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

Thanks dude. I’m honestly not even shocked, just because of the nature of this sport and my dealings with the promoter in the past. This is at least the second show I’ve had canceled on me. I pretty much expect it to happen every show at this point, and just get pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t, haha.

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Fair enough haha. I guess for now I’ll just sit back and enjoy the log. Your lifts are crazy man, especially post knee surgery. Good luck at your contest man!

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Bummer man. But hey I guess coming back it’s more about competing against yourself, and success isn’t via some sanctioned judges, rather it’s from achieving a benchmark that denotes the essential end of your recovery process.

I appreciate that dude, thanks. It’s becoming more and more of a cluster, as they’ve announced that they don’t want kids at the event, so I gotta work around that, but my family is being really supportive and offering to do what it takes so I can compete. I’ve got some an awesome support network online and off, it’s probably been what has made my recovery so strong.

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Glad you’ve been able to draw so much strength from social support structures man. No kids? Is it being held at a stripclub or something?

Nah, it’s just an indoor competition, so space is small, and since it was made up in 5 days and is unsanctioned there are no liability waivers drawn up. Just easier to not have kids present than to try to deal with the issues they bring about. It sucks, but I understand where they are coming from.

Yeah that’s understandable. I was running with a shouldered atlas stone once and this little kid got right in front of my path and sort of stood there like a deer in the headlights. Luckily it was sub-maximal, or he may have learned the hard way why you should really make an effort to get out of the way when something many times bigger than you is heading in your direction. His mom was super pissed at him lol.

I’ve seen some similar stuff at shows before. It’s the nature of the sport for sure. My kid has grown up with the sport and is well behaved, but I know that isn’t always the case. I’m just hoping I can get someone to videotape it. Worse comes to worse, they’re going to livestream the contest on facebook.


While I have some downtime I figure I might as well map out my off seasons training theory.

PRESS DAY

-5/3/1 press. Going for rep PRs for topset and FSL. After topset and between FSL, think I’ll try to rep PR with push press. I’ll keep the weight the same as the topset, figuring that the fatigue from the rep PR will make the weight more meaningful. Sticking with axle for primary implement still.

-Assistance work will be alternate between BW dips and weighted (weekly). BW dips will aim for 200 reps. Weighted will be 5x10.

-During warm-ups of press, I’ll superset with latpulldowns for 5 sets (possibly neutral grip) and band pull aparts 5x20

-Stick with the axle rows for rep concept. Shoot for 100 total before upping weight. Starting with 136.

-Poundstone curls with the axle.

SQUAT DAY

-ME workout cycling between axle front squats, SSB squats w/chains, buffalo bar squats and yoke pick-ups. I’m thinking 2 weeks on axle, 2 weeks on SSB, 1 week on buffalo bar and 1 week on yoke. Triples and singles primarily.

-Chase ME work with backoff sets. 1-3 total. 5-10+ reps. My front squat harness should arrive soon, so that will open up options. I’m contemplating making the back off sets an alternate movement compared to the ME day (so not really a backoff at all). Something like Axle-SSB, SSB-buffalo, Bufalo/axle-front. Maybe even bring in/back the car deadlift simulator, or possibly have that as yet another assistance work on top of things. I’m trying to get some more volume back in the leg work.

-Between warm-ups, 4 sets of Reverse Hyper, 4 sets of standing ab wheel. Possibly bring in some GHRs as well.

BENCH

-5/3/1 rep PRs for topset and FSL.

-Between bench, superset w/chins (BW for 100 reps) or weighted chins (5x5-10) alternated weekly along with shoulder circuit (lateral raise and rear lateral raise) 5 sets.

-Assistance work will be push press, most likely with log. 5x10. Possibly alternate with other implements to keep skillset strong.

-Giant set the assistance work with either t-bar rows or DB rows 5 sets and curls or some variety.

DEADLIFT DAY

-ROM progression axle. Topset is touch and go, 2 rest pauses. Dropset is deadstop with rep goal.

-GHR sit-ups, 4 sets

-Dumb squat workout with buffalo bar

-I’d like to do more here, but this day already takes me 80+ minutes.

Conditioning is gonna be a little more varied. Carry medleys, prowler work, some run days, weighted vest walks, EMOM workouts, etc. Keep things diversified until specificity is necessary.

I’m planning on running building the monolith at some point in my off season, but I wanna run this approach for a while first. I seem to really have a good thing going right now, and I wanna ride it out until it doesn’t work.

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To speed up deadlift day to make room for more work, you could always play around with giant sets with or rest-pause for your assistance. Like a weighted ghr sit-up to bodyweight for rest-pause set, rest a moment, then move onto heavy buffalo bar squat for higher reps, drop to 50% and rep the holy hell out of it

Appreciate you reading through all that mess dude, haha. The GHR sit-ups aren’t taking up a lot of time, since I do them in between squat warm-ups. It’s really just all the warm-up sets for the deads and squats, and for the most part it’s getting my head right. Something I might try is to perform the squat warm-ups in between the deadlift warm-ups so that I can easily transfer from one to the other. I finally have enough 45lb plates to pull that off.

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Hey man, I would love to get your opinion on a thought I had recently.

As you might remember, there is currently no chance to compete in strongman for me. However I would love to do a show. I really enjoyed the experience and learned a lot during my prep and the contest itself.
Since doing another show is not in the card right now and organizing one myself has proven to be difficult, I had the idea of doing somewhat regular “mock meets”. The idea would be to select random events ( I would choose from categories like over head, deadlift, carry, medley and the like) by drawing lots. For example I would pick either rep effort or max weight and then pick the specific discipline like dumbbell press, axle clean and press etc.

Of course a mock meet that I do all by myself would not give me the thrill that a real competition brings but it would probably spice things up in my regular training.

My question now is: Do you think this would hurt my overall progress? Or would this actually be a good way to get stronger both over all and in specific events? Have you tried an approach like this?

I think this would be a fun way to challenge myself and it would be a nice way to kind of make up for the fact that I can’t do a real show right now as I would get more experience in prepping for specific events on specific dates.
However on the other side I am unsure if this will actually hinder my overall progress, since I would devote a little less time to overall strength development by focusing more on specific disciplines.

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I’m gonna do a full write-up later, but long story short; I won!

I took first in every single event. I tied for first in the first, and cleanly won first for everything else.

I am the Juggernaut. I said in the first post that this log would document everything to include my return to competition, and I did it. Thanks for all the support along the way, and stay tuned as my best years are still yet to come.

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Damn. You absolutely smoked it. Everything looked really easy, a bit too easy for you even. Are this the same weights as the original comp before it was cancelled?

Nice job brother, knee looked great and you straight crushed it!

Fucking right! Congrats!

Good stuff, great speed with those kegs especially -you’d never know you had knee issues

Congrats! That’s fucking badass!

Awesome stuff man!!!

Congratulations man! What a comeback!

Unfortunately the video is banned in my country because of the music you used :frowning: