Do you have five days to train in the gym? Then check out this awesome five-day workout split designed to put on pounds of mass and build massive strength. We've created a training program designed to maximize your time in the gym and optimize your muscular gains. If you're tired of using other splits or not seeing results, we're pretty sure this will get you the results you're seeking.
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Have the program customized to your personal needs with one of our expert...
Benefits Of A 5 Day Workout Routine
Running a 5-day workout routine has many benefits if you do it properly. Here are some reasons this could be the best program you ever run.
1. Provides A Lot Of Time
A 5-day split gives you a lot of time in the gym. This means you have the time to train for more specific goals and hit specific muscles.
For example, while 3-day splits can be very effective, they generally leave you time to train a muscle group or movement with 3-4 exercises a week. This is not necessarily bad, but it means you have less of an opportunity to be specific about your exercise selection.
On the contrary, with a 5-day split, you get a lot more time in the gym to really target each muscle with plenty of work.
2. Provides Structure And Goal Setting
Any training split provides structure, as that's its entire purpose. However, using a higher training frequency can make having a specific goal for the session easier.
For example, if you use a full-body split, you need to train every muscle every session. Not only that but you need to train for strength and hypertrophy, if that is your goal.
This can make it challenging to have a clear goal for that session.
On the other hand, as you'll see below, using 5 days lets you develop more specific goals for each training session. This can be very effective for hitting prescribed benchmarks.
Again, we are not saying you can't progress using a 3-day frequency. In fact, they can be very effective for some people.
However, it's all just a bit easier when you have an extra 2 days.
3. Ensures You Train Each Muscle Group Twice A Week W/ Volume
In addition to goal-setting, five days gives you plenty of time in the gym to ensure you'll hit two primary goals;
- Hit each muscle with the right training frequency of 2 times a week.¹
- Each time you train the muscle, you can put plenty of volume on it.
Both of these will help maximize the amount of effective work you place on your muscles. Now, as long as you can eat and sleep enough, your body can translate this extra work into bigger gains.
The 5-Day Workout Program
We will first review the framework for this program and then provide the actual five-day split. We want you to understand the general methodology behind its construction so that it makes sense.
The 5-Day Split
There are quite a few ways to run a 5-day split, as there are a lot of days you can train. However, when optimizing for both strength and muscle growth, we've found a very effective method is to combine two different splits;
- An Upper/Lower split is needed to concentrate on strength.
- A Push/Pull/Legs (PPL) split to concentrate on muscle hypertrophy.
This seems to make it easier to compartmentalize the primary goal for that specific training session, i.e., lower body strength or pulling hypertrophy.
Now, this won't be 100% true for every movement session and movement. The two main examples are;
- You'll train the squat on your pushing (hypertrophy) day, but focus on strength.
- The overhead press will be your primary pushing hypertrophy movement, and you'll
The Program
We'll now lay out the program's five sessions. Afterward, we'll address any nuance and discuss how to progress weekly.
You'll notice some exercises have "Rest Pause" meaning you'll perform a rest-pause set on your last set. This means you'll perform a set failure. You then put the weight down, rest 20s and repeat. Then do this 2 more times.
Session 1 - Upper
- Push Press - 4X4
- Bench Press - 3X5
- Bent Over Row - 3X6
- Dips - 3XRPE8 (If you can't do 6, use assistance)
- Chin-Ups (weighted) - 3X5
Session 2 - Lower
- Deadlift - 4X4
- Front Squat - 3X5
- Barbell Hip Thrust - 3X6
- Bulgarian Split Squat - 2-3X8-10/leg
- Leg Press (Single Leg) - 2X6-8/leg
Rest
Session 3 - Push
- Overhead Press - 3X6-8
- Incline Dumbbell Press - 3X8-10
- Narrow Grip Bench Press - 3X8-10 + Rest Pause
- Cable Lateral Raise - 3X8-12
- Dumbbell Pullover + Triceps Pushdown - 3X8-12
Session 4 - Pull
- Rack Pull (knee level) - 3X6
- T-Bar Row - 3X6-8
- Lat-Pulldown - 3X8-10 + Rest Pause
- Seated Row (Wide) - 2X8-10 + Rest Pause
- Reverse Fly + Face Pull - 3X8-12
- Bicep Curl - 3X8-12
Session 5- Legs
- Squat - 3X5
- Hack Squat - 3X8-10
- Romanian Deadlift 3X8-10
- Leg Press* + Calf Raise - 2X15-20 + Failure +Rest Pause
- Leg Extension + Leg Curl - 3X10-12
- Standing Calf Raise** - 3X6-20
*Alternate foot position
**Use the entire rep range over time
How To Progress Through This Program
Working through this program will be similar to running any program; you need to apply progressive overload, which is the most important training principle and is fundamental to your progress.²
It simply states that in order to progress continually, you must continually increase the amount of stress or work placed on the muscle. If you stop, your muscle will stop growing as it's already adapted to the stress!
The most important aspect is you need to always be concerned with doing more work over time. There are two main ways to do this.
- Increase the load: Adding weight to the bar is the most obvious option. To do this, we recommend making small jumps in weight—5 lbs for upper body movements and 10 lbs for lower body movements. This will apply to all of your movements but be of special importance for your strength training. Increasing strength is a matter of improving your neuromuscular efficiency, and this is done optimally by using heavier loads rather than increasing reps.
