Rebirth of the Juggernaut: Brute Force and Ignorance (Part 1)

Training Training Logs
4329

I pull more with a bar than the low handle trap bar as well. Honestly, I think it’s just our positioning. We’re similar height and we seem to be built similar in limb length. That’s the main reason I started doing them on my second deadlift day of the week as well because if they go up, I can only assume my conventional will too.

I even pull more from a deficit with the low handles. Probably due to being able to wedge myself in and use my legs and back more. Without the deficit, I just can’t seem to get my legs in there as much.

Also, that’s the first time I’ve heard Godsmack in years so thanks for that.

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You think the shorter bar is a factor? I can’t say I’ve ever seen a trap bar flex but every bar flexes at 400+ lbs. Well, maybe not an axle.

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Nah, I genuinely think it’s the way you have to grab it and position (for me anyway). I have a horrible time getting my hips down and wind up pulling with my hips high.

To add some context, a month and a held ago or so I was trying to get a base line for where I should start and figured I’d get a 90%+ from the floor and the deficit so I’d know where to work from programming wise. I pulled 545 from a ~4inch deficit prior to doing that 405 from a massive deficit I posted in another thread, but before I did the 545 from a deficit, I had the hardest time pulling that from the floor. I just couldn’t get my legs into it as much.

I’ve since tried it on multiple occasions and honestly prefer the ~4 inch deficit than from the floor. I can keep my hips down enough to mimic a conventional pull and get more carryover imo.

(Sorry to hijack your thread Pwn)

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@oldbeancam No hijack at all. You’ve pretty much identified what I’ve noted as well. We’re built for high hip position/short ROM conventional deads, and can make the most of that when the pick height is good, but once it hits that “no man’s land” of the low handle trap bar, we can’t take advantage of our leverages but ALSO our leverages don’t allow us to really squat down low and make the most of THAT position. Kinda like how a lot of folks can’t get into a good pulling position with an elevated conventional deadlift set-up, standard low handle trap bar IS an “elevated position” for the low handle trap bar for us. If we pull from a deficit, we can get into a decent starting position.

@Frank_C this trap bar is built pretty similarly to an axle, with no flex in it, but even then, I can actually pull more on an axle than I can on low handle trap bar pulls. Most likely a big factor is that I can’t benefit from upper back rounding on the trap bar like I can on a conventional pull, which increases the ROM I need to pull from. It’s definitely a chink in my armor, and something I can work on.

YESTERDAY’S PM WORKOUT

SUPERSET (press-chin)

Axle strict press
5xAxle
5x66
5x181
3x206
6x236 (PR)

8x206

NG chins (various grips)
4x9
2x8

DB rows 105
1x22

Notes: 3:45 between heavy presses. I am very pleased with the performance on this. After having benched the morning before and hitting the trap bar pulls the morning of this workout, my front delts and back were screaming, and the first warm-up set felt like I was breaking up scar tissue to get my body into position. My abs were also pretty torn up from the ab wheel. It was less than ideal training conditions, but my schedule is forcing some weird compromises. The chins felt very “tonic” in getting my body back in order. I’m confident I’d have another rep in me if things were more ideal. That having been said, it’s most likely getting to be about time to roll back the TM, and I’m due for a deload next week, so that should keep things going.

Going to try to get in the rest of this workout tonight, and then squats on Friday morning, and then be somewhat caught up in my training.

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4333

Great oh as always mate.

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Pwn you really are an inspiration, you just keep getting stronger setting PR’s on all kinds of lifts and it’s heavy shit too.
I thought of you the other day, got to 6 reps on DL a shitty day, was about to call it, but said no way got another 3 and a quick weight decrease and got anoter 4 - 5 reps. Felt great.

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@T3hPwnisher for BBB Beefcake, what would be your preference on number of sets for dips/chins? Try and get all reps in three sets or add weight and split it over say 5-8 sets? If you don’t recall the prescription is 50 reps total. Also, do you still have your before and after pictures? Found your thread on reddit but the links were broken.

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@simo74 Much appreciated dude. Always great to have you along.

@mortdk Hell yeah dude, great to hear! Getting an extra 3 reps on top of a set of 6 is amazing. There’s always so much more to bring out if we dig deep.

