**INTRO AND BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT**
Here are some yoke goals
* Allow me to start with the conclusion: this program is awesome, like most of Jamie Lewis’ programs. It looks daunting until you finally do it, and then you realize the genius built into it. It has my approval, and I highly recommend people pick it up alongside the “Feast/Famine/Ferocity” bundle here .
**WHAT IS JUGGERYOKE**
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| It's not a grip training program, in case you thought that |
* Jamie sums it up as “the traptastic YuggerYoke Protocol V 3.0, a 3 page pdf of a super trap-heavy full-body training program that will appeal to strongmen, powerlifters, and anyone trying to look like a Marvel superhero.” I assumed this was a 6 week program, since Jamie says in the document “After 6 weeks of this, you should be ready for the beach, looking like a lost member of the X-Men.”, but in the actual Juggeryoke link it says “This product is not a book- it’s a 3 page PDF specialization program designed to be used for 8 weeks to quickly bring up your yoke area (traps and shoulders).” Whelp, I’m finishing the 6th week right now and writing my review but I DO intend to carry it forward for the next 2 weeks as I prep for a follow on comp on 14 Oct…so maybe I’ll write about that too. Chaos is the plan.
* Jamie has a 5-6 day and a 3-4 day variant of the program in the book, similar to what he did with “Feast, Famine and Ferocity”, which turned out to a positive for me while I ran it.
**PROGRAM OVERVIEW**
I don't know what this is, but I have to imagine this program is infinitely better
* I won’t give away the full programs, although I DID take video of every single workout and you could most likely piece it together from that, but still: please buy the program and support Jamie.
* I primarily ran the 5-6 day variant, which is effectively 3 full body workouts with an arm day in between each day for a total of 5 directed workouts and a 6th one wherein you can do whatever you want (similar to the “Dealer’s Choice” from Feast/Famine/Ferocity). The 3-4 day variant takes those 2 arm workouts and merges them into the 3 full body days, along with a bit more exercise shuffling, and gives a bit more guidance on what to do on the 4th day as a gap filler.
* The program requires training without a belt and a daily 1.5 mile walk, both of which are awesome. It includes front squatting and squatting, push pressing and strict pressing, touch and go benching and pause benching, high pulls and HEAVY shrugs, ab wheel and hanging leg raises with lat shrugs, squat singles, triples and squatting for time. That final bit was definitely my “favorite” part of the program. 1-2 sets of 2-3 minutes of squatting with 135lbs on your back. I, of course, opted for 2 sets of 3 minutes and used 1 minute of rest between, and made it a goal to hit a new rep PR each week. That was a fantastic challenge.
**MY DEVIATIONS**
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| Think of it more like an alternative universe variation |
* When I run a program the first time, I like to stick with it pretty close, BUT I also picked Juggeryoke in particular because it would allow me to include some movements that would benefit me for my upcoming competition. So in that regard: I used a strongman log for my push pressing work, an axle for all my other pressing (bench, incline and strict), same axle for most of my skull crushers and reverse curls, grenade balls with chains for more of my arm work, and a trap bar for my high pulls and my shrugs. Also, on the day where I was to do 15x1 squats, I often would lower the bar weight and use chains instead. This was primarily due to sustaining a slight knee injury in the second week of the program during log clean and push press. I moved a bit too quickly and possibly tore a meniscus. By the end of the program it was feeling better, but it still seemed to work well to limit loading at the bottom of the rep and increase it toward the top. Besides: Dan John said that, if he had to do it all over again, he’d always squat with chains, so good enough.
* I took to adding a set of Poundstone curls at the end of one of the arm days, just for even more pump, and would throw in band pull aparts and lateral raises where I could find space for it.
* For my 6th day, I ran through a ROM progression cycle of trap bar mat pulls, since I had a max trap bar lift coming up in my competition. This was ultimately a 5 minute workout that I would frequently do without a warm-up. After lifting was finished on each day, if I had any extra time, I’d do some short intense conditioning work. I’d also do some sort of strongman training on Sundays: some sort of carry and load of some variety.
* On the 3rd week of the program, my schedule got compromised, so I ran the 3 day variant, and on the 6th week (current) my competition was at the end of the week, so I dropped my lifts back to their starting point and made it a point to move these (now) lighter weights fast and with short reps, as something of a mini-deload. I actually think these might be good intentional decisions in the future. They’re tools in the toolbox if nothing else.
**WHAT I LIKED**
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| SO much better than "it's clobberin' time!" |
* As much as I genuinely didn’t care for the arm days (I get up at the crack of dawn to train, and its hard to get motivated to do that when it’s JUST arms…), they are honestly a brilliant touch in the program overall, because they effectively give you an active recovery day between the BRUTALLY hard full body workouts. I would be incredibly sore from the previous day, but wake up knowing I “just gotta do arms”, and then, by the next day, I was ready to train again. And one of those arm days includes 20 minutes of non-stop bodyweight work, which I used as an opportunity to do burpee chins, which did a great job of getting some restorative bloodflow to the sore muscles and a touch of conditioning.
* The timed squats are just plain awesome. The weight is light and it encourages PR chasing, to say nothing of the lactic acid threshold benefit and the sheer anabolism that comes with it. It’s also another great break between one day of heavy front squat triples and one day of heavy squat singles.
* On that, the variety of rep ranges and movements in general is just intelligent and awesome. This is typical Jamie Lewis “Chaos and Pain” training: a great break if you’ve been doing the same thing for a while. And since I was coming off of “Easy Strength”, that’s exactly what was happening.
* HANGING LAT SHRUGS. Oh my god that makes SO much sense. You do 10 lat shrugs at the end of every set of hanging leg raises you do, and lat shrugs from a hang are so much more intuitive than trying to do them with dumbbells/barbells. This is giving Paul Kelso his proper due. And they’re very restorative. Jamie does a great job of forcing me to do the things I SHOULD be doing, and that includes these lat shrugs, alongside all the direct arm and ab work.
**WHAT I WOULD CHANGE**
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| I imagine Rogue wishes she could undo that punch |
* Jamie has an arm day where you are to do skull crushers and reverse curls as a superset, using the same weight. Jamie either has the strongest biceps ever or the weakest triceps, but for me, a weight I can reverse curl is too light for skull crushers, and trying to make this work was just square peg/round hole for me. I came up with a bunch of tricks, but ultimately, when I run this again, I give myself permission to just use 2 different set ups.
* My next run, I’ll probably bring the Safety Squat Bar in for that day of heavy squat singles. I feel like the SSB better fits the “Yoke” portion of Juggeryoke, given how much it hammers the upper back. I’ll most likely do SSB front squats too, just because my front rack is jacked up after 6 shoulder dislocations and toward the end of the program I had to deal with bar slippage issues.
**RESULTS**
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| Yeah, pretty much this |
* You can see my physique in all the training videos. In general, I’m more filled out in the areas I was lacking, which is awesome.
* This program was GREAT for my horizontal pressing, as funny as that seems. I went from 225 to 255 on my pause benching, and my dips went from 105 to 120. I also went from 77 squats to 90 with 135. My burpee chins each week tended to climb up, front squats went from 185 to 220 for the 10x3, etc etc. All of my lifts went up: the program worked.
**NUTRITION**
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| I'd go with something a bit more nutritious |
* Nothing specifically prescribed by the program, but during this time I was using the nutrition protocol I laid out here , which included a 5 day “mini-famine” in the 5th week, which allowed me to eat VERY big in the 6th week…which might also just be a good approach.
**CONCLUSION**
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| What else is there to say? |
* This program is awesome. Please buy and run it.
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