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4 Day Workout Plans

4 day workout plans are a great way to build strength, grow muscle, and make solid progress. Utilizing 4 training days per week is a popular choice for upper/lower body split routines like PHUL as well as programs that focus on a major compound lift each day like Wendler's 5/3/1.

Not what you're looking for? Check out Lift Vault's workout split guide to find the best routine for you.

Best 4 Day Workout Plans

  1. Jim Wendler's 5/3/1
  2. PHUL
  3. Beginner Bodybuilder Program (Ripped Body)
  4. Juggernaut Method
  5. GZCLP
  6. TSA 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program
  7. Calgary Barbell 8 & 16 Week Powerlifting Programs
  8. Greg Nuckols 28 Programs
  9. nSuns
  10. Jonnie Candito 6 Week Powerlifting Program

You can check out the latest 4 day workout programs below.

8 Week Mass Building Hypertrophy Workout Spreadsheet

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This is an 8-week, 4-day hypertrophy program from Muscle & Strength built to add size. It runs a bro split: chest and side delts, upper back and rear delts, arms and abs, then legs. Most exercises are three sets in the 10 to 12 range, and the last set of the bigger lifts gets a high-intensity finisher like a rest-pause set, a drop set, or slow negatives.

It’s a high-intensity-technique mass block, the kind of bro-split hypertrophy plan you’ve seen built around training each set close to failure. The split sends plenty of volume at one or two muscle groups per day, and the finishing techniques squeeze a bit more out of the sets that matter. Pick weights that are hard for the listed reps, beat the log book week to week, and the size follows.

It’s for intermediate lifters chasing size who are willing to train each set hard, often to failure. You don’t need a max or any percentages here. Skip it if you want strength or percentage-based work, or if you’d rather run a full-body or push/pull/legs structure.

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Mike Burgener 12-Week Olympic Weightlifting Program Spreadsheet

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The Mike Burgener 12-Week Olympic Weightlifting Program is a longer build from coach Mike Burgener, known to most lifters as Coach B. It runs four days a week for three months and works through the snatch, the clean and jerk, and heavy squatting, with the intensity climbing and the volume dropping as the weeks go on.

It fits lifters who want a full three-month run rather than a quick peak. If you want something shorter, Coach B’s 23-day Bulgarian cycle is the faster option, but this one gives you the time to sharpen the lifts week by week. Week 12 day 4 is the payoff, where you work up to heavy singles at 85, 90, then 95 percent, or you go compete.

We rebuilt the program as a clean Lift Vault spreadsheet. Enter your maxes once and every working weight for all 12 weeks fills in for you, so you can just train and log what you hit.

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Wil Fleming 4-Week Stronger Than Ever Weightlifting Program Spreadsheet

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The 4-Week Stronger Than Ever program is a short Olympic weightlifting cycle from coach Wil Fleming. It runs four days a week and works through the snatch, the clean and jerk, and heavy squatting, with the weights climbing and the reps dropping as you move through the month.

It fits lifters who already know the classic lifts and want a focused block to push their numbers up. Week 4 is the payoff, where you work to heavy doubles on the lifts and a back squat rep max.

We rebuilt Fleming’s program as a clean Lift Vault spreadsheet. Enter your maxes once and every working weight for all four weeks fills in for you, so you can just train and log what you hit.

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Dan John 10,000 Swing Kettlebell Workout Spreadsheet

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The 10,000 Swing Kettlebell Workout is Dan John’s famous 4-5 week challenge. You do 10,000 kettlebell swings split across 20 workouts, which works out to 500 swings a session. It’s brutally simple, and it’s one of the best ways to lean out and build work capacity without losing strength.

Each workout is 500 two-hand swings done as 5 rounds of 10, 15, 25, and 50 reps. Between the swing sets you do one strength exercise on a short rep ladder, so you build a little pressing or pulling strength while you grind out the swings.

We built a tracker that does the counting for you. Log each workout and the sheet keeps your running total, so you always know how many swings you have left to hit 10,000.

