Powerlifter/Strongman Chad Wesley Smith's Juggernaut website is a great resource for anyone interested in strength training. Their Youtube channel in particular regularly puts out excellent content, and Chad's the real deal, a record holder in the shotput and squat with a 905 lbs lift. His female powerlifting team also includes IPF champ Marisa Inda, so you know he's an accomplished coach. Because of their excellent content, I decided to purchase the Juggernaut Method, a training book designed for competitive athletes. Of course, I'm not a competitive athlete--I'm just a guy lifting weights in his basement--but I figured Chad's training could help me improve my own lifts, and I was right, for the most part.
The actual Juggernaut program is very straight forward, which is great, because I think complicated training is ridiculous. It's basically block periodization with an adjustable training max. If that's all voodoo to you, let me explain. You have four lifting days, with each one focusing on the squat, deadlift, bench press, and press, a la 5/3/1. Your first week consists of a high volume workout, the next week a slightly heavier workout with slightly less volume, and the final week is a testing workout where you work up to a as-many-reps-as-possible set. These three weeks are considered a wave. You then follow that testing week with a deload or you just skip it and go heavier for the following wave. So for the squat, let's say you use a training max of 400 lbs.
Week one: Accumulation: 60% of training max for 5 sets of 10.
Week two: Intensification: 67.5% for 3 sets of 10.
Week three: Realization: 75% for as many reps as possible.
Wave one complete. Next wave.
Week one: 65% for 5 sets of 8.
Week two: 72.5% for 3 sets of 8.
Week three: 80% for AMRAP.
Deload.
Does that make sense? There are four waves: a ten's wave, an eight's wave, a five's wave, and a three's wave. That last week, if you get more reps than required (say for the 10's wave you squatted 75% for twelve reps), then you adjust your training max with a formula. All of this might sound complicated, but it's really a simple program. As for assistance work, Chad gives quite a few suggestions. I went with 5/3/1 for my assistance, with my lifts being the front squat, rack pull, and close grip bench press. I also added pullups, rows, curls, pressdowns, calf raises, and leg raises, all for around five sets of ten to twenty reps. For the lower body assistance lifts (rack pulls, front squats), I did as Chad suggested and only did the prescribed reps rather than go for PR sets. All in all, the program worked very well for me. I ended up squatting 360 lbs for five reps, which was a five rep PR; I deadlifted 390 for seven, which was also a PR (I didn't have a 7 rep max written down in my PR log; benched 250 for five (five pounds off tieing a PR); and pressed 155 for 7, tieing a PR. The training volume for the lower body lifts is just about right, but I had to add an extra bench day after my five's wave in order to avoid disaster. The bench is a lift that loves volume, and twice a week benching (I did my close grip benching on my press day) just wasn't enough.
Much of the Juggernaut Method 2.0 consists of strategies for implementing speed and power work. Remember, this isn't a powerlifting manual; it's more of a guide for athletes. I didn't do much of this stuff because I work a manual labor job, and I train with very spare implementation, but doing such work would probably pay off, even for a powerlifter. The book's only about seven bucks on Amazon for the Kindle version. There are too many grammatical mistakes for my liking, but such errors don't distract from the content.
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