One Bench, Six Moves: Leanna’s Simple Upper-Body Workout

Crowded gym? No time? Leanna Chanco’s answer is one bench and six moves. This simple upper-body workout skips the million machines and the hour-long session, and it became her most-liked reel for a reason. Do you really need 15 exercises to train your upper body well? Not even close.

As Leanna puts it, train with intention, progressively overload, and make it fit your life.

View this post on Instagram

The workout

#	Exercise	Sets × reps	Main muscles
1	Chest-supported rear delt fly	3 × 12–15	Rear shoulders, upper back
2	Single-arm dumbbell row	3 × 10–12 per side	Lats, mid back
3	Lateral raises	3 × 12–15	Side shoulders
4	Front raises	3 × 10–12	Front shoulders
5	Biceps curls	3 × 10–12	Biceps
6	Triceps extensions	3 × 10–15	Triceps

Different angles, one bench, full upper-body focus. Watch the reel for Leanna’s setup on each move, and choose a weight where the last two or three reps of each set feel genuinely hard while your form stays clean.

How much work each muscle gets

Is six moves really enough? Count the sets. Because several moves overlap, your shoulders and back get more work than it first looks like.

Why does that matter? A meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger (2017) found a graded relationship between weekly sets and muscle growth: in the studies they pooled, people doing 10 or more sets per muscle per week tended to grow more than those doing fewer. Run Leanna’s session twice a week and your shoulders and back land in that range.

Those figures come from 15 studies and reflect a trend, not a guarantee. More sets only help if you can recover from them, and for busy schedules, two focused sessions usually beat four rushed ones. Our piece on productive training volume goes deeper.

How to progress it

The same workout can keep working for months if you progress it. In a study of trained adults, Plotkin and colleagues (2022) found that adding reps or adding load both built muscle and strength over eight weeks. That’s handy when your dumbbell jumps are big: work up to the top of each rep range first, then move up in weight.

1. Write down your weight and reps for every set.
2. When you hit the top of the range on all 3 sets, go up to the next dumbbell next time.
3. Expect your reps to drop with the heavier weight, then build them back up.
4. Keep form strict. Swinging the weight on raises and curls moves the work away from the target muscle.

How will you know it’s working? Your numbers will climb. Norvic explains more in why you should track your training. For more simple, effective routines like this and her four-move core routine, follow Leanna on Instagram, or apply for coaching.