Chapter 6

Putting It All Together: Developing The Training Plan

In preceding chapters we have discussed proper technique and its foundations. We have covered the topics of learning proper weightlifting technique, building strength and power, developing flexibility, training the mind, selecting equipment and choosing exercises to assist the weightlifter in improving his or her performance in the classical lifts. Having been given the “raw materials” that form the building blocks of training a champion weightlifter, the reader is now prepared to study the all important process of integrating these resources into a training plan and creating a workable plan for the optimal development of individual weightlifters.

Creating the Training Plan

In this chapter we will deal with such issues as warming up for a workout, the proper sequence of exercises, the use and misuse of periodization and cycling, combining complex means to improve performance, the value of short- and long-term planning, diagnosing needs and many other aspects of workout construction. However, we will avoid any emphasis on what seems to be obligatory for most books on bodybuilding, powerlifting, weight training and weightlifting: the “cookbook” workouts for beginners, intermediate lifters and advanced lifters. Overall, any use of “one-size-fits-all” workouts should be avoided, because lifters of all levels vary so much in their needs that illustrative workouts are almost useless in terms of practical application to real athletes. It is true that lifters with similar levels of experience have many needs in common. For instance, all beginners will need to learn proper technique, and that only occurs with a great deal of practice. But the question of just what is practiced and how can only be answered precisely on the basis of each lifter’s specific situation.

Similarly, more advanced lifters should not merely copy the training program of any particular champion. Some actual training programs of weightlifting champions will be presented in this chapter, and there is no doubt that such programs provide very useful examples of planning concepts that have already been presented to specific athletes in particular instances. But the reader will be explicitly warned that a coach or athlete should not merely adopt such programs wholesale.

This chapter will provide a survey of the principles and guidelines for planning that have evolved in the weightlifting world. Such information can serve as a valuable starting point for coaches and athletes as long as they understand one overarching principle: the guidelines being presented are not rigid rules to be applied blindly. Rather, they are a foundation on which the coach must build in order to reach the optimal training plan for each individual athlete. If coaches and athletes understand the principles and techniques of planning and can see how they are applied, the problem of developing their own programs should present no insurmountable challenges (although training design is always one of the great challenges in coaching, even for coaches of great experience and ability).

Before we begin an actual discussion of training plan design, it is important to set forth some underlying principles. Bill Bowerman, the legendary coach of the great University of Oregon track and field team, has identified three “cornerstones” of training in any sport: moderation, consistency and rest. By moderation, Bowerman does not mean that an athlete should not train hard. High level performance can only be achieved through excruciating effort. However, in the overall context, training must not be so extreme that it leads to a loss of motivation, overtraining or injury, the three biggest threats to any athlete’s performance. A champion must be completely dedicated to his or her training and must exert heroic levels of mental and physical effort during some phases of training and competition in order to reach elite levels of performance. Sport must come first in the athlete’s life. But the athlete who is always on the brink of injury or overtraining, one whose training is all consuming and leaves no time for anything else in life, is bound to falter at some point, losing valuable training time and, perhaps, a career.

Consistency, Bowerman’s second cornerstone, is absolutely essential. An athlete cannot reach the elite level without a fanatical adherence to his or her training schedule (though schedules can and should be modified in accordance with an athlete’s reactions to training). Helter skelter training does not work in the long run; consistency is key. Not surprisingly, consistency goes hand in glove with moderation. The athlete whose training does not adhere to the principle of moderation will not be consistent in his or her training. An injury will occur, an illness will come up or a loss of motivation will arise and the need for “a break” will emerge. Consistency will be breached, and the athlete’s overall performance will ultimately suffer. On the other hand, the athlete must let nothing get in the way of executing the properly designed training plan in its entirety.

Bowerman’s last cornerstone, rest, is the forgotten side of training. Without rest, the athlete will not recuperate from his or her training, which is to say that no training occurs. Contrary to popular belief, younger athletes need even more rest than fully mature (though not “master” athletes). It is during rest that recuperation and adaptation take place. If athletes and coaches had half the respect for rest that they do for exercise, levels of performance would soar, and incidents of overuse injuries and overtraining would be rare.

Bowerman’s three cornerstones make sense only when they are added to the fundamental training principles of overload, specificity, reversibility and individuality. These principles have already been discussed in this book, but they bear repeating here. If exercise is to generate a training effect, it must overload the body, providing a greater stimulus than that which has previously been applied to the athlete. To be effective for purposes of training, exercise must be strenuous enough to constitute an overload. However, not just any overload will do. The training stimulus must be specific to the qualities that the athlete wishes to develop. For instance, a weightlifter can perform a certain exercise to “get the back strong,” but if the exercise does not stress the same back muscles in the same way that they will be taxed when he or she is performing the classical lifts, such training will contribute little to competition performance. Reversibility means that any adaptation gained will be lost unless a training stimulus of sufficient magnitude is applied often enough. Just as the body is capable of positive adaptations to increasing demands, it is capable of negative adaptations to decreasing demands (i.e., detraining).

Finally, training is an individual process. No two individuals will have precisely the same needs in their training and no two individuals will be equally stressed by the same training stimulus or respond to it in precisely the same way. The same training program may work for two different athletes, but it will never work in exactly the same way for both, and it will almost never be optimal for both. Therefore, it is vital that training programs be individualized.

The Essence Of Planning

Planning an athlete’s training is in some respects akin to filling an article of luggage with only the items essential for a trip. The luggage itself presents a size constraint, but the variety that is possible in terms of what is packed in the luggage enables the traveler to meet his or her needs and to exercise a great deal of judgment during the packing process. In addition, the experienced traveler knows that by packing carefully, much more can be fit in than if he or she merely throws items randomly into the bag. Similarly, the coach can place a wide variety of training modalities within the constraints of a training time that an athlete has at his or her disposal. Therefore, the skill of the coach at designing the program will permit the athlete to “fit” more of what is valuable within the training period. (The training time available is always constrained by the athlete’s energy level, his or her recuperative powers and other needs in the athletes life.)

Given the limitations that exist with respect to the training process, the first questions the effective planner must ask are: “What are we trying to accomplish during the period of training for which the plan in being created? What qualities of the athlete are we trying most urgently to improve?” Unless the planner explicitly addresses these fundamental questions, the training plan will be too haphazard to provide maximum benefit to the athlete.

In establishing the objectives for the training period, it is particularly useful for the coach to consider the four important categories of athletic qualities: mental, emotional, physical and neurological. (The latter term is loosely used to identify subconscious aspects of human behavior that have their basis in the nervous system but which cannot, at least with present methods, be measured objectively.) Within the mental qualities are the processes and content of the lifter’s mind (what the lifter is focusing on and what kind of activity the lifter is undertaking). The athlete can learn to control the direction, width and depth of his or her focus as well as the actual content of the conscious mind. As a result, processes such as visualization of the execution of cognitive skills are under the direct control of the conscious mind and can be improved with practice and effort.

Developing an athlete’s emotional qualities involves improving the ability to generate and control certain emotions. Athletes need enthusiasm, desire and a certain level of arousal in order to perform optimally. They must never permit a negative (from the standpoint of its affect on performance) emotion to intrude into consciousness during the performance of their events. Practice outside and inside the gym can assist the athlete in controlling his or her emotions during at least a limited period of intense effort.

The physical qualities required for weightlifting are, of course, multifaceted. The most important are: strength, power, speed, flexibility, the endurance to perform the work of training and the ability to accept the stress of training and lifting maximum weights.

The neurological capabilities of the athlete include the ability to exert force rapidly and maximally (within the constraints of the athlete’s physical abilities) and the ability to move efficiently and consistently (motor skill). These qualities are developed by a combination of physical work and mental effort and they embody the mind/body link.

The effective training plan must be designed to help the lifter improve (or at least maintain previous improvements) in all of these areas. If the coach were not constrained by the athlete’s training time, he or she could attack all of the athlete’s needs at once. But since a constraint always exists, the primary challenge facing the coach is to establish priorities ( in view of the athlete’s objectives) and resolve conflicting demands to arrive at a training content that will optimize the lifter’s improvement in the areas that are most urgently targeted for improvement. The coach must carefully consider what to place within the training period, recognizing that by careful “packing,” the coach can optimize the nature and strength of the training stimuli, so that the athlete will get the maximal possible results out of the resources at his or her disposal.

The tools at the coach’s disposal are the exercises that the coach prescribes, the volume and intensity achieved in those exercises, what the athlete is thinking about while the training is being performed and what the athlete does during and after training sessions in order to recuperate from his or her workouts. (The latter subject will be discussed in later chapters of this book.)

The Fundamentally Cyclic Nature of All Planning

Where do you begin in designing a training plan? Do you begin by creating an annual or even longer plan and fill in the framework for even shorter periods (e.g., year to month to day)? Or is it better to begin at the workout level and build outward into the long term plan? To answer that question we will examine first the two prevailing, and in many ways contradictory, approaches to planning. Then we will examine a radically different approach, one that I will argue represents a significant improvement over either of the others. However, before we examine the two opposite approaches to planning, let us look at the root of all planning: the training “cycle.”

While athletes and coaches may disagree on the degree on the nature and importance of the training plan, what cannot be denied is the fundamentally cyclic basis of any plan. Any planner must see a plan as a “cycle” (even if the concept of a cycle is only implicit to that person). For example, even the most “intuitive” planner says, in essence, “I will do snatches today because I feel I need them.” But why does the planner think this is so? Generally, because he or she has not done snatches in a while and feels ready to perform them effectively, or because the need to perform at a certain level on an upcoming day suggests that snatches should be performed today. In other words, this planner is placing today’s training session in the context of what has been done in the past and/or what will be done in the future. Viewing a training session as part of a training unit consisting of today’s workout and past or future ones is the essence of a training “cycle,” because a cycle is nothing more than training done over a period of time that is viewed as unit. As soon as someone says “I do snatches every day” (or every other day, or once heavy and once light in a week), that person is acknowledging the existence of a cycle of some sort, the cycle consisting of whatever time period he or she has identified.

The ability to develop training cycles that are of optimal length and content is perhaps the single greatest key to progress in weightlifting. Unfortunately, ideal cycles have never been developed for all lifters, nor can they ever be. Individual differences between the genetic makeup of athletes, their backgrounds in training, the techniques that they use, the degree of mental and emotional effort that they apply in their training, their outside activities and many other factors affect their reactions to training. Therefore, while uniform cycles can be developed for and applied by all athletes, the degree of benefit that different athletes will derive from the same cycles will vary.

Although there are no cycles, short or long, that are optimal for all athletes, some very useful guidelines can enable the lifter to achieve the greatest rate of progress possible through proper cycling. Nevertheless, the journey of discovery that is entailed in individualizing the cycling process and planning and executing its many steps is the responsibility of each athlete and his or her coach. This continuous journey of discovery is one of the many things that makes weightlifting a wonderfully exciting and rewarding sport.

Now that the foundation of planning (the concept of the cycle) has been presented, let us examine the evolution of the planning process (from early experimentation to short term planning to long term planning philosophy) that dominates training today. Then we will look at some means for improving on what many coaches are doing today as well as avoiding an oversimplified view of the planning process.

The Evolution of Early Planning

In the early years of the development of weightlifting as a sport (during the latter part of the ninth century and the first half of this one), there were no established “seasons” for weightlifting. Because weightlifting was generally considered to be an indoor sport (although some notable competitions, such as some of the early Olympic competitions and some famous exhibitions, were held outdoors), there was no reason to schedule major competitions at a specific time in the year or day. In addition, because weightlifting was considered a developmental sport, many athletes trained year round to improve their abilities, without a particular competitive outlet for their new abilities in mind. Other athletes introduced seasonality into their training, perhaps reducing their weight training when outdoor activities tended to be most feasible and pleasurable (e.g., during the summer).

Early trainers noted that they could not perform at their best every day and that some form of fatigue seemed to be at the root of their poor performance. As a result, the concept of training every other day was born. On the basis of some understanding of anatomy and the observation that certain exercises were “felt” more in certain areas of the body than in others, the causal link between exercise selection and improvements in the appearance and performance of certain muscles of the body was noted. Because some responses to training occur rather quickly (e.g., fatigue, muscle soreness and improvements in strength performance) early training schedules were often derived from observation of those responses and on the premise that the ideal training regimen would lead to a straight progression in training (i.e., that if the proper level of stimulus was provided, the body would simply improve continuously). For instance, if a particular improvement was noted after the addition of an exercise to the lifter’s workout or a change in routine, it was assumed that this was a “good routine” for that purpose. If not, the new program and/or training regimen were discarded or modified.

Trainees who decided to train every day noticed that while performance varied from day to day, they could train every day as long as there was no attempt to perform at the same level every day. Alternatively, they noticed that they could train and perform well on successive days if different exercises and/or different parts of the body were exercised on successive days. Early trainers also noted that after a certain period of time on a particular program, progress seemed to slow or stop, and sometimes the trainee seemed to take a step backward. This phenomena was referred to as a period of stagnation or “staleness.” Athletes in this state were typically advised to change their routines and/or to improve their general health habits so that the body’s recuperative powers would be improved (e.g., athletes were urged to improve their diets, to get more rest and sleep and to avoid excessive alcohol consumption). Another popular suggestion was to stop training for a week or two and then to resume.

In addition to encountering periods of stagnation, athletes noticed that they had a tendency to overtrain before pending competitions and that extra rest before competitions was beneficial in many cases. Therefore, while many athletes trained in much the same way all year round, they learned to estimate their abilities as the competition approached by “trying themselves out” on the competitive lifts. They adopted the practice of taking a few workouts with smaller workloads and lighter weights in the days immediately prior to the competition to assure that they would appear for the competition in a rested state.

When the approaches described above are viewed in the aggregate, they comprise a relatively complete approach to short term planning and program design. If done properly, combining these training concepts can be quite effective. This is because all workouts are planned within a time span that permits reasonable predictions of performance, the workouts can be well balanced across a series of days and weeks and the reactions of the athlete tend to be monitored very closely, with modifications being made as needed. Some truly great champions have been produced using this kind of planning. And although it has fallen out of favor today, there is much to recommend this approach.

While the mainstream of thinking about the training process in the middle of this century was characterized by the principles and practices outlined above (many of which are still as valuable today as when they first emerged), some athletes discovered that despite their adherence to those training methods, their training and competition performances were often quite unpredictable. Some of these variations from expectations can be attributed to purely human factors and to chance, but others can be traced to shortcomings in the nature of short term planning.

One shortcoming of short term planning is that it fails to take advantage of workout sequences that can build toward a certain result over a rather extended period. Consequently, exclusive reliance on short term planning can make it difficult for some lifters to peak reliably for major competitions because the conditions that lead high performance at a given competition are not established early enough in the training process. Another shortcoming of short term planning is that its proponents tend to analyze training results only from a short term perspective. Such analysis can overlook longer term factors that influence performance.

In an effort to address the shortcomings of short term planning, coaches and athletes began to search for approaches to training that would yield better and more predictable results. That search took two basic paths, and the influence of those who explored those paths is still with us today (as are many of the short term planning concepts pioneered by early experiments in weight training).

“Intuitive Approaches To Planning”

One direction of exploration was in the area of abandoning all planning. Some coaches and athletes had concluded that virtually all planning was futile, reasoning that all training should be performed on the basis of how the athlete feels emotionally and physically on a given training day (the so called “intuitive” training concept).

In this approach the workout is established as the lifter goes along. In the most extreme cases the lifter’s and/or coach’s intuition on a given day governs everything. The athlete lifts in accordance with his or her “feelings.” A workout might begin with a few snatches because someone else in the gym is doing them and they look like fun. Then, because the snatches do not “feel” very good, the lifter proceeds to cleans. The cleans go well, so the lifter does many sets. The squat racks are already set up as the lifter is finishing the cleans, so he or she moves on to squats. And so the workout continues.

Advocates of this approach argue that it represents the most advanced training method possible because it is based on how the athletes feels, which to their way of thinking is all that counts. What is wrong with such an approach? Perhaps nothing if the lifter is highly skilled, usually “feels” like working on his or her weak points, has an impeccable sense of when to rest and when to push hard and does not have to perform successfully on any given day (i.e., the lifter is not a competitive athlete). How many lifters out of the thousands I have observed or with whom I have trained over many years have satisfied all of these criteria? None. Does that mean that such lifters do not exist? No. It merely means that such lifters are the exception rather than the rule and that therefore the purely intuitive approach cannot be recommended for the vast majority of lifters.

The lifters I have known who make the best use of intuitive training are veterans who have spent so many years studying the sport and their bodies that their “intuitions” have been highly developed by a lot of thought. This is certainly not the norm, not even for such knowledgeable veterans. Even for these highly advanced weightlifting “sages,” completely intuitive training is not likely to be the most effective coaching strategy, because these veteran lifters cannot feel what is going on in a pupil’s body as they can in their own.

The obvious weaknesses of failing to plan at all were apparent to most coaches and athletes, so accepted the “purely intuitive” branch of training for very long. In view of the perceived shortcomings of short term and intuitive training, many athletes and coaches turned to what seemed to them to be the only authentic alternative: long term planning.

