The Bulgarian Weighlifting System Part 1

     So I used to be an Olympic lifter. For those who are unaware, that doesn't mean that I was in the Olympics. I wasn't. I rarely competed. It just means that my training revolved around the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk.

     In training for the Olympic lifts, there are basically two systems. There is the Russian System, and there is the Bulgarian System.

     Well, now there is the Chinese system. And judging from what I read on the internet (which is always true) the Chinese system is an amalgamation of the Russian and Bulgarian System.

     It probably isn't that polarized, but from way over here in the United States it seems accurate.

     I've used both systems in my training. They both have advantages and disadvantages.

     Today we'll be talking about the Bulgarian System.

     The system was developed by Ivan Abadjiev. According to Wikipedia, he won Bulgaria's first medal in weightlifting at the 1957 World Championship. In 1968 he became the head coach for the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation. He brought with him his new system of training. It was this new system that transformed Bulgaria into arguably the most successful weightlifting team ever.

Ivan Abadjiev

     The system can basically be boiled down to this; train heavy all the time. For the professional lifters in Bulgaria, training is a full time job. They lift 8-9 hours a day. And that training revolves around the snatch, c&j, back squat and front squat. If they have a light workout (and in this system 80% of your max is considered light.) they may do power snatches and power c&j's instead of the full squat versions. So you have 8-9 hours of training dedicated to only 6 lifts.

     Oh, and did I mention that they train 6-7 days a week? Because they do. Abadjiev believed that taking a day off increased your chance of injury.

     The day's training would be broken in to little mini sessions. So you may start the day with 45 minutes of snatching and work up to the heaviest weight that you can manage. Then after a 15 minute break you would C&J for 45 minutes. Again, you would probably work up to the heaviest weight that you could lift. Then you would take another 15 minute break before moving on to squats. And again you would probably work up to the heaviest weight you can lift.  See the trend yet?

     And that's just what you would do before lunch. After lunch you would come back and repeat the whole process again. A lifter may have as many as 3 snatch sessions, 3 C&J session and 3 squat sessions in the same day.

     This system has produced World and Olympic Champions for Bulgaria, Turkey and Qatar.

     John Broz helped helped bring this system to the awareness of many non-olympic lifting types (people I refer to as sub humans). It was then further popularized by Matt Perryman's website mysosynthesis.com and then his book Squat Every Day (<---You should click that Amazon Affiliate link and buy the book. Doing so helps support the site.)

     Some people say that you can't do this type of training without the use of steroids. I have read on the internet that Abadjiev has admitted this fact. I have also read (but did not confirm) that at least one of the John Broz's lifters failed a drug test. Even though drug free lifters can't follow the exact program of professional athletes, doesn't mean that we can't learn anything from their programming.

Well, that's enough background info. Check out the video below. Next post I'll go over some of the mistakes that I made with this program and show you ways that you can modify Bulgarian training to make it work for you.