Best Push Day Workout & Exercises for Mass & Strength

A push day workout is a strength training routine targeting all the muscles involved in pushing movements.

Compared to training routines that focus on just one muscle group per workout, push day workouts allow you to train harder in less time and don’t cause as much soreness, making them excellent for gaining mass and strength.

A common problem with push day workout routines, however, is that people program them poorly. They choose exercises that overemphasize some muscles and neglect others, or they try to do too much in each session.

In this article, you’ll learn to avoid these common missteps. You’ll also learn the best push day workouts and exercises for gaining upper body size and strength and tips for maximizing your progress.

Want to know exactly how you should train to reach your fitness goals? Take our free 60-second training quiz and find out now.

Key Takeaways

• A push day workout trains the upper body muscles involved in pushing things away from your torso—primarily your chest, shoulders, and triceps.
• The best push day exercises train multiple muscle groups at once (compound exercises), train your muscles through large ranges of motion, allow you to lift heavy weights, and make applying progressive overload straightforward.
• For a solid push day workout, do the following: bench press, overhead press, inclined dumbbell bench press, dip, dumbbell side lateral raise, and overhead triceps extension.
• Track your workouts, eat enough calories and protein, and take sets close to failure to ensure you’re gaining muscle and strength.
• To maximize your results, consider using a high-quality protein powder to help you reach your daily protein target, creatine to support recovery and muscle growth, and a pre-workout to enhance energy, focus, and performance.

What Is A Push Day Workout?

READ MORE: An Expert Guide to the Push Pull Legs Upper Lower (PPLUL) Split

Muscles Worked in a Push Day Workout

The Best Push Day Workout for Size and Strength

It works because it contains only the most effective push day exercises—each one trains your pushing muscles through large ranges of motion, allows you to lift heavy weights, and makes it easy to apply progressive overload.

It also contains the perfect amount of volume (sets) to stimulate growth without causing excessive fatigue. 

That said, this is a demanding routine. To get the best results without burning out, run it once per week for 8-to-10 weeks, take a deload, then swap it for a lower-volume push workout for another 8-to-10 weeks. Once you’re fully recovered, switch back to this routine to kickstart growth again:

Now let’s look at how to perform each exercise and why they’re so effective.

Push Day Exercise List

1. Barbell Bench Press

2. Overhead Press

3. Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

Why: The incline dumbbell bench press deserves a place in every good push day workout because it emphasizes your “upper pecs,” which is crucial for developing a full, balanced chest. It also allows you to train through a slightly larger range of motion than the barbell version, which likely benefits growth. 

How to:

1. While lying on a bench angled at 30-to-45 degrees, hold a dumbbell in each hand and rest them on your thighs. 
2. Lie back, hoisting the dumbbells up so you’re holding them on either side of your chest by giving them a nudge with your thighs.
3. Press the dumbbells over your upper chest until your arms are straight and your elbows are locked.
4. Lower the dumbbells to the starting position.

Alternatives:

• Incline Barbell Bench Press
• Close-Grip Bench Press
• Dumbbell Bench Press

4. Dip

5. Dumbbell Side Lateral Raise

Why: The dumbbell side lateral raise is an excellent push day exercise for isolating the lateral (side) head of the deltoids, which is important if you want to develop wide, proportional shoulders.

How to:

1. Stand up straight with a dumbbell in each hand. 
2. Raise the dumbbells out to your sides until your upper arms are parallel to the floor.
3. Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Alternatives:

• Cable Side Lateral Raise
• Barbell Upright Row
• Cable Upright Row

6. Overhead Triceps Extension

Why: For a highly effective push day exercise for the triceps, look no further than the overhead triceps extension. It trains the entire triceps while stretched, which may help maximize growth. It also emphasizes the triceps long head, which is the section of the triceps most responsible for adding mass to your arms. 

How to:

1. Sit up straight on a bench. 
2. Grip one end of a dumbbell using both palms and lift it overhead so your arms are straight. Your palms should be flat against the end of the dumbbell and facing the ceiling. 
3. Lower the weight until it’s behind your head by bending your elbows, then straighten your arms and return to the starting position.

Alternatives:

• Dip
• Skullcrusher
• Triceps Pushdown

What Are the Benefits of Push Day Workouts?