@Voxel I’d never add any weight to it. I’d throw them in between the sets of the supplemental work and focus on getting it all done as quickly as possible. So easy breakdown would be sets of 10. OR, since it’s usually 2 assistance exercises, sets of 15-25 and just switch which exercise I do between sets of supplemental work. I like using bodyweight work to get in a pump and really flush out the muscles while the supplemental work hammers stuff.

I’ve got a few different before and afters out there, but this is me at 17 with 3 years of training under my belt

155

And these are the most recent ones I’ve got

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YESTERDAY’S PM WORKOUT

GIANT SETS (press-dip-raise-pull apart. Sets 1 and 4: axle. Sets 2 and 5: trap bar. Sets 3 and 6: log)

Axle strict press 191
1x10
1x6

Trap bar press 150
1x10
1x8

Log clean and press away 180
1x10
1x6

Dips
6xFailure

DB lateral raise 30s
3x12
3x10

Band pull aparts
6x13

Notes: 2:00 between giant sets. 3 days in a row of pressing probably isn’t smart. Things felt solid on the first round of everything. Didn’t walk far enough back on the axle press and kept hitting the garage door motor, but still got through the set. Wore a belt for the first time on the trap bar presses and it felt like it went a long way. Log was a battle each time. Upper back was torched from deads.

Got the tell tale signs of pushing myself too hard. Connective tissue pain, and woke up this morning and my first thought was that I didn’t want to squat. Tried it anyway, made it through warm ups, but only manage 8 reps in first worksheet before I started grinding and I shut it down. Just need to push it back a few days and get back to it.

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LUNCHTIME WORKOUT

Buffalo Bar Squats

5xBar
5x140
3x230
1x320
1x370

REST PAUSE (12 Deep Breaths between sets)
6x430
3x430
2x430
1x430
8x340
4x340
2x340
1x340

5 minute rest

SUPERSETS (hyper-shrug)

Reverse hyper 360
4x17

Keg kelso shrugs 150
4x12

Notes: Varied the strategy some. Ideally I’d only use 45s and 25s with this squat method, but since my schedule is more chaotic than usual and I have less control over variables, I decided to move up 20lbs from the previous workout. I seem to able to trade 5lbs for 1 rep, so hitting 10 reps at my previous weight meant I was ready to go for 6 reps with 20lbs more. Figure I’ll work this up to 10 and repeat the whole process. Seems stable so far.

As nice as the barbell shrugs were, they were beating up my equipment. My bar was already bent, but I noticed the safety pins in my power rack were starting to bend as well. Just not worth it. Instead, did some kelsos with the keg, and it worked well. Braced my head against the pad of the reverse hyper to be able to focus purely on contracting the upper back musculature. Should be easy to add weight as needed.

Took one of my squats a little too far down and had my right knee buckle downward. Felt pressure on the ACL. Something to watch out for. No worse for wear at the moment, but that could go south quick.

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4339

LUNCHTIME WORKOUT

Swiss bar incline bench 265
2x10
1x5

Axle bench press 281
1x10
1x8
1x5

Close grip axle bench press 241
2x10
1x6

Dips
2x30
1x26

Standing ab wheel between sets of benching
8x8

Notes: 2:45 between sets. Bit of a mixed day. Hitting that second set of 10 on the incline bench was awesome, but also took out a bit of my soul with it, and it meant I spent the rest of the training hurting bad. Saw it the most on the axle bench follow up, and regained a little bit of it with the close grip. Existentially, I’m finding myself just plain not caring about training much, and my comp in 2 months just seems like an obligation. I’m still enjoying how strong I’m getting on the press, and it gives me a little something to keep going, and the novelty of the squat program has me thinking about squats again, but I’m feeling a bit at the end.

Part of me wonders if this is just a product of gaining weight in training. I may just be feeling a general lethargy, and possibly even the crushing feeling of being content. I do wish the keg weight was 275, as I’d be sweating right now and it’d give me something to care about, but I haven’t done any stone training and it doesn’t seem to be bothering me.

Semi-related, but I had the cool revelation the other day that things are working in my training because my squat and bench workouts are effectively just supplemental workouts rather than main work. There’s no real PR chasing to be had in them, and it allows me to go full out on the press and dead training, which most likely reflects the success in them as well. Funny how things strike a balance.

Plan is to hit some max effort work this evening and chase it with the supplemental work the next morning.