The Dominant Philosophy of Beginning with a Long Term Plan and Filling in the Details

Long term planning is the dominant planning approach to high performance weightlifting training today (at least if you believe the weightlifting literature). It became popular in Eastern Europe in the middle of this century and is now employed all over the world. (The coaches and athletes in the United States were probably among the last to embrace long term planning, but its popularity has increased dramatically in recent years.)

In this approach the coach creates a long term plan or model of lifting development for an athlete. On the basis of this framework or foundation, the coach then progresses to planning ever shorter time frames in order to fill in the details of the plan. The coach begins on the level of the “macrocycle” (a period that is generally one year but can be as short as several months or as long as several years). Once the macrocycle has been created, the “mesocycles” are planned. Only occasionally calendar months, these training “months” are generally twelve periods of four to five weeks each that fit into a twelve month period. Finally, “microcycles” are planned (the weeks within each mesocycle and the individual workouts within each week).

In its most extreme and ineffective variety, this kind of “top down” planning relies almost completely on models developed from statistical analyses of lifters at various levels to establish the content of the training plan. The results of the statistical analysis are often modified by the creator of the workout models to conform to his or her judgment of how the model workouts should look.

For example, the coach might say that it will take six years for the talented athlete to develop to the international level. At that level, the average lifter might be doing 18,000 reps a year (in all exercises combined) distributed over 500 workouts. A typical beginner might be able to handle 5,000 reps in a year across 200 workouts. Therefore, a plan is made to increase the lifter’s load to the appropriate level over a six year period. To fill in the first year’s plan, the coach might rely on some statistic and/or recommendation by an expert that beginners spend 35% of their time on general physical training, another 45% of their time on the classical exercises and 20% of their time on strength work.

In planning the training, the coach might be guided by a study or book that recommends three training cycles a year with a specific distribution of loads and monthly training emphases. Many published guidelines break the monthly training sessions into weekly ones and the weekly ones into daily workout plans. Using these guidelines, the novice coach can supposedly duplicate the entire planning process of the most highly successful coaches down to the smallest detail.

Such workout planning is a joy for busy coaches. It is simple and almost purely mechanical in nature. Moreover, if a long enough plan is created, the coach need only do planning on occasion. In fact, virtually the entire process can be computerized, making the work of the coach nearly effortless once the “master plan” has been programmed. The coach decides how many reps are to be performed in a particular month, then multiplies the guideline percentages of reps allocated to each exercise by the aggregate number of reps that month in order to determine the number of reps to be performed in each exercise that month. A similar procedure is then followed in assigning the reps to weeks and particular workouts and in determining the distribution of reps into various “zones” of intensity. Underlying the overall plan is generally some preconceived rate of progress toward a certain training load as one of the objectives for that athlete

The shortcomings inherent in the kind of long term planning procedure described above are numerous. However, let us identify five of the most severe faults of the process.

First, the statistics or theories generally used to create the basis for such planning are gathered from individual lifters and then combined (unless a specific group of lifters was experimentally placed on the same program). Therefore, the average figures so accumulated do not represent the actual workout pattern of any particular lifter (i.e., the average athlete in the group studied is training as described but no particular athlete is training in exactly that way). Unfortunately for the statistician, the differences between the programs of individual lifters may account for at least a portion of the success of those programs, and it is possible that none would have had as much success if he or she had performed the “average program.”

To clarify this point, consider a situation in which the jerk training of 1,000 high level lifters was studied. Let us assume that 10% of such lifters employed the power style of jerk in competition and that the remaining 90% used the split style of the splitters, 30% had jerks that were strong relative to their cleans (i.e., they virtually never missed jerks after cleaning a weight). Those lifters spent 50% of their time split jerking and 50% power jerking. The other 70% of the splitters spent 90% of their training on the split jerk and 10% on the power jerk. Those who used the power jerk style in competition spent 90% of their time power jerking and only 10% split jerking. The average allocation of split and power jerk training among these 1000 lifters was 71% to the split jerk and 29% to the power jerk. It is obvious that such an allocation was not successful for the splitters or the power jerkers. Nevertheless, a gross statistical analysis could lead to the conclusion that the 71% to 29% distribution of split jerks to power jerk is desirable (because elite lifters have such a ratio), when in fact a very different ratio was favored by the superior jerkers in this group (the lifters really worth emulating).

It could be argued that the problem with the statistical approach described above lies not with the approach per se, but with the lack of skill of the person collecting the data. If that person were insightful enough, the correct allocation of exercises would be discovered (e.g., by focusing on the good split jerkers versus the bad). But even with more sophisticated analyses, the problem does not go away. It might be true that, as a group, the better jerkers allocated their split and power jerks 50:50. But it might also be true that, within that group, one-third did no power jerks at all and that the remaining two-thirds of the group had a 75:25 ratio of power jerks to split jerks. Therefore, the 50:50 spilt was not used by anyone. In reality, the “secret” of the better jerkers might simply have been that they identified the pattern of jerk practice that was most effective for them early in their careers.

A second and related problem with the top-down planning process is that it can miss the entire rationale for what coaches and athletes are doing in the gym at any particular moment. To clarify this point, let us consider a business analogy. Suppose a business analyst was sent to study the activities of the world’s most successful microchip manufacturer and noted in careful detail every measurable activity occurring within the manufacturing facility across a year (or even a series of years).

That analyst might say that each chip requires one hour to make. Of that hour, ten minutes are spent in each of six stations along the production line. There are a total of 1,000 workers, 10% of whom are managers, 10% are sales people, 10% are maintenance people, 5% are in shipping, 5% are in receiving and the rest (60%) are actually involved in the direct manufacturing of the chips. In further observing the managers, the recorder might note that they spent ten minutes of every hour on the phone, twenty minutes in meetings, ten minutes writing memos, ten minutes on benefits and compensation issues and ten minutes talking about what they were planning to do on the weekend and other personal matters. Would a fledgling microchip manufacturer who established a factory that had all of the above characteristics have any chance of becoming world class in chip manufacturing? Obviously not. In order to understand the business, a new manufacturer would have to understand how and why things were, how procedures evolved, which were necessary and which a matter of chance or the preferences of the employees. The new manufacturer would also need to understand the present conditions in his or her marketplace and the characteristics of his work force, suppliers, customers and owners in order to have any chance of succeeding.

Thinking that you can model training plans blindly is as misguided as thinking that you can observe the operations of a factory and simply start up a successful replica. This does not mean that the trips Japanese manufacturers made to American companies while they were learning to be world class competitors were not valuable, even critical, to their success. But if the Japanese had merely tried to duplicate what the Americans were doing, they would have never become the formidable competitors in international business that they have become. The same applies to Soviet scientists or American coaches who rely on statistics gathered about the champions.

The third major problem with basing exercise prescriptions on average workouts is the fallacy of applying laws derived from large numbers to individual cases. For instance, it is true that highly trained mathematicians who are specialists in applying statistical data to real world situations can accurately calculate life expectancies on the basis of a population’s age and sex. So successful are such mathematicians (called actuaries) at their mortality projections that hugely successful financial enterprises (insurance companies) have been built on the basis of the predictions that they make. However, the prognostications of actuaries are only accurate in the aggregate. No matter how skilled the actuary, no matter how perfect the data upon which the actuary bases his or her projections, a prediction of the age at which any specific individual will die is totally outside the realm of the power of statistics.

Similarly, even if we know that 60% of the lifters in a very large population got stronger doing three sets of five reps with weights that were 80% of their respective maximums than they did with five sets of three reps with the same weight, we could not say that it is any more likely for a specific lifter to benefit from one alternative than another. We can only say that if we train a large enough group of lifters with a weight that is 80% of their maximum, more of them will benefit from three sets of five reps than five sets of three reps.

The fourth major fallacy of top-down planning is its underlying premise that any truly effective long term plan can be made under normal circumstances. The process of training the human organism is highly complex. Many bodily systems interact during the training process (e.g., the central nervous system, the muscular system and the endocrine system). Training can affect each system, and each system can affect the others. Moreover, the mind can affect these systems and vice versa.

For instance, a lifter’s values and mental focus can influence the training effect his or her body receives from a given bout of exercise, and the body’s reaction to the training can influence a lifter’s values and mental focus. With so many interactions, it is impossible to predict the ultimate outcome with real accuracy, even across a time span as short as several days or weeks. Making accurate overall predictions with respect to an athlete’s progress over a period of months or years is absolutely out of the question, and making predictions of development in specific areas is even more futile (e.g., technique may not develop as quickly as had been expected, or strength gains in one area of the body might easily outpace all expectations).

A related problem with long term planning structured around peaking for a particular competition is that the length of the various cycles is established by the competition schedule rather than the lifter’s long term needs. For example, a lifter can have a technique or strength deficiency that will require many months of specialized training to correct. In such a case, interruption of the lifter’s technical education with the high intensity lifts that are generally used to prepare for a competition may actually hinder the lifter’s progress. Nevertheless, a coach who blindly follows the long term plan would dutifully schedule the competitive preparations required by the season’s contest schedule, thereby damaging the lifter’s long term optimization of his or her capabilities.

The final major problem with long term planning is that it tends to put the workout schedule on “autopilot” for too long. Many long term planners tend to create the plan and then never really monitor and modify the plans as needed. Moreover, because the athlete is not often tested against maximums in the classical lifts in many long term training plans (especially those that are based on the principle of long term periodization), such plans can go very wrong long before any problem is discovered.

Does this mean that long term planning of any kind is a waste of time? Not at all. Long term planning can establish a valuable framework for shorter term planning. It can place short term planning within the context of the competitive schedule and assure that any short term training plans consider the overall developmental objectives that a coach may have (e.g., in terms of reaching certain volume objectives).

A long term view can also serve as a powerful analytical tool for determining training effectiveness, because some of the effects of training are cumulative and an analysis of long training periods permits the analyst to gain a full picture of the training process. However, the limitations of long term planning that have been cited must not be overlooked by anyone who uses it; good coaches never do.

In this chapter we will examine periodization, the dominant method of long term planning. Periodization is an invaluable training concept. Moreover, it forms so much of the framework of today’s planning (and the training analyses in Eastern Europe) that it is important to gain a thorough understanding of its elements to appreciate fully training planning as it is done by many coaches today.

Periodization Of Training (Soviet Style)

In essence, periodization involves dividing the training process into periods which have different goals, lengths and training contents. The classic model of periodization suggests that training should be planned across the span of several months or years and should move from the general to the specific in preparation for major competitions. Specifically, the training of an athlete should be divided into distinct phases or “periods,” each having an objective of eliciting a certain response. In most periodization models, training is divided into three periods in the following order (although there are often subdivisions within these periods): preparatory, competitive and transitional.

The preparatory period is generally several weeks to several months (although for very young athletes it may last for a period of years). It tends to focus on general aspects of physical conditioning, injury rehabilitation and the correction of technical flaws. Naturally, the content of the training varies with the sport, but the general principle is that a larger quantity and variety of training are done during the preparatory period than during any other period.

In the sport of weightlifting, the tendency during this period is to do fewer of the competitive lifts and more of the lifts that are similar to them (e.g., power snatch and hang snatch) and to emphasize the development of strength and perhaps particular areas of technique in which the lifter is deficient. Some trainers emphasize developing the more general athletic characteristics of the athlete during this period (e.g., through running and jumping). There is also a tendency to perform more repetitions in exercises during the preparatory period than in the competitive period and thereby to have a lower absolute intensity (i.e., weight on the bar) in training, at least on the same exercises. (The plan often calls for an even lower absolute intensity than would otherwise be necessitated by the greater number of repetitions per set.) The objective of this period is not only to develop special qualities in the athlete which will ultimately enhance performance in competition, but also to provide mental and physical variety in the training stimulus.

During the competitive period of training, the athletes begin to approximate more closely competitive conditions in training. In weightlifting training the competitive period of training focuses more on the competitive lifts than on assistance exercises (at least relative to the mix of these exercises during the preparatory period). Technique is emphasized, repetitions tend to be lower (so the average weights lifted tend to be higher in each exercise) and competitive lifts make up a greater share of the total lifts that are performed. Here the emphasis is on preparing the athlete in every way for an upcoming major (for that athlete) competition, which is typically timed so that it falls at the end of the competitive period. During the competitive period there are often trial or “control” competitions, which are designed to permit the athlete to practice performing under competitive conditions with the typical aim of having the athlete’s peak performance occur at the final competition of the competitive period.

Finally, there is the transitional period. As its name implies, it is a period of transition to a new preparatory period of training. Its purpose is to assure that the athlete has both mentally and physically recuperated from the rigors of the competitive cycle so that the preparatory phase of training can begin once again. During this period any nagging injuries that may have developed during the competitive period are attended to, and physical activities of a general nature tend to be undertaken. Exercises related to the athlete’s sport are not necessarily discontinued (although they are reduced in terms of the overall volume and intensity of the training effort). These transitional periods may be as long as a month or two for very young athletes, but they decrease in length as the athlete matures. (High level athletes rarely have more than two consecutive weeks a year of such training.)

In trying to explain the conceptual underpinnings of the classic periodization model, some coaches have described the model as consisting of a period of preparation, followed by a period of adaptation and climaxing with the application of the new capabilities which have developed as a result of the adaptation. While this all sounds reasonable, there are many training approaches, other than the classic periodization model, that are in concert with the notion of preparation, followed by adaptation, followed by application. As a consequence, the classic periodization model is not without its critics.

During a recent IWF-sponsored symposium in Olympia, Greece, Bulgarian professor Dimitar Gjurkow proposed a change in the nomenclature and characterization of long term planning. First he proposed that the concept of an annual cycle be “doubted” when it is not connected to a sport that has seasons, because each training cycle within the year (he suggests three a year) is based on the prior cycle more than it is the annual plan. Gjurkow argued that the concepts of preparatory and transitive periods are inappropriate. He maintained that the transitive period is not the end of one but, rather, the beginning of a new one (a beginning that a lifter would not undertake if he or she was not planning to continue his or her career). He also asserted that the term “preparatory” is a misnomer because all training amounts to preparation for competition. It is difficult to disagree with any of these criticisms of the classic periodization model.

Gjurkow recommends the following cycle structure. First, there is a “period of active rest” (the former transitional period). Second, there is a period of “recuperation” (or the gradual resumption of more conventional training), during which the lifter is once again acclimating to the normal training load. Third, there is the basic training period (formerly the preparatory period). Finally, there is the pre-competition phase (formerly the competitive phase). Unfortunately, while Gjurkow’s proposed new labels appear reasonable at first, there are at least as many problems with his proposed periodization terminology as with the existing nomenclature. For example, why refer to a period as one of recuperation (an obvious reference to a prior period from which one is recuperating) when the recuperation period involves reconditioning the body to accept the higher training loads? Similarly, why call the period immediately before the competition the pre-competitive phase when in fact all of the training performed prior to the competition (active rest, recuperation and basic) is in some sense pre-competitive? Perhaps the terms active rest, reconditioning, training and peaking would be more appropriate to explain Gjurkow’s proposed periods.

I have not introduced Gjurkow’s proposal to advocate it or to refute the existing terms or concept of periodization. Rather, the point is to show that the preparatory, competitive and transitional periods are not “carved in stone” as the only way to plan or to reference what is going on in the periodization concept. The concept easily allows for many variations (although the richness of the possible variations has not yet been fully explored).

This concept of focusing on different aspects of training during different periods of the year (or even over an athlete’s career) has probably been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The form has changed and has been greatly refined during the second half of this century, and particular emphasis on this kind of training has manifested itself over the last thirty years. Today, it is virtually dogma. To question it is considered radical. But in my opinion it is high time to be a radical with respect to the concept of periodization.

One reason to question the classic periodization model is that, for all of its popularity and acceptance, the efficacy of periodization (as characterized by the traditional three cycles discussed above) has never been proven. It is true that most of the world’s top athletes use it, but then so do many of the world’s worst athletes. Just as the fact that most of the “qualified” doctors in the Western world once cauterized wounds with hot oil or bled their patients with leeches did not mean that such procedures were medically effective, so use of the classic periodization model by many coaches and athletes does not prove its efficacy.

This is not to say that periodization does not work. It is just that such training (as it is currently structured by many trainers) has not been proven to be the most effective training method. Nor is it based on a clear and unambiguous foundation of underlying scientific theory. (Hans Selye, often alluded to as the philosophical father of periodization, would probably have laughed if he had heard that his theory gave specific support to a particular form of periodization, although his work, and other knowledge that we have of the training process certainly suggest that some form of variation in training loads over time is appropriate.) In addition, there are no proven theories of biological rhythms that support periodization as it is performed today.

Again, this is not to say that periodization is not an effective means for training athletes. Rather, the intention of this discussion is to convey the idea that there is no reason to believe that periodization (at least as it is most often practiced) need be accepted as a given of training in the way that concepts like specificity of training or overload are today. (The concept of variability of training probably should have a status similar to that of the concepts of overload and specificity when it comes to workout planning.)

