Exercise Substitutions on the 10-8-6-15 Program
"I read your article on Bodybuilding.com titled Hypertrophy Training for the Ectomorph, and it really struck a note with me. I’m a 21 year old university student, 74 inches tall, 188lbs. My whole life I’ve been athletic but never have had any real muscle to my body.
“This August I started weightlifting with a friend and gained about 13lbs (going from about 175 to 188), and I would like to reach 200lbs, possibly 210 at the most. As of late October/early November I started noticing my gains were small, if none, but I kept lifting anyway.
“Last night I read your article, and I am going to try the 10-8-6-15 approach, specifically the one you reccommended: squats, bench press, lateral raises, V-bar pulldowns, dumbbell curls and close grip bench press. I have some questions though about this: How long would one do this routine?
“I figured in my head that 6 weeks would be optimal for this. I would be doing this three days a week, also including 2 extra exercises that would be rotated throughout the week. I’ll also rotate the order of the 6 core exercises throughout the week.
“Basically on Monday I would do the core 6 exercises, but include shrugs to target my traps and seated calf raises to hit my calves. Then on the 2nd day I would include cable flys to help with chest and cable rows for my lats/middle back/bi’s etc. On the 3rd day I would include preacher curls and lying tricep press, repeat for 6 weeks, switching up the order every week to keep it fresh.
“This is the routine I’m thinking of, but being a bodybuilding rookie I would like some advice and guidance. Thanks for reading James, I appreciate any and all help. Sorry if this has been hard to read.”
-Jay
My Answer: Ideally, you wouldn’t follow a program longer than 3 weeks. You can follow it for 6 weeks, but the exercises would have to be switched up from workout to workout. Here’s what you do:
Instead of adding 2 extra exercises (like you propose), just substitute all of your proposed exercises once a week, preferably in the 2nd workout. Adding 2 extra exercises would lengthen the workout and defeat the purpose of the program itself: brief, intense and frequent workouts to induce hypertrophy.
So let’s just say you chose Wednesday to substitute all of the exercises? Your workout would look like this:
Thighs- Deadlifts
Chest- Cable flyes
Back- Seated cable rows
Biceps- Preacher curls
Triceps- Lying triceps extensions
Calves- Seated calf raises
I suggest deadlifts instead of shrugs. The deadlift will work both your thighs and your traps.
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