Which gym split should you run?

Choose by how many days you actually train

Not by how many you intend to. The commonest failure is a five-day split run three days a week, which quietly means the last two days never happen and two muscle groups never get trained.

The splits, honestly compared

Full body — 2 to 3 days

The best answer for anyone training twice or three times a week, and the one people avoid because it sounds unserious. Every muscle gets trained two to three times a week, which is the frequency that drives growth. Sessions are longer and the leg work is the part that gets rushed.

Upper / lower — 4 days

The most balanced option for four days a week. Everything is trained twice, sessions are a sane length, and it fits neatly around two team-training nights. If you play a sport and lift four times a week, this is usually the answer.

Push / pull / legs — 3 or 6 days

The most popular split for a reason: it groups muscles that work together, so nothing is trained sore. It needs six days to hit everything twice a week; at three days a week each muscle is trained once, which is enough to maintain but slow for growth.

Push / pull — 2 to 4 days

Upper body split by movement, with legs handled separately or not at all. Useful for an athlete whose legs are already getting hammered by their sport.

Bro split (one muscle a day) — 5 days

High volume per body part and each muscle trained once a week. It has fallen out of fashion and the frequency criticism is fair, but it is not useless — it works if the weekly volume is there and it is the split people find easiest to stay interested in. It needs five days; at three it does not work at all.

Goal-biased splits

Glute-focused, V-taper, arms-and-shoulders and similar splits are just a standard split with volume redistributed toward what you care about. That is a legitimate choice, and it is more honest than pretending every program should be balanced.

The part that actually decides your results

Progressive overload — the weight going up over time. This is the thing no split solves for you, and it is why most people run the same weights for a year and then blame the split.

It is also exactly what Train Smart's prescribed weights handle: every working set carries a number in kilos, calculated from your last top set and the week you are in within the block, so the load climbs whether or not you planned it. Pick any of the ten splits, or build your own week by choosing which muscles pair on which day — the progression works the same underneath all of them.