I was told by some compeitors I looked up to, when my training partner complained about being sore. The comment made was “if you are not sore, you’re not training hard enough…”
What has this got to with the programme soon on the link? I threw hammers, I threw 5 times a weeks, did general weights 3 times a week and also did sprinting and jumping once a week. The throws, tended to be relative to the best we could do as easily we could do. EG Our target was say 80-85% of our pb/pr with 10-15 throws at that level. Some days it was hard some days it wasn’t
Soreness is a poor index to evaluate training one way or the other.
Also I find critical the way soreness is perceived by athletes,and how it is associated with positive or negative feedback (performance or lack of such)in their mind.
Have athletes achieve pb’s when sore and they may even want to be sore again and again.
More examples of his philosphy. Mentions he failed snatching 150kgs 52x before he finally got it. Last time I maxed out on cleans I stopped right after my first miss. I guess I need to keep going next time.
We are talking about the chronic tightness and inflammation in the tendon insertions and things like that.
Funny how the best weightlifter in the USA does not follow a program even remotely similar to this. He even does sets of 10 at times. The lifters in many other countries do higher rep work and pulls and presses.
Often times the people with a huge hard on for bulgarian style training are very emotionally attached to it. Good luck even discussing any other training but that with them.
Tightness inflammation and issues you mention come from muscles working inappropriately (poor biomechanical position,faulty firing patterns),not from training per se.
Sub-Max training is surely more forgiving for such lack of competence,as well as a good guarantee to perform short of potential career long.
Good luck with that too.
So you are telling me if I squat to max daily and my itb and other tendons around the knee and hip become extremely inflamed it is because muscles are not working appropriately?
General Organism Strength: develop strength anywhere and you develop strength everywhere. Charlie elucidated it and I have personally seen it over and over again with my athletes. It’s real.
Converse in relation to the postulate of general organism strength: the less you to everywhere the more you can do anywhere. Practically: the less multi-targeted the training, the more frequently you can load a particular stimuli; even if it is of a high CNS, neuromuscular character.
I worked with an Olympic Lifter who came to live with me for a few months. Following our time together he was invited to Abadjiev’s camp in San Francisco. While he was there I was able to get direct knowledge of Abadjiev’s tactics; at least with my guy. Interesting enough, when he eventually returned home he preferred my approach to training him and we picked up where we left off.
My point: while he was at Abadjiev’s, following a shoulder injury from snatching, Abadjiev had him perform nothing but back squats for 4 days as the main stimulus. In 4 days he performed 27 individual squat sessions at near max loads; after which he made a 20kg improvement in the squat relative to where he was at prior. Keep in mind he was already a very strong squatter having done just shy of a 3x bodyweight back squat 2 years prior to going to Abadjiev’s.
Moral of the story: there were no other conflicting demands and it is for this reason why Olympic lifters and powerlifters are able to train at relatively high intensities at high frequency’s. As soon as you enter alactic speed work into the equation, however, you will experience an entirely different result all together.
I recently resolved the symptoms you mentioned on an athlete with quadriceps massage (focused on VMO), and soft-tissue releases on glute medialis and maximus, as well as iliopsoas. It took about 45 minutes.
I know that you are capable of doing that and have had similar done to me. Sometimes simple foam-rolling if done consistently can keep that away.
But are you alluding to you training your athletes following the Bulgarian method?
Example of National caliber lifter.
Trained under a somewhat well known coach who is Bulgarian influenced basically using the same method as described by Broz. He plateaued and was constantly injured. Switches to a Chinese coach. Obviously Chinese programming has some Bulgarian elements (they may max on the classics on a weekly basis if feeling it) but it is largely Russian based and involves substantial amounts of auto-regulation based on how they feel for the day.
Many others I have talked with that experienced the same. One I know used both methods and achieved the same PR’s using both methods (Bulgarian and Russian). He was just less injured while following a Russian plan.
Again, not saying the method doesn’t work, it is obvious that it does, but why use a method with typically higher injury rates?
The injury/risk argument against it is echoed by numerous world class coaches around the globe.
I agree with you,and James,perfectly understanding the scenario you are talking about. Nevertheless: in my experience with professional athletes from many sports,injuries,injury rates,emerging limitations (maladaptive responses) in applications of max daily outputs of non-conflicting nature are primarily related to biomechanical and functional faults in the system,which create sub-optimal firing patterns and hence inflammation,starting the injury cycle,and short-cutting the recovery process in an otherwise extremely efficient training approach.
And the points worth to discuss here were originally two in my mind:
opportunity of a background noise stimulus (either max like the Broz’s example - I have no idea of whom these guys are,nor I am interested in what they do,only their use of squats made me think of this - or sub-max,like whatever stimulus you may want to choose in CFTS like programs)
opportunity and possibility of maximality in daily training applications
Both points proved to be very effective strategies for me with many half recovered and half nothing professional athletes who I have had the chance to work with during the last five years or so. That is the only reason why I wanted to share and discuss.