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

Training Training Logs
4832

@garagerocker13 Great to have you along dude. Yeah, I haven’t experimented much with electroyltes. I’ll drink gatorade in strongman comps, and back when I was running Deep Water it was part of my squat and deadlift workouts, but that’s about it.

@kdjohn Thanks dude. I’ve noticed some improvement in grip strength. My 405 warm up on deads feels easier on the grip than usual, and my forearms are getting bigger. When I REALLY want to make the grippers useful, I go for timed holds, but right now I’m just clicking away to get in some reps.

Does remind me that I meant to document on my training from yesterday that my lower back felt like absolute hell. Had to belt up a set earlier than usual. I was surprised with what I managed, haha.

TKD lesson (1 hour)

I lost my cool a few times during this lesson, and I can’t tell if I’m getting tired of my kid or if they’re getting tired of me and it’s coming through, haha. Biggest thing we’re battling on right now is having a FRONT and a BACK hand when you are in a fighting stance. I’m all for a square stance ala Bas Rutten, but even then there’s at least a SLIGHT twist of the shoulders so that you have a jab and a rear straight, and front and back hooks. My kid will have a front and back foot and then square their shoulders dead on straight, and it makes all the defensive stuff we’re learning completely ineffective. Also had to deal with excessive bouts of giggles and the tongue being out of the mouth. I like to joke that my kid has “tongue to eye coordination”, because whenever their focusing really hard the tongue comes out. I keep letting them know it’s a good way to bite off their own tongue in a fight.

All that said, we drilled a lot on one steps using the blocks we’ve learned from the form. I actually turned the douhble knifehand block into a kick catch/shove, like this

image

Wasn’t a bad drill.

Let the kid pick their own drill, and they went with roundhouses again. We got them looking REAL good today. Had my kid focus on turning their pivoted foot around so that the knee faced away from the bag at the end of the kick, and it totally transformed things. Really got their hips into it. I just need to get their punches good, because right now we’re doing that whole “pick up fist and place at the end of arm” idea vs an actual punch with intent.

Heard back from the Tang So Do place and they offer classes for my kid’s age. We may check in on them this weekend.

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4833

Nuun tablets taste better imo

4834

Rockstars taste even better, but I don’t drink too many of them, haha.

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4835

Rockstars don’t have electrolytes though :joy:

4836

Nah, but if I am going for taste, that’s where I will go. Otherwise, it’s pretty much never in my calculus, haha. I lost that part of me.

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4837

If I’m feeling like I need it, I’ll drink a mixture of lemon juice, orange juice, salt and water. Lemon juice and salt for the electrolytes, orange juice for sugar and flavour, water because I need to dilute that shit.

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4838

I always went for Pedialyte but it’s expensive, so I switched to Liquid IV and they’re not too bad. About 1/4 the cost of Pedialyte and seem to work close to as well. I think a lot of my problem is my blood pressure medication causing me to shed electrolytes.

4839

I feel like I have to try this. How much lemon juice?

4840

I buy those bottles of lemon juice, so my “measurement” is one big squeeze of lemon juice, about 1/2 teaspoon salt, big splash of orange juice, then water until it’s about 1 litre.

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4841

Was poking around the internet for a couple new training books and was astonished at the price for a paperbook of Kelso’s Powerlifting Basics. Any idea if it’s become a collectors item of sorts?

4842

I noticed this too. Had been looking after hearing how good it is.

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It’s out of print as far as I know, but should be available on kindle. I know Paul was really proud of that. He asked me to write a review for it. Was happy I got to do that before he passed.

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4844

Ran most of a Darkhorse overhead day, minus dynamic effort. Time was short. Will do a full write up tomorrow, but wanted to log dip reps during assistance before I forget

40, 25, 18, 23, 14

And I got the sweat seal of approval

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4845

Awesome. Definitely on my bucket list of programming.

Did you get something tailor-made or put it together yourself?

