reckoner
This is a plan you can take to the gym this week. Every lift has a machine or a dumbbell version beside it, and every name links to a page showing how to do it. Push pull legs: the PPL split covers what the split decides. This page is the plan.
Three days or six
Run the three days once through the week and every muscle is trained once a week. That is a fair place to start, and short enough to learn properly. Run them twice through on six days and every muscle is trained twice, which is where the evidence points once your recovery keeps up. Run it three days a week to start; six days is for later. A meta-analysis by Schoenfeld and colleagues found that training a muscle twice a week grew it more than once, and concluded that major muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week1. The 2026 American College of Sports Medicine position stand recommends hard training at least twice a week for every major muscle group, and found strength rose more with two or more sessions a week2. For size alone it found once a week did as well when weekly sets were equal2, so what the second pass really buys you is more hard sets.
One honest note. On three days, full body training reaches every muscle two or three times, and for most beginners it is the stronger choice. A beginner strength program has one written out. Push pull legs on three days still works. It is the weaker of the two.
The plan
Do the lifts in the order shown: strength improves more on a lift done early in the session2. Pick one column for each row and keep it for a few weeks, so you can see it move. On the one-arm row and the split squat, the reps are for each side.
Day 1: Push
Day 2: Pull
| Lift | Or | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lat pull-down | Inverted row | 3 | 8–12 |
| Seated cable row | One-arm dumbbell row | 3 | 8–12 |
| Face pull | Incline reverse fly | 2 | 12–15 |
| Dumbbell biceps curl | Cable curl | 3 | 10–15 |
Day 3: Legs
| Lift | Or | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leg press | Goblet squat | 3 | 8–12 |
| Dumbbell Romanian deadlift | Glute bridge | 3 | 8–12 |
| Seated leg curl | Lying leg curl | 3 | 10–15 |
| Dumbbell split squat | Leg extension | 2 | 10–12 |
| Standing calf raise | Leg press calf raise | 3 | 10–15 |
On three days, leave a rest day between sessions where you can. On six, run push, pull, legs twice and take the seventh day off.
How hard each set should be
Stop each set when you could have done two or three more good reps. The position stand found that lifting to failure added nothing to strength or size, and that stopping two or three short is enough effort2. You will not judge it exactly, and nobody does: people underpredict the reps they have left by about one on average, experienced lifters included3. A good rep looks like the first one. When the reps start to change shape, the set is done. Reps in reserve explains the counting.
Warm up and rest
Before your first lift, do two or three lighter sets of it, working up toward your working weight. The lifts after it are warmed up by the ones before. How many warm-up sets has the reasoning. Rest about two minutes between sets of the first two lifts and about a minute on the smaller ones. Rest length did not change strength gains in the position stand2, so treat those as starting points and rest until the next set can be an honest one.
How to progress, week to week
- Start lighter than you think. Pick a weight you can lift for the bottom of the range with three reps to spare. Week one is for learning the movement.
- Add reps first. Each week, try for one or two more reps on each set at the same weight.
- Then add weight. Once every set reaches the top of the range with two or three to spare and clean form, move up the smallest step you have. The reps drop back, and you climb again.
- Hold when the form slips. If a set got messy, repeat the same target next week.
- Write it down in the gym. Weight, reps and how many you had left. Next week starts from that record.
Some lifts will climb every week and some will sit still for a while. Both are normal. Double progression is the name for this method.
Pick the days you will show up for, stop every set with two or three in the tank, and let the record tell you when to add weight.
What Reckoner does with it
Reckoner builds this kind of plan and rewrites it from what you log. Tell it how many days you can train and it lays out the week. While you are new to lifting, three days is full body, so every muscle is reached more than once. Six days on a muscle or fat loss goal is push, pull and legs, twice through. You can also name what each of your days is, push, pull or legs, and it builds that.
As a beginner your main lifts are written as three sets of eight to twelve. After each lift you say how many good reps you had left and how the form looked. The reps climb first, and the weight goes up when what you logged shows you are ready, lift by lift, from what you actually did.