Leg focus – advanced, 4 days/week, 8 weeks

Four gym days a week where the legs get two workouts with different emphasis: Monday knee-dominant with squat, front squat, Bulgarian split squat and hack squat, Thursday hip-dominant with Romanian deadlift, hip thrust and Nordic curls. The upper body is split into push on Tuesday and pull on Friday. Eight weeks, the last one a deload. For those with a few years of strength training.

How it works

Monday's workout is heavy for the quads: squat 5 × 5 followed by front squat and single-leg work. Thursday also starts with squats, but in a higher rep range and lighter than Monday – the main lifts are Romanian deadlift and hip thrust. Friday's pull workout starts with deadlifts the day after the hip workout. Keep them at RIR 2–3 and drop the weight if your lower back feels tired.

Weeks 1–4: stay at RIR 2. Weeks 5–7: same workouts, add one set to the first exercise and go to RIR 1. Week 8 is a deload – halve the sets, keep the weights.

Progression

At this level progress is slow. Add weight when you hit the top of the rep range on all sets with good technique. Stuck for three workouts: drop 10% and build back up. Two heavy leg days a week demand recovery – if the weights go backwards several workouts in a row, take the deload earlier.

The rest days

Wednesday sits between the two leg days and gives the legs two days before the next leg workout; Tuesday's upper-body workout hardly loads them. The weekend is free. A walk or light mobility on rest days is fine, but let the legs rest from heavy training.

If four days becomes three

Keep both leg days and combine the upper body that week: do the first three or four exercises from both the push and pull workouts on Friday.