- Increase the reps: The other method you'll use is increasing the number of reps. Again, this can be true for all of your movements but will be especially important for your hypertrophy movements.
Progressing On Your Strength Movements
As we just mentioned, your primary tool for progressing on your strength movements will be increasing the load.
Your strength-centric movements will have heavier loads and fewer reps. To make this more clear, they will just have a set number of reps prescribed, i.e., 4X4 or 3X5 as opposed to 3X8-10.
This is how it might look to do a deadlift 4X4
- Week 1: 315lbs - 4X4
- Week 2: 325lbs - 4X4
- Week 3: 335lbs - 4X4
- And so on…
If you miss the prescribed number of reps one week, you'll use cluster sets to get the rest. Rest 20-30 sec and perform another set of 1-3 reps. Then, repeat this two more times. Let's say you're doing a 4X4 set of 315 lbs. However, you only get 2 reps in your last set.
- 1X2 (missed set)
- Rest 20 sec
- 1X2
- Rest 20 sec
- 1X1
- Rest 20 sec
- 1X1
Progressing On Your Muscle Hypertrophy Movements
You will use a combination of increasing load and reps on your hypertrophy movements. Apart from the strength movements, you'll see movements with a rep range, i.e. 3X8-10 or 3X10-12; these are your muscle hypertrophy movements.
For these, you will start at the lower end of the rep range and then add reps weekly. Once you get to the top range, add some weight, which will knock you down to the lower rep range. You'll then continue adding reps and continue on.
Let's say you're doing the close grip bench press using 3X8-10 and start with 135lbs. Here's how it will progress;
- Week 1 - 135lbs 3X8
- Week 2 - 135lbs 3X9
- Week 3 - 135lbs 3X10
- Week 4 - 140lbs 3X8
- Week 5 - 140lbs 3X9
Now, this doesn't need to be exact. You might get to a point and find that completing all 3 sets at 10 reps is tough. You don't need to get all 3 sets; just add weight and continue. You could also use the tactic above.
Nutrition And Recovery
This program is awesome, but you'll only see optimal results if your nutrition and recovery are on point. With that said, there's nothing unique about what those should look like for this program, so this is just a good reminder.
Sleep
Sleep!!!
That's as complicated as it needs to get. Aim for at least 7 hours of sleep nightly. And no, you can't "catch up" on the weekend. You should be as consistent as possible.
Sleep has been shown to play a major role in a person's body composition; sleep and improve your body comp or don't sleep and worsen your body comp.³
Nutrition
This program is designed to build muscle and strength, so ideally, you'll be in a caloric surplus. We recommend starting with a 300-calorie surplus and then monitoring and assessing it after a couple of weeks.
Regarding your protein intake, you should eat 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight (g/kg) at an absolute minimum. However, eating up to 2.2g/kg, or even higher, could be beneficial.
That said, you could run this while you're cutting as well. If you choose to do this, your deficit will be affected by your body fat percentage. If you're higher, you could afford to have a larger deficit. On the other hand, if you're lean, you should use a smaller deficit of around 300.
In either of the above situations, you should get at least 30% of your total calories from fat and then fill in the rest with carbs.
Regardless, you should increase your protein intake to above 2.0g/kg of body weight. Ideally, it would be 2.5g/kg+. Very high protein intake has been shown to be very effective in optimizing weight loss and even producing successful body recompositions.⁴
Cardio?
Should you do cardio?
Yes.
Cardio is a part of your overall training that shouldn't be negotiable. While this program will provide some cardio benefits, nothing replaces a good 30min+ session of steady state. You could do HIIT as well, but keep in mind that HIIT is high-intensity and could be a lot for your body,
If you want to do something on the other two days, we'd recommend you do a session of cardio and a session of mobility or very-low intensity activity (walking 10,000 steps). Ultimately this would result in a 7-day frequency, so be mindful before you do that.
Final Word On Your 5 Day Workout Split
We really like this program as it delivers the best of both worlds: adding strength and mass. It's done in an easy-to-follow system that can help keep you focused.
We have found that setting isolated goals for a specific workout produces a more efficient and effective workout. Either way, be sure you eat plenty and get a ton of rest as you're going to need it to run this program!
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Have the program customized to your personal needs with one of our expert...
References
- Schoenfeld, Brad J., et al. “Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Sports Medicine, vol. 46, no. 11, 21 Apr. 2016, pp. 1689–1697, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102172/, https://ift.tt/QGZUoOg.
- Plotkin, Daniel, et al. “Progressive Overload without Progressing Load? The Effects of Load or Repetition Progression on Muscular Adaptations.” PeerJ, vol. 10, no. 10, 30 Sept. 2022, p. e14142, https://ift.tt/lWyEZOq.
- DÁTTILO, MURILO, et al. “Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Acute Skeletal Muscle Recovery after Exercise.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 52, no. 2, Feb. 2020, pp. 507–514, paulogentil.com/pdf/Effects%20of%20Sleep%20Deprivation%20on%20Acute%20Skeletal%20Muscle%20Recovery%20after%20Exercise.pdf, https://ift.tt/ejd5Arl.
- Barakat, Christopher, et al. “Body Recomposition.” Strength & Conditioning Journal, vol. Publish Ahead of Print, no. 5, 4 Aug. 2020, journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/Fulltext/2020/10000/Body_Recomposition__Can_Trained_Individuals_Build.3.aspx, https://ift.tt/RVzDtSG.
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