Written by Chad Wesley Smith
The Juggernaut Method is a great program that has helped thousands of athletes take their strength and power to new levels. With Juggernaut’s current crop of high school and junior college football players, I implemented the Inverted Juggernaut Method to help build their work capacity, groove their motor patterns, pack on pounds of muscle and make their strength and explosive power skyrocket.
Juggernaut is home to a tremendous group of young football talent. On February 1st, National Signing Day, Juggernaut had 15 athletes sign LOI (or commitments to service academies) to continue their college football careers, including 2 athletes to USC, 2 to UCLA, and others U of Washington, Air Force, U of Arizona (hopefully he is aware of such illustrious alums like Jim Wendler and Matt Rhodes), Navy, Louisiana Tech and several 1-AA and D2 athletes.
The Inverted Juggernaut Method utilizes the same percentage schemes as the 10s and 8s wave of The Juggernaut Method, but inverts the sets and reps, to keep the quality of repetitions and speed of movement high. When you are performing a set of 10 reps, especially with a younger or less experienced lifter, technique often breaks down during the later reps, so when teaching a young athlete to lift it is better to utilize lower reps and higher amounts of sets. That is where the Inverted Juggernaut Method came into play, their 6 weeks of training utilizing this scheme looked as follows…
Week 1
Squat-10 sets of 5 reps at 60% of 1rm, 1 minute rest between sets.
Bench-10 sets of 5 reps at 60% of 1rm, 1 minute rest between sets.
Week 2
Squat-10 sets of 3 reps at 67.5% of 1rm, 90 second rest between sets.
Bench-10 sets of 3 reps at 67.5% of 1rm, 90 second rest between sets.
Week 3
Squat-Up to 75% for as many as possible. Add 5 pounds to working max for every rep over 10 performed.
Bench-Up to 75% for as many as possible. Add 2.5 pounds to working max for every rep over 10 performed.
Week 4
Squat-8 sets of 5 reps at 65% of new working max, 75 seconds rest between sets.
Bench-8 sets of 5 reps at 65% of new working max, 75 seconds rest between sets.
Week 5
Squat-8 sets of 3 reps at 72.5% of working max, 105 seconds rest between sets.
Bench-8 sets of 3 reps at 72.5% of working max, 105 seconds rest between sets.
Week 6
Squat-Up to 80% for as many reps as possible. Add 5 pounds to working max for every rep over 8 performed.
Bench-Up to 80% for as many reps as possible. Add 2.5 pounds to working max for every rep over 8 performed.
The athlete’s were also sprinting, throwing medicine balls and jumping 3x/week and their assistance work was very similar to that outlined in The Juggernaut Method ebook.
During these 6 weeks of training these 15 athletes added an average of 42.7 pounds to their projected bench maxes and 100.6 pounds to their projected squat maxes. Many of these athletes added 15+ pounds of muscle to their frames in the past 2 months. This training was extremely simple and effective, the only time the athlete’s went for a rep max was during weeks 3 and 6. Also due to the short rest periods, their work capacities increased tremendously and they locked in their technique for the heavier near-maximal effort work they will be performing throughout the rest of the year.
Check out this super springy high school junior WR/DB going 41’11” in a 4-fold jump.
