# The pull, push, legs, auxiliary split, explained

> Compound trains pull, push, legs and auxiliary in that fixed order, four days covering 31 lifts, so the deadlift and squat are never back to back.

**Source:** https://trycompound.cc/blog/pull-push-legs-auxiliary/  
**Author:** Scott Shumaker, maker of Compound  
**Published:** 2026-07-18  
**Topic:** Programming (programming, split, training frequency, pull push legs)

## In short

Compound runs a four-day split, pull, push, legs and auxiliary, always in that order, with 8, 7, 8 and 8 lifts respectively. Pull is scheduled first so an entire push session separates the heavy deadlift from the heavy squat and Romanian deadlift on legs day, since both draw on the same lower back and central nervous system. The fourth day, auxiliary, is built from the neck, rotator cuff, grip and anti-rotation core work that most three-day splits never schedule at all.

- The split is four fixed days in order: pull (8 lifts), push (7), legs (8), auxiliary (8), 31 lifts across the week.
- Pull is scheduled before push so a full push session sits between the heavy deadlift and the heavy squat and RDL day, not because pulling should always come first.
- Auxiliary covers neck, rotator cuff, grip and anti-rotation core across its own 8 lifts, the categories a three-day split usually drops entirely.
- On a strict four-day rotation, any single lift comes back around roughly once every four sessions, below the twice-a-week frequency research favors for hypertrophy, a deliberate trade for recovery on heavy compounds.
- Every day runs heaviest compound first and single-joint work last; the leg press specifically follows the Bulgarian split squat because a fatigued single-leg lift gets unstable and the leg press does not.

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Compound runs a four-day split: pull, push, legs, then auxiliary, always in that order.
Pull comes first specifically so a full push session separates the heaviest pull-day
lift from the heaviest legs-day lifts, and the fourth day is not a second push or pull
day. It is built from neck, rotator cuff, grip and anti-rotation core work, which
almost every other program drops entirely.

## What are the four days in Compound's split?

Pull, push, legs and auxiliary, covering 31 lifts across the week with no exercise
repeated on two different days.

| Day | Trains | Lifts | Dynamic warm-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pull | Back, rear delts, traps, biceps, forearms, grip | 8 | Arm circles, band pull-aparts, scap pull-ups |
| Push | Chest, front and side delts, triceps, serratus | 7 | Arm circles, band pull-aparts, scap push-ups |
| Legs | Quads, hamstrings, glutes, adductors, calves, tibialis | 8 | Leg swings, bodyweight squats, walking lunges, ankle rocks |
| Auxiliary | Core, lower back, neck, rotator cuff, carries, conditioning | 8 | Cat-cow, dead bugs, band pull-aparts |

Pull opens with the deadlift and pull-ups, then a row, face pulls and three curl
variations before finishing on a dead hang. Push runs bench press into overhead press,
incline dumbbell press and weighted dips, then lateral raises and triceps work. Legs
runs the back squat into the Romanian deadlift, a Bulgarian split squat, leg press, hip
thrust, an adductor exercise, a calf exercise and tibialis raises. Auxiliary opens with
the farmer's carry and hanging leg raise, then an RKC plank, Pallof press, back
extension, band external rotations and isometric neck holds, closing on the suitcase
carry. Every session also opens with a warm-up and closes with about ten minutes of
mobility matched to that day's lifts; both get their own articles, at
[/blog/warm-up-that-works/](/blog/warm-up-that-works/) and
[/blog/mobility-after-lifting/](/blog/mobility-after-lifting/).

## Why does pull come before push?

Because putting pull first is what keeps the heaviest pull-day lift and the heaviest
legs-day lifts from sitting next to each other in the rotation. The deadlift lives on
pull day, and the squat and Romanian deadlift live on legs day, three lifts that draw
heavily on the same lower back and the same central nervous system. In a pull, push,
legs, auxiliary rotation, an entire push session sits between pull and legs on one side
of the cycle, and an entire auxiliary session sits between them on the other. Neither
heavy posterior-chain day is ever adjacent to the other.

