Start lifting.

Choose the week you can keep, not the one that looks best on paper. The planner gives you a split and a first week; the rest of this page says why.

Plan your first weeks

Days a week you can train
What you have

Full body: every workout trains the whole body, with a day of rest between workouts.

Each muscle about 3 times a week.

  1. MonLift
  2. TueRest
  3. WedLift
  4. ThuRest
  5. FriLift
  6. SatRest
  7. SunRest

In Perdura: the Full Body 3-day template, free. Eight exercises, three sets each; your first workout sets the weights, and after each one Perdura says what to lift next time.

How you split the week matters less than doing the week's sets: with the weekly sets equal, studies find a muscle grows about the same whether it is trained once, twice or three times a week. More sessions make each one shorter, and help strength a little.

For adults 18 and over. A starting point, not a prescription. If you have an injury, pain, a heart condition or another medical condition, or you are pregnant, ask a doctor or physiotherapist before you start. Nothing you choose here leaves this page.

Set up your first week in Perdura: it picks the template for your days and tells you what to lift each time. Free, no card.

Start free

Start with a week you can keep

The best first plan is the one you will still be doing in three months. Lifting two or three days a week is a real start: the largest review of the research so far found that strength training improves strength and muscle size compared with not training, and that two or more sessions a week help strength (American College of Sports Medicine, 2026).

Count the days you can protect on a normal week, not your best week. You can add a day later; a plan you keep dropping teaches you less than a smaller one you repeat.

Full body or upper/lower

With two or three days, train the whole body each time. With four, split it: upper body one day, legs and hips the next, so each half is trained twice a week and each workout stays short.

Which split you choose matters less than people think. With the same number of hard sets in the week, a muscle grows about the same whether it is trained once, twice or three times a week (Schoenfeld, 2019). More sessions help strength a little (Pelland, 2025) and make each workout shorter. Weekly sets matter more: around ten or more hard sets a week for a muscle helps it grow (American College of Sports Medicine, 2026).

Perdura asks for your days at setup. With three days or fewer, or on the free plan, it starts you on the Full Body 3-day template; with four days and Premium, on Upper/Lower 4-day. Push/pull/legs needs about six days to train each muscle twice, so Perdura has no template for it; you can build your own.

Your first four weeks

Week 1: learn the movements. Start lighter than you think. In Perdura your first workout sets the weight for each exercise, and the gym screen shows three short steps and a tip for every lift.

Weeks 2 to 4: add a little each time. Every exercise has a rep range (big lifts 6 to 10 reps by default). When every set reaches the top of the range, add weight; until then, add reps. After each workout Perdura gives one instruction per exercise for next time: add weight, add reps or lower the weight. The progressive overload guide explains the rule.

Judge the first month by your log, not the mirror. Numbers that go up are the first sign it is working.

How hard each set should feel

Finish most sets with one or two reps you could still do. You do not need to go to failure: in the 2026 review, training to failure did not consistently change results.

New lifters usually stop too early. In one study, people guessed they had fewer reps left than they did, and guessed better with experience (Steele, 2017). When every set of an exercise comes out with the same reps, or your last set beats your first by a lot, Perdura points out that the sets were probably easier than they felt.

Before you start

Warm up with a lighter set or two of your first exercise. Muscle soreness a day or two after a new workout is normal; sharp pain, or pain in a joint, is not: stop that exercise.

If you have an injury, a heart condition or another medical condition, take medicines that affect your heart rate, or are pregnant, ask a doctor or physiotherapist before you start. Perdura is tracking software, not medical advice.

Set up your first week in Perdura: it picks the template for your days and tells you what to lift each time. Free, no card.

Start free

Sources

  1. Currier BS et al. American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand. Resistance Training Prescription for Muscle Function, Hypertrophy, and Physical Performance in Healthy Adults: An Overview of Reviews. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2026;58(4):851-872.
  2. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Krieger J. How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. J Sports Sci. 2019;37(11):1286-1295.
  3. Pelland JC et al. The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Med. 2025;56(2):481-505.
  4. Steele J et al. Ability to predict repetitions to momentary failure is not perfectly accurate, though improves with resistance training experience. PeerJ. 2017;5:e4105.