4846

Just read your blog about unpopular opinions and mostly it made me smile. With nearly everyone I could picture someone asking you a question on here or in person and then being totally pissed at the answer. My dad always says ‘don’t ask the question if you aren’t going to like the answer‘. This post reminded me of the level of immaturity or maybe just stupidity that exists when it comes to training for size or strength or any other goal for that matter. With all the good information out there today, be it in the form of a book, club, coach, trainer whatever, it is crazy that people can still just not understand this stuff or worse still not have the desire to figure it out. It feels like we were better off when all we did was talk to the biggest strongest bloke in the gym and do whatever he told us to do. Anyway I am rambling now. Good post mate.

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4847

Ran Darkhorse at some point, every damn workout I was laying in a pool of sweat, just wanting the program to end. Brians programs are tough as boulders.

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@mattjp Just something based off the video. This is going to be something of a proof of concept test, especially since I’m only running it for the press vs all 4 movements.

@simo74 Absolutely spot on dude. It’s been amazing having trained so long AND been online so long I’ve seen the internet fitness hivemind shift so many different times to the latest training and diet du jour, and now things that used to be the ONLY way to train are things that would NEVER work in a million years according to the internet. It’s weird how the smarter we get, the dumber we get.

@mortdk It definitely had me active, and the increased humidity doesn’t help. This wasn’t quite as bad as when I ran Building the Monolith without rests, but it had a similar feeling.

AM WORKOUT

DARKHORSE-esque PRESS DAY

MAX EFFORT GIANT SETS (chin-press-wheel-boxing)

NG chins
5xBW
5x30
5x55
5x75
5x85
5x90

Axle strict press
5xAxle
5x66
5x136
5x186
5x226
4x226

Standing ab wheel
6x5

Boxing bob-and-weave slipline drill
6x30 seconds

STRENGTH GIANT SETS (row-press-abs-boxing)

DB row off bench 105
3x8

Trap bar press 160
1x12
2x8

Standing ab wheel
3x8

Boxing bob and weave slipline drill
3x30 seconds

ASSISTANCE

Dips
1x40
1x25
1x18
1x23
1x14

DB lateral raises
6 sets with 20lbs
3 sets with 15lbs

Band pull aparts
9 sets

Mini band tricep pressdowns
5 sets

Body Action System boxing workouts
10 minutes of intervals (20 seconds on/10 seconds off)

Notes: 1:30 between all giant sets. Gonna do some explaining here to make everything make sense. First thing is that I borked the rep numbers for the strength work: had it in my head that it was sets of 8 on the 5s week, but it’s sets of 10. The positive there is that 8 felt challenging but not like all I had in me, so next time I try this it should work out perfectly.

I cut out the dynamic effort benching due to time constraints. I may honestly make a habit of it, since I’m only running the program for 1 movement vs the press AND bench.

I’ve also already altered the program by mixing up my max effort movement and my supplemental movement. They’re supposed to be the same, as that would make sense when it comes to calculating percentages to work with. I have 2 things going for me here, and one is that, BECAUSE I’ve been rotating between 3 different press exercises for so long, I’m very familiar with how one translates to the other in terms of percentages. If I had hit a weight with the axle, I can hit it 1 for 1 with the log, and with the trap bar I have to take off 15lbs. And the second thing is simply that I’ve seen so much success with training multiple press implements on the same day I don’t want to abandon that yet. Specifically, I don’t want to have a day where I DON’T press the axle, because keeping that “pressing in FRONT of the face” strength/technique is big for me. The log and trap bar absolutley make me stronger, but it’s a little different with the neutral handles.

For the boxing conditioning I was doing at the end of each giant set, it was essentially a slipline drill like this

Except I was using the axle that was in the rack and slipping underneath it. Not really enough room under those constraints to move forward/backwards, so I was just planted in place and bobbing and weaving quickly. I started throwing punches at the end of the bob and weave to make it a little more fatiguing, and added more and more to the combinations as time went on and I found my rhythm.

I think next time I’m going to push the ab wheel reps up to 6 between sets on the strength work. I came in a little short of my usual weekly total on this. I just tried to match everything today to make it a little easier.

