A/B Style Juggernaut Method - Shorter Program

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

I am 37 and I have been lifting for around 2 years (started May 2018), but had a few months where I had small injuries; with the latest one I stopped for almost 5 months from Sept 2019 to Mid Jan 2020, but I had other small breaks of 1 month or breaks with just a few lifts, every break was a big setback.

I was skinny 65kg (143 lbs) when I started and now am 79kg (174lbs), with definitely nice visible gains. My fat levels is a bit high (no abs) but I currently don’t do cardio, so I guess when I start that it will help me drop (planned for Autumn with fewer people at the pool).

I started with Starting Strength, and have since then just built on it and for the big lifts, I have been increasing weight on all sessions. To do that for so long I have used microplates with the lowest additional added weight being 0.5kg per session (mostly for overhead press and then bench) or 1 kg (Squat and Deadlift). On a few support lifts, I have sometimes added reps instead of weight. Additionally on some lifts, I increased the sets (Bench Press, Overhead Press, and Deadlift), and for Squat I changed the rep number from 5 to 8 because somehow I am comparatively extremely good at it and I quickly reached quite high numbers compared to my other lifts and it felt dangerous. I also did some stupid changes once or twice to the program (for example changing Deadlift for Romanian Deadlifts).

I have always trained only 3 days per week, and I plan on keeping to do that, as it’s as much as I plan on giving.

I’m not even going to compare the lifts from when I started, as obviously it increased very fast in the beginning. Currently, the below are my last 2 successful training sessions (like in Starting Strength I kept the ABA BAB 2 weeks programming):

Day A

  1. Deadlift: 2 * 5 @ 135 kg (297 lbs)
  2. Bench Press: 4 * 5 @ 79.5 kg (175 lbs)
  3. Pull-Up: 4 * 8 @ 82.5 kg (182 lbs) done with a 3.5kg belt

Day B

  1. Standing Overhead Press: 4 * 5 @ 54.5 kg (120 lbs)
  2. Squat: 4 * 8 @ 134 kg (295 lbs)
  3. Parallel Pull-Up: 3 * 6 @ 94 kg (207 lbs) done with a 15kg belt
  4. Dips: 3 * 6 @ 94 kg (207 lbs) done with a 15kg belt
  5. Note: Parallel Pull-Ups and Dips are done in a row with minimal rest between Parallel Pull-ups and Dips, but then taking longer rest before restarting

You will notice that it is my upper body lifts that are the weakest. I am however quite happy with the progress until now, and my focus is actually on growing my back. You will notice that I train the OHP in front of the Squat because that’s where I want to gain. Unfortunately, I am more and more challenged mentally and physically to keep on with this. Also, I need a lot of rest in between sets (5-8min) which makes the sessions quite long around 2 hours with the warm-up and warm-up sets.

I have been looking around for my next program and the two programs that seem to fit would be the Texas Method or the Juggernaut Method. But as I want to take it a bit more easily I think the juggernaut method is more attractive to me at the moment, as the texas method would still be mentally challenging and long especially on volume day.

However, I am planning on doing one major tweak to this planning and wanted to see what others think about it.

First I will continue to train 3 days per week. In the book he gives two alternatives, one is to put the OHP and Deadlift on the same day, and the second one to just do the four days when they come (so instead of being 4weeks blocks its even longer). I am however thinking that at my current stage of early intermediate, it could be in my interest to actually decrease the total time until it doesn’t work anymore. What I mean is instead of doing 3 days and only combining 2 days together, I would combine the other 2 days together as well and reduce the block time. By doing that I would keep the AB training I was doing until now. It would look like this:

  1. OHP + Squat + Parallel Pull Up + Dips
  2. Deadlift + Bench + Pull-Up (if the time is ok then either delt flies or face pulls)

As you can see, it is actually almost the same as I am currently doing. The main difference will be that I would use the progression and blocks as detailed by the Juggernaut Method for the main 4 lifts instead of the session to session progressive overload I was using.

By using the AB system, it would decrease the program from 4 months to less than 3 months, and I feel it should be ok at least for the time being. My plan is that if I see that I can’t add any more reps on the Realization phase before failure, then I will tamper it down to the 3 days as described in the book (only one combination day).

My last view on this is that if you really just use one of the main lifts per session, then not only are you only lifting them once per week, but you would need to add quite a lot of assistance work. With my current level and as I only have a home fitness with barbell, convenience and results of focussing on the main lifts seem to be enough for the results I hope to achieve (basically I want to be at around 80kg but with lower body fat, so I guess at my current body fat it would be around 85kg).

Any opinions on this is well appreciated. Cheers!

2

Train how you like. I would probably go with the recommended ways to split the program ahead of making a new one.up yourself.

