About this workout
This is a five day body part split that runs Monday through Friday and gives you the weekend back. One muscle group per day, trained hard, then left alone for a week. I built it around a normal work calendar because that is the calendar most lifters actually live on. You train after work, you take Saturday and Sunday off, and you show up again Monday. The volume per session is enough to grow on and short enough to finish in about an hour. It is an intermediate program. You need a base of strength and a few years of clean technique before it pays you back.
Who This Program Is For
- Intermediate lifters with at least a year or two of consistent barbell work behind them.
- People who want muscle first and strength as a byproduct.
- Anyone whose schedule is locked to weekdays and free on weekends.
- Lifters who train at a full gym with barbells, dumbbells, cables and machines.
Who this is NOT for: beginners, anyone who can only train three days a week, and shift workers whose days off move around. The fixed calendar is the whole point of this plan, and it is also its weakness. If your week is unpredictable, a rotating split will serve you better than this one.
What You'll Need
- A full gym: barbells, an adjustable bench, dumbbells to a useful weight, and a squat rack.
- Cable stations with a rope and a straight bar, plus a lat pulldown.
- Standard plate loaded and selectorized machines: leg press, leg extension, lying leg curl, pec dec and a calf station.
The Program
Monday is chest and abs. Tuesday is back. Wednesday is legs. Thursday is shoulders and traps. Friday is arms and abs. Each day opens with one heavy compound in the 6 to 8 range, then moves into 8 to 12 rep work, then finishes with isolation in the 12 to 15 range. Five to seven exercises per day keeps you inside 60 to 75 minutes if you keep your rest honest and your phone in your pocket. Friday runs as supersets: exercises marked with 0 sec rest go straight into the movement listed under them, and you rest after the pair. Now the honest part about a fixed calendar. If you miss Tuesday, do not stack back onto Wednesday's legs. Push the whole week forward one day and train Saturday, or drop the missed day entirely and pick the split back up on schedule. Doubling up two big sessions in one night is how intermediate lifters get hurt.
| Day 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday: Chest and Abs | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Barbell Bench Press | 4 | 6-8 | 120 sec |
| Incline Dumbbell Bench Press | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Smith Machine Bench Press | 3 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| Pec Dec (Butterfly) | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Incline Cable Fly | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Rope Crunch | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Day 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday: Back | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Bent Over Row | 4 | 6-8 | 120 sec |
| Lat Pulldown | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Seated Cable Rows | 3 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| One Arm Dumbbell Row | 3 | 10-12 each side | 60 sec |
| Straight Arm Pulldown | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Barbell Shrugs | 3 | 10-12 with a 2 second squeeze | 60 sec |
| Day 3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Wednesday: Legs | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Barbell Squat | 4 | 6-8 | 150 sec |
| Leg Press | 3 | 10-12 | 120 sec |
| Romanian Deadlift | 3 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Lying Leg Curl | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Leg Extension | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Standing Calf Raise | 4 | 12-15 with a 2 second pause at the bottom | 45 sec |
| Day 4 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday: Shoulders and Traps | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Military Press (Overhead Shoulder Press) | 4 | 6-8 | 120 sec |
| Seated Dumbbell Lateral Raise | 4 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Arnold Press | 3 | 10-12 | 75 sec |
| Reverse Flyes | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Face Pulls | 3 | 15-20 | 60 sec |
| Dumbbell Shrugs | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Day 5 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday: Arms and Abs | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Close Grip EZ Curl (EZ Bar Curl) | 4 | 8-10 | 0 sec |
| Skullcrusher | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Incline Dumbbell Curls | 3 | 10-12 | 0 sec |
| Cable Rope Overhead Tricep Extensions | 3 | 12-15 | 75 sec |
| Hammer Curls | 3 | 10-12 | 0 sec |
| Tricep Pushdown | 3 | 12-15 plus one rest-pause burst | 60 sec |
| Cable Crunch | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
How to Progress
Ten weeks, four phases, and the loading gets heavier as the rep targets tighten.
Weeks 1 to 3. Take every listed set to the top of its rep range with two reps left in the tank on the compounds. Write down the weights. This block exists so you have a real starting point, not so you can find your max in week one.
Weeks 4 to 6. Add 5 pounds to upper-body compounds and 10 pounds to squats and Romanian deadlifts whenever you hit the top of the range on every set. Isolation work moves up only when the last set still finishes clean at the top of the range.
Week 7. Deload. Same five sessions, same exercises, but cut every set count by one and use about 60 percent of your week 6 loads. Nothing goes near failure. You are not losing anything here. You are letting connective tissue catch up to what your muscles have been signing up for.
Weeks 8 to 10. Drop the heavy compound to 5 to 6 reps and add load. Everything after it stays where it was and gets pushed to true failure on the last set only. Week 10 is the peak of the run, then take three or four easy days before you start it again or move on.
Warm-Up and Recovery Notes
Five minutes of easy general movement, then warm up the first exercise specifically. Empty bar, then roughly 50 percent, 70 percent and 85 percent of your working weight for a few reps each. Those ramp sets do not count as working sets and should not leave you tired. After the first exercise of the day you are warm; one light feeder set is plenty for the rest.
Five hard weekday sessions in a row is a real load, and the weekend off is the recovery plan, not an afterthought. Sleep seven to nine hours. If your bench and your squat both stall for two straight weeks and you feel flat walking into the gym, you are under-recovered, not undertrained. Cut a set from each exercise for one week rather than adding more work.
Nutrition and Supplementation
Muscle needs a small calorie surplus, somewhere around 200 to 300 calories above maintenance, and enough protein to use it. Aim for roughly one gram of protein per pound of target bodyweight, keep carbohydrates high enough to fuel five sessions a week, and do not cut fat below about 20 percent of your intake. Weigh yourself weekly and average it. If the average is not moving up slowly, eat more. If you are gaining more than about a pound a week, most of what you are adding is not muscle.
Food does the heavy lifting here, but hitting a gram per pound five days a week is easier with a protein powder in the mix, and a multivitamin is cheap insurance when your meals get repetitive. Creatine is optional and has the most evidence behind it of anything you can buy, so if you take one thing beyond those two, take that.
FAQ
Can I move the weekend rest days somewhere else? Yes, as long as you keep two consecutive off days and keep the exercise order intact. Legs sitting in the middle of the week is deliberate; it separates the two pressing days from each other.
Where is the direct ab and cardio work? Abs are trained twice, Monday and Friday, and that is enough alongside heavy squats and rows. If you want cardio, put it on the weekend or after a lifting session, never before one, and keep it easy enough that it does not eat into Monday.
Five days feels like a lot. Can I run this four days a week? Not without changing it. Drop a day and one muscle group loses all of its direct work. If five days is not realistic for you, run a four day upper and lower split instead and come back to this when your schedule opens up.
Questions and results
Ask a coach
Running this program? Tell us what week you are on and how the progression is going. A coach answers every question here.