Workout B — hinge, vertical push/pull, shoulder prehab

Workout B — Hinge, vertical push/pull, shoulder prehab Reps default to 12, with exceptions marked. A dash means no rep target. Rows marked P are prehab.
#	Exercise	Reps	Notes
1 / 2	Front Squat	5	One set of five. Elbows high, chest tall. Before the deadlift, after the power clean — cleans are graded on bar speed and leg fatigue takes speed first, so on clean days these two swap places. The app does that for you.
2 / 1	Deadlift or Hang Power Clean	see below	Alternates session to session, so each lift lands roughly 1.5×/week. On clean days this goes first, ahead of the front squat. The alternation can be turned off — see below.
3	Barbell OHP	12	Standing. Squeeze the glutes and keep the ribs down — the torso is usually the limiter, which changes what a hard set means here.
4	Pull-Ups	8–12 strict	Strict. Add load once you are getting 15+ bodyweight reps; assist if you are under 8. Stop before kipping.
5	Suitcase Deadlift	12/side	Straps optional — going without is the default, because grip is a training target here rather than something to work around. Anti-lateral-flexion; keep the shoulders square. If the hand opens before the obliques are done, that set became grip work — put straps on and train the trunk, which is what the lift is for.
6	Alternating DB OHP	12/arm	Standing. Non-working arm holds locked out at the top.
7	Alt. Single-Arm Lat Pulldown	12/arm	D-handle lat stretch.
8	Ab Wheel Rollout	—	Anti-extension. No rep target: progression comes from leverage. Leverage ladder knees, short → knees, full → knees, deficit → standing, eccentric only → standing, full
Cut line — stopping here is a complete session
9	DB Lateral Raises	15–20
10	Bicep Curls or Reverse Curls	12	Alternates session to session. Reverse days run lighter — never grind them. They come out of the rotation entirely if the lateral elbow starts talking.
11	One-Legged Hamstring Curl	12/leg
12	Single-Leg Calf Raises	—	Deep Achilles stretch, minimal footwear. Progression is the leverage. Leverage ladder flat floor → step deficit → deficit + 2s pause → deficit + 3s eccentric → deficit + DB
P	Face Pulls	15–20	High-rep external rotation.
P	Lying Back Extension	—	Face down, lift the chest slowly and lower it slowly. Take it as hard as you like. Leverage ladder hands by sides → hands at temples → arms overhead → arms overhead, 2s hold at the top
P	Band Finger Extensions	~30 s	Both hands, about 30 seconds. Counterbalance to daily grip flexion — this program loads the hands every single session.

The cut line, after #8

Exercises 1–8 are the session. By the time the eighth is done, the hinge, both vertical patterns, the loaded carry and the loaded core are all in. Walking out there is a complete session, not an abandoned one.

It is still an exception rather than a routine option — off days, time pressure — and every use gets logged. Cut-line frequency is a diagnostic, not a failure count: more than two cuts a fortnight means the session is too long, recovery is short, or life has changed shape. On this day a cut deletes the lateral raises, the curls, the hamstring curl, the calf work and both prehab items — which is exactly the material a habitual cut removes from the program while the table still claims it.

The hinge slot: Deadlift / Power Clean

The two lifts alternate across B sessions, so each one lands roughly 1.5 times a week:

Wk 1 DL → Clean → DL Wk 2 Clean → DL → Clean

Deadlift day

8 reps, one set, RPE 7–8. The one place the program deviates from twelve, and deliberately. A deadlift's value is concentrated at heavier loads, and twelve reps stopped short of failure sits far enough below that it mostly buys lumbar endurance and systemic fatigue — the worst return on fatigue in the week. Eight moves the load up without going anywhere near a max, and it is the only heavy pull in an otherwise entirely submaximal program.
Full reset before every rep. Eight first reps, not one rep and seven worse ones. If setup quality starts degrading over the last two reps, you have found the ceiling.
Double overhand by default; hook grip when the load calls for it. The resets give the hands eight micro-breaks per set, which is why double overhand is far less taxing here than touch-and-go would be.

