re: H&F January Program- PPSA Welcome to Strongville

W1d3 complete for me

My shoulders feel almost like new again. Been super setting in the face pulls with all my presses. Started adding in hangs and a rib cage stretch to between each set and has helped tremendously, almost to the point all pain is gone.

W1D3 done!

My shoulders are toast from the superset.

I was pissed because I ended up having to the Arnold Press before squats because Mr. Hogs the squat rack did 8 sets of lightweight squats. Ended up holding me back. I tried to do mine on the smith machine but it’s not the same and doesn’t feel good.

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Your shoulder improvement is interesting to me

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my shoulders are almost always in perfect health which is a big time rarity for someone who is 40, was an overhead athlete(baseball & javelin) and a lineman in hs. I played baseball for 15 years with much of that as a catcher so tons of throws. Also have been lifting since summer before 9th grade, so 26 years now with some breaks here and there about a decade ago. but consistently can say i have 20+ years under the bar.

for my shoulders to be almost perfect is something to brag about imo. hell my overal lack of bumps and bruises is a feat imo.

i say all that not to brag, but to explain what i do. first my shoulders started hurting me when i switched to the cadillac bar(angled neutral grip) and then again when we started benching 5 days a week plus close grip back in december.

but my normal routine is this

25 broomstick dislocates
25 band overhead Y to T
25 band pull aparts


i do this if i am healthy before every session no matter what

since my shoulder started hurting i started implementing the following (look up dro kirsch on the hanging)

1) replaced pull aparts with face pulls
2) added hangs
3) add lat stretching(essentially stretching out the rib cage area)


these have helped me a ton. since the pain is in extrernal rotation and essentially only when at greater than 90 degrees or with a lateral load at 90 i added some extrernal band work here and there.

i wil be adding this lift prehab guys posted shortly.

but main things for shoulder health

1) hang, hang, hang and do tons of upper back work like face pulls(banded is best for rehab/prehab imo), ywts, band pull aparts.

2) make sure your posture is correct and its not being caused by a very tight chest. the broomstick dislocates and german hangs can help a ton with this.

3) make sure you are rowing as much or more than you are benching volume wise

4) priortize horz pulling over vert pulling

5) make sure you are getting in plenty of free scap pushing like pushups

lastly, if benching is a big issue, grab a bosu ball and use that under your lower back when benching and put a squat pad on the bar. the bosu will allow some(some not free) scap movement while benching and the bar will limit the range of motion and keep you out of that bottom 1-2" which is most dangerous. reverse banded bench is good for that too.

Anyone else lose count of sets when the weight stays the same. I either just finished 2 or 3 on squat. . Guess we’ll call it 2.

yes so i started putting a talley mark next to it to make sure

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Still sore AF after my rest day. I wasn't prepared for this.

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sorry i dont mean to laugh, i just find it funny cause strongville is deceiving. its many of the same exercises we did last few months but for some reason the way it is set up makes you sore AF and just hits different

its my favorite ppsa program so far by a long ways

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The strong app? What is this? Is this a PPSA??

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its just an app you can plug everything into

I make tally marks on the sheet; started the first time I encountered an 8x8 set :)

Knocked out w1d3 today and felt better after than I did going into it. We considered taking an extra rest day, but were glad we got going once we started. I went AMRAP on last set of squats and got 6 slow deep reps so that was fun. I’ll pay for it tomorrow in the deadlifts probably. The Arnold press is a nice exercise ; I liked the squeeze at the bottom to get the dbs parallel with each other. I went heavier on the lat/front raises since it was only 12 reps; that was pretty poor judgement on my part.

Looking forward to some beef stew out of the crockpot for supper and then day4 tomorrow

Oh ok. I was making sure tis wasnt some special app I needed

Question for 777 or anyone with experience with using a SSB for squat: did you adjust your training max you used when using it? Feels like it uses slightly different muscles or puts more emphasis on different leg muscles than a regular barbell squat. Just wondering if I used too much weight on Sunday and that’s what caused the tweak Wednesday.