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4340

Relatable.

I will, however, state that your training is inspiring, and reading about it pushes me to work harder.

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@kdjohn I appreciate it dude. It also does remind me of something funny I saw on a Joe Rogan Experience podcast with David Goggins, where he said sometimes, he’ll stare at his shoes for 30 minutes, because the last thing he wants to do is go for a run, and then he thinks to himself, “Come on David: people look up to you”, and then immediately after he thinks “Man, f**k those people”, haha.

I totally dig Goggins. Very shared mindset. And I’m hopeful that I can keep inspiring.

PM WORKOUT

MAX EFFORT

Low handle trap bar lifts
5x135
5x225
3x315
1x405
1x495
1x565
3x575 (10lb and 2 rep PR from previous week)

Notes: Ok, a story, and forgive me: it’s very self-aggrandizing. After I uploaded the video from the previous week, I received this message on a different forum

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image854×191 12 KB

And at the time, I just laughed about it. Wasn’t the first time I got free advice from a guy who didn’t really get where I was coming from. And I came to this workout today and the plan was to break a PR on a single, since the movement was still new and I had technique to squeeze out of it. I started with last week’s topset and it moved ok but not great, so I settled with a small jump to 575, with the plan to hit that and then finish with 585.

And I was looking at the weight, I remembered it was the weight that other dude pulled. And then, I thought something.

“F**k that guy”

And decided I was going to rep his max.

And the first rep sucked. And the second. After the third, I called it, as I could feel my connective tissue snapping and popping with each rep and the rest between sets was getting to be too long to call it a set. But the mission was accomplished.

Because seriously: f**k that guy. Say whatever you want: I will come back and rep your best lift.

And I left it in the video, but I stared down the camera at the end, because in the off chance he watched again, I wanted to take his soul through youtube.

My hips and lower back are a little stiff after all that, but not too worse for wear. And looking at the video, I feel like I had a 4th, but at the time I sure didn’t.

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What I laughed about most when I read that was he starts by saying he can outlift you and then immediately says I used to before I got injured. I have met a lot of people over the years who ‘used’ to do a lot of stuff. My take on this is usually ‘who gives a fuck what you used to do’
In fact I usually don’t even care what they person does now let alone what they did once in some distant past. Especially given most human memories are very unreliable so a 275 bench can quickly become 275 for 10 or 400 !!

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Yeah, just in case he got asked for a video to prove it.

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Probably so long ago it would be on VHS!! :joy:

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Haha Pwn saw the video and thought that after the second rep you’d stop but then you kept going for the third. And for a reason awesome reply

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In case any of you missed it - here’s a great way to discredit yourself right out of the gate.

“I can out lift you on something, or I could before injuring myself.”

Everything that followed was worthless drivel.

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@simo74 Yup. I’ve had no shortage of people that, in high school, could best my top lifts that I’ve accomplished after a lifetime of training. Hell, one of our most recent booted guest had that same lame excuse. I never get why people are so eager to brag about how FAR they’ve fallen. I think of Brian Alsruhe and how, even when he had only 1 healthy arm and was suffering from TBI, lyme’s disease and 2 different parasites, I’d STILL rather have him on my side in a fight than ever be forced to go against him.

@mortdk Thanks dude. Felt like the story behind the set was worth telling, because I’m sure people would wonder why I didn’t just go for 585, haha.

@Frank_C 100%. Too many Al Bundy’s.

LUNCHTIME WORKOUT

High handle trap bar pulls 405
1x42+10+10

Notes: 1 minute rest between rest pauses. This is a +1rep PR on the first set. The little chip shot PRs become a big deal at this point, and it’s amazing how they’re completely unpredictable. I didn’t feel good coming into this one at all, but around rep 30 I knew I had a shot at it. At 34, it seemed a little doubtful, but I broke it into 2 sets of 3 to get to 40 and then told myself I HAD to have 2 more left at that point.

My right leg is taking on more work than the left on these, but I imagine that’s due to mismatched extension per knee.

Seeing the video, it’s kinda nice how “filled out” I’m looking these days. Deads are typically where I see just how lanky my frame is.

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Because they’re not the men they never were.

I never realized how big/wide Brian was until I watched that overhead pressing video he made at Mark Bell’s gym. Mark Bell looked like just a guy…

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