Clean day — hang power cleans

The hang version is the default, not a compromise. What the program wants from a clean is rate of force development — the ability to produce force fast, which is the physical quality that fades earliest and that nothing else here trains. The hang keeps essentially all of that while dropping the pull from the floor, which is the part that is hardest to learn, easiest to do badly without a coach, and the part that adds lumbar loading to a week already carrying plenty of it. It is also much quieter, which settles most gym objections before they start.

3 × 3. Load it by feel rather than by maths: the heaviest weight where the bar still snaps to the rack without you having to dive under it. That cue is the whole gauge — you don't need to know a clean max, and most people who'd try this don't have one. (If you do, it usually lands somewhere around 70–75% of it.)
Not confident with cleans? They're optional. Pin this slot to the deadlift, or take one of the quieter versions below — DB cleans, trap bar jumps, KB swings.
2 minutes rest — the one place in the program you actually wait. Everywhere else consecutive exercises train different patterns, so there is nothing to rest for and you simply move on; that is what keeps a session to 15–30 minutes. This slot is the exception, and it matters: short rest here turns a power lift into conditioning, which is not what it is in the program for. Two minutes is the whole cost — the load is well below a max, so there is nothing here that needs longer.
Stop on speed, not on sets. If set three is visibly slower than set one, that was the last set. A 2 × 3 day is a correct outcome, not a failure.
RPE does not work here. A slow, ugly clean can feel easy — bar speed is the sensor, so this is the one lift the app judges on speed rather than on how the set felt.

Cleans want freshness more than anything else in this program, and B days land every two to three days. If bar speed is dead on clean day, shift the rotation so cleans follow the lighter surrounding session. Accepting that one of the two clean sessions per fortnight is the lower-quality one is also a valid answer.

Other versions of the same lift

Pick any of these instead of the hang clean. The first is the full lift rather than a substitution; the rest trade some of the stimulus for quiet.

Power Clean (from the floor)
DB Power Cleans
Trap Bar Jumps
KB Swings

The floor version is worth having if you have the technique and a gym that will have it. Most commercial-gym objections are to dropping the bar rather than to the lift: controlled lowering at moderate weight on rubber flooring often draws no reaction, and it is worth asking staff rather than assuming.

Each one keeps its own progression state — hang loads are not floor loads — but all of them advance the rotation as a clean day, so switching never desyncs the alternation.

Turning the alternation off

Anyone who does not clean, or whose gym will not have it, can pin the hinge slot to the deadlift and get a deadlift every B session — the front squat then opens every session, since there is no longer a lift graded on speed to protect. Be clear about what that buys:

Deadlift every B session means heavy 8-rep deadlifts three times a week, on top of 12-rep squats three times a week. Squats are already the likeliest recovery bottleneck in this program, and this stacks the heaviest pull in the week on top of them at double the usual frequency. The deload triggers will watch for it, but consider alternating with a lighter hinge if progress stalls.

Grip is loaded every session

Pull-ups, gorilla rows, hanging wipers, the suitcase deadlift, all the dumbbell work — grip gets no scheduled rest anywhere in the week. The suitcase deadlift is the one true sustained hold, and it is run without straps by default: grip is a training target here rather than something to work around. Straps remain your call, and on a day when the trunk is what you want to load, using them is the sensible choice rather than a compromise.

Medial elbow pain is the classic slow-onset injury here and it presents as chronic once it arrives. Two notes about the same elbow in a fortnight is a signal to act on, not to train through. If the lateral elbow starts talking instead, slow eccentric DB wrist extensions go back in as a dedicated prehab item and reverse curls come out of the curl rotation until it settles — loaded wrist extension is the treatment; a heavier curl variant is not.

Reps are not blanket 12

The default is 12 and the exceptions are marked in the table. A dash means no rep target at all: the ab wheel and the single-leg calf raises have their intensity set by leverage and position rather than by weight, so the progression variable is the rung on the ladder shown in the notes.

Where there is a weight, reps may still float in a band of 8 to 16 to absorb equipment granularity. Power cleans are the exception that proves it: they are triples because they are cleans, so that rep count never moves. Reps and load are one ladder →