Most men in the gym are doing plenty of good exercises. What they’re rarely doing is putting them together into a routine that’s actually structured to build muscle — one with a sensible split, the right volume, a clear plan for progression, and recovery built in rather than left to chance. This guide brings all of that together into a single, complete push-pull upper body workout, using exercises and training principles already covered in depth elsewhere on this site.

If you’ve read any of our individual exercise guides — the lat pulldown, the flat dumbbell bench press, the biceps curl — this is where they all fit together.

What Is a Push-Pull Split, and Why Use One?

A push-pull split organises your training around movement pattern rather than individual body part. Push exercises — pressing movements like the bench press or lateral raise — primarily use the chest, shoulders and triceps. Pull exercises — rows and pulldowns — primarily use the back and biceps. Training this way means every session hits multiple muscle groups that work well together, without the awkward overlap you get from a strict “chest day, back day” split.

For anyone training two to four times a week, alternating push and pull sessions is one of the simplest ways to build a routine that covers the whole upper body without constantly rewriting your programme.

The Push Exercises

These four movements form the pressing half of the workout, covering chest, shoulders, and the pushing muscles of the arms.

Flat Dumbbell Bench Press — the primary chest builder in this routine. Dumbbells allow a slightly longer range of motion than a barbell and force each side to work independently. If you train with a barbell instead, our guide to the barbell bench press covers the same movement with a fixed bar.

Cable Crossovers — an isolation movement that keeps constant tension on the chest throughout the rep, unlike a press where tension eases near lockout.

Side Chest Press — an unconventional but effective way to target the inner chest, where balance and grip aren’t the limiting factor.

Dumbbell Lateral Raises — the single best exercise in this routine for building shoulder width, targeting the lateral deltoid directly.

Before you start any pressing movement, it’s worth understanding why retracting your shoulder blades during pressing exercises matters — it’s a small setup detail that protects your shoulders and improves how much force you can actually produce.

The Pull Exercises

These four movements form the pulling half, covering the back, rear shoulders and biceps.

Lat Pulldown — builds width through the back and is a useful stepping stone if you can’t yet perform a pull-up with good form.

Seated Cable Row — builds thickness rather than width, training the mid-back through a horizontal pulling pattern.

One-Arm Cable Row — trains each side independently, which helps even out any strength imbalance between your left and right back.

Biceps Curls — finishes the session with direct arm work, once the bigger pulling muscles have already been worked.

A Sample Session

A straightforward way to run this as two alternating sessions per week:

Push Day

1. Flat Dumbbell Bench Press — 4 sets of 6–10 reps
2. Cable Crossovers — 3 sets of 10–15 reps
3. Side Chest Press — 3 sets of 10–12 reps
4. Dumbbell Lateral Raises — 3 sets of 12–15 reps

Pull Day

1. Lat Pulldown — 4 sets of 6–10 reps
2. Seated Cable Row — 3 sets of 8–12 reps
3. One-Arm Cable Row — 3 sets of 10–12 reps per side
4. Biceps Curls — 3 sets of 10–15 reps

That’s a starting template, not a fixed prescription — the sections below explain how to adjust it as you progress.

Structuring and Progressing the Workout

A list of exercises isn’t a training programme on its own. How you order them, how much you do, and how you progress over time all matter as much as the exercises themselves.

Exercise order isn’t arbitrary. Bigger, more demanding compound lifts like the bench press and lat pulldown come first in each session, while smaller isolation movements like lateral raises and biceps curls come later — read the full explanation of why exercise order matters for the reasoning behind this.

How much volume you need is a common sticking point. If you’re unsure whether four sets or six sets per exercise is right for you, our guide to how many sets you need to build muscle breaks this down properly, and volume vs intensity in hypertrophy training explains the trade-off between doing more sets and pushing each set harder. If you’re not sure what “intensity” even means in a training context, this explainer clears it up.

Once the basic routine feels manageable, understanding the difference between compound and isolation exercises will help you see why this routine pairs big pressing and pulling movements with smaller, targeted ones rather than using compound lifts alone.

To make each set count for more, pay attention to time-under-tension — slowing down the lowering phase of a rep rather than just moving weight from A to B — and to the distinct roles of concentric, eccentric and isometric contractionswithin each lift. For a more advanced approach to the eccentric phase specifically, eccentric training (negatives) is worth building in once you’ve got the basics down.

When a straight set of 4×8 stops being enough, our overview of workout set types — including supersets, drop sets, and pyramid sets — gives you several ways to add intensity without simply adding more weight. If you’d rather add muscle without loading more plates onto the bar at all, this guide covers exactly that.

The single most important long-term principle is progressive overload — gradually increasing what you ask of your muscles over time. Our guide to continuously improving through progressive overload is the one to read and apply here; without it, this routine (or any routine) will plateau.

Finally, how many days a week you should train determines how often you can realistically run this push-pull split — most people do well alternating push and pull two to four times per week, depending on recovery capacity.

The Science Behind Why This Works

If you want to understand the “why” rather than just the “what,” a few of our deeper explainers cover the underlying physiology: the science of muscle hypertrophy itself, how muscle protein synthesis actually drives growth, and the science behind muscle contractions more broadly. Together, these explain why a structured push-pull approach — with adequate volume, sensible intensity, and real progression — produces results that random, unstructured training doesn’t.

Recovery Determines Whether This Routine Actually Works

Training stimulates growth; recovery is where it actually happens. A few things worth getting right alongside this routine:

• Sleep is where the bulk of muscular repair takes place.
• Hydration and electrolytes affect performance far more than most lifters assume.
• Protein supplies the raw material for the muscle you’re training to build, and if you’re new to training, these beginner-friendly supplement basics are a sensible starting point.

For the fuller picture — including nutrient timing and how much protein and carbohydrate you actually need around training — see our complete guide to workout recovery.

Avoiding Common Mistakes

A few final checks before you start:

• If you’re unsure whether your working weight is appropriate, this guide to knowing if you’re lifting too heavy is worth reading before your first session.
• On heavier pressing or pulling days, knowing when a weightlifting belt actually helps can protect your lower back.
• If progress feels slow after a few weeks, why consistency is the secret to muscle growth and six ways to overcome a workout plateau are both worth reading before you assume the programme itself isn’t working.

Setting It Up for Yourself

Before your first session, it’s worth taking five minutes to set clear workout goals — strength, size, or simply consistency — since that will shape how you apply the progression principles above. And if you find yourself losing motivation a few weeks in, these seven ways to stay motivated in the gym are worth revisiting.

This routine isn’t complicated. Four push exercises, four pull exercises, run twice a week, progressed steadily and recovered from properly, will build a stronger, more balanced upper body for as long as you keep applying it.