038 : 013 Mobility + strength
Kegan the other day said, “Man it’s good to be in a gym that’s down to try weird shit.” I haven’t been here too long but his saying that made me realize I’ve already taken for granted the environment that’s been established here, which emphasizes exploring new ways to get things accomplished either as good or, more often, better. And it might be that the inverse of that environment/style that takes place at the majority of gyms is why the fitness industry is in this weird plateaued purgatory state. The issue isn’t exclusive to fitness, it’s a reason why I discovered the military was not a place for me to continue trying to improve myself. But we’ll skip the soapbox for now.
I enjoyed the structure of last week’s mobility strength piece so we stuck with it for this week. Shoulders get primed with a 90-meter warmup piece, then the session gets right underway with an assessment piece for the shoulders then right into a strengthening piece. Then said strength gets applied in a dynamic fashion, and then finally in a more practical application piece. The real “meat” of these sessions, again, is actually in the assessment and strengthening pieces while the dynamic and practical application parts are just to explore what we’ve developed.
Oh also, Prophet Press Debut! What up!!
Pre Fatigue:
3x10m each
Bear Crawl
Inchworm
Work:
Assessment:
Shoulder and Elbow CARs
AMAN (As many as necessary)
Strength:
PAIL/RAIL:
Shoulder Internal and/or External Rotation
Shoulder Extension and Flexion
Dynamic, 3-5 Rounds:
Cable/Banded Bus Drivers. This is a constant tension until failure. Take a standing position like you would for a standing cable fly. On one side only start with a band or cable handle directly out in front of you, turning your wrist to start the semi-circle motion, then as slowly and as controlled as you can allow that circle to become as big as you can.
5-8 Prophet Press (this is a behind-the-neck press that extends down into a dislocate and then back)
Practical Application/Meat:
10-1 (10,9, 8…1) Funky Bench Press ladder
10x gorilla rows between each set
Either 20 total with a light-medium set of KBs OR
10 total with a heavy set of KBs
Flow:
Start the session with our staple dynamic warm-up piece, however, I think skater walks are a new movement. For those grab some sort of roller board if you have one, and start in the top of an inchworm position. Using one hand on the board roll out until you’re in a plank position then catch yourself with your other hand. Walk your feet in like you would for an inch worm then switch hands. You can vary this with one of those ab roller implements, but play around with it, there’s no right answer.
For the assessment, the player will do CARs for both elbows and shoulders but choose one to hyper-focus on. Here at the space, some people have elbow/bicep issues, others have shoulder issues, and we’ve all got our individual thing so use this time to focus on what you need the most.
The breadwinner of this session, the player will PAIL/RAIL their shoulders thoroughly. If the player established the need for more internal rotation over external rotation, or vice versa, they will do the PAIL/RAIL for that specific rotation, or do both if they desire. But the player will do PAIL/RAIL for both shoulder extension and flexion.
For the dynamic portion, the amount of rounds to complete is the player’s choice. The first movement will be cable/banded bus drivers until failure. This movement starts in the extension part of a chest fly and then the player will begin rotating the shoulder to make semi-circles with the hand. The player will increase the size of the semi-circle until they’ve reached their limit of range of motion, this will be considered “failure,” and then they will repeat on the other side. For the Prophet Press, look at it like a viper press done on both sides of your body. So the player will start performing a viper press, then go as deep as they possibly can for a behind-the-neck press. At this point, if it’s too much, the player will just repeat that range of motion for reps or, if they can keep going, the hands and elbows will turnover and bottom out. From there, the player will go through that range of motion in reverse to complete one rep of the PROPHET PRESS!!! Start super light for this, most used a 10lb bar and then worked up to 20-30 lbs.
And finally for the practical application piece, a 10-1 funky bench press ladder. Increase weight where feasible, if not, pick something that’s hard for 10 and ride it out the whole ladder. In between each set do a set of 10 gorilla rows. This looks like: 10 bench press, 10 gorilla rows; 9 bench press+10 gorilla rows; 8 bench press+10 gorilla rows. . . 2 bench press+ 10 gorilla rows; 1 bench press.
