Bulgarian Methods

On the idea that the Bulgarians were a meat grinder machine that just started with a big pool of lifters and broke a lot of the athletes, with the few left standing (who were able to tolerate the training load) being the team, I offer this:

"After experiencing such disappointing results in the 1968 Olympics, Bulgaria decided to develop a special sports school for young Olympic hopefuls in several sports, including weightlifting. There were 10 boys in the weightlifting groups, ages 14 to 16. Krychev, who was 16 years old at the time, was a member of this first group of lifters who were to become the core of the 1972 Bulgarian Olympic team. Ivan Abadjiev, who had been a silver medalist in the 1957 World Championships but was then working in an administrative capacity for sports, was selected as the coach of this team.

Abadjiev administered a program that involved multiple training sessions per day at extremely high intensities. Many of the grassroots coaches of the junior lifters, who were still communicating with their athletes, objected to these methods – some gave him the nickname “The Butcher.” But critics soon were silenced, because during that first year his junior athletes were breaking senior national records. "

Ten kids isn't a lot. Break more than a few and you've got no team.

Quote is from: charlespoliquin.com/Article…

But along the lines of what Gary Ohm says above (from the same article linked):

"Krychev believes that to become a world-class weightlifter, the athlete must be focused on their training and not have to work outside. “Today’s results are so high, in order to achieve those results the weightlifter has to train, think, sleep, drink weightlifting only. He doesn’t have to worry how he is going to pay the rent, how he is going to pay the insurance to provide for the family. Unless some system is in place, don’t expect miracles.”

reading brent's post, i'm interpreting it as higher frequency, lower amplitude. by not trashing yourself you are able to supercompensate more quickly to get back to a higher point than the previous workout.

i think your overall life schedule plays a big part in this - right now i have barely enough time for 1 big workout per week. so i will tend to maximize volume because i have plenty of recovery time.

for other folks who have a lot of smaller chunks of free time, doing smaller volume (but yet high intensity) workouts might work better.

good topic.

Brent Apgar wrote: Isn't this always the crux of training for performance?

Sure. But I think climbing uniquely calls on body parts to do things they didn't evolve to do, as we all know, and the risks of aggressive training could be higher and harsher in some cases, and that's really all I meant. I believe you reiterated those thoughts: "The real trick is knowing how hard to go and how long to keep the hammer down before you destroy something."

I think it is a bit of a fine, somewhat unforgiving line in climbing between supercompensation and overtraining, and it seems that many climbers maintain a mindset determined to ignore warning signs or dismiss them.

slim wrote:right now i have barely enough time for 1 big workout per week. so i will tend to maximize volume because i have plenty of recovery time.

To my knowledge the literature supports this as an effective form of strength maintenance.

that's interesting as it seems consistent with how my performance has been over the last few months. basically hovering at a decent level, waiting for work to chill so i can try to bump it up again.

i have basically just been able to use my hangboard. i do about 6 weeks of hypertrophy style workouts and then 4 weeks of more of a recruitment style workout. all in all, i have been pretty happy with how i have been climbing, given my limited amount of time.

I just started a "grease the groove" type strength phase for climbing and figured I'd pipe in. I'm starting week 3 now so I still have a while to go.

My workout consists of:
-warmup (5 minute or so traverse)
-rest ~5 minutes
-2 sets of weighted deadhangs on an edge w/ 3 - 5 minute rests between
-2 sets of front lever raises

I do this workout Monday - Thursday (climb outside on weekends but that might change soon since its cold as shit), and usually on 1 or 2 of the days I will do this workout in the morning and in the evening. The workout lasts less than 30 minutes and I usually feel really strong and fresh at the end.

I don't time my deadhangs, but basically they are <10 seconds and I only hang to about 80% of my ability.

Thus far I've noticed the deadhangs are getting easier and easier even with added weight. I'm planning on sticking with this plan for 5 - 6 weeks.