If you need to fiddle around with things so much that the program is no longer recognisable, perhaps you would be better off picking a program which is designed to work within your constraints

3

Just wanted to give a small update as I just finished the 8’s realization.
It seems to be working fine. I skipped the 10’s deload, but will now do it.
What I can say is that 10 reps and 8 reps are really tough when you always stayed at 5 for the lifts concerned. Squat where I had already used 8 reps was much easier to handle.

I am however a bit concerned about the 3’s phase coming up soon, as it will be weights I never lifted and by quite a distance especially on Squat. For now it seems I will have to lift 3 * 155-160 kg, and the heaviest I went in the past 8 months is 10 * 135 (yesterday…and prior to that it was 8*135 before I started Juggernaut). So that’s a 20-25kg or 44-55 lbs increase.

As I am already quite old with 37, I am a bit worried that this quite sudden weight increase puts too much stress on my joints and ligaments. Is that concern warranted or do you think it should be fine?

Of course in the end I will have to judge myself if it feels ok or not, but just wanted to see what others think about that. If its too much stress I guess I could just skip this 3’s phase and return back to the 10th.

1 Like
4

Um, you have no idea what old is yet. Now enough excuses, cowboy up.

5

But you have a 5’s phase before the 3’s, right? As long as you gradually increase the weight and not put 20% over your heaviest squat on the bar one day you should be fine.

6

ok thanks guys!

I guess we’ll have to see then haha

This method of training is so different than increasing with a small weight each session it’s been a bit rough to get straight in my head. Almost all the time feeling it’s not enough (a part from the accumulation phase), but somehow it seems to be giving results, so I’ll just keep at it like the plan.

7

Hi Guys,
thought I’d give a small update.

So I’ve been running this now for a few month, started in August last year. Before results, a few notes:

  • Accumulation phase is miserable in terms of recovery especially for squats
  • Realization phase, volume is really low and it feels like more can be done, so for bench press and overhead press I added two rest-pause (15 sec) to add a bit. I first added
  • Results are vaired,
    ** geat progress was achieved on Deadlift. I think its mainly because of volume.
    ** average on overhead press, squat and bench press.
  • Deloads seem not needed for me at least in not that many. I now did it straight since January, and am only going to do a small pause now as I feel it can be benefical.
  • going heavy feels horrible as you train so much with lower weights (with 10s and 8s its ok in the realization, but with 5s and 3s its quite ughhh), at the end I didn’t do the 3s series any more, I think cutting the 5s is next step…

Note1: 2 weeks off beginning of October (lost 2 kg), and 3 weeks off end of December. Suffice to say when I restarted in January I couldn’t lift well…and dropped a lot. During both of these times I did quite some cardio as in surfing (or trying to…mostly paddling).

Note3: I had two periods where I cut from 80kg to 70kg, first lost 2kg to 78 in October, and then Nov-December I cut from 78 to 70 (was not planned to go so low, but I got sick at the end and lost additional 2 kg, maybe some part of it water as I had food poisonning with fluids going out from everywhere).

Note4: Now I’m at 75kg, so 4kg lower than the compared lifts last time. I plan on doing a 2kg cut soon.

Note5: pull-ups and dips progression was done on some other programming. I just started to add barebell curls and reverse barebell curl on Day A, and preacher curls on Day B (both one set with 2 15sec R-P), I can only say I am very weak on these according to Strengthlevel website, but progression is fast so we’ll see.

Progress:

Day A
Deadlift 5 @ 135 kg (297 lbs) → 14 @ 135 kg
Bench Press: 5 @ 79.5 kg → 7 @ 82.5kg
Pull-Up: 8 @ 82.5 kg (182 lbs) (+3.5kg belt) → 6 @ 87kg (+12kg belt)

Day B
Standing Overhead Press: 5 @ 54.5 kg (120 lbs) → 9 @ 52.5kg
Squat: 8 @ 134 kg (295 lbs) → 14 @ 132.5kg
Parallel Pull-Up: 6 @ 94 kg (207 lbs) (+15kg) → 6 @ 96kg (+21kg)
Dips: 6 @ 94 kg (207 lbs) (+15kg) → 9 @ 96kg (+21kg)

Finally these PR are for only one set, and before it was for several sets…suffice to say I couldn’t do the number of sets I did previously with these numbers…not sure if that’s a matter of concern. What matters is if I do look stronger, which I do a little I guess (but obviously not enough huh). Question is whats next…maybe some more 10s and 8s or moving to Doggcrap (just found out about it a few month earlier) to add some variety

Thanks for reading and appreciate any comment, not sure if what I achieved is good or not, it seems ok in general I think. Have a good one!