Another reason for questioning the effectiveness of the standard version of periodization is the proven principle of specificity of training. If muscles are trained most effectively with exercises and techniques that most resemble those of the events in which the athlete will compete, why is it necessarily beneficial to spend long periods avoiding or de-emphasizing those exercises or techniques? There may be reasons (I cannot think of any), but they have certainly not yet been fully developed or proven. For instance, it has never been proven that a large volume of training necessarily leads to better long term development of strength (i.e., that a foundation of large workloads necessarily leads to the potential for tremendous strength development). If such a theory were true, we would have only to search for the ditch diggers and other manual laborers of the world (who have devoted their lives to one large volume, preparatory period) and give them some competitive training.

Since strength training fits into a category of adaptation that requires frequent repetition of a stimulus to maintain or enhance the training effect, there is no basis for assuming that a capacity developed earlier in the training cycle will be sustained at an appropriate level to contribute to performance at a later stage in the cycle. (Detraining occurs rather quickly.) This is particularly true if the capacity developed during one period is not trained during a subsequent one. Again, this is not to say that having “periods” in training is a mistake, merely that periods as they are widely known and applied today should not be considered sacrosanct.

Another reason for questioning the efficacy of the classic periodization model is the enormous practical evidence that coaches who use periodization have collected (even if they themselves do not always see the importance of that evidence). One brief example should serve to support my point. I can recall hearing a very well known and respected coach lecturing on training methods some years ago. During the course of his presentation, he stressed the importance of a more or less classic approach to periodization. He spent much time explaining how the complex structure of his program was necessary in order for his athletes to achieve their absolute peak condition during the most important competition of the year. In a very minor reference during his presentation, he indicated that every athlete in his program made all of their personal best lifts during the preparatory period. Apparently, it had never occurred to this coach to question the value of his competitive period despite the fact that his athletes never made improvements in performance during such periods!

Why has today’s version of the periodization concept been accepted so widely and seemingly without much question? There are at least several reasons, some of them good and some of them bad. One reason is that some forms of periodization work better than many forms of short term planning. Another reason is that variety is often appreciated by athletes in training. Performing the same exercises over and over can become monotonous. Periodization can offer a welcome break from the monotony, so athletes tend to like it.

Periodization can also make the process of planning an athlete’s training easier. A coach does not need to do as much analysis of an athlete’s training when its effectiveness is not tested very often. In addition, anyone can do broad brush planning and call it periodization. It is simple, easy and foolproof; to make an impressive plan, just pile on the volume and exercises during the preparatory period and cut things back during the competitive period, and you will have a plan that looks good on paper.

Still another reason for the acceptance of periodization is its natural fit within competitive seasons and the idea that it assists the athlete in peaking, because all training appears structured (appropriately) around the competitive season.

Finally, as we suggested earlier, the concept of periodization has supposedly been given scientific support by the theories of Hans Selye (a man whose identification of the “general adaptation syndrome” was considered a breakthrough in biological science). In essence, Selye found that when a very wide variety of stressors are applied to the body, the body responds in the same general way. First, there is an alarm stage in which the body reacts to the stressor in order to minimize its negative effects on the body. Then the body goes through a stage of resistance in which it attempts to adapt to the stressor. Finally, if the stressor is strong enough and is not withdrawn, the body’s defenses and adaptive capabilities may be overrun, and a stage of exhaustion in which the body succumbs to the onslaughts of the stressor, occurs. Brilliant as it might have been, Selye’s work gives only very limited support to the idea of periodization. If the body cannot withstand continual stress, then stress must be applied at intervals. This much Selye’s work suggests. But to claim that Selye’s work supports preparatory and competitive periods and the like or that it even suggests the use of a macrocycle is more than a “stretch” of Selye’s theory; it is a nearly complete “leap of faith.”

Research in Eastern Europe has reportedly supported the use of various periodization models, and supposedly a scientific rationale for a specific version of periodization has been supplied by research in the West. For example, a number of weight training experts have pointed to a 1981 study by Stone, et al., as “proof” that periodization is superior to conventional forms of training for building strength. In the study Stone’s group compared the effectiveness of three sets of six repetitions in several exercises with a program which involved decreasing the number of reps over the training period while increasing the weight lifted. Better results were achieved, particularly in certain exercises, by the group that used “periodization.” However, there are several reasons to be careful in interpreting the results of such a study.

First, the study only continued for a period of six weeks. What would have happened over longer periods (like the months or years that it takes to develop high strength level or complete a full blown periodized training plan)? What would have happened if the non-periodization athletes had trained using one set or three reps or a pyramid of alternated light and heavy workouts? Would they have performed better than the athletes doing the periodization? Does merely cutting reps and increasing the weights constitute periodization as it is currently understood? The answer to all of these questions and many similar ones is: “We can’t say for sure.”

This is not to say that the Stone study was not pathbreaking or useful. It was, after all, probably the first study that attempted to compare a training model used by many weight trainers with any form of periodized training. And it is surely to be commended for that effort. However, I am sure that neither Dr. Stone nor his colleagues would agree that their study (nor the few similar and limited studies that followed) “proved” the effectiveness of periodization. Rather, they would probably say that such studies suggest that such training methods may have promise and bear further study (and they might, on a personal level, adopt these methods in their training of athletes). Nevertheless, the popularizers of periodization would have us believe that the book has been closed on this subject and that whatever version of periodization they espouse represents the last word.

There does appear to be much truth in the periodization concept (as there is in many concepts that do not necessarily represent the “final solution”). For one thing, variety can indeed be a valuable training stimulus (on psychological and physical levels), and variation in the intensity of training is clearly very important in assuring long term progress). Periodization is also supported by the fact that when a lifter performs resistance training in an effective manner, at least two major physical capacities can be improved. One is physical strength and the other is work capacity. These two qualities are related, but the extent and nature of that relationship is not fully understood. Training to improve either quality clearly stresses the body’s adaptive capabilities. If an athlete is training both qualities and then reduces the training on one, there is a period during which the body, now able to devote its adaptive recuperative energies to developing one quality, seems to spurt ahead in the development (or at least the expression) of that quality. Moreover, the other quality enjoys a period during which it is sustained at its previous level (partly because it takes some time for the training effect to be lost and partly because whatever other training is continued, it has some effect on maintaining that quality as well).

A parallel can be drawn here with the case of the injured athlete who, during the period of resting the injured area, often reports a sudden spurt in the capabilities of a non-injured area. The body is suddenly expending its entire adaptive energy to that one area with resulting progress. However, this process seems to be of a limited duration. After a time the body adapts to the new overall demands placed on it, and progress returns to a more normal rate (especially if the athlete concludes that his or her newfound energy can be applied with benefit by increasing the amount of training that the athlete does on the injured area). Unfortunately, during the process of truly long term periodization, the advantages that arise out of the body’s growth spurt when focusing on fewer capacities may be long gone by the time the cycle ends.

In summary, the concept of periodization has significant merit, but the classic periodization model is seriously flawed. However, revised models of periodization can be very useful. As is the case with so many aspects of coaching, the “devil is in the details” (as are the keys to all successful planning). The real question is: “What kinds of training variations work best, and how can long and short term planning be effectively integrated?” In the sections that follow, we will focus on an extension of the concepts of planning and on the many details that make for successful planning. We will begin by looking at the “Macrocycle, the starting point of long term planning models.” However, before beginning the presentation of the macrocycle, the mesocycle and the microcycle, it is important to include a cautionary note.

Much of what is being presented in the next sections is a reflection of the current “state of the art” in training theory and practice, and this makes sense. When planning to enter any field of endeavor, it makes sense to look at what the top performers are doing. It would, after all, be foolish to ignore the lessons that have been learned through arduous trial and error by the leading members of the field (e.g., practicing athletes and coaches in the field of weightlifting). But it would be equally foolish to assume that everything the champions (or their coaches) do has been learned by trial and error (i.e., is based on sound personal experience), or that the quality of every athlete’s experiences and the evaluation of those experiences have been the same. More often than not, the established “wisdom” in a given field is a combination of science, rigorous clinical experience (i.e., in the gym), working hypotheses, that have been accepted as sensible, pure imitation of other athletes and unconscious actions. There is no way to tell one from the other by mere observation. Even questioning the athlete and/or coach involved is not reliable, because they may be unable or even too embarrassed to provide entirely accurate explanations of their rationales for doing what they do.

The great breakthroughs that have been made in weightlifting training, and in all other fields of human endeavor, have been made by those who were willing to question and improve upon existing “knowledge.” In contrast, the great blunders and follies of human history have been made by those who ignored existing knowledge. Therefore, challenging the existing body of knowledge for the sake of the challenge is a serious mistake, rivaled only by accepting everything the “experts” in a given field have to say because they are experts. The key to navigating successfully between these two potentially disastrous alternatives is to discover the basis for the beliefs that are currently held and the degree of certainty that can be properly assigned to the veracity of each belief. If the beliefs can withstand careful scrutiny, their basis can be described as “scientific” in the broadest meaning of that term. If all the known facts support a particular theory, and none contradicts it, it is appropriate to apply it until and unless contradictory evidence emerges. If the degree of certainty in a given training method or technique the belief is relatively high, then spending a great deal of time questioning that method may be fruitless.

In contrast, if the theory is not scientifically based, no particular weight should be attached to it, regardless of who generated it or who follows it. Scientific in this context does not necessarily mean proven in a laboratory but, rather, established by carefully manipulating variables in a clinical (i.e., real world) setting. If the degree of certainty that can reasonably be attached to a given method lies between those two extremes (i.e., between contextual certainty and mere speculation), the belief may properly be regarded as only provisionally accepted and subject to further consideration and testing. (That may not be a priority if the issue under consideration is not currently causing a problem or is not a significant limiting factor in an athletes progress.)

To give just one example of a provisional belief, consider the notion of studying the physical characteristics of weightlifting champions to assist in the selection of future weightlifters. Such study may indeed ultimately reveal some fundamental characteristics that are shared by all of the subjects and are not common in the general population, but for the most part the characteristics identified so far either do not appear to be very exclusive or may have been developed by training. True genetic advantages (or at least insurmountable disadvantages) have not as yet been revealed by the relatively crude methods that we currently have at our disposal. It must be remembered that even when apparently distinguishing features between champions and also-rans have been identified, they may well have been the result of previous selection (particularly when those features are less than universal in nature). In such a case the characteristic identified might be necessary but not sufficient, or sufficient but not necessary, to develop a champion.

In order to increase the likelihood that a fundamental trait has been identified, a study would have to test non-weightlifters as well as those who have trained seriously and failed to achieve satisfactory results. Even such a study would not approach certainty, because those sampled had been successful or not at the then prevailing level of training knowledge and practice; perhaps other training and/or nutritional methods would have helped the poorer performers to equal the results of today’s better performers.

This is not to say that there are no traits that give certain athletes advantages over others; there most certainly are. The point is that we do not currently know very much, and the claim that we are has probably caused as many potential champions to be missed as to be selected (and this does not consider the psychological damage some of these spurious theories may have done to potential champions). Consequently, we must be very careful to assure that we do not fall into the self-fulfilling prophesy: look at the champs, see how they train and what traits they possess, then merely repeat the selection of such people and apply the same training methods (i.e., look for people who tolerate the prescribed training instead of optimizing the training of each of each athlete). Therefore, the reader is encouraged to evaluate what follows with a critical and active mind instead of merely digesting all of it as “gospel.”

The Macrocycle

The classic macrocycle can be defined as a unit of training that includes at least one (or more) of each of the three training periods (preparatory, competitive and transitional). Macrocycles can be from several months to several years in duration, but cycles that are longer than a year are generally viewed as two or more macrocycles, one built upon the other.

For many years it was virtually an article of faith in workout planning that the macrocycle should consist of a year or more. Most sports (including weightlifting) have some kind of annual cycle. An athlete wants to “peak” at the most important competition of the year, and he or she certainly cannot maintain the very highest level of performance year round. Therefore, why not plan training in accordance with an annual structure (or, in the case of athletes who are involved in Olympic sports, in four year cycles)?

The most obvious answer is that it is difficult to predict an athlete’s response to training across a period of several months, let alone several years. Most coaches who have actually tried to apply very long term plans soon discovered this through hard experience. This does not mean that all long term planning is futile. It is actually be a very useful tool in the arsenal of the coach who wishes to optimize the planning process, but it is clearly not sufficient.

In recent years, there has been a somewhat subtle but significant change in the thinking of many coaches who use classical periodization in their training planning. It is a change in a direction I consider to be very positive. That direction has been away from the very long term planning on at least two levels. The first is that of the planning horizon itself. Four year plans, at least for advanced level athletes, have been losing favor, as the recognition that such plans are very tentative at best has broadened. The second level of change in the macrocycle has been in the lengths of the cycles within the long term plans; they tend to be shorter today. An annual plan with one preparatory, one competitive and one transitional period is fast becoming a thing of the past. An annual plan which encompasses two, three, four, or even more such cycles has become more and more common.

Those who cling to the traditional long term planning concept may argue that only the content and not the concept of long term planning has changed with the advent of shorter cycles. of course, this is not truly the case unless the coach refuses to consider the results of each cycle prior to the athlete’s beginning the next cycle. If the coach does rethink each cycle after the close of the prior one, then the athlete is no longer carrying out one long term plan but, rather, a series of shorter term ones in which the results of each affect the design of the succeeding ones (although an effort may be made to remain within the framework of an annual plan as well).

Within the context of training cycles, there has also been a movement toward reducing the degree of difference in the content of the training that takes place across the cycles. While with long cycles the content of the training at two different stages of the cycle tends to be very different, within short cycles the differences in the content of the training during the preparatory and competitive cycles tend to be a matter of degree more than kind. There is simply no time for the lifter to change content dramatically within short cycles.

It is now rather widely acknowledged that very high level athletes require greater variety in the loads that they lift from workout to workout than do lower level athletes, while periods of significantly lighter loads are not generally performed for any significant length of time by advanced athletes. High level athletes simply cannot afford to go without a training stimulus for any extended period of time.

While some of these changes in periodization practice may not have been the result of a completely conscious intent on the part of cycle planners as they moved from longer to shorter cycles, the effect has been the same. Moreover, I believe that these have, for the most part, been positive developments that have a very sound theoretical and practical basis. The body readily adapts to imposed exercise stress. It also responds nearly as well to lack of exercise stress (by detraining). There is also a relationship between the length of the period during which training occurred and the length of the period for which an adaptation is retained. The longer the period of training, the greater is the tendency for the training effect to be preserved.

Therefore, if during an exercise cycle a certain training effect is generated, that effect will not be preserved to any significant degree months (or even weeks) later, unless the lifter continues to apply (at least occasionally) a stimulus similar to the one that created the training effect. For example, if the lifter engaged in cardiovascular training from October through December during an old style yearly cycle, there would be virtually no remaining training effect during the competitive cycle in the period from June through August(unless the lifter continued such training through most of the competitive period). The primary exception to this rule is in the area of learning. Learned capabilities, such as concepts of how to perform a lift, motor skills, and probably the ability to recruit muscle fibers, are likely to be partially, if not fully, retained for extended periods with little or no continued rehearsal.

Therefore, designing cycles with the intention of building a physiological capability and then assuming that this new capability will be retained during a future period in which no continuing training for that type of capability takes place is virtually pointless. In order to avoid any detraining effect, the training that developed a given capability must be continued, at least on a maintenance basis, up to the point (or nearly so) at which it will be needed. This is why a change in training emphasis can be useful, but a change in the kind of training done is likely to be less so.

This is not to say that a lifter may not require regular breaks from the normal training stimulus, so that the body can have a respite to recuperate from training stress. Special training modifications may be required if the lifter becomes overtrained or injured. But such an “active rest” should be seen as a period during which recuperation is taking place, not a period during which conditioning is being done for some competition six months away.

The design of annual cycles can vary significantly from coach to coach. The structure of an annual cycle also tends to vary with the developmental level of the lifter (a point that will be discussed in greater detail in the next section of this chapter). The general pattern is to identify several competitions during the year and to build cycles around those competitions, so that there is a preparatory period with generally higher volumes, more exercise variety, and higher repetitions per set. During such a period, there is an emphasis on strengthening the athlete, improving the athlete’s condition and correcting specific technique flaws. The athlete then moves into a competitive phase during which intensity is gradually increased and volume of training is decreased. There is greater emphasis on the classical lifts and a reduction in the repetitions per set during this period. Immediately before the competition, both intensity and volume fall as the athlete attempts to “peak” for the day of the competition.

After the competition (if it is a very important one in the overall plan), the athlete generally has a period of training (the transitive period) in which the volume and intensity are relatively low in comparison with the rest of the year. The objective here is to give the athlete a period of active rest (i.e., light activity), during which any injuries have an opportunity to heal, any overtraining will have a chance to resolve itself and the athlete can have a break from the training stimulus. In this way the athlete can enter the next preparatory cycle refreshed and enthusiastic about the challenges which lie ahead.

Analysts in the former Soviet Union have performed extensive research in the area of periodization as it applies to weightlifting and have developed a number of guidelines for the content of preparatory and competitive periods. These guidelines include suggestions for variations in the monthly loads, the monthly intensities and the exercise content of months within the competitive and preparatory periods. These guidelines have been further refined to the point where they are specific to the athlete’s level of development. Therefore, before presenting any of the recommendations that have been made with respect to the content of various training periods, let us look at the stages that is exist in a typical athlete’s career.

