Upper A

Warm-up first — see Warm-ups. Two to three minutes rest on compounds, ninety seconds on isolations.

RIR = reps in reserve. 2 RIR means you could have done two more. The last set of each exercise goes to genuine failure.

Time: about 55 minutes including warm-up.

#Why these six

Incline dumbbell press over flat barbell. Dumbbells allow a genuine stretch at the bottom that a fixed bar path prevents, and the stretched position is where mechanical tension does most. 30° — enough to bias the clavicular head without turning it into a shoulder press.

Chest-supported row over bent-over row. Chest support removes lower-back fatigue as the limiter, which is what caps rowing volume for most people. You are training your back, not your erectors' endurance.

Wide-grip pulldown for lats specifically. Lats are longest overhead, so this is the stretch-loaded lat movement. It complements the row rather than duplicating it — different length, different region.

Cable lateral behind the body. With a dumbbell, the moment arm on the medial deltoid at the bottom is essentially zero — the weight hangs directly below the joint and the first third of the movement is nearly unloaded. Set the cable so the line of pull crosses behind you and the stretched position is loaded.

Overhead triceps extension, not a pushdown. The long head crosses the shoulder joint. With your arm at your side it is already partly shortened, so pushdowns train the lateral and medial heads well and the long head — the largest of the three — poorly. It is only genuinely stretched overhead.

Incline dumbbell curl. Shoulder extension lengthens the biceps long head. Two sets because arms get direct work twice a week and substantial indirect work from every pull.

#Substitutions

Every one is in Substitutions. Machine equivalents are fine — often better, because they let you load a stretched position without stability ending the set.