Good strong and healthy shoulders are as important as any other joint and suffer a lot of wear and tear throughout the years. Keeping them strong help keeps them healthy and pain free. What's important is you do movements through each plane of movement (something I'm currently lacking and need some work on). Shoulder Press: 3x3, 2, and 1. One of the big compound lifts but not one of the famous big three. This popular vertical pressing movement is great for overall shoulder strength. If I start getting beyond my current strength capabilities I add a little bit of a push press into it. If you currently have some shoulder discomfort it can help to sit on an inclined bench just very slightly leaned back. Spoto Press/Heavy Press: 2x3 and 2x2. Explosiveness is incredibly important. Helps you move more quickly and can help joint health through strengthening tendons and ligaments. Think about most of your workouts, slow and controlled which serves its purpose, but its not how your trying to move in real life. The light spoto press is for more explosiveness off the chest while the legs elevated takes away the leg drive moving all of the work to the upper body which will carry over to the flat bench. I put the heavier sets in there for more work with heavy weight and once again for the explosiveness. Even though the weight isn't moving fast that doesn't mean that you aren't pushing up with a ton of force (that part relies on you though). Heavy Weighted Pull-Ups: 4x6+1 super heavy set. Reduce the work load and save some time by adding some weight to your pull-ups (if you're already able to do plenty of bodyweight pull-ups). Again think explosiveness, hanging and exploding from a dead stop to get your chin up over the bar with the heavy weight hanging from your waist. Bulgarian Split Squats to an Elevated Platform: 3x8, after just three weeks I've noticed a huge difference in my balance and stability when my front foot lands on the box then back down onto the floor.

I do a lot of deadlifts on deadlift day so much so it get dangerously close to junk volume but there’s a purpose to each of the movements. Something I could do to widen the junk volume gap (again I wouldn’t quite consider it junk volume yet) would be to spread some of the variations out over the course of the week but for right now I’m happy with it though that could change depending on results as the weeks go on. Deadlift: 3x3, 2, and 1 with some extra sets thrown in between wherever I see fit to close the gaps in the weight jump a little. I do conventional deadlifts on deadlift day probably for obvious reasons but if I’m going to get better at deadlift then I need to do them. Why do you want to do deadlifts?? Compound movements are the way to go, isolated bodybuilding movements serve their purpose but for health and longevity you need to get good at the movements that train your muscles to work together and one of those top movements is deadlift. Rack Pulls: 3x3…these are great because you can go much heavier with them and for the purpose of training your central nervous system to lift heavy weight that is very important, the range of motion is greatly reduced especially when the starting above the knees like I do. Additionally, if you have issues locking your deadlifts out (that’s not my biggest issue, off the floor is my biggest issue and there will be more on that shortly) this is a great movement because it is essentially just the lockout portion of the movement. Farmers Carry: 4x40 yds. Carrying things is great for you. You can do this with one dumbbell and make it even more of a core stabilizing movement but I do it with two. It is still a great core stabilizing exercise but also great for grip strength. I don’t want grip strength to be my limiting factor for my lifts so it’s very important. Additionally, grip strength is one of the top health indicators but mostly because if your have a strong grip you’re likely just overall strong. Deficit Deadlifts : 3x5 like I said I have a lot of issues with the weight coming off the floor. I increase the deficit while also increasing the weight. The extra range of motion translates over well to the conventional deadlift.

Week 4 starts off the same as every week and that's with leg day. Some leg days are tougher than others because sometimes I do a long run on Sundays. That wasn't the case this week but still had some issues maxing out back squats today. I credit that to losing a little leg drive in my left leg after doing something to it a few weeks back. It feels mostly better now and hopefully I'll get that leg drive back as the weeks go on. Back Squats: Programming called for 3 sets with a set of 3 warmup weight, 2 about moderate effort and 1 heavy. I don't like this a lot for squats as I feel like I need another stepping stone or two between my moderate weight and heavy 1 rep max weight therefor I added a set of 335 in to reduce the jump in weight. My top set was supposed to be a single rep of 355 which I failed so I reduced the weight down to 345 then topped out at 350. 15 lbs is a pretty big jump from one week to the next but we'll see what happens next week. Front Squats: 3x3, I have grown to love front squats and I like to challenge myself with heavier weight as I get better with the olympic grip. I feel as if the olympic grip forces you to control your torso even more than the cross arm grip does. A huge part of the benefits received from front squatting come from the upright torso and having to control your core, the olympic grip reemphasizes that. These are great to get even more leg work while giving your back side a little bit of a rest. Paused Squats: 3x2 benefits of paused squats come in a couple different forms. One is from arresting the momentum at the bottom and allowing the standard reflex of your muscles to go back to their concentric position. This helps with power out of the bottom of your standard back squat. The second comes from not just sitting on your heels at the bottom of the squat but holding just above to get some isometric work out of it (those smaller stabilizing muscles). Hanging Leg Raises: I do a lot of additional core work but from time to time will do the core movement I have written into my normal workouts especially if I don't feel like doing any of the extra core circuits. With hanging leg raises it's important to control the swing. You can go extremely slow and controlled and likely get a little more bang for your buck with less reps but as long as you're controlling the movement you'll be getting plenty of work out of your abdominals and hip flexors.