041 : 017 Strength Endurance (push)
Boulder Shoulders
Season 3 of The Quest for the Hyper-Trophy continues with a shoulder pump episode. Normally for sessions, we have an idea for the “meat” portion and then build the rest of the session around that to complement the sensation we’re going after. This time around, the main thing I wanted to experiment with was the dynamic PreFatigue portion and then taking some movements we tend to do as a PreFatigue and use them as a finisher piece. From the start, I had a good feeling about the session because Michael evilly laughed when I explained the bear crawl burpee ladder and everyone else looked at me with disgust. #SorryNotSorry
Pick your poison as you would with any bodybuilding session, either go real deep during the “meat” and maybe do the finisher, or maybe not. If you’re holding back on the meat portion, go deeper on the finisher. With shoulders, in contrast to legs, I find value in going deep both in the meat and finisher to really drive home the sensation I’m aiming for.
Prefatigue
100m Bear Crawl, every 10m a 1-10 ladder of alternating Burpee Step-up and Burpee pull-up
10 m bear crawl 1x Burpee Step up, 10 m bear crawl 2x burpee pull up, 10m bear crawl, 3x burpee step up etc…
Scap, Shoulder, Elbow CARs
Work
Build to heavy standing or seated press
8-5-3
Piston Strict Press (leave the “resting” side in the overhead position) 8x left, 8x right, 5x left, 5x right…
20x Cable or banded low rows between sets
3 sets, rest as needed
Finisher (do as many sets or reps of each as needed)
Dynamic Overload in external rotation
Tricep Extension
*All done for a “sensation.” Either snappy, speed change or range of motion limitation.
Flow:
For the Dynamic PreFatigue, the player will do 100m total of a bear crawl. Every 10 meters, they will stop to execute a burpee ladder. At the space one length is 10m so on one end we set up boxes for a burpee-to-box variation then after the following 10 meters, players would be at the pull-up bars so the alternate move was burpee pull-ups. This looked like: 10m bear crawl+ 1 burpee to box; 10m bear crawl + 2 burpee pull-ups; 10m bear crawl + 3 burpees to box. . . 10m bear crawl + 10 burpee pull-ups.
After getting the shoulders ready for action, go into the FRC portion. The thing to notice is much more attention is needed on each CAR rep because the player is fatigued and likely to compromise the integrity of the reps if they aren’t paying attention.
Once complete with the shoulder extension PAIL/RAIL, begin building to a heavy single-side strict DB press. This can be done seated or standing, and players can also use this time to get used to piston pressing and gauge what weight they may use for the meat. Once through with the build, the player will begin 3 sets of a piston press ladder + 20 cabled low rows. The 8-5-3 constitutes as one set and the numbers are reps per arm. This looks like: 8 presses right arm (with left arm+DB locked out overhead)+ 8 presses left arm (right arm now locked overhead with DB) then 5 on the right, 5 on the left, then 3 on right, and 3 left, and then followed by 20 cabled low rows. Complete this 3 total times, and if the player chooses correctly, they will stay at the same weight for each set and the third set should feel extremely difficult to complete with questions starting to pop in their head as they go through the 5-rep rung of the ladder.
Finally, the player will move through a dynamic shoulder finisher. External rotation dynamic overload, overhead ball taps, bus drivers, and 15-20 Tricep extensions. For the first three movements, there’s no specific rep range associated but instead, a sensation to strive for. The Dynamic overload has been utilized in the Space Program before, the first couple of reps are to feel it out then the player should slowly become comfortable letting their shoulder “snap” back. The player will do this until they’ve reached a max “snappy” feel. This takes usually 4-7 reps. The overhead ball taps are with a lighter medicine ball. The player will start trying to tap the ball off the wall as fast as they can, once they start to notice a loss in speed, they’ve reached their limitation for the movement in that set. The sensation for the bus drivers will be reaching an end of range of motion for this movement. Reference the movement library for a visual representation of these movements. To round out the circuit, the player will complete 15-20 Tricep extensions, any variation of their choosing (barbell, dumbbells, cable machine, etc). There’s also no prescribed amount of rounds for the finisher, but people were doing at least 2 rounds and no more than 4.
