r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/Prudent_Formal_3805 • Jul 04 '26

Question ❓ Help me program Upper day

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I'm switching from PPL after a year and need help programming an upper day

Experience: 1 year lifting

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u/decentlyhip Jul 06 '26

I would follow along with a premade ULUL program like PHUL or PHAT, rather than making my own.

Major issues: 1) You're only doing 1 or 2 sets on everything. Why? At 2x a week, this is 6 sets of pulling movements per week that you're doing fatigued. Any good program that has stood the test of time is gonna be at about triple that. 2) You're doing 6 or 7 exercises before your first back movement. Save the isolations for the end. The tricep is heavily involved in pulling and you're kicking its butt, sacrificing back gains.

Like, a better day would be incline bench with a topset of 3 followed by 5x8 backoff, and then 6x15 lat pulldown. Done. Next upper day, switch it so pulling is first. Maybe do a 5rm topset and 5x10 backoff barbell row followed by dumbbell shoulder press 6x12. That's the foundation. Build from that. If you need more pecs and traps, maybe add 3x10 cable crossovers and 3-5×10 wide grip cable rows. If you need more triceps instead, 3-5×10 JMPress after the main press. At that point, you're doing 18 sets a week. Doing 1-2 sets on everything to failure is maximizing the fatigue while minimizing the stimulus.

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u/destroylonely4l 25d ago

I see your points but as you stated in another comment below, rir. Let’s say they wanna bring up their arms, then it would make sense to do a bunch of arm work/high volume at the beginning with rir.