Time Efficiency

Higher-Quality Training

Less Soreness

Since you never train any single muscle group to the point of exhaustion, most people find they’re less sore from push day workouts and can recover faster, making it easier to maintain training intensity across the week without one session negatively affecting the next.

5 Tips for More Productive Push Day Workouts

1.   End every set 1-to-3 reps shy of muscle failure.

As I explain in my fitness books for men and women, to maximize your results, you must take most of the sets in your push workouts to within a rep or two of failure.

Ask yourself at the end of each set, “If I had to, how many more reps could I have gotten with good form?” If the answer is more than two, increase the weight or reps to make your next set more challenging.

READ MORE: Does Training to Failure Help You Build More Muscle? What Science Says

2.  Once you hit the top of your rep range for a set, move up in weight. 

READ MORE: Double Progression Guide: How to Use Double Progression to Gain Muscle and Strength

3. Eat enough calories and protein.

To maximize muscle and strength gain while following this push day workout routine, maintain a daily calorie surplus of around 110% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). In other words, eat around 10% more calories than your body burns daily. 

You also need to eat enough protein to allow your muscles to recover, repair, and grow effectively. Aim to eat at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.

For personalized advice about exactly how many calories to eat, how much of each macronutrient, and which foods you should consume to reach your fitness goals, take the Legion Diet Quiz.

4. Track your workouts. 

5. Take the right supplements. 

• Protein powder: Protein powder, such as whey or casein, provides your body with the nutrients needed to build muscle tissue and recover from workouts. For a clean and delicious protein powder, try Whey+ or Casein+.
• Creatine: Creatine boosts muscle and strength gain, improves anaerobic endurance, and reduces muscle damage and soreness from your workouts. For a natural source of creatine, try our creatine monohydrate, creatine gummies, or Recharge.
• Pre-workout: A high-quality pre-workout enhances energy, mood, and focus, increases strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue. For a top-tier pre-workout containing clinically effective doses of 6 science-backed ingredients, try Pulse with caffeine or without.

(If you’d like even more specific advice about which supplements you should take to reach your health and fitness goals, take the Legion Supplement Finder Quiz, and in less than a minute, you’ll know exactly what supplements are right for you.)

FAQ #1: Is doing 6 exercises enough for a push day workout?

An unpublished meta-analysis suggests there’s a cap on how many sets you can do for a muscle group in a single workout before it starts doing more harm than good. Here’s a graph to illustrate this:

As the graph shows, muscle growth improves as you do more sets—up to a point. Once you go beyond six sets for a muscle group in a single session, the benefits plateau. And if you push to around 14 sets, it may even hinder muscle growth.

That said, the data has a lot of variability, so it’s best used as a guideline rather than gospel. If we compare it with other research, a good rule of thumb is that most people can benefit from doing about 6-to-10 hard sets per major muscle group per workout before hitting the point of diminishing returns.

In the push day workout in this article, you do:

• 9 sets for chest, which is near the high end of the effective range
• 6 sets for shoulders, plus additional indirect volume from chest exercises
• 2 direct sets for triceps, plus indirect volume from all chest and shoulder exercises

That’s a high—but effective—amount of training volume. Just make sure to deload after 8-to-10 weeks, then switch to a lower-volume push day routine for the following 8-to-10 weeks to give your body a break.

READ MORE: How Many Sets Should You Do for Muscle Hypertrophy?

FAQ #2: What’s a good push day workout for women?

With that in mind, here’s a push day workout that might be a better fit for some women:

• Overhead Press: 3 sets | 6-to-8 reps | 3-to-5 min rest
• Close-Grip Bench Press: 3 sets | 6-to-8 reps | 2-to-3 min rest
• Incline Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 sets | 6-to-8 reps | 3-to-5 min rest
• Overhead Triceps Extension: 3 sets | 8-to-10 reps | 2-to-3 min rest
• Dumbbell Side Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8-to-10 reps | 2-to-3 min rest
• Triceps Pushdown: 3 sets | 8-to-10 reps | 2-to-3 min rest

Again, this isn’t necessarily better for all women all the time. If these changes align with your goals and preferences—say, you’d rather focus on your shoulders than your chest—then give this variation a go. If not, the original push day workout outlined earlier is still a great choice.

FAQ #3: What’s a good push day workout at home?