Today we have a guest post from Renegade Inner Circle member, John P, detailing his last twelve weeks of training.
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Hey guys, I just finished up my final week of Yoked so I figured I’d throw out my review in case it’s useful to anyone.
A bit about myself: I’m 33 years old, I’ve been training seriously for approximately a year and a half. Starting this program, I had just completed a 3-4 month phase of trying to get lean, where I started around 19-20% body fat and got down somewhere around 11-12%, which was around 186-188 pounds.
After that cutting cycle, I was really burned out mentally from the dieting and workouts. I decided to find a program that was focused on lifting heavy again, while eating at or above maintenance. I noticed Jason had just released a new version of Yoked so I decided to jump on it.
My starting weight as I said was around 186-188, and I’m currently at around ~195-196.
To put it bluntly, this was by far the most enjoyable program I have ever done. I felt great the entire time, and while I probably put on a bit more fat than I would have liked (completely due to diet of course), I saw great gains in my traps/upper back/shoulders, and more importantly I just flat out feel great.
The amount of muscle gained was about as much as I could have hoped for at my age, and I couldn’t believe how quickly my traps began growing on this program.
At the beginning of the program I set a goal of hitting 315×1 in the deadlift, and I ended up hitting that in week 10, and hit 335 early today during my final day. So, I’m quite happy with that obviously.
I also managed to hit 145×2 in the standing Military Press which felt great considering that 4-5 months ago I was push pressing 95×5-6.
Originally I thought Yoked might be better suited for more advanced lifters, but after having done it, I think it’s a great program for a lot of more intermediate lifters, simply because it is a great program for overall posture (which a lot of people are fighting), and because upper backs/traps/shoulders are a weak point for a lot of guys.
The programming overall was brilliant. The “Heavy Pulling” day is one of my all-time favorite exercise days and I am going to miss it.
One unexpected and really nice side benefit that I didn’t expect was that I have noticed more progress in my ab/core strength than ever before, even though there is virtually no dedicated ab work involved. I chalk this up mostly to the heavy deadlifting, farmers walks, and both barbell and dumbell standing overhead presses.
It also makes me believe that anybody who really wants to get killer core/abs should be focused on getting to at least an intermediate strength level on the big lifts, particularly the deadlift.
I know I’m preaching to the choir considering Jason’s writings on the subject but now I know from experience that it’s true.
In addition, my lower back (which has always given me problems on certain lifts), feels better than ever, even while lifting the heaviest weights of my life on deadlifts and modified olympic lifts, etc.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m pretty sold on Jason’s programming at this point and can’t wait to get going on the next program.
PS. To use the same 12 week workout John did click HERE now.
