PHUL Program: Full 4-Week Schedule + Progression Rules

The PHUL program — Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower — is a four-day split that does something most programs treat as a trade-off: it trains strength and size in the same week, on purpose, without asking you to choose. Two days are built around heavy compound work in low rep ranges; two days shift to higher reps and more isolation. Run it correctly and both qualities move forward together. This guide covers every session, every exercise, how progression works on each type of day, and the mistakes that quietly blunt the results.

What PHUL is — and who it's for

PHUL splits the training week by both body region and training style. Each session has a clear identity:

• Power days — heavy compounds, 3–5 rep range, long rest periods, maximum load. These drive strength.
• Hypertrophy days — moderate-to-light compounds plus isolation work, 8–15 rep range, shorter rest. These drive muscle size.

The result is that each major muscle group gets hit twice a week — once for strength stimulus, once for volume — without any single session becoming unmanageably long.

PHUL suits intermediate lifters: people who can perform the main compound lifts with solid technique, have outgrown beginner full-body programs, and want a structured plan that builds both the lifts and the physique simultaneously. If you're deciding between PHUL and a straight PPL split, the PHUL vs PPL guide breaks down exactly which one fits your schedule and goals.

The full PHUL program

Run on four days per week with at least one rest day between the power and hypertrophy blocks. The most common layout is Monday / Tuesday / Thursday / Friday, with Wednesday and the weekend off. If your schedule demands it, any four days with adequate rest between them work.

Day 1 — Upper Power

The session's job is maximum force production on the pressing and pulling patterns. Work up heavy, rest fully between sets (3–5 minutes on the main lifts), and treat rep quality as non-negotiable.

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Barbell bench press	3–4	3–5
Incline dumbbell press	3–4	6–10
Bent-over barbell row	3–4	3–5
Lat pulldown	3–4	6–10
Overhead press	2–3	5–8
Barbell curl	2–3	6–10
Skullcrushers	2–3	6–10

Day 2 — Lower Power

Squat and deadlift heavy. Everything else is assistance. Keep rest periods long on the first two lifts; you're not conditioning here — you're moving as much weight as you can with clean technique.

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Back squat	3–4	3–5
Deadlift	3–4	3–5
Leg press	3–5	10–15
Lying leg curl	3–4	6–10
Standing calf raise	4	6–10

Day 3 — Upper Hypertrophy

Shift the intent entirely. Weights are lighter, rep ranges are higher, isolation work goes up, and rest periods come down to 60–90 seconds. The goal is accumulated volume and a full muscle stretch-and-contract through every rep — not demonstrating how strong you are.

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Incline dumbbell press	3–4	8–12
Flat dumbbell press	3–4	8–12
Cable or machine row	3–4	8–12
One-arm dumbbell row	3–4	8–12
Dumbbell lateral raise	3–4	8–12
Face pull	3–4	8–12
Hammer curl	2–3	8–12
Dumbbell curl	2–3	8–12
Tricep pushdown	2–3	8–12
Overhead tricep extension	2–3	8–12

Day 4 — Lower Hypertrophy

Higher-rep leg and posterior-chain work. The Romanian deadlift and leg curl at these rep ranges add meaningful hamstring and glute volume that the heavy Day 2 doesn't fully provide. Take most sets to within 1–2 reps of failure.

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Front squat or hack squat	3–4	8–12
Leg press	3–4	10–15
Leg extension	3–4	10–15
Romanian deadlift	3–4	8–12
Seated or lying leg curl	3–4	8–12
Seated calf raise	4	8–12

How progression works — differently on each type of day

This is the detail most PHUL guides skip, and it's where people stall. The two day types don't use the same progression logic.

Power days — linear progression

On the 3–5 rep sets, progress like a strength program: when you hit the top of the rep range on all working sets, add a small amount of weight next session — typically 5 lb on upper body lifts, 10 lb on lower. Your reps will drop to the bottom of the range, and you build back to the top before loading again. This is slow and deliberate; trying to add weight every single session will stall you within weeks.

Hypertrophy days — double progression

On the 8–12 (or 8–15) rep sets, use double progression: stay at a weight until you can hit the top of the rep range on every set, then increase the load. For example: if you're doing incline dumbbell press for 4 × 8–12 at 50 lb, you add weight when you consistently hit 4 × 12 — not before. After the increase, expect to drop back toward 4 × 8 and climb again.

The two different rules matter because the two days serve different functions. Power days need enough weight that even a small increment is a genuine challenge. Hypertrophy days need enough volume and cumulative fatigue across the week that the muscle actually has reason to grow.

Common mistakes

Going too heavy on hypertrophy days. The most common PHUL error. Hypertrophy days at 8–12 reps should feel distinctly lighter than your power-day work on the same movement pattern. If you're grinding 6 ugly reps "for hypertrophy," you've missed the intent entirely.

Rushing rest on power days. Heavy sets of 3–5 require 3–5 minutes between them. Cutting to 60 seconds because you feel fine turns a strength session into a conditioning session — your top-end loads will drop and strength won't develop.

Skipping Day 4. Lower hypertrophy day has the most exercises and often feels like the least glamorous session. It's also where a lot of the quad and hamstring development comes from. People who skip it consistently end up with lagging legs and imbalanced lower body development.

Adding too much assistance volume. Day 3 already has ten exercises. The temptation to add calves, extra arms, or core work to every session turns recovery into the limiting factor instead of training quality. Run the program as written before making additions.

Changing exercises every few weeks. PHUL works through progressive overload on the same movements. If you swap exercises before the weight on them has gone anywhere, you're just burning time. Stick with each exercise for at least a full 8-week block.

How to run it in practice

The canonical week: Monday (Upper Power) → Tuesday (Lower Power) → Wednesday rest → Thursday (Upper Hypertrophy) → Friday (Lower Hypertrophy) → weekend off. The two rest days between Lower Power and Upper Hypertrophy matter — your upper body gets used indirectly on Tuesday through posture and bracing, so Tuesday and Thursday need a day between them.

If you can only train on non-consecutive days (e.g. Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday), that works — just keep the order the same: Power Upper, Power Lower, Hypertrophy Upper, Hypertrophy Lower.

Session length: power days typically run 60–75 minutes at a proper pace (rest periods are long). Hypertrophy days run 75–90 minutes because of the higher exercise count, especially Day 3. If either is consistently running over 90 minutes, you're resting too long on hypertrophy days or socialising too much.

A good PHUL block is 8–12 weeks. At the end of a block, take a light deload week (halve the volume, keep the weights), then start the next block with the weights you left off at. Repeat until progress stalls consistently across multiple lifts — at that point either run another block with adjusted starting weights or rotate to a different split for a change of stimulus.

How Massiv handles this for you

PHUL's double-layer structure — two different progression rules running in parallel across four sessions per week — is straightforward to understand and genuinely fiddly to track by hand. You need to remember which lifts are on which day type, which rule applies to each, and where each individual lift is in its progression cycle. Massiv ships PHUL as a built-in program and keeps all of that straight automatically: it loads today's session, shows the correct target weight and rep range for each exercise based on its day type, and advances each lift individually — power-day sets on linear progression, hypertrophy-day sets on double progression — without you managing two separate systems.

PHUL works because it stops treating strength and size as mutually exclusive goals and gives each a dedicated place in the same week. Run the power days heavy and patiently, run the hypertrophy days with honest effort and a full range of motion, and let the two stimuli compound over a proper block. The program is well-designed — the most common reason people don't get results from it is not running it long enough or cleanly enough to find out.