Weighted chins didn’t bug my elbows much. They’ll be a little easier when I get back some of the smaller plates I loaned to that high school kid.

Ok, let me explain the assistance work. I set a timer for 15 minutes, spent the first 2 minutes or so unloading some plates and then spent the rest of the time doing an unbroken workout that went like this

Do a set of dips, then raises, then pull aparts, then pushdowns, then back to pull aparts, then raises, then dips, then back to raises, pull aparts, etc. It made it so that the middle assistance work got trained more than the ends, which was the goal. I wanted the dips to fatigue the triceps, then to give the triceps time to recover with the shoulder work before I did the pushdowns, and then have the whole thing happen all over again. I dug this approach as a way to get in a lot of work over that short time. I may introduce some different assistance work through out the program, but I think this will be my style to allow for a great deal of work.

My initial impressions are positive. I appreciate how much work I’m getting in on this program, and it makes my drop-off of top level pressing strength easier to swallow when I’m using short rest times. I did 2 sets of 226 because the first set of 5 was a struggle but not quite max effort stuff, but I didn’t feel like I could up the weight. The set of 4 that followed was honestly easier than the initial set of 5, and were it not for a misgroove on rep 3, I’m confident I could hit it. Being able to produce that kind of result with only 1.5 minutes of rest with giant sets was very pleasing.

I genuinely didn’t feel too wiped out with the shorter rest periods. It was giving me that Building The Monolith vibe, but I actually rested even less when I ran that.

This program still ran longer than I would have liked for it to do, but I think I wasted some time just figuring out what I was going to do. I think if I’m diligent on the front end of it by prepping my training space and coming in with a gameplan vs figuring things out as I go, it may time out just about right. I’m definitely going to give it a full go and see what I can do with it, at least while my nutritional goals have me on the low end.

I’m planning on using something I did when I ran a similar approach with squats: doubling back to the axle for my max effort work. So with this week being axle for 5s, I’m thinking trap bar for 3s, axle for 1s, log for 5s, axle for 3s, trap bar for 1s, axle for 5s, log for 3s, you get the picture.

EDIT: Just to tag on even more to this really long post…

I got some fight shorts from Combat Sports based on Brian Alsruhe’s recommendation to wear fight shorts for training. I am a fan, especially given I got them for $12. I have one more pair I plan to test out on my squat workout.

I finally got some speed in my punches on the BAS. I realize, much like my moving events, I have to THINK about being fast if I want to be fast. I’ve observed the same thing with my power snatches, and with clean pulls. I’m not sure if that’s something that everyone who is fast also does, or if it’s unique to me as a slow twitch dominant dude, but when I think about being fast I’m MUCH faster vs when I just rely on instincts. It’s also more taxing when I move fast vs slow, so maybe it’s just a self-preservation thing. Still, I had some decent left hooks and uppercuts.

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4849

I’m the exact same way. My body naturally wants to do things at a steady pace. Explosive movements aren’t natural (for me).

How do you like using different modalities and programs for different lifts? I’m thinking I’m going to do that in the future, now that I’m starting to find what works for me/what I like.

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@kdjohn I’m starting to think you are me from an alternate dimension, haha. Good to know I’m amount good company at least.

I’m a big fan of my current approach. It tends to be what I fall back on. Deep Water made it work by rotating the movements every other week, but otherwise, whenever I try to follow a program that programs all 4 big movements the same way, it doesn’t tend to work. I do better by focusing on TWO movements and then using the other two movements to supplement them.

In my current approach, strict press and deadlift are the priorities, and bench and squat are there to supplement those lifts. It’s why bench and squat are so different in terms of programming, and more focused on getting in reps, whereas the press and deadlift are more about chasing PRs and building top level strength. It’s also nice to have 2 workouts in the weak that I can throttle back on.

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4851

This was my experience each time I ran one of Brians programs for the first training week. Once I got the ‘flow’ down I was able to cut like 20 minutes out of the workout due to less thinking. A handful of times the length would creep back up as I’d sit and wonder after finishing whatever supplemental work I did if I really needed to do assistance. Then conditioning, haha.

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