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Push, pull, legs workout: An exercise routine that targets muscle gain

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Push, pull, legs workout: An exercise routine that targets muscle gain

Looking for exercises to gain muscle and strength? Then follow the push, pull, legs workout routine that targets different muscle groups on separate days.

Your strength training goals may include increasing your strength and gaining muscle. But doing the same exercise every day will get monotonous and make you hit a plateau. It will also not target all the muscle groups, so you will need to consider a more specialised workout routine. Push, pull, legs or PPL method is a training routine that divides workouts into three categories. Each muscle group gets trained separately, on a different day. One day you can focus on your chest, shoulders, and triceps. The next day you can perform exercises for your back, and biceps. Then the following day, you can work on your lower body, which includes the hamstrings, calves, glutes.

What is the push, pull, legs workout?

Strength training is not all about building muscle and strength. It may help in prevention of type 2 diabetes, enhance cardiovascular health, promote bone development, and may be effective for reducing low back pain, as per research published in Current Sports Medicine Reports in 2012. Splitting your strength training routine by focusing on different muscle groups on separate days may be more effective. “The push, pull, legs (PPL) workout is a training style split by organising exercises which benefit specific body muscles,” says fitness expert Aman Puri.

Push, pull, legs workout targets muscles on different days. Image courtesy: Adobe Stock
  • Push day emphasises exercises that incorporate pushing actions focussing on the upper body muscles like the chest, shoulders, and triceps,
  • Pull day involves exercises with pulling actions, primarily aimed at muscles of the back, biceps, and forearms.
  • Leg day targets the lower body, focusing on the hip flexors, hamstrings, calves and glutes and abdomen muscles.

“Typically, it involves training three to six times a week, rotating through the three categories,” says fitness expert Yash Agarwal.

What are the health benefits of the push, pull, legs workout?

Split workout routine like push, pull, legs may be effective in stimulating muscle growth in people who do strength training, as per a 2021 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Here are some of the benefits –

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1. Promotes balanced muscle development

The push, pull, leg workout targets different muscles each time, ensuring a balanced workout schedule. “This balance increases the total functional strength as well as growth of muscles,” says Puri.

2. Prevents over or under doing exercise

Over or underdoing a workout is a common issue. There can be no relaxation while overdoing, and no muscle strength while underdoing an exercise. The push, pull, legs exercises are performed in such a way that there is enough rest for the muscles and no overlapping of exercises or overworking of the same muscles again and again.

3. Increased strength

“It incorporates movements that build overall strength efficiently,” says Agarwal. Exercises such as squats and deadlifts improve strength for a variety of muscle groups.

4. Enhanced muscle hypertrophy

By focusing on a particular weakened muscle area or isolating muscles of the injury area, the PPL split helps achieve growth of muscle mass and volume. “This may result in better body composition,” says Puri.

5. Allows personalisation and flexibility

The PPL split exercise regime gives the flexibility to easily customise your exercise and training frequency for strengthening particular muscles. You can just customise and increase the number of sets or reps as per your body’s strength and ability.

6. Prevents fatigue and reduces risk of injury

Alternating between push, pull and leg days can help the muscles to recover, allowing you to maintain the intensity and improving circulation and oxygenation without the risk of soreness. “Also, when you do balanced training, it minimises the risk of overuse injuries by distributing workload,” says Agarwal.

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What are the best exercises for the push, pull, legs workout?

Since the push, pull, legs workout targets different body parts, try including the following exercises in your workout routine –

1. Push exercises

Bench press

  • Keep your feet flat and lie down on a bench.
  • Grip the barbell a little bit wider than shoulder-width.
  • Bring the bar closer to your chest then push it back up.

Overhead press

  • To do overhead press, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
  • Grip the barbell at your shoulder level.
  • Press the barbell overhead until your arms get completely extended.

2. Pull exercises

Pull-ups

  • Hang from a pull-up bar with an overhand grip.
  • Pull your body up until your chin is above the bar.

Bent-over rows

  • To do bent-over rows, stand with your feet hip-width apart, and bend your knees a little bit.
  • Bend at your hips and keep your back straight.
  • Pull the barbell towards your waist then lower it.

3. Leg exercises

Squats

  • To do squats, the first thing you need to do to stand up with your feet shoulder-width apart.
  • Keep your back straight and bend your knees aa you lower your body.
  • Return to the standing position.
A woman doing squats
Squats are great for lower body. Image courtesy: Adobe Stock

Deadlifts

  • Stand with your feet hip-width apart, and barbell in the front.
  • Bend at your hips and knees to firmly grip the barbell.
  • Lift the equipment by extending your hips and knees.

Who should avoid the push, pull, legs workout?

“The push, pull, legs routine can be done by a wide range of individuals, but some may choose to avoid it,” says Puri.

