2-day full-body workout plan

Is 2 days a week enough?

For a beginner, yes. Every muscle still gets worked twice a week, the same as on a 4-day upper/lower split. You simply fit the work into fewer, longer sessions.

The price is session length. Each workout carries 6 exercises, so plan on 60 to 75 minutes. Two sessions you actually turn up for build more than 4 you keep skipping.

How the week looks

Keep 2 or 3 days between the sessions. Tuesday and Friday, or Wednesday and Saturday, work just as well.

The workouts

Workout A

Workout B

Warm up for 5 to 10 minutes, then do a few light sets of your first lift. Rest 2 to 3 minutes after the first 2 exercises and 60 to 90 seconds after the rest. If you only have 45 minutes, drop the last exercise of each session.

How to add weight

Use double progression. Stay in the rep range, and once you hit the top of it on every set with clean form, add weight next time. Then work back up from the bottom of the range.

Add about 2.5 kg on upper-body lifts and 2.5 to 5 kg on lower-body lifts. Squat 50 kg for 3 sets of 8 this Monday, and next Monday put 52.5 kg on the bar and aim for 6s.

Each lift comes round once a week, so the weight climbs weekly rather than every session. That is slower than a 3-day plan, and still steady progress for most of your first year.

What to do when you stall

If you miss your target reps 2 weeks in a row, keep the same weight until you hit them. If several lifts stall at once, you are probably short on sleep or food, not on training days.

When a third day frees up, move to the 3-day full-body plan for beginners. It uses the same lifts, spread over one more session. Our guide on how long a workout should be helps if the hour is hard to find.

Run this plan in Trackist

Answer Trackist’s 14 questions about your goal, experience, equipment, joints, schedule, session length and age. Pick 2 training days and the time you have, from 30 to 90 minutes. Trackist writes the plan around the weekdays you chose, with every exercise, set and rep target decided. A plan of 6 weeks or more ends with a lighter week, called a deload, at 60% of the sets.

At the gym you log weight and reps set by set. Last session’s numbers sit under each field, which matters when that session was a week ago. A line above each exercise suggests today’s weight, and each exercise page shows short form cues.

Momentum, a reading out of 100, builds as you train and fades slowly when you miss a session. It does not reset like a streak, so one missed week does not wipe out a good month. If a session keeps running too hard, say so. Trackist notes it the first time, and if you report it again, Trackist Pro rewrites the day.

See how Trackist works as a workout tracker for beginners.