PPL, Full Body, or Bro Split? Pick the Split You’ll Actually Do

People love asking which training split is best: push pull legs, full body, or bro split. The honest answer is less satisfying, but far more useful: it depends.

The split I used to build my physique is not the same split I use now. In 2023, when I was aggressively cutting weight and trying to preserve as much muscle as possible, I needed structure, volume, and very little room for negotiation. Today, my goals are different. I am balancing lifting with jiu-jitsu, running, family life, and recovery. That means the right split changed.

That is the real lesson. Your training split should serve the life and goal you have right now, not the one you had two years ago and not the one some influencer has in a perfectly optimized schedule.

The Split That Built My Physique: Arnold Blueprint Push Pull Legs

During my 2023 transformation, I used Arnold Blueprint-style workouts adapted for Tonal. The original workouts were essentially a push pull legs structure with a lot of classic bodybuilding volume. I modified them so they made sense on a smart cable machine.

One of the biggest changes I made was organizing exercises by machine setup. Instead of constantly moving arms, handles, benches, and positions, I grouped movements by height and attachment. That made the workouts faster and more realistic to complete. I still think this is one of the most important tricks for training on machines like Tonal or Speediance: optimize the workout for execution, not just theory.

The Arnold-style workouts were brutal. Many blocks used descending rep targets like 6, 12, 15, and 25 reps. That meant heavy work, volume work, and high-rep finishers all in the same structure. For the first several months, I followed that approach hard. Later, I removed the 25-rep sets and continued with a slightly reduced version.

That split worked because I was in a very specific phase. I was trying to lose a lot of weight quickly, preserve muscle, and follow a rigorous plan. I was not giving myself much flexibility. I was executing.

Why I Don’t Train That Way Now

Once I built the physique, the question became: what now?

I did not want to keep living inside that same grueling push pull legs plan forever. It had done its job, but my goal shifted from transformation to maintenance, performance, and sustainability. I wanted something I could repeat without feeling like every week was a bodybuilding death march.

So I moved toward full body workouts, or more accurately, full body minus legs most of the time. That sounds like a joke, but it is practical. If adding legs makes me avoid the workout entirely, then the better plan is the one I will actually do. I still include some lower-body work in certain workouts, like deadlifts or calf raises, especially because of ankle issues, but the core of my lifting became upper-body dominant full-body sessions.

These workouts usually use one warm-up set and one hard set to failure for each movement. They are built around efficiency on the machine. I am not trying to create the perfect textbook split. I am trying to create a workout I can hit hard two to four times per week while still doing jiu-jitsu, running, parenting, and recovering.

The Full Body Problem: Recovery Adds Up

Full body training sounds simple until you try to do it too often. I learned this during a Speediance lunar challenge where the goal was to work out every day.

My original plan was to rotate full workouts with warm-up-only days. A full workout might be over 40,000 pounds of total volume. A warm-up-only version could still be around 10,000 pounds. That is not nothing.

After a few days, I realized I was not recovering. Even the lighter days were accumulating fatigue. Full body training is efficient, but because it touches so many areas, it can become hard to repeat daily. If you train hard, your body eventually sends the bill.

Where the Bro Split Actually Shined

That challenge forced me to build a bro split: individual days focused on individual muscle groups. And honestly, it worked better than I expected.

For a daily lifting challenge, a bro split makes sense. You can train arms one day, chest another, back another, shoulders another, and avoid smashing your entire system every session. I also saw noticeable gains from having a dedicated arm day. My full-body workouts included arm work, but they were mostly built around back and upper-back movements. A focused arm day gave my biceps and triceps attention they were not getting before.

But once the challenge ended, the downside appeared immediately: I do not want to lift every day. With two little kids, jiu-jitsu, running, and normal life, a bro split becomes easy to miss. If you miss one day, the whole week can feel off. For me, it became a tool, not a lifestyle. I still keep an arm workout around and sometimes use pieces of it between bigger sessions, but I do not want my main training plan to require daily lifting.

Completionism Is Not Required

One major difference between transformation training and maintenance training is how much grace I give myself.

When I was cutting from 250 down toward 185, I was not ending workouts early. I was following the plan exactly. That phase demanded precision.

Now, if I start a workout and realize my strength is dropping too much, I will call it. That happened recently after a hard session earlier in the week. I got through the warm-ups, made it about halfway through the working sets, and knew the quality was gone. So I stopped.

That is not failure. That is experience. There is a difference between quitting because you are uncomfortable and stopping because the productive work is done.

How Cross-Training Changes the Equation

If all you do is lift, planning is simpler. But if you train jiu-jitsu, run, kickbox, or do any serious conditioning, your lifting split has to account for that.

Jiu-jitsu can create cardiovascular strain, muscular fatigue, or both. Some sessions barely affect strength training. Others leave your arms cooked. Running also competes for recovery, especially when coming back from an ankle injury or preparing for a race.

That is why the best split is not just about muscle groups. It is about priorities. Sometimes jiu-jitsu is number one. Sometimes lifting is number one. Right now, running is high on my list because I am preparing for a four-mile race. That changes what I can recover from and what I should emphasize.

So Which Split Should You Choose?

Here is the practical breakdown:

• Choose push pull legs if you want a proven bodybuilding structure, can train frequently, and are willing to handle serious volume.
• Choose full body if you want efficiency, fewer lifting days, and a repeatable structure that fits a busy schedule.
• Choose a bro split if you enjoy daily lifting, want targeted muscle focus, or need lower per-session systemic fatigue.
• Modify everything if you train another sport, have injuries, or use a machine where setup time matters.

The best split is the one that matches your current objective and your actual life. Not your fantasy schedule. Not your old schedule. Your real one.

The Bottom Line

I built my physique with a hard Arnold-style push pull legs plan. I maintain and evolve it now with efficient full-body machine workouts, occasional targeted bro-split days, and a lot more flexibility.

If you are in a transformation phase, structure and discipline matter. Follow the plan. Hit the sessions. Remove ambiguity.

If you are in a long-term maintenance or performance phase, sustainability matters more. Train hard, but build a system you can keep doing. The perfect split on paper is useless if you skip it. The imperfect split you execute consistently is the one that changes your body.