Superman is alive and 19

To be fair, coach... most athletic endeavors outside of weightlifting and powerlifting require so many more movements to practice that such a program would not be practical. The low leverage component of most straight arm gymnastic work makes constant maxing a bad idea from a tissue regeneration standpoint as well, even outside of the large number of movements a gymnast must train compared to a weight lifter, and the difference between times under tension with the actual O-lifts versus most everything else.

Such a program might, for example, work well for someone who is working on HeSPU, PPP (done just prior to lock out most days, to minimize excess tendon stress), SLS, pull ups, core, and arch ups. Or, working alternately between HeSPU, push press, and slow military press each training day, and working similar variation into the other major muscle groups associated with FBE with the focus on achieving daily maxes. Of course there would be relatively little energy left for skill work, but as a way to build a strength base it may work extremely well, so long as the trainee takes the time to build the requisite work capacity. In fact, done along with tendon strengthening work like the planche statics, it is certainly possible to successfully build basic gymnastic strength more quickly than with only gymnastic conditioning. Besides, during the acquisition of basic strength there shouldn't be much advanced technique work done until sufficient strength is achieved anyhow, right?

Obviously, I have no idea what the parameters are for this, but I'm working on figuring it out. Seeing as I lost a lot of ability while my elbows are hurt, and now that I am making good progress rehabbing my shoulder, I am going to be experimenting with this. 4 days a week feels great right now, I probably won't be doing any pressing besides push press, HeSPU, and some behind the neck presses, each once or twice a week. I won't be starting behind the neck presses until I am fully satisfied with my shoulder external rotator strengthening progress as well as my lower and mid traps. But, I'll be doing my first HeSPU on Friday since starting the basics this week, and it should be enlightening to observe my progress (or lack thereof) over the rest of the year.

All I know right now is that after slightly less than two weeks of external rotator work, and going from 6x25 to 3 sets of 8x30lbs, I notice a very distinct increase in control during both planche work and handstand work in the shoulder girdle, and with about 3 sessions of training with alternating back squats and front squats, I am feeling better than ever. I've separated things into separate 1 hour or less sessions since I have a power rack and weights at home. This allows me to get maximal hormonal responses, which should maximize healing and progress.

And I agree wholeheartedly with Ido's latest point, that this approach of the "daily max" on training days is not dangerous. It's not nearly the same as going for actual maxes. After all, this is the very approach used by many of the old strongmen, men who were giants in the strength world long before steroids or supplements were discovered, and some of whose feats have yet to be equaled in this world of modern marvels.

Straining for a daily max rather than a daily PR is somewhat better, but not by much. In addition, advocating chasing lifts on a "daily" basis is a far cry from "occasionally". While occasionally "chasing a lift" may be acceptable, to do so on a daily basis is counter-productive and indeed dangerous.

As for the other, comparing pursuing a daily technical skill improvement to a pursuing a daily maximal physical strength gain is akin to comparing apples to oranges.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I respect your view coach.

There are many ways to skin a cat, you are doing amazing work with your athletes, and I have been fortunate enough to see it personaly, Broz is doing amazing work with his athletes over at LV. Two approaches, two different views on the subject of pursuing excellence.

Ido.

Ido Portal said:

Also dont you all get tired of screaming 'steroids' whenever you see someone really strong?

Ido,

Absolutely.

However, I also got tired of being burned by athletes performing amazing feats, in track&field and cycling to every American stick-and-ball sport ever, and then getting busted for PEDs.

However, 200kg is 200kg. It is an impressive feat. Mendes joins a very elite list.

http://www.chidlovski.net/liftup/a_top_lists.asp#200.

Also, the dialogue above really illustrates the true artistry that comes with being a coach: How to know how much for each athlete, each day, and balance short-term training goals with competitive and lifetime career goals; how to motivate and inspire. When to push and when to back off.

This has been one of the more informative threads on this board, not least for the info on the Cuban Press.

best,

jason

jasonmstein said:

Scaps pass through adduction, elevation, some depression. Not so much protraction.

Key principle: we are strengthening scapular retractors and depressors (rhomboids and middle/lower traps), and the external rotators (teres minor, infraspinatus, posterior delt).

best,

jason

Thanks Ill stick with the scaps squeezed together for the rotation part, very informative thread indeed :wink:

Jason,

what is your experience with professional Olifting?

Have you yourself ever been drug tested?

In Olympic Weightlifting it is very hard - close to impossible to compete while using anabolics. The sport has suffered a huge change in that respect. Anyone who is competing knows this, but people who are on the outside like to talk shit and bring info from 'reliable' sources like the yellow TV and newspapers.

WADA is a very very strong body, with a lot of funding and resources. To 'trick' them, you would have to get a goverment behind you.

http://www.wada-ama.org/

This is not the tour de france or NFL we are talking about.