Plans for Long Term Development

In the past several years, a great deal of attention has been paid in the weightlifting literature of Eastern Europe to the subject of the long term development (i.e., over a period of several years or more) of young athletes. This approach to planning must be contrasted with what was being done under some of the older periodization models, which tried to apply long term plans to mature athletes. Plans for long term development are not very long macrocycles because they are presenting a sequence of development that will not be repeated within the career of the same athlete. (They are not cycles at all but, rather, a plan for a developmental process.)

Authors Medvedyev, Dvorkin, Roman and Gjurkow, to name a few, have presented plans for the long term development of young weightlifters. Extracts of their methods will be presented here in order to acquaint the reader with some of the thinking that is going on in this area. In order to gain a more complete understanding of what these and other theorists have to say regarding the long term development of young weightlifters, the reader is encouraged to read their original works (which are listed in the Bibliography).

The reader is also encouraged to cast as critical eye on all of the systems presented, because while they each have many very sensible elements, they also have many aspects which can and should be brought into question. More importantly, any multi-year system suffers from the same shortcoming that any system of long  term training has; no trainer can anticipate the response any individual athlete will have to any system, even in the short term. Any system that presents a long term plan necessarily increases (exponentially) the likelihood that the system will fall out of sync with the lifter’s needs at some point (a point which I am sure most of the developers of multi-year systems would concede).

My purpose in presenting these systems is not to say that any of them can or should be followed as written. Rather, the systems are presented for the purpose of suggesting what some of today’s thinking is with regard to the general direction of a young lifter’s development and how many of the theorists of Eastern Europe (and by extension many other parts of the world, including the United States) view this issue. My purpose is also to point out that young athletes should never be expected to follow the training methods of advanced lifters without a long period of careful preparation.

Because so much of the material that follows provides programming guidelines that are related to the “classification level” of the athlete, let us explain the classification levels that were established in the former Soviet Union. These standards provided a total for each weight category and were established for each Olympiad; the standards did not change from 1988 to 1992. Athletes received various incentives for achieving each level (with the greatest incentives reserved for those who reached the highest levels). The standards ran from Class III (the lowest) to Master of Sport International Class (MSIC, the highest classification). Competitors in the latter class were considered ready to challenge the best in the world (although, due to the competitiveness of weightlifting in the former Soviet Union, an athlete could make the MSIC standard and still never be able to represent the Soviet Union in a World or European Championships. A table summarizing the classification standards for Classes II through MSIC appear in Table 1.

In his book A System of Multi-Year Training in Weightlifting, A. Medvedyev, former World Champion and coach of the Soviet National Team, outlines his vision of the development process of the typical high level weightlifter. Medvedyev’s highly structured long term plan for an athlete’s development reflects two processes that are taking place in the athlete at the same time: maturation and adaptations to training. This is because his plan assumes that most athletes will begin their specialized training at roughly the same age. (Selection of athletes is assumed to take place at around the age of twelve, and actual specialized training is expected to begin between the ages of thirteen and fourteen.) Consequently, athletes are maturing and adapting to training at the same time; if an athlete were to begin several years later, the training effect would take place, but the maturation would have essentially been completed.

It should be noted that although both Medvedyev and Bulgarian sources talk about athletes beginning their training in the prepubescent period, R. Roman, in analyzing a group of 131 highly qualified weightlifters who competed between 1979 and 1982, found that the average age of starting weightlifting was fifteen, plus or minus two years. (Athletes in lighter weight classes began training as late as age nineteen). Therefore, although this relatively small sample cannot be considered conclusive, it would appear that “ideal” starting ages and actual starting ages may be quite different, even in Eastern Europe.

Medvedyev divides the developmental process into four general stages: beginner/selection, educational training, formation of sport mastery (or, as he refers to it, “sport perfectioning”) and the achievement of high sport mastery. The beginner stage generally lasts for one year or more and emphasizes general physical preparation (general conditioning of the athlete via such activities as running, jumping, playing soccer, etc.), teaching the fundamentals of technique and evaluating the mental and physical qualities of the athletes. During this stage the coach is also trying to develop the athlete’s love for the sport, a love that will be needed to see the lifter through the training that must occur if the athlete is to achieve true sport mastery. General physical training comprises approximately 40% of total training time at this stage, as the development of general physical qualities is being stressed.

The second or educational phase lasts for a period of approximately three to four years. During this time the young athlete passes through several classification levels, until the athlete has reached the level of Candidate Master of Sport (CMS). In the educational phase, the development of correct technique and precision in executing that technique is emphasized, while the volume of training is steadily increased and an ever increasing portion of the athlete’s training is devoted to specialization on weightlifting (and progressively less to general physical preparation).

The third stage of development represents true specialization on weightlifting training and is designed to raise the performance of the athlete to the Master of Sport level and beyond. It generally requires up an additional two to three years for the athlete to reach this stage of development. Developing the very highest levels of technical skill and strength and power is emphasized during this period. General physical training drops to an insignificant level as full sport specialization takes place.

It is at the end of this stage that athletes enter the critical high sport mastery level of development and future champions emerge and go on to success on a national and international level.

Overall, Olympians typically require three to four years to reach the Master of Sport level, five to ten years to make the national team. (The average is seven years, with lighter lifters reaching a high level faster than heavier lifters.) R. Roman found that the rate of progress of record holders and other highly qualified athletes was similar during the first four years of training, but that those who achieved higher results continued their rapid rate of progress in the fifth year, while the other athletes began to experience slower progress at that point. The number of years that a lifter requires to reach the highest levels of development is related to the age at which the athlete began training and to the size of the lifter. Athletes who are lighter in body weight and start later in life generally require fewer years to reach their potential than the average athlete. In contrast, athletes who begin at a young age and who will ultimately lift in the heaviest weight classes take longer to develop.

Although smaller athletes generally reach their highest levels of performance earlier than heavier athletes, there is a trade-off in this advantage. Progress tends to level off for athletes in the lightest weight classes after twelve years of training, but in the heaviest weight classes this does not tend to occur until after fifteen to sixteen years. Athletes who move up a weight class after six or seven years (or sooner) improve their results substantially (from 20 kg. to 50 kg. on average) and extend the period during which progress occurs.

Soviet research suggests that during a lifter’s development to a high level of ability, the athlete increases both the volume and intensity of his or her training. Both the total weight lifted in training sessions and the average weight on the bar increase. After this period of rapid development, the total volume lifted tends to stabilize or even diminish, while the intensity of the training continues to increase (in terms of average weight lifted, not necessarily in terms of percentages of maximum lifted or number of reps performed in the maximum and submaximum repetition zones).

Some research performed in the USSR indicates that an increase of 3.5 kg. in the average weight lifted (assuming a relatively fixed mix of exercises) yields a 10 kg. improvement in the total. While the correlation here makes sense, there is a question regarding the causal link. Is the athlete able to lift more in the total because the average training load has been increased or because his or her capabilities have improved?

In 1980 Roman recommended a distribution of lifts among exercises based on the athlete’s classification, with differences in distribution during preparatory and competitive periods (see Table 2). For example, a 10 in the row labeled “snatch” means 10% of the lifter’s total training volume should be devoted to snatches).

It can be seen in Table 2 that differences in the distribution of exercises during the preparatory and competition periods are zero for lifters in lower classifications. These differences become more pronounced (though never large) for more advanced athletes. However, it can be seen that significant differences among lifters in different classifications occur with respect to exercise distribution and total reps.

Lifters in the lower classifications spend approximately 20% of their training time performing the snatch and snatch related exercises, and fully half of that time is spent performing the classic snatch during the competitive and preparatory periods. For Class I and CMS level lifters the ratios of classic snatches to total snatch related exercises decline to 45% and 43% respectively during the competitive and preparatory periods. (For MS level lifters, the ratios are 40% and 38%.) Roman indicates that less qualified athletes spend 44% of the time they devote to cleaning to the classic clean itself, while highly qualified athletes spend only 38% of their time doing classic cleans.

In contrast, lower level athletes spend 68% of the time that they perform jerk related exercises in the classic jerk, with highly qualified athletes spending 46% of their time on the classic jerk (and a slightly lower percentage of their time during the competitive period). Lifters of higher qualification tend to spend a little more training time doing high pulls, with proportional reductions in other lifts. They also spend less time on the clean and jerk and more time doing separate cleans and jerk and related exercises. Subsequent studies have supported distributions of training loads similar to these, although some writers suggest performing more snatch pulls and fewer clean pulls.

The average monthly loads (in terms of numbers of repetitions performed) recommended by Medvedyev for Novices, Class III, II, I, Candidate Master of Sport (CMS), Master of Sport (MS) and Master of Sport International Class (MSIC) are, respectively: 700, 900, 1000, 1100, 1250 and 1700. (He acknowledges that individual differences can lead to variations from these recommendations by as much as 40%.) These average loads vary with the period of training. During preparatory and competitive periods, respectively, loads are approximately: 1000/700 for Class III; 1200/900 for Class II; 1400/1000 for Class I; 1600/1100 for CMS; 1800/1200 for MS; and 2000/1300 for MSIC. Fluctuations in monthly volume (as a percentage of average volume) tend to be similar among athletes in different classifications but fluctuations in the absolute number of reps are larger for more highly qualified athletes. The number of lifts performed tends to be higher than the averages presented above for athletes in lighter weight classes and lower for athletes in heavier weight classes. Relative intensities also tend to be higher for athletes in the lower body weight classes, but heavier lifters seem to achieve the same training effect with smaller relative intensities.

The number of lifts in the highest zones tends to be small for beginners and peaks at the MS level. The highest level athletes (above MS) show a decline (relative to the MS level athletes) in the highest number of lifts in the maximum and submaximum zones.

On the basis of 7,000 reps in the first year of training, Medvedyev recommends an annual growth in loading of from 10% to 30% during the first 7 years of training. This would lead to loads in the seventh year of between 12,400 and 33, 800 (the former if loads grow by 10% each year and the latter if they grow by 30% each year). It should be recognized that loads will not necessarily increase by the same percentage each year and that attempts to force the loading up excessively are likely to result in the lifter’s failing to reach his or her true potential (for reasons such as overtraining and/or the development of overuse injuries).

The range of annual reps that a coach tries to achieve is in part a function of the coach’s training philosophy with regard to management of the training effect. Some coaches strive to apply maximum stress to their athletes primarily when they have reached a state of supercompensation. (The coach permits the athlete to train at lower levels of intensity following a maximum or near maximum effort, so that the next bout of maximum stress occurs when the athlete has adapted or overcompensated and is prepared to perform at a higher level.) Other coaches favor applying successive training stresses to the body before it has fully recuperated from a prior stress. Here the notion is that successive stresses before adaptation occurs will have a stronger cumulative effect in terms of invoking an adaptive response in the athlete’s body. A coach who subscribes to the full recuperation approach will not train his or her athletes as hard and will have more easy days than will the coach who believes in the value of cumulative stresses.

 During the transition period training is reduced substantially. Total breaks from bar training of from two to eight weeks a year are permitted (with beginners tending to be at the longer part of the range and more advanced lifters at the shorter). These rest periods tend to be coordinated with the length of the macrocycle (a six-month cycle will result in breaks during two transition periods, while an annual cycle will provide one longer break). A light “unloading” week is generally provided every one to two months.

As an example, consider the monthly volume arrangement that Roman suggests for athletes of various classifications shown in Table 3.

Roman has also offered a plan for athlete development with the monthly load distributions linked to the athlete’s level of development as shown in Table 4. (The C which appears after the number of lifts in some months symbolizes a competition month, while a P symbolizes a preparatory month and a GPP symbolizes a month of general physical preparation).

It can be noted that the load is smaller during the second half of the year than during the first half. (Roman suggests that the lifter is becoming fatigued from the large load employed during the first half of the year and can only withstand smaller loads during the second half.) GPP indicates that the focus of the month’s training is on general physical preparation (e.g., non-barbell conditioning exercises and remedial exercises, although some athletes use the bar during such a period).

In depicting the development of the elite athlete, Medvedyev uses a somewhat different method. He offers a table that summarizes the athlete’s development on the basis of somewhat different parameters than those used by Roman (see Table 5).

In his book Weightlifting And Age, L.S. Dvorkin has made recommendations for training athletes aged 11-16, as shown in Table 6.

In training the young athlete, Dvorkin recommends two-hour workouts three times a week for the first 6 months. In the first of those workouts, 36 minutes is devoted to training with the bar (18 minutes each of snatching and squatting). In the second workout the athlete trains for 60 minutes with the bar (20 minutes each of the C&J, the overhead squat and the bench press). In the third workout the athlete also trains for 60 minutes with the bar (20 minutes each of power snatches, an isometric version of the squat and an isometric version of the bench press). During the period from 6 to 18 months of training, the total time of training increases by 40 minutes per week (the athlete is still training 3 times a week), and the amount of time spent with the bar increases to approximately 3 hours a week. During the 18 to 24 months, total training time remains about the same, but the time spent lifting increases to just over 4 hours per week.

How does the distribution of training loads across zones change as the athlete matures and improves his or her abilities? When the strongest lifters in the Soviet Union were studied in 1980, it was found that, on average, 19% of their training was with weights in the 50% to 60% range; 28% of their reps were in the 61% to 70% range; 34% were in the 71% to 90% range; 15% were in the 81% to 90% range; and 4% were in the 91% to 100% range, with a total of 500 lifts being performed in the classic lifts in one month. This load distribution reveals that the majority of lifts are in the middle zones, with fewer lifts being performed at the upper or lower zones. However, Soviet researchers have noted that there are significant differences among lifters in the distribution of loads. Some perform more lifts in the middle and lower zones and fewer in the higher zones, while others perform more lifts in the higher zones and fewer in the lower zones.

The tables that are often used to depict changes in an athlete’s training programs as the athlete matures and becomes more accomplished can omit other important changes that are taking place in the athlete’s training regimen. For example, in addition to changing the monthly loads as an athlete develops, Medvedyev also believes in changing the number of exercises the athlete employs in his or her training. Early in the educational training phase, lifters practice up to 23 exercises. The number of exercises is gradually increased to 37 by the fourth year of training, 52 in the fifth year, 62 in the sixth year, 70 in the seventh year, 79 in the eighth year, 84 in the ninth year and to more than 100 exercises after that.

While the number of total lifts is increasing substantially during this growth in the complex of exercises, the number of lifts in the classical exercises is falling both as a percentage of the total lifts and in absolute terms. For example, Medvedyev talks about a Class II lifter who performs approximately 9000 lifts a year, spending 7% of his or her time on the classic snatch and 12% on the clean and/or jerk. By the time that lifter has reached the stage of high sport mastery, he or she may be performing more than 20,000 total repetitions, but may be spending only 2% of his or her training time on the classic snatch and an equal amount of time on the C&J. However, the time devoted to exercises related to these lifts (snatches and cleans from the blocks or jerks from behind the neck) is growing dramatically, to the point where they comprise approximately 30% of the training load. According to Medvedyev, methods are changed every three weeks to prevent staleness and to maintain a constant level of stimulus.

In starting an athlete, Medvedyev recommends only the snatch and snatch related exercises and squats be performed during the first week of training. Jerk related exercises are focused on during the second week, and in the third week the clean is the primary exercise.

According to Medvedyev, another change that should occur as the athlete develops is a shift in the training time that the lifter spends on various repetition patterns (see Table 7). The table suggests that the amount of time a highly qualified athlete spends doing higher repetition sets should grow as the athlete becomes more advanced.

It should be noted that Medvedyev would have to be considered at the extreme end of the coaching spectrum in terms of the training variety that he recommends. In contrast, by the end of his coaching career in Bulgaria, Ivan Abadjiev would have to be considered at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of training variety (recommending essentially the power clean and power snatch, the classical exercises and front and back. squats and very low repetitions on all sets in an athlete’s training).

Some of the most interesting differences in training during the preparatory and competitive periods take place with respect to reps with weights 90% and above, so let us spend some additional time in the analysis of what some of the weightlifting literature has to say regarding training in this important area (one in which coaches often differ with respect to their exercise prescriptions). Studies of high level athletes in the former Soviet Union have shown that they perform 10 to 60 lifts a month with maximum and submaximum weights (90% and above) in the average training month. While some of these variations in the total such reps performed are attributable to differences in loading on the same exercises (e.g., the classical lifts) and in the allocation of those maximum efforts across exercises, a greater share is attributable to differences among athletes in the distribution of high intensity efforts among exercises.

For the majority of athletes, 90% and greater efforts in the snatch tend to outnumber such efforts in the C&J by a factor of two to one. (There is speculation that as more athletes separate cleans from jerks in their training, a growing trend at least among some coaches, the number of lifts in these combined exercises may come closer to the number of snatches performed, and the overall number of 90%+ efforts in the clean and jerk will increase.) Overall, many of the athletes who perform more attempts with 90%+ weights do so in non-classical exercises.

Regardless of how many 90%+ reps athletes perform in an average training month, significant variations in the number of maximum and submaximum efforts occur among months, and those differences are related to the period of training. A number of studies have suggested that the number of 90%+ lifts tends to be limited to twenty to thirty during the preparatory period but rises to forty to sixty during the competitive period. Maximums (100% efforts) are typically attempted once or twice a month (but usually not closer than eighteen days before a competition, a minimum of ten to fourteen days out).