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12 Week Intermediate Strongman Program Spreadsheet (Big Loz)

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Once you have a base of strongman training, you need a plan that pushes your main lifts hard while still building your events. This free 12 week intermediate strongman program comes straight from Laurence “Big Loz” Shahlaei, a 10x World’s Strongest Man competitor, published through Cerberus Strength.

You train 4 days a week across three 4-week blocks. The deadlift, strict press, safety bar squat, and push press all run on percentages that wave up to heavy singles, and the program peaks in weeks 11 and 12 with a PB attempt on deadlift and push press. Accessories, carries, and events round out each day.

We built the whole thing into an interactive spreadsheet. Enter your four main maxes once and every working weight prints out as “weight x reps” for all 12 weeks. Accessories and events have green cells you fill in as you train.

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GZCL P-Zero (GZCL 2.0) Spreadsheet

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GZCL P-Zero is the flexible, do-it-your-way framework from Cody Lefever, the coach behind the whole GZCL family. It keeps the GZCL pyramid of three tiers but drops the rigid week-by-week layout, so you can run it full-body or on any split you like.

Instead of fixed weeks, P-Zero moves through three stages. Each tier gets heavier and drops reps as you advance, and you move up a stage when your top set stops improving. It is autoregulated, which makes it run as long as you keep progressing.

If you are newer to the system, start with our GZCLP beginner program or browse the full GZCL method spreadsheets for the other templates.

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Stronger By Science (SBS) Program Bundle by Greg Nuckols

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The Stronger By Science (SBS) Program Bundle is a collection of six autoregulated training programs from Greg Nuckols. It’s free with an email signup on the Stronger By Science website, and it comes as a Google Sheets workbook.

The bundle covers six 21-week programs across different goals and experience levels. There’s also a standalone Program Builder that lets you customize almost everything. Getting autoregulation and periodization wired together like this is rare for a free resource.

There’s a catch worth knowing before you start. The spreadsheet automates so much of the programming that there’s a real learning curve. Spend 20-30 minutes with the included PDF instructions before your first session, and don’t skip that step.

If you’re already familiar with Greg Nuckols’ work, you might know his popular 28 Programs (also available here on Lift Vault). The SBS Program Bundle is a more recent and more sophisticated set of programs. Think of the 28 Programs as individual single-lift routines you mix and match yourself. The SBS Bundle is a full training system with built-in autoregulation and multi-lift programming already wired together.

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Alberto Nunez Upper Lower Program Spreadsheet

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Alberto Nunez’s Upper Lower Program is a free 15-week hypertrophy program built around a 4-day upper/lower split. It’s designed by the head bodybuilding coach at 3D Muscle Journey (3DMJ) and 2022 WNBF Mr. Universe winner. The program comes in 4 variants – arms & delts dominant, torso dominant, quad dominant, and glute-ham dominant – so you can pick the one that matches your weakest body parts. Each variant still trains your full body twice per week. You just get extra volume where you need it most.

What I like about this program is how simple the progression system is. You pick a weight, work your way up through the rep range, then add load. No percentages, no math. RPE targets keep the intensity honest without overcomplicating things.

It’s a solid pick for beginners and intermediates who want a structured hypertrophy plan without a steep learning curve. One caveat: if you’re an advanced lifter already doing 5+ days per week of high-volume training, this might feel like a step back in total weekly volume. It’s intentionally moderate, landing around 14-18 sets per muscle group per week, lower than a program like PHAT or a typical John Meadows setup. All credit goes to Alberto Nunez and 3D Muscle Journey for making this available for free.

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Ben Pollack Free Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet

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Ben Pollack’s free powerbuilding program is a 7-week training plan built for lifters who want to get both stronger and bigger but don’t have the recovery capacity (or schedule) for 5-6 days in the gym. It runs 3 days per week, alternating between push/pull/legs weeks and full body weeks. If you’ve got more bandwidth, you can also run it on a rolling 4-day schedule and finish in about 5 weeks.

The program comes from Ben Pollack (a.k.a. PHDeadlift), who held the all-time world record raw total of 2,039 lbs at 198 lbs and later earned his IFBB Pro card in bodybuilding. The guy has a PhD in the history of strength from the University of Texas, too. So yeah, he’s qualified.