Also, as you say: 200kg is 200kg. Even with a whole pharmecy up their bloodstream, few would be able to accomplish that.

Ido.

From what I understand of steroid testing, you test for the specific steroid, which is why the dopers are ahead of the testers. Wouldn't be far fetched for someone to find another path. "The clear" was just ridiculous. Insanely powerful, and undetectable. I am not up on all my steroid details, but the lesson we should learn from that drug is anything is possible. My microbiology and biochemistry professors believed it to be quite easy to beat the tests for EPO and steroids.

I talked to Johann Martin about Pat Mendez's 200 kg snatch.

He said something like this:

Johann Martin: "An American snatching 200 kg? That's impossible!"

Me: "They say he uses a Bulgarian training method..."

Johann Martin (nearly breaking out in laughter): "The Bulgarian method is one litre of steroids every day right in the ass."

He also said that he doesn't care about creating world class olympic lifters since nowadays it is not about the best technique or training method but rather about taking the best steroids.

For those of you who missed it:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3888

Complete and utter bullshit. Sci-Fi.

By the late 1980's the sport went through a turbulance and have been cleaned.

As for the Balco scandal, if you deduct from that that any competing athlete has in his close circle a genious like Patrick Arnold and endless funding that creates for him custom made anabolics, you are probobly the kind of person that buys into those conspirecy theories and believe that michael jackson is alive and that he is actually Elvis and the true son of JFK.

The fact that people get hit by lightening every year does not mean you dont go out when it rains, also, not all afro americans are criminals, and believe it or not, not all jews are rich and thinking how to take over the world. (unfurtunatly)

Oh, and not all strong people who train with a lot of volume are users.

Ido.

Common sense tells me the only legitimate outs for this kid's results are superior genetics, or Broz has a completely unique system which nobody truly understands. Very difficult to believe that elite lifters from America simply do not have the heart, or are too stubborn to know that pushing themselves is the difference for getting on the podium. I've chatted with one elite lifter who felt he would have responded better with a Bulgarian style regimen, but not everyone is so convinced of its superiority. What is certain is nobody is convinced it has all been cleaned up in the lifting community.

Ido Portal said:

In Olympic Weightlifting it is very hard - close to impossible to compete while using anabolics.

Ido,

In Mendez' case, we aren't talking about a competitive, tested O-lifter who is a member of any sanctioned body.

He is someone who 'merely' snatched 200 in a YouTube video and apparent training session.

In other words, an incredibly strong and explosive human.

O-lifting, like track & field, cycling, and ball and stick sports, now all have to deal with the specter of PEDs any time an athlete performs an amazing feat.

As someone who appreciates these feats, it's always a let-down when another athlete gets busted and it has made me, for one, pretty jaded over time.

Mendez set the US record for the snatch, and is within what, 16kg of the world record? And at 19!

I appreciate the feat. I'm hoping to see more of him, in competition or otherwise.

best,

jason

Ido Portal said:

Complete and utter bullshit. Sci-Fi.

The fact that people get hit by lightening every year does not mean you dont go out when it rains, also, not all afro americans are criminals, and believe it or not, not all jews are rich and thinking how to take over the world. (unfurtunatly)

Ido.

You have just debunked my entire belief system

On a serious note, there are several paths that can lead to the same goal, what works for one person will not necesarily work for another. To me its like being a team leader but the team is your body, you have to learn how each member likes to be managed in order to work efficiently. Its an approach I have adopted and am still trying to master.

I think people tend to focus on the differences in programs vs the common elements. There are so many completely different systems in the world and each one has a group of followers that believe the one that they follow is the best and only one. Where as in reality most coaches agree with each other on more things than disagree.

The intensity+frequency approach that the average broz gym uses has been used with great success in the past by many lifters in Olympic and power lifting. However to say that it is the only successful system would be pretty ignorant. Tommy Kono was extremely successful with a very different approach,he only maxed out once per week sometimes less, and used quite a few accessory movements, Bill Starr had more in common with Tommy Kono than anyone else. The Sheiko approach is yet another different system with great success that utilizes volume and frequency. And of course the gymnastic bodies approach is also another great way to achieve goals. The point being is that having an organized system with progressions is much more important than worrying about which one of them is the best.

As a side note this video makes me have faith that the days of the U.S. coming back to being a top competitor in Olympic Weightlifting are near. The lifter at that gym are powerhouses. Here is an interview with John Broz where he discusses his trainng philosophy:

To quote fromthis article:

The fact is that the Bulgarians dominate the middleweight classes, where excessive use of anabolics might just put a lifter over his class limit. Some countries which will remain nameless, for instance Russia, always seem to have their best lifters drifting through the 94s and the 105s on their way to being 135 kilo heavyweights. This type of situation seems much more indicative of drug use, but of course the whiners do not want to hear logical arguments. Additionally, the Bulgarian training system is not the type that would draw too heavily upon the benefits of using anabolics. The Bulgarian-type workout consisting only of a moderate number of not-quite-maximum singles imposes a heavy burden on the CNS, but if one is looking for CNS stimulation or recovery there are better places than steroids to find it.