Robert Roman recommended that the distribution of loads (in terms of the percentage reps in each intensity zone) during the preparatory and competitive periods be structured as shown in Table 8.

It should be noted that athletes in higher classifications are attempting a smaller number of 90% weights because lifters of lower classifications appear to thrive on more maximum and near maximum attempts than do the highest level athletes. It appears that the number of such attempts follows almost a flattened bell curve distribution in that athletes require and perform few heavy attempts early in their careers, then progressively increase the number of such attempts as their skill and conditioning improve. Ultimately, a large number of maximum attempts are not well tolerated, and the athlete reduces the number (see Tables 9 and 10).

This philosophy would seem to conflict somewhat with the approach of the Bulgarians, who require even the highest level athletes to perform many maximum and near maximum attempts.

The distribution of attempts across zones of intensity for the classic lifts and pulls, as recommended by Medvedyev, appears in Table 11 (Table 12 provides a similar distribution for squats).

In addition to the number of lifts in each zone and the number of lifts with 90% or more of maximum, another indicator that is used in Eastern Europe is the Ki (coefficient of intensity) value (often simply referred to as the Ki value). It is calculated using the following formula: (Average Weight Used During Training X 100) / Total in the Biathlon = K_I.

Most athletes have Ki values in the 35% to 41% range, but there has been little evidence of any close relationship between successful performance and the Ki value. Perhaps this is because the content of the athlete’s training can have such a profound influence on this value. For instance, the athlete who performs many pulls and squats will tend to have a higher Ki value than will an athlete who performs many classical exercises and does a limited number of pulls and squats. In addition, that same athlete might be able to obtain similar results by training with a different content (e.g., a higher proportion of classical lifts). Therefore, the Ki value would be of little use in evaluating the athlete’s training. Similarly, an athlete may tend to use low reps in his or her training of the classic exercises and therefore have a greater ability to handle higher average weights. In such a case the value would be more a reflection of a training trade-off (volume for intensity) than a message of the training stimulus.

In an article in the 1984 Weightlifting Yearbook, N.R. Tonyan and V.G. Grigoryenko proposed what they consider to be a more precise measure of overall training intensity and a better indicator of what to expect in terms of competition results. They believe that the athlete’s results in the snatch or C&J (separately) can be predicted using the following formula: (The Average Weight Used in the Snatch or C&J and related exercises) X 100* / 2 K_I.   (*The snatch includes the snatch, snatch from the hang and snatch from the blocks; the C&J includes the C&J, clean, clean from the hang or blocks and the jerk or power jerk from the racks.)

T. Ajan and L. Baroga, in their book, Weightlifting: Fitness for All Sports, suggest that intensity measures can be refined by dividing volume measures by the athlete’s body weight in order to reflect the influence of body weight on the ability of an athlete to execute a certain load in training. The limitation of such a method is that it relies upon there being a linear relationship between body weight and the capabilities of an athlete. This is clearly not the case; there is a relationship, but it is not nearly that simple. However, although such relationships may not be linear across wide spreads of body weight classes, they may be stable within weight classes, and therefore, this approach can be useful within that context.

Having looked at the prescriptions that have been offered regarding the macrocycle, it is now appropriate to examine what analysts have had to say about the mesocycle. However, before doing so, it is worthwhile to take another look at the developmental process of weightlifters from a somewhat different perspective.

Physiological Changes That Are Taking Place During the Developmental Process

The perspectives on long term planning that have already been presented will enable the planner to see the “big picture” of an athlete’s entire career. However, viewing the long term development of the weightlifter primarily as a process that involves a gradually increasing training load, greater sport specialization (through a wider or narrower selection of bar exercises but also through a diminution of non-weightlifting related exercises) and improved results can be somewhat limiting. Therefore, a more detailed analysis of what is going on during the developmental process can help the coach to understand that process.

Table 13 identifies the important physical characteristics of the weightlifter and describes the kind of development taking place during the various stages of the elite lifter’s career.

As can be seen in Table 13, only certain qualities improve to any significant degree after the beginning and intermediate stages of the lifter’s career. Those qualities are strength from hypertrophy of the contractile elements of muscle tissue, power derived from the athlete’s ability to produce more force (the strength based component of power) and skill. Muscular hypertrophy in the contractile elements of muscle tissue results from the continuing training stimulus that arises from an increase in absolute intensity and a continued supply of the nutrients that facilitate muscle growth. As strength increases, power output does as well, because the lifter can move a heavier object at the same speed as he or she could move a lighter object before (although the athlete may not be able to move a lighter load materially faster than before). Continued practice yields continued, albeit ever smaller, increases in skill (even musicians who have been playing the same instrument for thirty years can detect new levels of skill as they continue to practice).

In contrast, increases in muscle strength and power due to neural factors are more difficult to continue over time. (There is also a change in the character of the improvements as earlier gains stem more from the ability to recruit muscle fibers into concurrent action, while later improvements come more as result of better coordination of the actions of certain muscle groups and overcoming the natural mind/body inhibition against maximal muscle contractions.) The changes that take place in a lifter’s training over time dovetail nicely with these neurological improvements. Early training emphasizes lighter weights and proper technique, which permits the athlete to gradually learn to exert force and to coordinate the action of the muscles in doing so. Later training incorporates more maximum and near maximum efforts which refine an athlete’s ability to generate force and help the athlete to reduce inhibitions against the generation of maximum effort. This more strenuous training also stimulates the hypertrophy that forms the foundation for improvement in the later stages of the lifter’s career. But this more strenuous training only occurs at a time when the athlete has been conditioned to accept a greater level of training effort.

Increases in flexibility are generally insignificant and unimportant after the early stages of a lifter’s career because by that time adequate levels of flexibility have generally been acquired. Speed does not increase much because after a few years of training the lifter has learned to move as quickly as possible under the bar (although it is always important for the athlete to think of moving as quickly as possible under the bar throughout his or her career).

The need for the body to harden to the stresses of training generally presents no problem for the young athlete who is just beginning in weightlifting, because he or she is not strong enough to lift weights that could create overuse injuries (though an improperly supervised beginner may attempt to do so or may incur a traumatic injury from attempting a heavy weight before he or she is technically or physically prepared). In contrast, the concept of work hardening is particularly crucial to the athlete who is becoming a weightlifter after developing his or her physical qualities in another sport. Such an athlete is at particular risk for injury because his or her capabilities permit the athlete to handle relatively heavy weights and/or to withstand a training volume the ordinary beginner could not.

Anaerobic endurance increases as the athlete increases his or her training load. Such an increase is not necessarily required for an increase in the lifter’s performance in every physical quality, but an overall increase in endurance permits the lifter to increase the amount of training he or she can effectively perform and thereby allows the lifter to address more training needs within a given period of time.

Finally, the “work hardening” process is one by which the athlete’s body adapts to the loads involved in lifting and is able to handle them more easily. For example, when certain stresses are placed on the joints, the tissue in those joints responds by toughening and adapting to that stress. The importance of this process cannot be overstressed. An athlete can only withstand the demands of weightlifting if his or her body has been given the chance to adapt to the training loads that are imposed by weightlifting. If the athlete tries to handle heavy weights before the body has had a chance to adapt to the stresses of the sport, injuries can result. The most wonderful aspect of the work hardening process is that the body adapts rapidly to a modest increase in load during the early stages of training. (It is highly receptive to the stimulation that modest loads provide.) Then, as greater training demands become necessary to further stimulate improvements, they are gradually increased in undulating fashion, with lighter and heavier loads being alternated to permit stimulation and recuperation.

Classic examples of athletes in this situation are powerlifters and weight throwers who decide to make the transition to weightlifting. Powerlifters have often become very strong by practicing their sport. Even with very inefficient weightlifting technique they are sometimes able to lift some fairly heavy weights in the classic lifts. Such weights would not present undue stresses to an athlete who had reached that level through the practice of weightlifting, but to the athlete who has no such background the stresses may be more than the athlete can tolerate. They may experience joint pain or injury as a result and blame weightlifting for their problems. The reality is that they have bypassed an important element of the training process and are suffering as a result of that, not because weightlifting is inherently tough on the joints. Similarly, a weight thrower may have developed considerable strength through the weight training that he or she performed. Such an athlete may have even performed partial versions of the classic lifts (e.g., power cleans) in his or her training. A skilled and powerful athlete of this type may be able to handle some fairly heavy weights in the classic lifts their first time out. But the joints of these athletes are generally not prepared to handle such stresses. For instance, while the weight thrower may have developed considerable pulling power via the power clean, his or her knees are not accustomed to the stresses of the full squat position. The athlete can pull a heavy weight to the shoulders in that position, but his or her knees are not conditioned to the task. The end result can be injury.

Therefore, athletes who are engaging in competitive weightlifting for the first time need to go through at least a modified version of the development process in order to harden their bodies to the stresses of weightlifting. (This as also true of a weightlifter who has taken a long layoff from the sport; such an athlete may still remember how to lift a fairly heavy weight, but he or she is not in condition to do so.) If they do go through the development process, they are on the way to becoming a weightlifter. If they do not, they are running a high risk of suffering an injury just when they were beginning to appreciate what a truly wonderful and unique sport weightlifting truly is. The primary value of understanding the kinds of development that can and should take place over time is to use this knowledge in designing training programs for the various stages of an athlete’s career. For example, because increases in flexibility and skill are possible and appropriate during the early stages of training, it is important to emphasize development in these areas in the programs of beginners.

Having examined the developmental process in further detail, let us now return to the subject of planning and consider the conventional wisdom with respect to the planning of training during the mesocycle (the next unit of training after the macrocycle).

Guidelines for the Amount of Volume a Lifter Can Tolerate

One of the basic rules of weightlifting training (or any other kind of training) is that it must reach a certain threshold of volume in order to have training effect. Beyond that minimum threshold, increases in volume can increase the training effect, up to a point. After that point has been reached, further increases in volume or intensity will not increase the training effect proportionally and, if the volume of training is pushed to extremes, it will tear the body down so much that regression will occur instead of progression. Therefore, while an increase in training volume will stimulate an increase in strength, increasing the training volume is neither the only nor necessarily the best way to achieve improved performance.

Although pushing an athlete’s training volume up simply for its own sake (as compared with accomplishing other specific ends by that volume) is seldom a good idea, it is interesting to see where others have been in this regard and what the limits in human ability seem to be in this area. Studies of the volumes handled by elite athletes have been done in many Eastern European countries, particularly the former Soviet Union and Bulgaria (where volume, and many other aspects of weightlifting, may have been pushed further than in any other country in the world).

Clearly the direction of training loads from the 1950s through the 1970s (and, is some cases the 1980s) was in an upward direction. For instance, one study done of Soviet National Teams showed an increase from an average of just under 9,000 reps a year in 1964 to an average of 21,000 reps a year in 1980. In 1972 the average member of the national team trained from three to five times a week, but by the latter half of the 1980s the average number of training sessions had increased to twelve times a week (with most days in the week having multiple training sessions).

At the extreme upper end of volume, average monthly training loads in excess of 4,000 reps (or approximately 50,000 reps a year) have been reported by some high level athletes. (Lifts with weights that are less than 50% or 60% of maximum are not being counted in those totals; some coaches who report lower numbers of reps per year do not count weights that are less than 75% or 80% of the athlete’s maximum.) Average monthly loads of up to 3,000 reps per month have been proposed by a number of highly regarded coaches in recent years as a sort of standard for high level athletes. (Some coaches see such levels as representing upper limits, while others see such levels as standard objectives.) Many elite athletes have thrived on average loads of between 1,000 and 2,000 reps per month. (The actual load in a particular month can be as little as half, or as much as double, the average monthly load for a given year.)

It should be noted that some lifters have performed at the elite level with far lighter loads. For instance, Robert Bednarski, 1969 World Champion and many time world record holder, trained at a volume somewhere in the area of 2,000 to 3,000 reps a year at his peak. Clearly, Bob was at the lower end of the volume spectrum while being at the upper limits of the success spectrum.

Indeed, few athletes can train effectively at the upper or lower load levels mentioned above. The vast majority will benefit from training loads that fall between the extremes cited, and each lifter will have a range within which he or she can function most effectively. This tolerable range can be increased over time if the lifter gradually trains himself or herself to accept a larger load (e.g., increasing the overall load 10% to 30% a year with variations among monthly loads being maintained or increased). An athlete’s tolerable range of loads can also decline because of aging, injury, cumulative fatigue or if the lifter reduces his or her load and sustains it at that lower level over time. The key point to remember is that the relationship between performance and loads tends to be quite limited (except at the extreme ends of the ranges, where training volumes beneath the lower limit will fail to elicit a training effect and volumes beyond the upper limits will lead to overtraining and injury). More is not necessarily better. and it can often be worse.

One final point with respect to loads bears mentioning. First, there has been speculation in the international weightlifting community that the training loads that were handled in the 1970s and 1980s, when anabolic steroid use was at its peak, cannot be achieved under today’s era of drug testing. Therefore, there has been considerable discussion in recent years of training with lesser loads (especially with lower volumes).

The Cuban approach once again demonstrates that there are many ways to “skin” the proverbial cat.

The Monthly Cycle or Mesocycle

The mesocycle that fits within a training macrocycle is generally a training “month.” In athletic circles, a month usually consists of four weeks, but some athletic “months” have as few as three or as many as six weeks. Planning on the basis of actual calendar months is virtually unheard of, because most coaches construct their months out of seven-day training weeks (such weeks fit into 4 or 5-week “months” but not into most calendar months).

The placement of a week into the wider framework is essential for effective workout planning. An athlete who repeats the same training week to week is destined for sub-optimal results. It is appropriate neither to attempt maximums every week nor to train at sub-maximum levels week after week. Training sessions with maximum weights and/or large numbers of lifts with near maximum weights simply cannot be repeated week after week. Training week after week with weights that are well below maximum (at least for the number of reps being performed in a given set) will not lead to optimal rates of improvement (except in the case of the beginner).

Different coaches recognize these facts in different ways. When the Bulgarian team trained under the guidance of Abadjiev, he reportedly most often prescribed three weeks of heavy training followed by an “unloading” week of lower volume and intensity. Most of the programs described in the mainstream literature of the former Soviet Union have far more variety from week to week than Abadjiev’s, with intricate patterns of loading and intensity which are often repeated in successive months. Medvedyev has indicated that most of the weekly variations in loads center around the following distribution (each number represents the percentage of the month’s total load lifted in that week): 35/28/22/15. Naturally, significant variations from such a distribution are recommended by Medvedyev and other authors.

For instance, one common variant is to increase the load from week to week in a four week cycle. So, for example, 14% of the month’s load might be lifted in the first week, 25% in the second, 29% in the third and 32% in the fourth week. Therefore, the first week is akin to an unloading week in terms of volume. Weeks two through four are progressively more difficult.

Another variation begins with a relatively low week of loading (e.g., 14%) and then achieves relatively high loadings in the second and third weeks (e.g., 31% in each week), followed by a medium load in the fourth week (e.g., 24%). A third alternative would be to have a small load in the first week (e.g., 14%), almost double the load in the second week (e.g., 26%), increase it further in the third week (e.g., 36%) and then drop off in the fourth week to a load lighter than that lifted in the second week but higher than that of the first week (e.g., 24%).

While quite different in terms of loading patterns and differences from week to week, these approaches do not exhaust the possibilities. They merely illustrate patterns that have been used with success with many athletes. It is important to understand that individual athletes will respond differently to these variations in loading and that the appropriate pattern will depend on the content of the training (e.g., exercises and intensities used) as well as the individual characteristics of the athlete. Therefore, the planning of weekly loads within training months is a challenging aspect of developing the training plan.

In his 1986 book The Training of the Weightlifter, R. Roman suggests that the six most common patterns in the distribution of weekly loads within training months are: a) those that have the highest loading during the first week in the month and then gradually diminish the load during the rest of the month; b) those that have the highest load in the second week of the month with the third and fourth weeks being lower; c) those that have the highest load during the third week, the second highest in the first week and smaller loads in the other weeks; d) those that have a maximum in the first week, nearly as much in the third week and lower amounts in the other weeks ; e) those that have the highest load in the second week, the next highest in the fourth week and the lowest in the first and third weeks; or, f) those that have maximum load in the fourth week, the next highest in the second week 2 and the lightest loads in the first and third weeks. Some examples of monthly loading distributions expressed as percentages of the month’s total load are presented in Table 14. (The notation used in the “load structure” indicates the week with the greatest load first and the week with the next largest load next: e.g., 4-2 means the fourth week is the one with the largest load and the second week is the one with the next largest load.)

Roman indicates that for competition months, load variants such as 2-3 or 3-2 in addition to the load structures shown in the above table can also yield favorable results.

While coaches have had success with these and other loading patterns, considerable judgment is required in order to select the proper loading patterns for individual athletes and particular circumstances. For example, if an athlete has recently had a month with a particularly high load, the coach may wish to assure that the first week of the next month is not a maximum week and that maximum loads are not undertaken until at least the second week and perhaps as late as the fourth week in the month.

It is generally believed that, both from the workout and weekly perspectives, a large load produces a training effect, a medium load maintains a training effect that has already been achieved and (at least in the short term) a small loading permits for supercompensation when the body has been previously subjected to large loads. If used continuously over the longer term, small loads lead to detraining.