What I like about this program is that it’s built for real-life constraints. A lot of “powerbuilding” programs are really just bodybuilding with squats and deadlifts bolted on. This one programs heavy competition-style lifts next to real hypertrophy work (myo-reps, AMRAP sets, brutal 20-rep high bar squats, dead-stop deadlifts), and the blend is well thought out.

The instructions on Ben’s Substack are dense. He writes out exercise-by-exercise coaching cues for every session, which is great for learning but a lot to parse on your first read. The spreadsheet handles tracking, but read the write-up first so the “why” behind each workout makes sense.

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70s Powerlifter Program Spreadsheet

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Alex Bromley’s 70s Powerlifter is an 18-week, 4-day per week strength program from his book Base Strength. It’s an upper/lower split built around one primary lift per session – bench, squat, overhead press, and deadlift – with two compound variations and bodybuilding accessories stacked on top.

The program draws heavy inspiration from the high-volume training style of 1970s powerlifters like Doug Young and Bill Kazmaier, who were known for piling on compound work and topping it off with plenty of bodybuilding movements. If you’ve already run Bromley’s Bullmastiff program, this is the natural next step from the same book. I’d recommend it for intermediate lifters who aren’t afraid of volume – and I mean real volume.

Sessions can run 90 minutes, and by week 3 of each wave you’re doing 5 working sets on your main lift plus 4 sets of two different variations. It’s a lot. But lifters who commit to it and pick conservative starting weights tend to put real weight on all four lifts. Fair warning, though: if you aren’t eating and sleeping enough to support this kind of workload, you’ll run into a wall fast.

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Beast Slayer 2.0 Program Spreadsheet (Bald Omni-Man)

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Beast Slayer 2.0 is a 4 day per week hypertrophy program created by Coach Paris Butler, better known as Bald Omni-Man on YouTube. It uses a hybrid upper/lower + full body split to hit your upper body 3x per week and lower body 2x per week in 4 training sessions per week.

What I like about this program is how it handles progression. Instead of just one method, it gives you several tools: double progression, dynamic double progression, cluster sets, and an optional linear periodization track for your main compounds. You pick the right tool for each lift. That kind of flexibility is rare in a free program.

Note: If you’re looking for a more flexible schedule (3-5 days), check out Paris’s Golden Warrior program, which has built-in 3, 4, and 5 day variants. If you want a 6 day PPL, he also has Power Bomb PPL.

This is the 2025 update to the original Beast Slayer. The biggest changes: more pulling volume (the #1 piece of feedback from 1.0) and an updated exercise selection with dropdown menus in the spreadsheet. The lower body frequency is only 2x per week, so if legs are your priority, you might want something with more squat and deadlift volume.

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14 Week Block Periodization Powerlifting Program (Empire Barbell)

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This is a powerlifting program designed by Empire Barbell that utilizes block periodization. Training is broken into three distinct blocks: intensification #1, volume, and intensification #2. These blocks can be run in order straight through, or can be repeated with some limitations (explained more below). Running each block once would represent 14 weeks of training in total. [Read more…]

Lyle McDonald Generic Bulking Routine Spreadsheet

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Lyle McDonald’s Generic Bulking Routine (GBR) is a 4-day upper/lower split built for intermediate lifters who want to gain size. You train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each 6-8 week cycle ends with a 2-week deload, and Lyle targeted a weight gain of about 0.5 to 1 pound per week while running it. There are four spreadsheet variants below, from pure hypertrophy to strength focus.

The GBR originated on Lyle’s bodyrecomposition.com forum around 2008-2009. The core idea is moderate-volume compound and isolation work with built-in flexibility on set counts. You decide during each set whether to do the lower or upper end of the prescribed range based on how you feel. Lyle described this as intentional, not a gap in the program. The jcdfitness.com FAQ PDF is the best single reference for the full program details.

This program is for intermediate lifters who have moved past their beginner gains and want a structured split to build mass. You need to eat in a caloric surplus and be comfortable self-regulating volume. If you’re still new to lifting, a more prescriptive program like Starting Strength or the Ripped Body Intermediate Bodybuilding Program will serve you better before you tackle the GBR.