  • People having specific injuries or those in the process of recovering from exercise can avoid engaging in this routine.
  • Beginners new to weight training or workouts should focus on basic movements and overall fitness before intensifying their workouts.
  • Older people should avoid this workout as the high-intensity exercises can affect the bones.

The push, pull, legs workout can be beneficial for those who want to target varied muscle groups for their development and growth. But consider your level of fitness before going for push, pull, legs workout for muscle growth.

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This type of exercise suppresses hunger in women more than men, study proves

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This type of exercise suppresses hunger in women more than men, study proves

Find yourself with a bigger appetite on rest days than after logging your hardest workout of the week? Same. It usually takes me an hour or two to feel hunger after an intense session, and while there are plenty of existing studies that have attributed this to a decrease in the hunger hormone grehlin and an increase in the hormone peptide YY, which helps you feel fuller for longer, new research suggests women are more susceptible to this response than men.

Granted, the study was conducted on only a small sample of participants (eight males and six females), but this is the first review to have included women at all, and the findings were notable.

The method was pretty straightforward: participants were asked to fast overnight, before completing bouts of cycling at varying levels of intensity the next morning. These were then followed up with blood tests (to measure amounts of lactate) and self-reports to analyse appetite levels.

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Science shows that high-intensity exercise suppresses appetite more in women than men

Results showed that the females had higher levels of total ghrelin (the hormone that makes you feel hunger) at baseline compared to the males, while they also had ‘significantly reduced levels’ of acylated (AG) ghrelin after intense exercise compared to males. Ghrelin levels were, in fact, much lower in both males and females after intense exercise compared to moderate exercise, meaning that all participants felt ‘less hungry’ after high-intensity exercise compared to after moderate exercise, but this was even more significant for women.

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‘We found that moderate intensity exercise either did not change ghrelin levels or led to a net increase,’ the study noted. The authors added that exercise above your lactate threshold may be necessary to elicit a suppression in grehlin. Lactate threshold is the point at which lactate builds up in your bloodstream faster than your body can remove it – it occurs during high-intensity exercise.

Why is this useful to know? The author of the study, Kara Anderson, PhD, says: ‘Our research suggests that high-intensity exercise may be important for appetite suppression, which can be particularly useful as part of a weight loss programme. Exercise should be thought of as a “drug”, where the “dose” should be customised based on an individual’s personal goals.’


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Bridie is Fitness Director at Women’s Health UK. She spends her days sweating over new workouts, fitness launches and the best home gym kit so you have all that you need to get fit done. Her work has been published in Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and more. She’s also a part-time yoga teacher with a habit of nodding off mid savasana (not when she’s teaching, promise).

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Working out but not seeing results? A PT confirms whether 30-minute workouts are top-tier for boosting fitness

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Working out but not seeing results? A PT confirms whether 30-minute workouts are top-tier for boosting fitness

While some of you have your healthy lifestyle down to a tee – balanced nutrition, adequate sleep and a finely tuned workout regime incorporating strength, cardio and flexibility training – others struggle to know where to start when it comes to fitness. And with Google searches for “Is 30 minutes of exercise a day enough?” spiking, it seems that many of you aren’t sure about the length of time or number of workouts to aim for weekly.

And to make matters even more confusing, knowing how often you should workout isn’t always as simple as it should be. You see, your progress will depend on a combination of factors which might seem unconnected to exercise but still have an impact. Sleep, for example, has been shown in various studies (like this one, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology) to affect physical performance, while research also shows a bi-directional relationship between exercise and stress.

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The overlooked key to fitness? Strengthening your joints and tendons

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The overlooked key to fitness? Strengthening your joints and tendons

Isometric exercises, like planks or lunge holds, require holding a position for an extended period. In these positions, your muscles are firing, but you’re also working on the alignment of the joint and working the tendon to hold that position, says Wulke. Ho adds that while ligaments and joints cannot technically be trained directly like tendons, you can support their health by strengthening the surrounding muscles and encouraging proper movement patterns.

Wulke often programs training days with a mix of goals for her athletes: “high” days for muscle and strength development and “low” days focusing on alignment, isometric holds, and mobility. But most people don’t have enough time to dedicate separate days for joint-specific work. Instead, try integrating these movements into your existing strength training sessions. Consider adding a few sets of isometric holds during your warm-up or as a finisher.

(Is cracking your joints bad for you?)

During your workouts, focus on the eccentric phase of your movements. Slow down and maintain control throughout the exercise to help you ensure proper form. You can also use higher reps and lower weight to reduce the risk of overstressing connective tissues.

Last, Hinson recommends incorporating low-impact exercises such as walking, cycling, Pilates, water aquatics, and yoga. “Taking care of and improving the structures that make the joints stronger and more flexible—it really will pay huge dividends in keeping [people] out of my office and away from injury,” he says.

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