"If I start using SH now until the new series comes out, would it make sense for my body to move into the new series of heavy lifting when those are released?"
I see no reason why not. The point is, we don't yet know which exercises Cathe will include, what subtle variations for working the same old muscle groups she will include to "tweak" things just a bit, nor what rep speeds and counts she will use. I doubt that the weight training in the new series will be an exact replica of S&H. What would be the point in that?
"Also, if I were to eventually move to a long rotation of SH for a few weeks, then GS for a few weeks, then PUB/PLB, where would I go after that?"
You could go back up the pyramid as it were in reverse order, from PLB/PUB back to GS, then back to S&H and then the new 4 day split weight work. But always bear in mind, to fitness training, there are no hard and fast rules. You can do what you want! After a while you get to know what your body type is, what your body responds favourably to and what it doesn't, and therefore which types of workouts are worth your while and which aren't. I am an ectomorph (long, lean muscles, hard gainer), and it is pretty pointless for me to do upper body endurance lifting because I just can't progress through the weights very far. So I only use workouts like MIS, PUB, MM, ME and CTX upper body when I have been out of fitness circulation for a while and am getting back on the wagon. To start with, these workouts will provide me with some strength gains, despite their high rep, fast counts. After a while though, I will stop seeing any gains in strength, and the only way for me to continue to grow is to slow down the rep speed so I can handle a heavier weight and force my body to grow muscle. Hence I use GS, S&H and will use the new 4 day split quite a lot I think. This is why in an earlier post I wrote "if you thing endurance weight training for the upper body has any value." For me, it doesn't much.
A lot of people also believe that strength work like S&H builds muscle whereas endurance type lifting improves definition. It is somewhat of a misnomer. I have never seen such definition as after a 6 week rotation with S&H. I have never looked better, aesthetically, as after S&H. So, since you list becoming stronger and gaining definition as two of your goals, the GS and S&H series will both help you.
"I keep hearing others mention that it's good to shock your body, but I'm not sure what kinds of "shocks" are most effective. Right now, my goals are to become stronger and also build some definition, and I've had such wonderful progress with the GS that I thought the SH would be a nice progression."
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You are not wrong: the S&H will be a nice progression for you and it will also be a shock, of a good kind, because there's nothing else out there quite like it! Despite how many reps and how much you can lift say for chest on GS, when you slow down that rep speed to 8 counts, it really becomes pretty tough to do multiple sets because the muscles are friend after just 1 or 2 sets, and there's still so much more to do!! You will see. It's a different kind of training and if you stick with it, it will pay dividends. Another bonus to this type of training is that the slow count allows you to really zero in on your form and perfect it.
Shocking your body can be achieved in different ways. Probably all of them are good. They all follow the same basic principle: after a while of following the same type of training, your body becomes very efficient at performing that type of exercise and the fitness gains you see start to slow down, you burn less calories doing the same exercises, and you stop feeling like you are really challenging yourself. You may also start to become at risk of repetitive strain injury. So, all you have to do is swap to a different type of training, so that you challenge your body and muscles in different ways and encourage it/them to keep growing in strength and endurance. You might, for example, do steady state cardio routines for weeks, and then realize that while you can keep going for ever, you have lost some of your ability to do sprint work, so then you'll swap to doing lots of interval work to get your muscles to respond faster and be able to work hard under pressure. You could do this by doing Drill Max and the Imaxes a lot for 4 weeks, so you could increase your times in a 5K running race, for example. There are so many different ways to shock the body. basically, you just want to get out of your comfort zone, challenge yourself again, and continue to grow.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Clare