It must be remembered that the volume, intensity and exercise prescription typically vary within the overall months because different months represent different periods in the macrocycle. Consequently, it may happen that no two weeks within an annual period are identical in terms of volume, load, or even exercises performed, even though the relative loads and intensities within the weeks of the different months may be similar or even the same. (For example, the month’s load may be distributed in such a way that 30% of the total load is lifted within the first week of two different months (A and B). but the actual load lifted in the first week of month B may be 10% or 20% different from the load that is lifted in the same week of month A, because the overall load in month B is significantly different from that of month A. Moreover, a high volume week in a low volume month may employ a lower volume than a low volume week in a high volume month.

In order to better compare weeks in different training months and periods, A. Medvedyev has suggested a method for characterizing all weeks regardless of when they occur in the annual training cycle. A “minimum” week has a training content of up to 75 repetitions; a “small” week 76 to 210; an “average” week 211 to 345; a “large” week 346 to 480; a “very large” week 481 to 615; a “maximum” week 616 to 750; and a “stress” week in excess of 751 reps. The annual distribution of the above weeks recommended by Medvedyev is: 2, 11, 21, 13, 3, 1 and 1. Although Medvedyev does not mention it, this categorization of rep loads seems to be appropriate for athletes of a specific level, perhaps CMS. This is because the beginner who is performing only 7,000 reps a year would find even the “average” week depicted above to be a very large load, given his or her average training load. In contrast, for the athlete who is performing 24,000 reps a year, an “average” week’s training load would have to be in the “large” to “very large” range for the athlete to reach 24,000 reps in a year.

Under Medvedyev’s loading scheme, more than 40% of the lifter’s training is spent with average loads (there are nearly two such weeks in every training month). There is one small and one large week in most training months, and 87% of the weeks in the year fall within the small to large loading range. Weekly loads in the very large to stress range are incorporated only every two months. This is not to say that loads are distributed on this average basis evenly across the year. On the contrary, two weeks of minimal loading might occur in one month because the lifter is taking his or her annual “vacation” away from lifting. In another period of training, two weeks of very large or greater loading might take place in two contiguous months, and then no such loads might occur in two other months. The annual loading distribution merely summarizes the variations in the loads among weeks across the span of a year.

It is my view that most athletes and coaches tend to conform unnecessarily to the notion that the length of the mesocycle is most appropriately four weeks. While their psychological and cultural backgrounds make planning around a seven day week reasonable (though not necessary) choice for most coaches and athletes, there is far less reason to conform to a four-week notion of the mesocycle. In my experience, many athletes benefit from training with mesocycles of three weeks, and some thrive on cycles of five or six weeks, or even longer. Moreover, the same athlete will often benefit from mesocycles of differing length across a year.

The only way to discover an athlete’s optimal mesocycle length (and it will vary within the same athlete with different training contents and as a result of other external factors, such as amount of time spent relaxing, etc.) is through trial and error, by observing the athlete’s responses to various patterns of weekly and monthly loading. My suggestion is to begin with the shortest cycle (perhaps three weeks) and to try various patterns within such a cycle. Then the coach can expand out to four-week patterns and then try five- and six-week patterns if no great success has been enjoyed with shorter cycles.

More often than not, the coach will discover one cycle length that is generally the most beneficial for each athlete (considering the typical content of that athlete’s training) and then he or she can plan around that cycle. However, the coach will also tend to discover that different cycle lengths can be used with success but that the content of the training within the cycle will vary with its length. For example, a given athlete may seem to benefit from a three-week cycle that has a relatively high load but moderate intensity in the first week, a higher intensity but lower volume in the second week and a higher intensity with the same volume in the third week. That same athlete might benefit from three consecutive weeks of high intensity training with the same volume, followed by a week of lower intensity and volume. Knowledge of such patterns permits the coach not only to provide variety in the athlete’s training (e.g., by using a three-week cycle at times and a four-week cycle at others) but also to peak his or her athlete properly, even when a competition does not happen to fall along a classic four-week mesocycle.

The Weekly Plan or Microcycle

The formulation of a weekly plan or “microcycle” is one of the most fundamental and important kinds of planning that takes place in weightlifting training. It is within the training week that the coach must become truly specific with respect to the exercises that will be performed within which training sessions.

There are three basic ways to fill in the volumes and intensities on the weekly and workout levels. One approach is what I will call the “classic periodization” method, because it is an extension of the long term periodization concept. Under this method the loads (the total number of repetitions) of the monthly mesocycles and weekly microcycles are filled in on these basis of the repetition numbers that were included in the macrocycle plan. Then the coach fills in the framework of load with various exercises, sets and reps to meet the overall loading objectives. During this process the coach considers whether each month falls within the preparatory, competitive or transitory periods. A greater variety in exercises and repetitions is employed during preparatory months, greater specialization on the classical lifts occurs during the competitive period and general physical preparation may be emphasized during the transitory period.

Given those overall planning constraints, the coach will generally emphasize a relatively greater variety of exercises in a week that calls for a large load than during a week with a smaller load. In addition, more sets per exercise and more reps per set will tend to be performed during such a week. This means of structuring the training has the advantage of offering the athlete great variety in his or her workouts, in that the widest range of training factors changes from week to week. This classic periodization method tends to be favored by many Soviet theorists and coaches, though there are many Soviet specialists who take issue with such an approach.

A significantly different approach to varying loads across months and weeks is to determine the exercises that will be performed first and then to leave those as a relatively fixed factor throughout a given training period. Then the sets and reps within various training periods are varied in order to achieve the appropriate loading. There is much to commend this “fixed exercise” planning approach. First, a limited number of exercises closely related to the classical lifts are typically performed. Employing exercises that are outside of that group has the advantage of creating training variety but the offsetting disadvantage of lack of transferability to the classical lifts. Second, when exercises are not performed on a regular basis, detraining with respect to those exercises tends to occur. When that exercise is later resumed, a renewed training effect must occur. Constant detraining and retraining can place a significant strain on the body’s adaptive capabilities. Moreover, it is unlikely that a long term positive adaptation will occur from such training, except, perhaps, in terms of skill development.

Still another advantage of the fixed exercise prescription is the assurance that exercises that are regarded as important will be performed throughout the training cycle, making it more likely that the performance of those exercises will be mastered. Finally, fixing the exercises eliminates one major variable in the exercise-training experiment. Since the coach varies only the volume and intensity of training (not the exercise content), there are fewer things to consider when assessing the effects of a particular training program. Consequently, it will be easier to differentiate between effective and non-effective volume and intensity configurations.

The great Bulgarian national coach of the 1970s and 1980s, Ivan Abadjiev, favored a relatively fixed exercise regimen. Moreover, the range of exercises performed by the Bulgarian national team narrowed over Abadjiev’s career to just six by the end of the 1980s (snatch, clean and jerk, power snatch, power clean and jerk, squat and front squat). Abadjiev appeared to reduce the variety in the other aspects of the training cycle over time as well. He also increased his reliance on multiple workouts per day.

The third main approach to filling in volumes and intensities for months and weeks can be called the “exercise based” method. Under this method, which is preferred by Medvedyev and others, the coach relies on the scope of the exercises included in the lifter’s training as the primary means for varying volume. During periods of high volume, a wide variety of exercises are included in the lifter’s training. During periods of lower volume, the number and variety of exercises is diminished. Many coaches believe that variety itself is conducive to the development of weightlifting performance, and varying exercises (in addition to varying volume and intensity) is one of the most powerful ways to create variety in training.

Naturally, all of the methods described above are interrelated. The classic periodization planner is generally using both the classic periodization and fixed-exercise methods of varying volumes and intensities, because there are generally at least some intervals in the training plan during which exercises remain fixed and only reps and their intensity vary (whether those intervals are within a week or a month). Similarly, although the fixed-exercise practitioner may maintain the same exercises in the lifter’s training for extended periods, those exercises may be changed from macrocycle to macrocycle (as Abadjiev did when he reduced the number of exercises in his arsenal over time). Finally, a coach who favors exercise variety must cast an eye toward volume and intensity constraints, so that the number of exercises selected for each training interval fits within the longer term plan.

It is my contention that none of the approaches described above is ideal because each subordinates the exercises themselves (arguably the most critical training variable) to other variables. The periodization planner subordinates exercise choice to the constraints of the overall plan and uses exercise variety as a means to accomplish the overall periodization process. The fixed-exercise planner assumes that an ideal complex of exercises exists for most or all lifters. The exercise based planner focuses on the need to provide variety with the underlying assumption that variety itself is perhaps the key training variable.

A more effective alternative is to use exercise selection as a means to induce specific ends in terms of technical mastery and the development of physical capabilities rather than as a fixed set of optimal or necessary exercises or as a means to achieve training variety. This concept will be discussed later in this chapter.

Regardless of the method used to arrive at the exercises that will be performed in a given training week, once objectives for exercise frequency and volume have been tentatively established for that week, they must be fit into a plan of some kind for the individual days within the week. For example, if an athlete is supposed to perform snatches three times a week, the next step is to determine on which days the snatches will be performed. Generally speaking, it is advisable to spread the exercise relatively evenly across the week. Therefore, it might be useful to snatch on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (as compared with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday). Motor skills tend to be better developed when practice is distributed across several days than when it takes place on successive days. In addition, there is the issue of building strength and maintaining conditioning. Strength is better developed and maintained when workouts are spread relatively evenly across the week than when they are concentrated into one portion of the week.

None of the above suggests that a planner must slavishly space workouts as much as possible across a week. At times an athlete may benefit from hard practice in the same lift on consecutive days This is particularly true when the emphasis is on developing a skill. An athlete may have achieved a technical breakthrough on a given day and the trainer may wish to reinforce the new skill by daily practice until the skill has been well reinforced. This may be the case even when continued practice leads to a short term reduction in performance because of fatigue (as long as such fatigue is not leading to a breakdown in the skill being practiced or is not increasing the risk of injury).

The trainer also needs to be aware that the weekly plan, while often convenient, is not necessarily optimal. There are a number of psychological and cultural reasons to adhere to a weekly schedule, and many athletes prefer a weekly schedule. For example, athletes who are working full time may prefer to perform their most arduous workouts on Saturday because they feel most energetic when they have not had to work prior to training. Many athletes prefer Sunday as a day of rest because of family responsibilities or religious practices.

However, not all athletes find themselves in the same position relative to the week. For some athletes Sunday may be the best day for a heavy workout. Others may find an afternoon workout less pleasant than an evening one. Some may find that Monday may be a “down” day after a long weekend of social activity, whereas others may find that Mondays are a great day after a restful weekend.

A coach should also bear in mind that there is certainly no rule of nature that dictates a seven-day week for society in general or for athletes in particular. In fact, I have known many athletes who have found another cycle optimal for them. At times that has applied to me.

Many bodybuilders follow a program which involves training for two or three days consecutively and then resting for one day, regardless of where that takes them in the week. There are those who would argue that bodybuilding and weightlifting are unrelated and that one offers no model for the other. However, I would argue that bodybuilders have gravitated toward such programs at least partially because their training tends to be far more individualized and less institutionalized than the training of weightlifters. It must be remembered that the vast majority of weightlifters (at least before the fall of communism around the world) trained under a system in which weightlifting was a job and weightlifters were coached by professionals. Few professionals (whether coaches or athletes) like to work seven days a week or to have variable hours and workdays. Therefore, it follows that traditional work week patterns crept into the training patterns of athletes who trained under professional conditions.

The lesson to be learned here is that the traditional weekly cycle will be beneficial for many athletes, but variations within weekly cycles should be addressed athlete by athlete, and the coach and the athlete should always be willing to consider that a seven-day week may not be optimal.

Many coaches like to plan a week so that there is a similarity in the load and intensity of all exercises done in a given day (or in training session within the day). As a result, Monday may be a day of moderate load and intensity, while Tuesday might be a day of similar load but higher intensity. Such a coach needs to make a decision regarding the number of heavy or peak days there will be in a week. Some coaches favor only one truly heavy (maximum or near maximum) day a week, while other believe that two or more are necessary. Generally, such a coach will plan the week around the heavy day(s), filling in with medium, light and rest days as appropriate.

In contrast, other coaches hold the view that various days in the weekly cycle do not need to be uniform in terms of their treatment of different exercises. For example, Tuesday might be a light day in the snatch but a heavy day in the squat and a medium day overall in terms of volume and intensity. In fact, many coaches believe that one of their most powerful coaching tools is the ability to structure different training sessions so that one exercise or kind of performance can be emphasized on one day while another kind can be stressed on another. (This concept can be applied to the mesocycles as well, so that while certain weeks have larger loads than others, the intensity and/or load in a particular exercise may be substantial even during a week that has a modest load overall.)

For those who prefer the kind of microcycle that treats loads and intensities relatively uniformly for each exercise on a given day, research and training practices in Eastern Europe provide a great deal of guidance. Many coaches and writers have made recommendations for varying the training load across a week. The way in which the load is distributed depends on the phase of the periodization cycle in which the lifter is training. For example, in his book A System of Multi-Year Training In Weightlifting, A. Medvedyev notes that athletes who are preparing for a competition must follow a special pattern of loading within the pre-competition week in order to assure that they are fully rested and prepared. He cites A. Vorobyev’s recommendation that an athlete restrict the load lifted in the week before the competition and that there be only three to four training sessions in that week. If the athlete trains three times, he or she might handle 55% percent of the week’s load in a training session six days before the competition, 30% of the week’s load in the second training session of the week and 15% of the load in the last training session before the competition. In contrast, for non-competitive weeks, Medvedyev recommends variations such as: large/small/average/small/large (for a week with five training days) and large/average/large/small or large/average/above average/small (for weeks with four training days). For high level athletes who have large overall training loads and are training six days a week with two or more sessions per day, he recommends patterns such as: large/medium/large/small/medium/large, or large/large/small/medium/large/large.

Roman has suggested that a small day is one with 50 reps or fewer; a medium day has 51 to 100 reps and a large loading day has more than 100 reps. These guidelines tend to be more accurate across a wider range of athletes than Medvedyev’s weekly loading categories mentioned above. Athletes at lower levels tend to perform fewer workouts per week than more advanced athletes. Nevertheless, the athlete who is lifting only 7,000 reps a year and is training three days a week averages less than 50 reps per workout. Clearly, all of those training sessions cannot be viewed as small loading days for that athlete.

In terms of the arrangement of loads within a week, Roman suggests the following patterns, which vary with the number of training days per week (S = a small load, M = a medium load and L = a large load):

3 days a week: S,L,S; M,L,M; L,S,L; or L,M,L

4 days a week: S-R, L-R, M, S; L-R, M-R, L, M; L-R, M-R, L, S; M-R, M, S; M-R, L-R, M, S.

5 days a week: M, S, L-R, M, S; M, S, L-R, M, M; S, L, S-R, L, S; M, S, M-R, M, S.

6 days a week: S, M, S, M, S, M; M, S, L, S, M, S; M, L, S, M, S, M; M, M, S, M, S, M; M, S, L, S, M, M; S, L, S, L, S, M.

Chenryak has developed guidelines for the distribution of weekly loads based on the number of training days per week. If an athlete is training 3 times a week, he recommends a pattern of 24/28/48 in terms of the percentages of the week’s load that are lifted in a given day. For athletes who train 4 times a week, he recommends a pattern of 15/22/28/35. For athletes training 5 times a week, he recommends a distribution of 13/15/15/27/30.

As varied as these load patterns are, they only scratch the surface. Weekly loading patterns have an almost infinite potential for variation. In addition to an enormous range of possibilities for alternating or repeating light, medium and heavy days, there is also a great potential for variation in the structure of the days themselves. For instance, a coach may have found that the medium, light and heavy pattern in training days works very well. However, with a little experimentation, the coach might discover that a somewhat heavier medium day followed by a somewhat lighter light day is equally beneficial. Moreover, if the trainer looks beyond the period of a week into the interrelationship of training sessions in different weeks, he or she is likely to find that weekly variations that recognize variations in prior and subsequent weeks are more beneficial than weeks that are treated more like separate units within a training month.

For coaches who structure workouts in a pattern that is outside the traditional seven-day week, there are even more potential variations in the pattern of weekly loading (especially when the training week is longer than seven days).

The important thing for the coach to remember is that the same weekly cycle will not necessarily work in the same way for every athlete and that the response of the same athletes to a given weekly cycle may change over time. In addition, the same athlete may have different optimal cycle patterns and/or lengths for different exercises. This is because of the unique responses of different athletes to the same exercises, because different exercises affect different body parts to varying degrees and because the recuperation rates of those body parts can vary. This does not imply that a coach may not have a basic weekly cycle that applies to most athletes under most conditions. It does imply that the basic weekly cycle may have to be varied for different athletes so that each can optimize his or her training (or at least that relative volumes and intensities in particular exercises may have to be manipulated so that recuperation patterns in different exercises are brought more closely into line).

