Phase 6 was my most unconventional program to date. After two months of full-body training, I wanted to go back to a split format — but I wasn’t interested in the standard pairings. No more chest/triceps or back/biceps. Instead, I deliberately mixed muscle groups from completely different parts of the body to see what happened.
The result was genuinely interesting. Chest and legs in the same session. Back and arms without any leg work. Lower body and chest in a single day. It sounds strange, but there’s method to it: by pairing upper and lower body movements, you can train more volume per session without any single muscle group fatiguing before the others.
The Experimental Split
- Day 1 – Chest / Legs / Core: Upper push paired with lower body compounds and core work.
- Day 2 – Back / Arms / Core: Horizontal and vertical pulling with dedicated arm isolation and rotational core.
- Day 3 – Lower Body / Chest / Core: Lower body primary with secondary chest work and core finishers.
Three days instead of four. Higher volume per session. The unusual pairings actually worked well because fatiguing your chest didn’t impact your leg performance and vice versa — completely different nervous system demands. Some research on high-frequency and mixed approaches actually supports this kind of non-traditional pairing for intermediate lifters.
Muscle Focus by Day
Day 1 — Chest, Legs & Core
This session opened with Romanian Deadlifts — a hamstring and glute hinge pattern as the primary lower body mover. Then we switched gears entirely to chest: Incline Dumbbell Bench Press, Seated Cable Chest Flys, and Butterfly / Pec Deck. Bulgarian Split Squats rounded out the unilateral leg work. The combination sounds chaotic, but in practice the chest work didn’t suffer at all from having done RDLs first, and the split squats after pressing didn’t compromise quad recruitment.
Day 2 — Back, Arms & Core
Day 2 was a pure upper body session with a twist — it was the one day where arm work had its own space. Lat Pulldown and Seated Row Machine handled the back, and then the session gave real estate to Overhead Triceps Extension, Seated Incline Curls, and Lateral Raises for shoulder width. Core work was rotational: Cable Twist (up to down). The overhead cable tricep extension is one of my favorite long-head tricep builders — it keeps constant tension through the full range of motion in a way dumbbells can’t.
Day 3 — Lower Body, Chest & Core
The third session was lower-body dominant: Hack Squat Machine and Barbell Squat for quad volume, Seated Leg Curl and Lying Leg Curl for hamstrings. Then chest got a secondary hit with Barbell Bench Press, Dumbbell Bench, and Butterfly. By this point in the week, the chest had already been hit on Day 1, so Day 3 was a solid second stimulus. The core finisher was whatever had energy left.
Phase 6 Weight Update
| Workouts | Total Sets | Total Reps | Total Volume Lifted |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 | 503 | 5,920 | 575,980 lbs |
Here’s where the numbers were at by the end of Phase 6 (October–November 2025):
Day 1 — Chest / Legs / Core
- Romanian Deadlift (Barbell): 225 lbs × 10 reps
- Bulgarian Split Squat: 40 lbs × 10 reps
- Incline Bench Press (Dumbbell): 45 lbs × 10 reps
- Seated Chest Flys (Cable): 22 lbs × 15 reps
- Butterfly / Pec Deck: 100 lbs × 15 reps
Day 2 — Back / Arms / Core
- Lat Pulldown (Cable): 121 lbs × 12 reps
- Seated Row (Machine): 120 lbs × 12 reps
- Seated Cable Row (V-Grip): 143 lbs × 9–10 reps
- Lateral Raise (Machine): 55–60 lbs × 14–15 reps
- Overhead Triceps Extension (Cable): 60 lbs × 12 reps
- Seated Incline Curl (Dumbbell): 25 lbs × 12 reps
- Cable Twist (Up to Down): 27.5 lbs × 15 reps
Day 3 — Lower / Chest / Core
- Hack Squat (Machine): 270 lbs × 8 reps
- Squat (Barbell): 225 lbs × 8 reps
- Seated Leg Curl: 160–180 lbs × 10 reps
- Lying Leg Curl: 100 lbs × 10 reps
- Bench Press (Barbell): 95–120 lbs × 8 reps
- Bench Press (Dumbbell): 100 lbs × 8 reps
- Butterfly / Pec Deck: 100 lbs × 15 reps
Phase 6 was experimental by design — it built serious lower body numbers (that Hack Squat at 270 lbs is a real milestone) and kept chest and back volume high through a non-conventional structure. Wouldn’t run it forever, but it produced real results.