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12 Week Mass Building Hypertrophy Workout for Powerlifters (Mathias Method)

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This mass building workout focuses on stimulating muscular hypertrophy and developing raw strength. It is a 12 week powerlifting program built on 4 high volume training sessions per week and was developed by Ryan Mathias at Mathias Method. It is a peaking program that is designed to build your one rep max in the squat, bench press, and deadlift for meet day. [Read more…]

Shortcut to SIZE Reviews

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Shortcut to Size is a 4 day body part split program by Jim Stoppani (who also created Shortcut to Shred). It is best suited for athletes with aesthetic or hypertrophy goals. It is a 12 week bodybuilding program broken down into three 4 week phases. [Read more…]

10 Week Glute Hypertrophy Workout Program Spreadsheet

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From Flap Jacks 2 Thick Stacks is a free 10-week glute hypertrophy program designed by Brendan Tietz. It runs 4 days per week on an upper-lower split, with each day assigned a distinct training goal: lower body overload, upper body overload, lower body hypertrophy, and upper body hypertrophy. The program runs in two 5-week blocks. Loading is calculated two ways: percentage of 1RM for the squat, bench, and deadlift, and reps in reserve (RIR) for accessories. You’ll need to know your 1RM (or a recent working max) before you start, since the spreadsheet auto-calculates your working weights once you enter it.

The idea behind the program is to build glute size without dropping full-body strength. Brendan programs squats, bench press, and overhead press twice per week alongside hip thrusts, lunges, and cable kickbacks, so you’re training glutes in context with compound movements rather than just isolation work. If you’ve run his beginner powerlifting program or his intermediate powerlifting program, this is a good next step if your goal has shifted toward glute development specifically.

This program is best for intermediate lifters who can train 4 days per week and already have solid form on the big lifts. It’s not a beginner program. The RIR prescriptions and percentage-based loading both assume you have a training history and know your way around the main movements. If you’re earlier in your training, Strong Curves is a better starting point for glute-focused training at a beginner-friendly level.

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Lean Muscle Building Workout Plans

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Here are some of the best workout plans for building strong, lean muscle. These routines focus on high volume, which stimulates muscular hypertrophy in the athlete. Coupled with proper nutrition and recovery, these programs will help the athlete develop larger, stronger muscles.

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Lee Hayward 12 Week Bodybuilding Workout Routine Spreadsheet

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Lee Hayward’s 12 week bodybuilding program is broken up into four 3 week cycles, each cycle focusing on adding volume to the same set of lifts before switching to new movement variations and rep ranges for the next 3 week cycle. Each week has four training days, with the recommended set up being Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. [Read more…]

Arnold Schwarzenegger Home Workout Routine Spreadsheet

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Arnold Schwarzenegger took to Instagram yesterday to share an old home bodyweight workout of his, which he also shared on Reddit. The workout consists of push ups, sit ups, bent over twists, bent leg raises, squats (aka knee bends), calf raises, and chin ups.

Each bodyweight exercise is performed for a different number of reps depending on the individuals strength level: beginner or advanced.

A full break down of each exercise and its different rep ranges is below, along with highlights from Schwarzenegger’s Reddit post.

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Boring But Big: 5/3/1 BBB Spreadsheets

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Boring But Big (BBB) is a template built on top of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1. You train 4 days per week, one main lift per day (squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press) using the standard 5/3/1 loading scheme, then follow it up with 5 sets of 10 reps (at 50% of your training max) on the same or a paired lift. Each session also includes one accessory movement, typically lat work or abs.

The idea behind BBB is straightforward: use the 5/3/1 main work to build strength, then pile on the volume with 5×10 to force hypertrophy. You’re not switching programs or adding complexity. You’re just bolting on more work after the strength sets. Wendler originally detailed this template in his 5/3/1 Second Edition, and it’s also covered in 5/3/1 Forever.

BBB is best for intermediate lifters who’ve already run base 5/3/1 and want to add size without abandoning their strength base. If you’re still in beginner territory, start with 5/3/1 for Beginners first. The volume in BBB is real, and jumping straight into 5×10 when you’re still adapting to the main work is going to beat you up. Even experienced lifters should start the supplemental sets at 50% and resist going heavier for the first few cycles.

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