06 August 2018
Juggernaut
10’s Accumulation Week
Day 1
Front Squat(TM - 365) - (135 x 10, 185 x 5) 225 x 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5;
A. Rack SGHP - 155 x 3, 165 x 3, 175 x 3, 185 x 3;
B. Hanging Leg Raise - 10, 10, 10, 10;
BBB Deadlift(TM - 450) - 250 x 10, 10, 10, 225 x 10, 10;
Single Leg Extension - 50 x 15, 15, 15;
KB Swing - 53# x 100 reps - 2:clock330:
So, change number…whatever… You may have noticed this is not a BFBattle write up, and there is an excellent reason for that. While I was still enjoying the circuit style training of BFB, it was starting to get in the way of a few things outside the gym. The athletic center I train at (small town place, used to be a middle school before they built the new one 12 years ago) only has a couple dead spots where I can do BFB and not impact a bunch of people with how much equipment I take up (4 bars, 1-2 racks, lots of plates). That, in turn, impacts how much work I can do to earn a little extra money, which also impacts my buddy that I do side work for. He owns a jewelry store up here on the mountain, and is expanding to another location and has a bunch of work that needs done in both locations. The dead time at the gym puts a limit on how many hours per day I can work for him, and I only have these three weeks (before classes start) to get the majority of it done. So, with all of that in mind, I decided to go ahead and jump back into Juggernaut a few weeks early. No testing, just using my 3RMs from BFB as my training maxes for Juggernaut. For those who are not familiar with Juggernaut (Chad Wesley Smith), the training max is 90% of your 1RM. I did a little math a couple weeks ago and figured out that 3RM is right at that number, so it works. Since I was using 500 (most recent 1RM for deadlift) to figure my percentages on the days where I was using the trap bar, I took 90% of that and made my deadlift TM 450.
Training day-
I front squat first in the week because it is my lower body focus lift - ie, the one I want to improve the most. Deadlift sort of takes care of itself, so I put it later in the week. I’ve pulled 500 (yay me), but trying to jump higher than that might not agree with my lower back…no real ‘issues’ (aside from intermittent sciatica), just taking care to keep it that way.
Front squats felt good, more volume at once than I have done in a while, but I’ve always responded well to higher volume. I got strong as fuck when I was doing 531, but couldn’t put on lower body mass (aside from squat ass) for nothing. Kept focus on solid form, trying to re-ingrain the proper form while at a lower weight (relatively speaking).
Followed front squats with rack SGHP supersetted (A/B) with hanging leg raise. Moved through those pretty quick, and then cranked through the BBB (Boring But Big) deadlifts. Smith and Co. borrowed this from Wendler - pretty basic, take 50% of your TM on whichever lift and perform 5 sets of 10 reps. You can do BBB on the same day as the primary workout, or you can do it on the opposing training day - that is what I prefer, BBB deadlift on front squat day, and BBB front squat on deadlift day (same for upper body days).
Last thing was some assistance work, in the form of high rep single leg extensions. These always give me that fun post-leg day wobble, makes it more fun walking down the gentle slope to the parking lot afterwards. Did the KB swings at home, since the gym doesn’t have KBs heavier than 35 pounds (they just bought them last fall - maybe we’ll get bigger ones eventually). I do these as alternating single arm swings, in pyramid fashion - 1 to 10 to 1, switching hands at each number on the ladder (1 swing left hand, 2 swings right hand, 3 swings left hand, etc). I compared the numbers years ago, and the total reps per arm comes out equal. Got these done in 2:33, pretty decent considering I haven’t done that workout in a bit.
Nah just kidding.