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.

3 Things Every Beginner Should Know

     I love lifting. I've loved it ever since my dad bought me my first weight set when I was 17. I would train 3-4 hours per day 5-6 days per week. I didn't get very good results for the first few months. In the first 9 months I only gained 5 pounds. That's what happens when you get all your training info out of a magazine.

     After 9 months of fruitless training I decided to try a powerlifting routine I found on the internet. I gained 10 pounds in 3 months. Not great, but not bad either.

     After that I joined an Olympic lifting team, and that's when things really started to come together for me. Within the first 3 months training with the team, I gained 30 pounds. Now that's good gains. As an OL'er, my coach and I weren't really concerned about adding size to my pecs or arms or any of the typical things that most people in the gym worry about. No, most of that weight went on my thighs with a little left over for my spinal erectors, traps and shoulders. Because those are the muscles that help you Snatch and Clean & Jerk more.

     I still look back at my 18 year old self and think, "How much could I have gained if I had really tried to maximize hypertrophy?" Guess I'll never know.

     I don't look like a bodybuilder, but I do know how to put on muscle.  I've done it. I also got pretty strong while Olympic lifting. I made some mistakes though. I learned, more from those mistakes than I did from successes. But I don't want my successes or my failures to go to waste so here are 3 things that I feel every beginner should know.

Rigert is a freak.

1. Fitness is a business.

     Magazines, DVD's,websites, equipment, books, training programs, consultations. All of them designed to make money. The problem is...well, let's take magazines for example. Every month that company has to come up with new content. The problem is though, training isn't that complicated. Thus the company has an incentive to break training into as many variables as possible and every month publish programs with inane, meaningless differences from previous issues. Same with those infomercial fitness products. How different do you think "Super Muscle Blaster Xtreme Fitness" is from its sequel "Super Muscle Blaster 2 Xtreme"? Not much different.

     Now does that mean that all these products suck? No. Some are good, others not so good. But after you've read a few books and a few magazines, you start noticing that creators are just reusing the same material in different packaging. 

2. Consistency is the most important factor.

     Some exercises are better than others. Some programs are better than others. What matters most is getting in the gym and doing the work. There is a type of training called "instinctive training". Basically it means that you just decide what you're going to do when you get to the gym. I don't like it. The only people that I've seen successfully use this type of training were clearly on steroids. That said, a person who trains instinctively but is in the gym at least 3 days a week will get better results than the person isn't consistent.

3. Progress matters.

     I don't care if you use 5x5, Bulgarian training. Russian training, high frequency, low frequency, Max OT or even HIT. What matter more than any of that is progression. Are you putting more weight on the bar? Are you adding more sets? More reps? You have to make some kind of progress.

You think Franco would be such a beast had he not tried to add weight to the bar?

     Don't misunderstand me and think that I'm saying that you must do more every workout. Quite frankly you can't do that. Don't try, you'll just burn out. Add reps, weight or sets when you can. You will have some periods of training where your lifts go up almost every session. Then you'll go months at a time with no progress. The important thing is staying consistent and making increases over the long haul.

Well, that's it for this post. I know haven't posted anything for a few weeks. Sorry about that. I'll try to do better. Check back in a few days for a new post. See you guys next time. 

5 Reasons You Should Bodybuild

I used to be a strength athlete. I was moderately strong. I could snatch 100kg and C&J 120kg at a body weight of less than 85kg. I didn't max on squats but 150kg was my workout weight, and 170kg was the heaviest I ever lifted and it wasn't very hard. And that was done with no special prep. 

For most of my time as a strength athlete, I had an elitist attitude to towards bodybuilding. I turned up my nose at anything that wasn't strength oriented. I rationalized my view by saying to myself that strength training is inherently functional and thus carried over to real life, or something like that. Bodybuilding as I saw it, was just exercising for vanity.

As I have grown older, I have also grown somewhat wiser. And I have learned that there are plenty of reasons to train for hypertrophy. 