Run the days in a different order and that spacing disappears. Push, pull, legs,
auxiliary looks just as reasonable on paper, but it puts pull directly next to legs,
which means the deadlift and the squat and RDL land back to back with nothing between
them. The two most demanding lower-back days in the week need a buffer, and putting
pull first is what creates one.

## Why is there a fourth day, and why isn't it just more push or pull?

Because a three-day push, pull, legs split has no natural place for the neck, the
rotator cuff, grip and anti-rotation core work, and those get left out entirely rather
than added on. Auxiliary is where that work gets scheduled, with its own warm-up and
its own 8 lifts, not five extra minutes tacked onto the end of a session that already
ran long.

Band external rotations train the muscles that externally rotate the shoulder, a
pattern that almost no bench-and-row program trains directly. A 2021 systematic review
of overhead athletes found that external and internal rotation strength were protective
factors against rotator cuff tendinopathy, and that an imbalance between the two, one
direction of rotation much stronger than the other, raised shoulder injury risk in a way
that pressing and pulling volume alone does not fix.

Isometric neck holds get their own slot because almost no accessory routine trains the
neck at all. A 2025 systematic review of cervical spine strengthening programs found
that strengthening the neck reduced sports-related concussion incidence in male rugby
players by 45 percent, a risk ratio of 0.55, though the same effect has not yet been
shown in female rugby players or in soccer. Compound is not a collision-sport program,
but the four 20-second holds, front, back, and both sides, build a kind of strength most
lifters never touch on purpose.

Farmer's and suitcase carries train grip directly, on the logic that pull day already
asks the hands to hold on but never trains the hold as its own variable. Grip strength
is also one of the more consistently replicated markers of general health: in a study of
139,691 adults across 17 countries, every 5 kg drop in grip strength was associated with
a 16 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality, and grip strength predicted death
better than systolic blood pressure did. That does not mean carrying two dumbbells down
a hallway adds years to a life. It means grip strength is a proxy for overall muscular
capacity worth training on purpose, not as a side effect of everything else.

The neglected work is not all filed under auxiliary, either. Tibialis raises, training
the muscle on the front of the shin that lifts the foot rather than pushes it down, live
on legs day. Face pulls, dead hangs and reverse curls, covering rear delts, grip
endurance and the forearms, live on pull day. Auxiliary carries the rest: core, lower
back, neck, rotator cuff and carries. None of it is one day's problem to solve and then
ignore for the other three.

## How often does each muscle actually get trained?

Roughly once every four sessions per specific lift, below the twice a week the
hypertrophy literature favors. Compound moves to the next day in the sequence, pull to
push to legs to auxiliary to pull again, based on sessions completed, not on the day of
the week. Train four times
in a single week and the math lines up: four sessions close one full cycle, so each day,
and each lift on it, comes back around every seven days. Train three times a week
instead, and the cycle still needs four sessions to close, but only three of them land
inside any seven-day week, so a cycle that used to take a week now takes closer to nine
or ten days, and the day that used to fall on a Monday drifts to a Wednesday, then a
Friday, then back around later than a week later.

Either way, the frequency per lift holds at once every four sessions. That is below the
roughly twice-a-week-per-muscle frequency that a 2016 meta-analysis of ten controlled
trials found produced a larger hypertrophy effect than training a muscle group once a
week at matched weekly volume. Compound does not hit that target for any single heavy
compound, and that is a deliberate trade, not an oversight. The deadlift, the bench
press and the back squat are loaded and rested hardest in the whole plan precisely
because they ask a lot of the whole body, and asking for a second heavy session of the
same lift inside four training days would cut into the recovery the other heavy lifts
also need. Smaller muscles get more real frequency than any single lift implies: rear
delts show up through rows and face pulls on pull day and lateral raises on push day,
and the lower back is loaded by the deadlift and the RDL, then finished with back
extension on auxiliary. It is the single heavy compound, not the muscle behind it, that
only comes around once a cycle.

## How is each day ordered, exercise by exercise?

Heaviest compound first, single-joint and bodyweight work last, on every one of the four
days. Pull opens on the deadlift, push opens on the bench press, legs opens on the back
squat, and each of those gets the most sets, the heaviest relative load and the longest
rest of anything on that day. What follows moves down in demand: multi-joint machine and
dumbbell work in the middle of the session, then curls, raises, extensions and holds at
the end, when technique matters less and fatigue costs less.

