Today’s Wall Street Journal features an article about Ivan Abadjiev, the one-time director of Bulgaria’s Olympic weightlifting program, who now works out of a weightlifting facility in Danville, CA.
The article points out Abadjiev’s method – “The Bulgarian Method” – of weight training. Train every day, multiple times, working up to maximal attempts each workout.
The article also (sadly) quotes some coaches who wonder whether or not they’re “loading” their athletes enough. I say “sadly” because these guys are strength coaches for athletes who are not Olympic weightlifters.
This goes to a notion that is popular in much of the strength world now that all athletes benefit from Olympic (or heavy) weightlifting.
It’s not true.
As a strength coach, the number one priority* is to understand your athlete’s (or client’s) desired outcome. For an athlete, the outcome must be to perform better than anyone else at their given sport or position. For a client from the general-population, it must be to enrich that person’s movement capacity (in terms both of movement quality/ability/skill and strength) as much as possible.
Heavy weightlifting is not necessarily the answer to either of those outcomes.
Most of what I’ve ever read about Abadjiev and the Bulgarian method says that it was based around the idea that the weightlifter who survived the training protocol would definitely be world-class (simply because they could survive that type of constant high-intensity training).
The most gold medals Bulgaria ever won in an Olympics was in the Summer Games of 1988, with 10. But at least two of those medals (for weightlifters) were stripped when it was discovered that they had been using steroids. (Note – this Olympics was likely more riddled with steroid abuse than any before or since…it is also the Olympics of Ben Johnson’s steroid-boosted record in the 100m). This was the Soviet/Eastern-Bloc’s last hurrah in international competition.
So What Good IS It?
Heavy weightlifting creates a certain response in the human body. “Heavy” lifting usually entails the use and development of the anaerobic lactic and alactic energy systems, the expression of increased levels of growth hormone and testosterone, increased bone and soft-tissue density, and higher nervous system firing rates.
Want to affect those qualities in your body? Lift heavy stuff.
The way you do it will make a difference as well. Heavy-and-fast (best exemplified by Olympic weightlifting) will have significantly different effects from heavy-and-slow (exemplified by the sport of Powerlifting). Both maximally load the body, but one does so in an explosive movement, while the other does so in a “slow” movement.
Heavy lifting and the changes it imparts to the individual can be generally beneficial. They offer greater structural strength and stability, and increased neural drive. But they also demand a lot of dedication and a high amount of recovery.
Mixing heavy weightlifting into a program in a competent way, keeping volume relative to the needs of the individual, is probably generally a good idea. How you do it should be dictated by what you want.
As Buddy Lee says – “Train the way you want to move.”
*The number two priority must be to understand where the client is starting in relation to that desired outcome. And then comes building a measurable plan to get them there…