1. Big muscle keeps trouble makers away.

In case you are unaware, criminals and other assorted bad guys profile before they engage in their nefarious activities. Now every one knows that size does not automatically mean that you can fight. The bad guy knows this better than most people. He's probably been in tons of street brawls and knows first hand that while size can play a role in the outcome of a fight, it is not the sole determinant of success. So when he sees a swole sucker walking down the street, the criminal's ego won't let him believe that he would lose. But he does a quick, mostly subconscious, risk/reward calculation & then decides that others people would make better victims.

Your enlarged musculature will be even better at dissuading average Joes from starting trouble. We've all seen it: two guys are at a party. Maybe one guy A accidentally bumps into guy B. So guy B turns on his heels ready to kick the crap out of guy A only to find that Guy A is jacked to the max. Guy B loses his courage and nearly pisses himself. The worst part is he also loses face.

Again it doesn't always turn out like this, but it does help stack the odds in your favor.

2. Other men will look up to you.

This idea goes back to Jack Donovan's book The Way of Men (<--- by using this link to buy the book, you help support the blog.) In the book Mr. Donovan makes a compelling case that men's job in society, historically speaking, has been to "defend the perimeter". As such, anything that you do to help raise the status of the group, also raises your status within the group. So by becoming larger and more intimidating you help raise the image of your group and thus your peers will hold you in higher regard.

3. Women like guys with big muscles.

We've all heard women say how they don't like huge muscles. The trouble is, every time one of these women finally sees a large muscular male in the flesh, one hemisphere of her brain shuts down, leaving her standing there, knock kneed, with her mouth agape and her tongue hanging out.

Having big muscles significantly increases your attractiveness to women. There is something about being big that elicits a primal, visceral reaction from women. And based on what I've seen, they are helpless to stop it. If I had to guess, I would say a guy who is a 6 could raise his attractiveness to women maybe as high as an 8 if he put on enough muscle.

Women also like to be with men who are esteemed by other men. So having big muscles increases your value to women, but you get another increase in her eyes because other men look up to you. So you get double bonus points for doing one thing.

Could you imagine how that would change your life? If you're single, imagine knowing that wherever you go you'll be able to meet women who will want to talk to you. Or if you're in a relationship, imagine how much better sex will be because you partner doesn't have just a mental attraction to you but she has a primitive, subconscious "OMG! I want to that hunk to pump his superior genetics into me" kinda of attraction to you?

4. Increased strength

There is this belief that floats around the internet, especially among third rate strength athletes, that training in the higher rep ranges doesn't make you stronger. Nothing could be further from the truth. Training in the 8-12 rep range just doesn't transfer well to a 1 rep max. This is because heavy lifting in the 1-3 rep range is neurologically different from training in the 8-12 rep range. (For more on this, read an article called Grease the Groove by Pavel Tsatsouline.) 

This means that if you had been training in the 8-12 rep range and wanted to enter a powerlifting competition you would be well advised run a special training cycle geared more towards strength. I think in the Russian training system this is called transmutation. There are a couple of different ways to do this, but that isn't the point of this post.  

The point is, training in the higher rep ranges does make you stronger, which like point #1 will cause you to be admired by other males.

5. Self Esteem

Finally, and maybe most importantly, being jacked will help your confidence.Being intimidating to other men, envied by other men and alluring to women is bound to give you a healthy dose of self esteem. It is hard to imagine an aspect of your life that would not benefit from this added self esteem. 

You wouldn't sit around despondent because you're single. You'd just go out and get a date. A healthy self esteem mixed with the fact that you're looked up to by other guys means that you probably won't have problems making friends. This self confidence would probably help your career too. You wouldn't hesitate to ask for a raise or a promotion, so you would probably have more money. 

Don't misconstrue this article to mean that I have attained swoleness, because I haven't yet. I have simply realized the error of my ways and intent on fixing them. For all you younger guys out there, I suggest that you learn from my mistakes.

That's it for this post. See you guy next time.