As I have said before, I used to be an Olympic lifter. I enjoyed Olympic lifting way more than following a typical bodybuilding routine. The trouble is that most OL routines aren't geared toward hypertrophy. So you can get quite strong and still not look like you lift. You do put on some muscle, but most of it is in your thighs, glutes, traps and erectors. You might also get a little development in your shoulders and forearms. So you might look athletic if you take your shirt off, but most lifters never develop a physique that screams "Holy crap!!! I'm not messing with that guy!"
That being said it is inspiring to see lifters that are jacked. In fact, for those of you who have difficulty maintaining the motivation to hit the gym, try this; take some caffeine, put on some music that gets you pumped and start looking at pictures of people with physiques you admire. Within 30 minutes, you should be ready to set some new PR's.
To that end, here are some pics of lifters with physiques that I admire. They aren't your typical bodybuilder physiques, but I like them and I think most ladies would too. Oh and I'm sorry, but some of these pics are old and thus of low quality. They look this way regardless of how big or small I make them. In spite of this, the people in said pics are jacked enough to merit inclusion in this post.
270 kg (595.25 lb)
I think this is Sergey Arakelov.
David Rigert
3x Olympic Gold medalist Pyrros Dimas.
75 kg European Champion Lidia ValentÃn.
Gennadi Ivanchenko
I have no idea who she is, but her legs and butt are nice.
The Beast known as Klokov.
Well, that's it for this post. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Check back in a couple of days for another post.
Previously I gave an introduction to the Bulgarian training system. You can find that article here. Today we’re going to go over how to actually design a program based on the Bulgarian methods.
Georgi Gardev
The first thing you need to know is that this program is very specific. If you want your training to be well rounded and include some hypertrophy training, some endurance training and some strength training, then this is not the program for you. This program is for one thing: maximal strength on a few core lifts. You might be able to throw in some supplementary exercises, but not many.
Next, you should know that this routine can be very time consuming. This isn’t some HIT program where you just walk in to the gym, warm up, do one balls-to-the-wall set and leave. Depending on your goal, you may be able to organize your workouts in a way that you can be in and out of the gym in an hour. But when I used this program, most of my workouts were 2.5-3.5 hours.
Now, on to the meat of the program. When I first read about this program, sites on the internet were saying that the Bulgarians “work up to a heavy single every workout”. I (wrongly) interpreted that to mean 1 heavy single. Thus I would try to set a PR (personal record) every time I was in the gym. I tried to work up to my top weight by doing the fewest number of sets possible. So if my PR was 100kg, I knew that today I would attempt 102.5kg. I would work up like this:
I made good progress with this program. But then the gains ceased. I was stubborn and for years refused to try anything different. I barely made any progress during those years. Eventually I went on a 5x5 type program. I learned a lot on 5x5 and those lessons helped me improve my “Bulgarian” training.
The most important lesson I learned was that intensity (whether you define that as a percentage of your 1RM max or perceived exertion.) is not the end all be all of training. Volume is a powerful aspect of training. Volume is at least as important as intensity. Most of the time, your training should be a balance between volume and intensity. 10 sets x 1 rep @ 90% is better than 1 set @ 100%. I mean honestly, just look at it. Assuming a max of 100kg, 10x1@90% means that you lifted 90kg ten times. That’s a total tonnage of 900kg. The other method gives you a tonnage of 100kg. So, who do you think is going to make more progress, the guy who lifts 900kg or the guy who lifts 100kg?
There is nothing wrong with using 1 max set. If you are new to this type of training, then feel free to give it a try. You’ll make good progress…for a while. When progress stalls, consider increasing your volume.
Milen Dobrev
One way to increase the volume is do more sets during your warm up. I would get to 90% in as few sets as possible. Weight increases for sets above 90% would be small, 1-2.5kg. Assuming a 100kg max, I might try something like:
If I you set a new PR, then adjust your weights in your next session.
Another way of adding volume is to wave load. Basically you work up to a max multiple times in a single session. You can do it in such a way that the top set in each wave is heavier that the top set in the previous wave. So after a warm up wave 1 might be:
90x1, 95x1, 100x1
Wave 2:
92.5x1, 97.5x1, 102.5
Or you could try to set a new PR on your first wave, with each subsequent wave being lighter.
Wave 1:
92.5x1, 97.5x1, 102.5
Wave 2:
90x1, 95x1, 100x1
You could also just work up to a new PR, and then drop to 90% of your new PR and do 3-5 singles. Or after hitting your top weight for the day, you could decrease the weight and try to set a new 3RM. Or you could completely forgo trying to hit a max and instead try to do a lot of sets at 90%. Completing a predetermined number of sets within a predetermined time frame would be a signal to increase your weight in the next session, similar to Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training (by using this affiliate link, you help support this site.) The main theme here is to increase your volume with weights above 90% of your 1 rep maximum,
If you're looking to increase just max strength, a heavy single program such as this is definitely worth trying. You'll probably set several new PR's. Give it a try and let me know how it works.
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.