Leg press is where that ordering is easiest to see. It sits after the Bulgarian split
squat, not before it. A pre-fatigued split squat gets wobbly, since it depends on
single-leg balance under load, and the leg press is the safest place in the day to be
tired: seated, back supported, feet fixed. It is
also the only way to load the quads again without asking anything more of a low back
that already handled the squat and the RDL earlier in the same session. Reversing that
order would save nothing and cost stability on the one lift in the day that most needs
it.

The weight itself is a separate question. How much goes on the bar each session is
decided by double progression, not by the day's ordering; see
[/blog/double-progression/](/blog/double-progression/) for how that rule works.

## Why doesn't the exercise list ever change?

Because a fixed list is what makes 31 lifts trackable at all. Every exercise and every
slot keeps the same identity for as long as the app is used, which is what lets
progression, history and slot choices mean anything session over session. Swapping
exercises in and out on a whim would turn every one of those records into a guess about
what actually happened last time. The tradeoff, and the full argument for keeping the
list fixed, is its own article: see
[/blog/what-compound-decides/](/blog/what-compound-decides/).

## What does Compound do about this?

Compound runs the rotation for you. It picks the next day off the sequence rather than
the calendar, so a missed session does not throw the split off, it just waits for the
next time a lift is opened. Every day loads in the fixed order described above, heaviest
compound first, and every session ends with the mobility block matched to what that day
just trained. None of it is adjustable, on purpose: the split is the one thing in the
app that is not a setting.

## Common questions

### Why does Compound put pull before push?

Because pull first puts an entire push session between the two heaviest posterior-chain days. The deadlift lives on pull day and the squat and Romanian deadlift live on legs day, and both draw heavily on the lower back and central nervous system. With pull first, push sits between them. With push first, pull and legs would be adjacent and stack those two heavy days back to back.

### What is auxiliary day, and what does it train?

Auxiliary is the fourth day in Compound's rotation, covering core, lower back, neck, rotator cuff, grip and carries across 8 lifts: farmer's carry, hanging leg raise, RKC plank, Pallof press, back extension, band external rotations, isometric neck holds and suitcase carry. None of it is chest, back or leg work already covered on the other three days.

### How many times a week should I train Compound's split?

Four times a week closes the four-day cycle in seven days, so pull, push, legs and auxiliary each land on close to the same weekday every cycle. Training three times a week still works, but the day names drift: a cycle that used to close in seven days now takes about nine or ten, so pull day lands on a different weekday each time it comes around.

### Does each muscle in Compound's plan get trained twice a week?

No. On a strict four-day rotation, any single lift comes back around once every four sessions, not twice a week. Smaller muscles worked across more than one day, like the rear delts through both rows and lateral raises, get more real frequency than a single lift does, but the main compounds, deadlift, bench, squat, are each trained once per cycle by design.

### Why does leg press come after the Bulgarian split squat?

Because a pre-fatigued split squat gets wobbly, since it depends on single-leg balance under load, and the leg press is the safest place in the day to be tired: seated, back supported, feet fixed. It is also the only way to load the quads again without asking more of a low back that already handled the squat and the Romanian deadlift earlier in the same session.


## Sources

- [Schoenfeld, Ogborn & Krieger (2016): Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102172/)
- [Leong et al. (2015): Prognostic Value of Grip Strength, findings from the PURE study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25982160/)
- [Kwan et al. (2021): Are Muscle Weakness and Stiffness Risk Factors of the Development of Rotator Cuff Tendinopathy in Overhead Athletes](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34276924/)
- [Alvacite Cardenas & Preston (2025): Does Strengthening the Cervical Spine Musculature Enhance Neck Strength and Reduce Sports-Related Concussions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41316595/)

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*Scott Shumaker, maker of Compound. Builds Compound, an iPhone and Apple Watch app that runs one lifting program and does the bookkeeping. Trains on the pull, push, legs and auxiliary split, and wrote the progression engine described here.*

*Compound: A workout app with exactly one workout in it. Four days, automatic double progression, warm-up and mobility built in. No account, no cloud. https://trycompound.cc*