Other Approaches To Periodization

Bulgarian Periodization Methods

The literature regarding Bulgarian training methods is far more sparse than that on Soviet methods. Most of the sources of information on Bulgarian training methods are lectures given by Bulgarian coaches or reports by coaches and athletes who have emigrated to Western countries from Bulgaria. These lectures and reports paint a picture of lifting cycles which are quite different from those reported in the literature of the former Soviet Union. For example, the Bulgarians work harder (more intensely) and have less variety in their exercises and in their monthly and weekly loads than the Soviets.

When Angel Spassov (the renowned Bulgarian coach who has worked with many high level athletes and lectured on weightlifting training throughout the world) visited the United States in late 1980s, he indicated that annual monthly training loads in terms of tons varied with the age and developmental stage of the athlete. The materials he distributed during his 1989 lecture tour indicated that for ages twelve to fourteen, monthly loads (in terms of metric tons) were: 30, 60, 70, 80, 65, 75, 85, 70, 80, 90, 10 and 10 (the latter two months represent summer vacations for young Bulgarian athletes). For ages fourteen to sixteen, the monthly loads increased to 40, 70, 80, 90, 80, 90, 100, 90, 110, 100. There was one month off, and competitive weeks followed the fourth, seventh, tenth and eleventh months; hence only ten “training months” were listed. For athletes ages sixteen years and above, the monthly loads were 50, 90, 115, 105, 105, 130, 120, 120, 150, 130 and 85. Athletes up to the age of eighteen were given one month off a year (after that there was only one week off), and competitive weeks followed the same pattern as for the fourteen to sixteen year olds (after the fourth, seventh, tenth and eleventh months). For both the fourteen to sixteen year olds and those sixteen and older, the eleventh month of the year was considered a competition month.

Table 15 summarizes Spassov’s guidelines for the weeks that fall within a three-month training cycle, categorized by age.

Within the monthly cycles, weeks follow the patterns which are associated with age as well. For example, in a sixty ton month performed by twelve to fourteen year olds, the weekly loading pattern is: Week I, 15 tons; Week II, 20 tons; Week III, 15 tons; and Week IV, 10 tons.

Another Bulgarian coach, Dimitar Gjurkow, has expressed the progressive loading of young athletes in a somewhat different way. He explains that Bulgarian youngsters do not compete in weightlifting up to age fourteen, but they typically begin their training for weightlifting between the ages of ten and eleven. Their training progresses as shown in Table 16.

Warm-ups remain at fifteen minutes in duration throughout the development of the lifter. Therefore, at ages ten to eleven, the warm-up comprises 25% of the training session, but by age seventeen it has diminished to 10% of the workout. In contrast, the portion of the workout spent in performing the competitive lifts begins at 10% (six minutes) and increases to 45% (sixty-seven minutes), while the portion of the workout spent on strength training increases from approximately 5% of the workout to 40% (i.e., from approximately three to sixty minutes). In terms of hours per year, the program is summarized in Table 17.

The snatch and C&J are the competitive lifts. Squats, front squats, power snatches, power cleans, power jerks (in front and behind the neck), lifts from the blocks and pulls are considered basic strength exercises. Abdominal exercises and other forms of remedial exercise are categorized as all around strength exercises.

Gjurkow also provides guidelines for what he suggests are the key measures of training content. They are: total tons lifted (1 ton = 2205 lb.); the number of attempts made at maximum weight; and the number of attempts to refusal. (These are relatively high rep sets—as many as 10 reps— in which the athlete lifts the weight as many times as possible until he or she reaches a point of failure.) The number of lifts in these parameters varies with the body weight of the lifter. Tons lifted per year begin at 1700 for athletes in the 54 kg. category and increases 100 tons per weight class until they reach 2500 for athletes in the 108 kg. and superheavyweight categories. The number of maximum attempts is 1400 per year for athletes in the 54 kg., 59 kg., 108 kg. and superheavyweight categories; 1450 for athletes in the 64 kg., 70 kg. and 99 kg. categories; and 1500 for athletes in the 76 kg. to 91 kg. categories. Sets or lifts to refusal are 450 for the 54 kg. to 70 kg. and 99 kg. and above categories, with 460 such sets being performed by athletes in the 76 kg. to 91 kg. categories.

As a group, Bulgarian trainers are probably more committed to distributing their workload across the day than trainers from any other country. They typically arrange the training plan so that there will be at least three to four days a week with two training sessions. This practice is common throughout Eastern Europe, but the arrangement of these training sessions by the Bulgarians tends to be different. They believe that the time devoted to a particular exercise should be from thirty to sixty minutes (with forty-five minutes the most common training period). They will then often rest for thirty minutes between exercises, performing two to four exercises per session. For example, during the late 1980s when a number of Bulgarian coaches were conducting seminars abroad, one of the programs presented is depicted in Table 18.

The arrangement of the exercises is not always the same (e.g., sometimes the lifters begin with the lifts instead of squats). The loading and intensity are varied by the height of the maximum lifts for the day, the number of times the athlete goes up and down during the workout and the amount by which the athlete diminishes the weight from the maximum for the day for his or her other sets. (This process was explained in greater detail in Chapter 3).

At least two reasons are given for this arrangement of the training sessions. The first is that spreading the training over the day gives the athlete the greatest opportunity (because of rest periods) to perform at his or her best in more of the exercises performed. The second reason offered is that, according to research performed in Bulgaria, blood testosterone levels become elevated during a training session, but the peak testosterone level achieved during training falls by the end of one hour. A greater number of training sessions permits testosterone levels to be elevated more often, and this facilitates greater progress in training. (Higher testosterone levels have been associated with greater improvements strength and muscle mass.) It should be noted that this exact pattern of testosterone elevation during training sessions has not been reported in the Western literature.

Table 18

At least one of Abadjiev’s leading athletes (a former world champion and world record holder) has opined that the evolution of Abadjiev’s training methodology owed as much to social as to theoretical reasons. According to this athlete, Abadjiev had difficulty controlling the behavior of his athletes when training sessions were conducted only once or twice a day. No matter how hard such training sessions were during the day, the athletes always found a way to “relax” during the evenings and often into the wee hours of the morning. Needless to say, these periods of relaxation often involved activities that were not truly restorative in nature and deprived the athletes of much needed rest and sleep. As Abadjiev expanded the training to include multiple daily sessions (separated by from one-half to several hours), these training sessions, along with other activities of daily living (e.g., eating and bathing), “pedagogical” lectures on training and competition and other organized activities sometimes extended from 7:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. With such a long and demanding day, even the most dedicated revelers found it difficult to muster the energy to do anything but sleep when their heads hit the pillow after the last training session of the day (particularly with the prospect of another grueling day ahead).

We may never know for sure how much of a role such considerations played in Abadjiev’s thinking, but my source is convinced that it was the foremost consideration in his mind. The athlete supports his contention with the evidence that the athletes who did not follow his all-day program enjoyed similar, if not superior, results.

As was indicated earlier, the Bulgarians typically vary the volume within the training month (particularly in preparatory months) by having three hard (high volume and high intensity) weeks followed by an easy (lower volume and somewhat lower intensity) week. In addition, the overall loading between months varies, with some months being “unloading” months in which there are three weeks with relatively low volume and one maximum loading week.

The Bulgarian coach Gjurkow has argued against macrocycles of less than two months (because little training effect can be generated) or more than five months (because there is not enough opportunity for athletes to compete at a high level with long cycles). He suggests that when an athlete begins a training cycle after a period of active rest, two to four weeks are needed for the athlete to work up to training levels that are approximately 90% of the level previously achieved when that athlete was in peak condition. During this period the athlete emphasizes technique; by the end of this first phase of training, the athlete is working up to maximums for three to five reps. Over the next two months the volume (or at least the intensity) of the training is increased. During this period maximum efforts for as much as six to ten reps are used in some exercises, and repeated efforts at maximum weights are used as well. Then, two to four weeks before a competition, any maximum efforts in high repetition sets are eliminated. The last seven to eight days prior to the competition, maximum efforts are excluded, and maximum weights lifted are approximately 10 kg. less than those that are normally lifted in training (as much as 20 kg. in non-competitive exercises).

It should be noted that while the Bulgarians do plan the volume of training to be performed during each workout, the methods mentioned above permit a very flexible approach to intensity. The intensity that the athlete can achieve during each training session is discovered as the athlete works up to the heaviest weight possible for that workout. A fatigued athlete will be unable to reach a very high level of intensity during his or her workout, but an athlete who has recovered from prior workouts can push himself or herself to the max.

The Resident Athlete Training Program at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs

When Dragomir Ciroslan was hired as the coach of the Resident Athlete Training program in 1990 (he was subsequently elevated to the position of National Coach of the USAW), he structured a program that was based on the principles that he had developed as coach of the Romanian National Team. However, Dragomir soon modified his overall program for the conditions which exist in the United States and ultimately for the specific athlete. Moreover, he is constantly adjusting the training programs that he prescribes on the basis of the responses of the athletes and as his training philosophy continues to evolve.

In general terms, however, a brief description of the 1994 program follows. (Weights lower than 75% of the athlete’s maximum are never counted in the loads used, and they are omitted in the figures presented below.) It should be noted that part of the annual plan for each lifter is based on that lifter’s load during the previous year and his or her response to it.

If an athlete successfully handled an average of 1500 lifts a month in 1993, his or her load might be increased by 10% to 15% in 1994 (e.g., to 1700 reps). Such a load might be distributed as follows: Snatch, 135 lifts; C&J, 115 lifts; Jerk, 85 lifts; Jerk Behind Neck, 90 lifts; Front Squat, 300 lifts; Snatch Pull, 200 lifts; Squat, 300 lifts; Clean Pull, 200 lifts; Romanian Deadlifts, 150 lifts; and Push Press Behind Neck, 125 lifts. The athlete might perform a total of 400 reps in the first week, 500 reps in the second week, 350 reps in the third week and 450 reps in the fourth week. During the preparatory period, , the distribution of reps and exercises for a week with 350 reps might be as shown in Table 19.

At times (particularly during the early portions of preparatory periods), higher reps are emphasized, with the athletes performing five reps, or even more, in some exercises. At other times (especially during competitive months), singles are emphasized. There is a significant amount of training in “segments” (the Bulgarian practice of working up to a maximum in a particular lift for the day and then performing a number of sets at that level with intermittent sets that employ 5 kg. to 20 kg. less). According to Dragomir, this training structure permits the identification and then correction of technical errors (it also supplies a powerful training stress that increases an athlete’s strength and power). Multiple sets with fixed weights are used, as are pyramiding and alternating sets with higher and lower reps.

Dragomir has developed his own training zones, which he finds more helpful for gauging training intensity and loads than those used by the Soviets. His zones are: 75% to 85%, 86% to 95% and 100%. He attempts to achieve a distribution of the training load in these zones of approximately 60/35/5, respectively. (The stress actually experienced by the athlete with weights in each zone is, of course, a function of the repetitions per set as well as the actual zone in which the training is performed.) When a lower rep week is done, work in the third zone is eliminated and reps in the second zone are reduced, so that such a week is truly an unloading week. In contrast, the fourth week is typically a stress week,, and the total number of reps in the two higher zones is increased. During the competitive period, loads are reduced, and the distribution of exercises is altered. More emphasis is placed on the classical lifts, and the number of pulls and squats is reduced.

Jumping is typically performed twice a week during such a period, and abdominal work is performed after nearly every workout, though the load performed in these exercises is not counted in the overall load.

The 1994 training program has been significantly modified across the years and there is more individualization today than there was at that time.

For example, it was reported in the October 1996 issue of Milo Magazine that in the weeks preceding the Olympics at least one of the athletes from the Olympic Training Center trained only 4 days per week. On Monday mornings he would do squats, military or push presses and/or some snatch pulls. In the evening, he would perform heavy snatches and snatch pulls. On Wednesdays, he’d front squat and then  military press, push press or pull. In the evening he went heavy in the C&J. Friday would be a replay of Monday’s workout and Saturday he might do power snatches or power cleans. The emphasis was on being rested for the Games and this rest obviously paid off. Virtually all of the resident athletes had outstanding performances at the Olympics

Gayle Hatch’s Training Programs for Blair Lobrano and Buster Bourgeois

Two of the hottest prospects in the American weightlifting scene are Blair Lobrano (who broke all of his Junior American records and took fifth place at the 1994 Junior World Championships and placed second at the 1997 National Championships) and Buster Bourgeois (who broke all of his Junior American records and placed eighth in the same competition at the age of seventeen). They are members of the Gayle Hatch Weightlifting Club. Gayle Hatch has been active as a weightlifting and strength coach for twenty years. His club has won the team competition at many Junior National Championships in recent years, as well as three Senior National Championships. Gayle has also had at least one athlete on three out of the last four United States Olympic teams.

He has honed his approach to training over many years of day-to-day work with young athletes. He bases his approach on the classic periodization model, with preparatory and competitive periods and mesocycles that are four weeks in length whenever possible. During each mesocycle there will typically be three weeks of heavy loading followed by one unloading week.

Six weeks before the 1994 Junior World Championships, Gayle shifted his mesocycle to three weeks in length, with two weeks of heavy loading followed by an unloading week. During the course of the year preceding the Junior World Championships, Blair Lobrano lifted a total of 21,000 reps with weights that were 75% of his maximum or more. Fifty-five percent of Blair’s reps were in the 75% to 85% range, 40% were in the 90% to 95% range and the remaining 5% were in excess of 95% (more recently 55% of the reps have been in the 75-87.5% range and 40% have been in the 87.5-95% range)

Buster Bourgeois’ training was similar to Blair’s, except that Buster’s total number of repetitions during the year was significantly lower. The reason for this is that Buster was playing football during this period. For the twelve weeks of the football season, Buster reduces his training to two to three sessions a week. This enables him to maintain his conditioning both for football and weightlifting during the season.

Gayle’s lifters perform segment work in the classic lifts. However, while they perform many singles, they do many doubles and triples as well. (Gayle feels that these reps are key factors in of strength development.) During the preparatory period, Gayle’s lifters do a significant number of squats and pulls in sets of five repetitions.

Blair and Buster (when the latter was not playing football) trained nine times a week (six days, with two of those days having two workouts). They used a wide variety of exercises, including: the classic lifts, power snatches, cleans and jerks, overhead, front and back squats, snatch and clean pulls, jerks from the rack, push presses, jerk lockouts and recoveries, jerk drives, presses, Romanian deadlifts, step ups, single leg squats, hyperextensions, good mornings, abdominal work and jumps.

When Gayle’s athletes move from the junior to the senior ranks, he believes in reducing the number of exercises they perform and focusing their training efforts more on the classic lifts and related exercises. There is a reduction of approximately 1000 reps in annual volume as a consequence of this change.

Gayle also believes in careful supervision of his charges. He observes virtually every workout, carefully adjusting the planned load for the condition of the lifters on that day.

While there is no doubt that the training programs that Gayle uses are effective, as an outsider looking in, I would have to say that much of the success that Gayle and his athletes have enjoyed stems from the attention that he devotes to the mental aspects of the sport. He inculcates a team spirit in his charges. His gym is steeped in symbols of the team’s success. Gayle has had banners made to represent each of the approximately 40 national level championships (AAU Junior Olympic through Sr. National) which his teams have won. An athlete raised in such an environment cannot help but be awed by the tradition that he or she is joining. But Gayle does not overlook the importance of individual achievement. A variety of boards record the personal records and rankings of individual athletes. Who would not be motivated by the opportunity to change the numbers next to his or her name?

As is so often the case, the contributions that a great coach makes often extend beyond the reach of the athletes whom he or she helps directly. Denis Snethen, coach of the Wesley Weightlifters, the 1995 Men’s Senior National Champions, says that he has patterned much of what he has done with his club after Gayle Hatch’s program. What greater honor could there be than to be beaten by a team you inspired? Despite the honor, no doubt Gayle will be working to see that he is not “honored“ by Denis’ team too often in the future.

The Training Of The Greek Team Prior To the 1996 Olympics

The Greek weightlifting team had a spectacular performance at the Atlanta Olympic Games. Virtually all of the athletes on the team made personal records and many of those records were world records as well. As a team, the Greeks were physically and mentally well prepared and exhibited a tremendous team spirit, as well as a deep respect for coach Christos Iakovou.

Mr. Iakovou, was a excellent lifter in his own right (he placed 5th in the 1972 Olympics). He had been living in the US for a number of years when he was asked to return to Greece to prepare the team for Atlanta. It turned out to be one of the best investments the Greek Weightlifting Federation has ever made.

How did the Greek team prepare for the Games? After a two week transitional period of relatively moderate training during the last half of January, the team began what was the first of four competitive cycles prior to the Atlanta Games.

The four cycles were quite similar in terms of exercises employed (coach Iakovou agrees with the Bulgarians in terms of focusing on the classic lifts and squats as compared with having very complex exercise configurations and repetition arrangements). This can be seen by studying Table 20, which depicts the exercises employed by the Greek team during the first of the competitive cycles.

During the second cycle, morning workouts were added to Tuesday and Thursday (the same workouts as the first cycles’ Monday and Wednesday workouts). However, during the second cycle, Wednesday morning and Saturday morning workouts were changed so that the athletes squatted first, then power snatched and power cleaned and finished with front squats. In addition, the optional exercise that was permitted for each athlete during the first cycle (e.g., a press or pull) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons was eliminated. Instead, the C&J was performed a 2nd time at the end of Monday’s workout (so the workout sequence was: snatch, C&J, squat and C&J). In a similar way, the snatch replaced the optional exercise on Friday (the optional exercise was eliminated entirely from the Wednesday afternoon workout). Finally, a Saturday afternoon workout was added which included the snatch, C&J and front squat. The exercise pattern of the second cycle was essentially continued during the third and fourth cycles.

