PPL Exercise Selection: Which Exercises Per Day, In What Order?

Dividing training into push, pull and legs answers only the first question of a training plan: which muscle groups am I training today?

It does not yet answer how many exercises you need, which one comes first, or how much work per muscle actually makes sense.

That is exactly where home-made PPL plans get unnecessarily complicated. Not because there is a secret perfect exercise list, but because every additional exercise competes with the others for time, performance and recovery.

How many exercises per session?

Five to six exercises is a usable practical range, not a hard ceiling.

The Reddit PPL sits roughly in that range depending on the day. That makes it a good example of how a PPL can be built. But it does not prove that exercise seven is automatically “junk volume” or that four exercises are too few.

The more important calculation is:

• Which movements do you want to cover?
• How many demanding sets does each target muscle get in the week?
• How long does your performance stay stable enough within the session?
• Can you recover before your next relevant session?

With four well-chosen exercises you can build a complete push or pull day. Seven exercises can work too, if some of them are small isolation blocks or supersets.

So the number of exercises is an outcome of your planning — not its starting point.

The order rule

What matters most to you comes early.

That is more precise than the classic rule “compounds always first”.

Research on exercise order shows mainly a strength effect: exercises placed at the start of a session improve their strength performance more on average. For muscle growth, the differences between multi-joint-before-isolation and isolation-before-multi-joint come out considerably smaller.

From that follows a practical order:

1. Highest priority. Usually a heavy compound lift where you want to build strength or practise technique.
2. Second large movement. Often a different movement pattern that complements the day.
3. Further muscle work. Machines, dumbbells or isolation for the major target muscles.
4. Lower priorities. Small muscle groups, additional volume, optional work.

If lateral raises, calves or biceps are your clear priority, they can deliberately move forward. In exchange you accept that later exercises happen with a bit more pre-fatigue.

That is not a mistake. It is prioritisation.

The general version of this rule — compounds before isolation, how many exercises per muscle group, push/pull balance — is in exercise selection and order. This article is only about the PPL-specific application.

The blueprint per day

Think in slots, not in exercise names first.

A slot describes a job in the session: horizontal pressing, vertical pulling, knee flexion for the hamstrings, or direct work for the side delt. Which specific exercise fills that slot depends on your goal, your equipment and which movements you tolerate well.

The set figures below are therefore starting points, not a PPL standard. Two good sets can be enough for an accessory; a prioritised movement can get four or five.

Push day

The table shows a chest- and shoulder-oriented push day. If your triceps matter considerably more than additional chest isolation, slot 3 can change accordingly.

Pull day

The deadlift is a special case here: it is a “pull” exercise in the traditional PPL scheme, but it does not fully replace vertical or horizontal pulling for the lats and upper back. So if you deadlift heavy, you do not automatically need even more back exercises — but the remaining slots should be chosen by their actual function.

Leg day

Leg day does not have to contain every slot in every session. If you train legs twice a week, you can distribute priorities: leg A more knee-dominant, leg B more hip-dominant.

The weekly view is what matters. A single training day does not have to do everything.

The four muscles that slip through in PPL

Four areas are good checkpoints, because they easily end up last in home-made plans or get trained only indirectly.

Rear delts. Rows load them as well, but how much direct work is needed depends on your pulling selection and your goals. Reverse flyes or face pulls are easy additions when they otherwise barely appear.

Hamstrings. Squats are no reliable substitute for targeted hamstring work. Studies on squat training show, despite clear quadriceps and glute adaptations, sometimes barely any hamstring hypertrophy. A hip extension pattern like the RDL and/or a knee flexion like leg curls cover different functions of the posterior thigh.

Calves. They get little direct growth stimulus from many compound lifts. If they matter to you, they need their own slot — whether at the end of leg day or earlier is a question of priority.

Abs. Ab training is not a mandatory component of a PPL. Squats, deadlifts and presses already demand the trunk. But if your goal is direct abdominal hypertrophy or specific trunk performance, that work should not depend on whether five minutes happen to be left at the end.

The test takes two minutes: go through your weekly plan and count which muscles get direct work and which get only indirect. Every plan page in the hitPR catalogue shows the set distribution per muscle group for the week. With the Reddit PPL, that makes it quick to see where the program deliberately places a lot or little volume.

That is more useful than assuming every PPL has to contain exactly the same six slots.

Push A and push B: vary the loading, not the exercise list

A/B days are one way to distribute priorities within the week.

The Reddit PPL does this cleanly: push A opens heavy with bench press, push B heavy with overhead press. The other pressing movement stays in the plan as a higher-rep exercise. Pull A opens with deadlifts, pull B with rows.

That is a good model, but not a general requirement.

You can also build two identical push days if that works well for your progression, technique and recovery. Conversely, you can differentiate them more if you need different exercises or want to avoid overuse complaints.

The advantage of a relatively stable exercise selection is above all measurability: when you repeat the same exercise regularly, it is easier to see whether weight, reps or execution are improving. Progressive overload does not require every exercise to stay unchanged forever, though.

So the rule of thumb is more like: variation with a reason. Stability as long as it works.

When time runs short

Do not automatically cut “from the bottom”. Cut by priority.

If your main goal is bench press strength, the heavy pressing movement stays and a later isolation exercise goes. If you are specifically building side delts right now, lateral raises can matter more than a third chest exercise.

What almost always works worse: brutally shortening every rest period and forcing six exercises into the same time. Reps and load then often drop on exactly the exercises you actually wanted to train.

A shorter session with clear priorities is therefore often better than a complete checklist rushed through.

The same principle applies to sets: how many sets per muscle group make sense is a weekly question. A single shortened session does not ruin the training block.

And if the equipment is missing?

The slot logic stays; only the specific exercise changes.

Cable flyes can become dumbbell flyes or push-up variations, cable rows can become single-arm dumbbell rows, and the leg press can become split squats or lunges.

Not every movement has a perfect 1:1 substitute, though. Vertical pulling and heavy lower-body training in particular become a planning problem faster with very little equipment. Which compromises make sense is covered in PPL at home and with dumbbells.

Conclusion

A good PPL does not come from writing six exercises under the right heading.

The more important rules are:

• Choose exercises by function and goal, not by a mandatory list.
• Five to six exercises is a practical range, not a biological ceiling.
• The highest priority belongs early in the session; that does not always have to be the largest compound lift.
• Plan weekly volume rather than optimising each training day in isolation.
• Check the areas that get only indirect loading in your specific plan.
• A/B days are a tool, not a requirement.
• When time runs short, cut the lowest priority instead of blindly dropping the last exercise category.

If you would rather skip the assembly: the Reddit PPL sits ready-configured in the catalogue. The structure of the split itself is in the Push Pull Legs guide; whether PPL suits your number of days at all is covered in PPL vs. upper/lower.

Sources

• Simão R et al. (2020). What influence does resistance exercise order have on muscular strength gains and muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Sport Science, 20(9):1275-1289.
• American College of Sports Medicine. (2026). Resistance Training Prescription for Muscle Function, Hypertrophy, and Physical Performance in Healthy Adults: An Overview of Reviews.
• Pelland JC et al. (2026). The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Medicine, 56(2):481-505.
• Kubo K, Ikebukuro T, Yata H. (2019). Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 119:1933-1942.
• metallicadpa. A Linear Progression Based PPL Program for Beginners. r/Fitness, 2015.