Johann Martin (nearly breaking out in laughter): "The Bulgarian method is one litre of steroids every day right in the ass."

As for recovery ability

The Bulgarians have massages before, during, and after workouts. Do you? The Bulgarians take all sorts of herbs and 'adaptogens' and are deeply involved in legal sports performance pharmacology. Are you? The Bulgarians on the national team don't have to keep a 9-to-5, forty hour a week job. Do you? The point here is that there are many recovery factors that can come into play that do make a Bulgarian routine more accessible to their lifters than to the average American.

Interview with Pat Mendes

Interesting and relevant:

1. He was doing three-a-days? 8:30, 2:30, 7. Ouch.

2. Pat mentions his second time under a bar, at age 14, he squatted 315#.

Part I

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Part II

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To continue with Abadjiev-related lifters, this interview with Donny Shankle is pretty good.

"He taught me how to be fearless."

How to be fearless in our training? Fail, and fail frequently.

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John Broz on Smolov

1) Lunges suck and I think are very dangerous. When you go heavy,fast or simply aren't perfectly strict you have a tendency to push hard and because of the deep split you push off to one side and lean to the opposite as a reflex to get up. I have witnessed many people injure a knee doing this (including my wife - who refused to listen, snuck off to the "ladies only" section. She split her meniscus and I had to carry her to the hospital from the gym. She was out of commission for 4 months and 5 yrs later her knee is still jacked) Lunging down is NOT a natural way for the human body to lift. Do you ever see kids lunging down to grab something? It's an unnecessary risk with little benefit. That is the classic definition of dumb. You wanna stretch the quads? kneel down and lean back. This is a much better stretch. It stretches the quad more from the hip and not as much from the knee.

2) Jumping and plyos should be left to jumpers and track athletes who needs to jump. As a lifter we don't need that additional stress put on any joints. save the stress and energy for training.

3) %'s don't work. Plain and simple. How many times have you had to go in and hit a max but you didn't sleep well, feel under the weather etc. but have to lift a designated amount of weight? Conversely, how many times do you feel great but are only allowed to go to 65-75% when you really feel like you could hit a PR that day? It's hard enough to peak at a meet a few times a year and feel like you are prepared to hit weights that are pre-determined. How can you possibly do it every workout, every lift? simple - you can't.

4) The more often you attempt max, the more opportunities you are giving yourself to feel what max feels like, make max attempts, hit PR's, and it builds confidence. Eventually max is usual and as routine as walking down the street. Every morning I would squat at least 220 (usually more, but that was my "minimum" I HAD to do regardless of how I felt) like clockwork. I could do it just as easy as walking to my car to drive home. Pat is currently doing 250 every morning. It is so routine that at any given time, night or day 7 days/wk he would be able to do it without even blinking.

*****5) NOT training everyday leads to more injuries! IF you train everyday then your entire body is fatigued. Muscles, tendons, cartilage, ligaments, etc. When you train every other day, then the muscles and avascular tissues don't recover at the same pace. What happens is the muscles become fresh and recover but all the connective tissue is NOT. When the additional stress put on these weakened tissues (that never really got a chance to recover) by fresh muscles = injury. Lifting everyday keeps everything in a state that is equal and consistent within the system. A balance or harmony within. The fatigued muscles can't contract enough to harm the other tissues. The weak link moves from body part to body part, and in a sense is not letting the other parts max so that's when they are resting!

6) The progress from this program is because of the volume. Most people don't even come close to the amount of volume that it demands in regular workouts. The progress is wrongly attributed to the %'s and reps scheme. It's not. IT's the workload.

7) The human body cycles up and down at unpredictable waves. The program can't take that into account. What if you started 5 days earlier? Would you be more successful? It is not possible to predict how you will feel and start the program at an optimum time within your own cycle to have more success. You can't succeed every workout unless the #'s were skewed from the beginning.

****8) How many opportunities for PR's did you miss out on by spending an entire year only squatting 3x/wk when you could be doing 7-14? In a entire year, just squatting once a day = 2x the volume of this program. 2x/day for 12-14 sessions a week is 400% more. That's the only % that is important!

Please keep this thread going.

For Ortpod: Another interview, this time with Broz himself ... follow it through for part II.

There are 4 interviews total here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/EastCoastBarbellBray#p/u/1/nU_ybeBZVQI

Broz interview

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Part 2 is much more down to earth as compared to the first interview he did.