The athletes typically employed 6-7 sets of 2 reps as they warmed up and lifted loads in the 80-85% of maximum range during each workout. When snatches were performed for 2 reps the first rep was lifted from the floor and the second rep was lifted from knee level. In the C&J, when 2 reps was called for, the athlete did one clean and two jerks.

Weights 90% or higher were lifted for singles. Generally, once a lifter hit his maximum for the day the lift was repeated no more than once (it appears that as many as three attempts at a maximum were permitted). A finishing set with 5-10 kg. less than the maximum for the day was done after most exercises. The athletes took a 30 minute break between exercises in the middle of each workout.

The athletes tested their limits on the classical lifts, front squats and back squats in mid-February, mid-March and Mid-April (with unloading weeks preceding the March and April tests). The results of each test were used to establish goals for the next mesocycle.

In mid-April there were three weeks of loading followed by an unloading week. Then there were four weeks of loading followed by an unloading week, then four more weeks of loading followed by a test in mid-July. Unloading weeks essentially had 9 workouts per week instead of 12 and all weights are reduced approximately 10 kg. from the prior week.

The mid-July test was approximately 10 days away from the competition and included a maximum in the front squat as well as in the snatch and C&J. Light days (approximately 60% of maximum) were alternated with heavy days after the 10th day. On the 8th and 6th  days out  the workout was similar to the 10th day except that the back squat and C&J were performed with 10 kg. less than the 10th day. The lifters worked up to approximately their starting attempts on the 4th day out and went relatively light thereafter until the competition.

It is important to note that throughout the training process the athlete had goals for each workout as well as the overall training cycle. Records were maintained for each athlete with respect to how he performed relative to goal is the snatch, C&J, squat an front squat. These were goals and it was not expected that every athlete would be able to perform at the level of the goal each day. There were often days in which the athlete lifted weights that were well below or above the goal (e.g., during the two months prior to the 1996 Olympics, Leonidis Sabinas lifted as much as 20 kg. more and as much as 10 kg. less than goal in the snatch on a given training day, but overall, he performed close to the daily goals throughout that training cycle). However, each athlete had something to strive for each training day and cycle. Careful goal setting obviously played an important role in the preparations of the Greek team for the Games.

Naim Suleymanglu’s Training Methods

power in weightlifting

Training Methods Employed In Cuba

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, Cuba emerged as a world power in weightlifting. Learning from their Soviet teachers very well, the Cuban coaches then added a number of  their own “twists” to the Soviet methods, gradually forming their own unique approach over time. The Cubans have managed to dominate weightlifting in the Western hemisphere over the past two decades with a population and resources that are a mere fraction of what is available in the US – a great tribute to Cuba’s coaches and athletes.

There has not been a great deal written about the Cuban training methods outside that country and virtually nothing outside Cuba and the former Easter bloc countries. Recently, some information has become available and it suggests a very well thought out approach to training.

The Cuban team trains in what is one of the largest, if not the largest, single facility designed for weightlifting in the world. With 60 platforms, it is a dream for the weightlifting fan (except that it is hard to observe what  is going on the entire facility from any one vantage point and there is no air conditioning despite the tropical climate).

The Cubans typically train nine times per week (twice per day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and once per day on the alternate days – normally there is no training on Sundays). The morning workouts take place at 10:00 am and the afternoon workouts at 4:00 PM. The morning workouts are relatively light and short. They are followed by lunch and rest for a few hours (including a 2.5 hour nap). In addition, the Cuban athletes typically sleep between 8.5 and 9.5 hours per night. There is also an emphasis on relaxation after workouts through such activities as movies and lectures. Consequently, these athletes are well rested

Most training sessions are performed with weights that are approximately 80% of maximum. Such weights are typically lifted for sets of 3 repetitions. When an athlete uses 90% of maximum, he or she generally performs doubles. Two to four weeks before a competition the athletes will lift a maximum for a single.

When competitions are not imminent, the athletes will occasionally lift as much as 90% of maximum for three sets of three reps to load their bodies. Alternatively, they will go as high as 95% for a single (only on relatively rare occasions will a lifter attempt a maximum single in training). Straps are used during training most of the time (their use is discontinued approximately 2-4 weeks from a major competition.

The coaches prepare plans for each athlete for each workout. The athletes are free to go heavier than planned during the Monday, Wednesday and Friday workouts, but are expected to follow the plan exactly on the other days (to avoid overtraining).

Squats are generally performed only 4 times per week. Some other assistance exercises are also performed regularly (such as good mornings and high pulls), so the workouts of the Cuban lifters appear to be more varied than those of the Bulgarians. But the Cubans hardly fall into the Medvedyev camp in terms of variability of exercises. Certainly their system works well for them

Integrating Long And Short Term Planning

Many coaches rely on long term planning to form the foundation, filling in the details of ever shorter periods of training on the basis of the decisions that were made regarding the longer term plan. Other coaches plan only the next workout or week on the basis of the athlete’s present condition. Yet neither of these approaches is optimal because both short and long term planning are necessary to achieve optimal results. Therefore the key to successful planning is to employ both methods. Many expert coaches who use the long or short term approach as their basis for planning learn to compensate for the deficiencies of the approach they use (the long term planner by making adjustments as he or she goes along to assure that the long term plan does not sacrifice the short term needs of the athlete, and the short term planner by assuring that any short term plan will fit into the longer term needs of the athlete). But such an approach relies on the “gut” of the coach to recognize when adjustments are made. The less experienced coach, or the more experienced one who does not wish to rely completely on his or her instincts to tell him or her when things are going astray, needs a more explicit method for resolving conflict between long and short term plans.

What method is there for doing this? Surely a coach cannot do both forms of planning at the same time. If short and long term planning are performed separately, how does the coach tie the results of both processes together? Moreover, when each method implies different training prescriptions, which method should have precedence? These are difficult questions, some of which cannot be answered scientifically. They are at the root of the art of coaching. Nevertheless, there are some important guidelines that help lead the coach through these difficult judgments. Three key processes underlie the effective coordination of long and short term approaches to planning: a) identification of the objectives of a specific period of training on the basis of the individual needs of the athlete; b) applying the techniques of long and short term planning in the proper sequence; and, c) using iteration between the long and short term perspectives to integrate them together into a unified and effective whole.

Set Objectives First

Before any training plan is formed, the athlete and coach must both understand and agree on the objectives they are trying to accomplish during a particular period of training and the hierarchy of those objectives. If it is believed that the athlete must reach certain training volumes in order to achieve success, that objective must be considered when the training plan is formulated. If is important to achieve specific results at certain points during the training period, that must be considered as well. The planner must also consider where the lifter is today and what his or her previous reactions to training have been. Then all of these considerations must be placed in a hierarchy of some kind. It is difficult to emphasize everything at once, and there will probably be a need to make some trade-offs among objectives, which can only be done effectively once priorities have been established. In setting objectives, the outline of the developmental process that was presented earlier should provide an appropriate framework for the long term aspects of the planning process. The short term perspective of the planning process should be founded on a different set of objectives, that of exploiting the greatest opportunities for growth that a given athlete has at point in time.

We have all heard the very wise adage that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” This is particularly true in the sport of weightlifting, wherein all of the necessary characteristics of the mind and body must be developed harmoniously in order for peak performance to occur. However, on reflection, I think that the “weak link” concept has a flaw. The flaw is not in the validity of the phenomenon that is being described, but, rather, in how it is framed. In the weak link analogy, the focus is on the negative: the weak. In reality, the focus should be just the opposite. It should be on the opportunity for rapid growth that is afforded by areas that have not attained as high a level of development as others.

To make this point clearer, consider the example of a lifter who is able to pull to the shoulders in the clean 5% more than he or she can stand up with. (The lifter can clean 150 kg. and pull to the shoulders 157.5 kg.). Let us further assume that this lifter can jerk nearly 8% more from the racks than he or she can pull to the shoulders (170 kg.). One way to view the situation is that the lifter is weak in the legs and must work harder (almost as a form of punishment) to improve his or her leg strength. The other approach is to look at the wonderful opportunity that is afforded by this lifter’s situation. A concentrated effort on one area is likely to bring immediate and dramatic results in the lifter’s total. In fact, no amount of effort in any other area can be as effective.

If the lifter improves his or her jerk, there will be no immediate improvement in the lifter’s performance in the C&J, no matter how much improvement the lifter makes. In the clean the situation is only a little better. If the lifter improves his or her pulling power by 5% or 10%, the effect on the lifter’s best clean is likely to be minimal. This is because most lifters can pull to the shoulders 10% to 20% more in the squat clean than they can power clean (the lifter described in this example is in this range, with a best in the power clean of 135 kg.). Therefore, even if the lifter improves his or her pulling power by 10%, he or she will not be able to power clean as much as he or she was able to squat clean initially. In fact, without improving leg power, the lifter would have to improve pulling power by nearly 13% (to a 152.5 kg. power clean) in order to clean more than before. (Somewhat less of an improvement in the pull might make the pull easy enough for the lifter to clean a little more in the squat style than before without any improvement in his or her leg power, because an easier pull gives a lifter a greater opportunity to position the bar and body optimally for recovery from the full squat position and to utilize the elastic qualities of the leg muscles in recovering from the low squat position.)

Therefore, instead of focusing on the negative and all it entails, the lifter should focus on the positive. The lifter should not necessarily, nor exclusively, be thinking that he or she is weak in the legs; rather, he or she should focus on the terrific opportunity that exists to improve his or her C&J by focusing on the legs. This may be a subtle difference, but it can have a very real effect on the psyche of the lifter. Some lifters become motivated by negative statements regarding their “weaknesses” and rise to the challenge to eliminate weaknesses. But many other lifters would benefit from the much more positive viewpoint of exploiting available opportunities for growth.

Regardless of whether you accept the “weak link” or “opportunities for rapid growth” perspective, the point is the same. The coach and lifter must identify the lifter’s most urgent short term and address those aggressively through the short term planning process.

Once long and short term objectives have been set, it is useful in virtually all planning to follow a specific sequence that considers both the short and long term aspects of planning. However, regardless of how effective a specific sequence is, there is a need to perform planning “iterations” (i.e., to cycle back and forth from long to short term planning frameworks in order to modify each in view of the insights contributed by the other). That process is outlined in the next few sections of this chapter.

Next Take the Long Term View to Find Your Constraints

Once objectives have been set, it is useful to begin creating a long term perspective on the plan. One of the advantages of formulating a long term plan is the wide-angle perspective that it requires the planner to employ. Such a perspective makes it more likely that the planner will see the forest as well as the trees. Perhaps the primary virtue of establishing the long term plan first is that it provides important guidelines for the short term planning process, assuring that short term actions do not undermine the more important longer term objectives.

Taking the long view assures correct timing of certain types of training by placing all training in the context of ultimate goals and objectives. For example, an athlete may well benefit from altering his or her technique in the jerk. However, it is likely that the athlete will take several weeks to begin to perform the new technique properly and at least several months for the athlete to automate the process sufficiently for it to hold up with maximum weights. In such a case, the coach would not undertake an effort to modify the athlete’s technique if a major competition were three months away, a fact that the long term plan would make evident. Naturally, if there is always an “important” competition in three months, some adjustment must be made in terms of performance expectations for certain of those competitions so that the lifter’s problem in the jerk can be corrected.

Taking the long view also enables the coach to establish a cutoff date, after which experimentation with the new technique must cease. If, under an initial plan, the intent was to learn the new technique over a period of six to eight weeks and then to automate it over a period of four to six months, the coach might well decide that if the new technique is not being performed correctly at the end of twelve weeks, the adoption of the new technique will be postponed until the athlete’s schedule next offers a long break before any major competition. Alternatively, the athlete might decide to pass on the planned competition or to accept a lower level of performance in order to continue working on the new technique. Prior planning helps to assure that such decisions are made carefully and consciously, not out of desperation and at the last minute.

The long term plan can take the process described above a step further by enabling the coach to develop a sequence in the development of the lifter. For instance, the coach might wish to correct several elements of the lifter’s technique in the jerk. However, the correction of one aspect requires the prior correction of another. The discipline of the long term planning process can assure that changes are conducted in the proper order and that the timing of the changes appears reasonable. The same sequential approach can be used in building up the training load that the lifter will handle each year (assuming that the coach believes that such a build-up is appropriate for the development of the athlete).

When an athlete uses a long term peaking process to prepare for a maximal effort (a form of periodization), the long view helps to assure that the peaking process will begin at the proper time.

One final advantage of beginning with a long term plan (or at least a long term perspective) is that it prevents a lifter’s load and/or intensity being increased too fast and helps the coach to discover when those training variables are bumping up against the lifter’s limits. If the coach thinks only short term, he or she can ignore the cumulative effect of training (e.g., failing to realize that a few more sets here and there can add up to a disaster over time or that the “random” occurrence of injuries is not so when the incidence is viewed from a longer term perspective).

It is easy for the coach or athlete who looks only at the short term plan to focus on what the athlete seems to require at the moment. If more snatches are needed, as many as seem to be needed to arrive at a certain result are added. However, if the coach does not take a longer term view, this can lead to week after week of heavy loading without any respite. Such a process can lead to overtraining and even injury, if the change in the lifter’s added load is significant enough and continues for a long enough period.

In a sense, then, a training plan is much like a business plan. You do not make a plan because you expect things to conform exactly to that plan (if anything, you hope for an even better outcome). Rather, the purpose is to trace out what will happen if the “best guess” outcome occurs, as well as some better and poorer alternatives. In addition, you make a plan in order to establish goals for a given period. Finally, you use the plan as a reference point for making adjustments. If you define goals and sub-goals for a given period, then you can see how progress is being made along the way. You can then see whether more attention needs to be devoted to a certain area and whether things can be accelerated somewhat since goals are being achieved faster than was anticipated. You can also see whether the goals originally established are proving to be too optimistic and whether downward adjustments need to be made in order to protect the lifter from overtraining and injury and to increase the likelihood that later progress will get the lifter back on schedule.

This should not be interpreted to suggest that any plan can or should be expected to move forward smoothly. Training does not proceed in a straight line of upward progression, and it rarely moves in a precise upward progression punctuated by precisely recurring peaks and valleys. Rather, there are unexpected peaks and valleys, and overall progress at a certain rate is far from a given. This does not mean that the lifter should not seek a smooth progression. It is just that failure to proceed that way in the short term should not necessarily lead to a complete revision of the total plan (although significant deviations over time should).

Once Constraints Have Been Established, Focus Intensely on Short Term Planning

Once the bare bones, long term plan or “macrocycle” has been formulated, it is time to focus on short  term planning. There are a number of ways to do this. Perhaps the most popular method is to work toward increasingly shorter time frames on the basis of the plan already established for a longer time interval. Using this approach, once the macrocycle has been planned, the coach fills in the details (volume and intensity) of the mesocycle; then volumes and intensities for the weeks within the mesocycles are established. Finally, the same process is followed for allocating volumes and intensities within the workouts that are planned for a particular week.

Within the broad framework supplied by the macrocycle and the general structure of the mesocycles (the period into which they fit and the loads that the athlete is expected to handle), planning should start with and emphasize the nature of the exercises the athlete will perform in the near term, chosen on the basis of the individual needs of each athlete. Why begin with exercise selection? Because the arsenal of exercises at the coach’s disposal offers the broadest available means for influencing both the technical preparation and physical conditioning of the athlete (i.e., what the athlete will do is at least as important as how he or she will do it). After planning the exercises, the trainer must review the planned exercises from the standpoint of load and variety, then evaluate their likely effect to arrive at the final exercise prescription.

This too should be an iterative process, with the trainer first planning the exercise mix, then filling in the load planned for each exercise on the basis of what is needed to achieve improved results overall and in those exercises, then looking at the interrelationships between the loads that are contributed by the training on each of the exercises and assessing their likely effect on one another as well as their overall effect. Finally, noting that the work load is either too high or low, the trainer may go back to alter the load planned for certain exercises or to add or delete certain exercises. This process may be carried out several times, until the coach feels that the optimal plan has been formulated.

It is critical during this phase of planning to consider the individual athlete’s characteristics and responses to training. Some lifters flourish under a constant variety of training stimuli. Changes in training days, venues and exercises are quite welcome to some athletes. Other lifters seem much more comfortable with and responsive to a regular pattern of training (e.g., light on Monday and Thursday, heavy on Tuesday and Saturday and medium on Wednesdays and Fridays). In addition, as was suggested earlier, the optimal length and nature of the various periods will vary with the lifter. Some will prosper with very long cycles, and others will benefit from periods that are half the normal length or less. Similarly, some lifters will benefit from periods that vary only in terms of emphasis, while others will respond well to rather major changes in exercises, volumes and intensity during various training phases.

Resolving Conflicts Between Short and Long Term Plans

At times apparent conflicts arise between the short and long term plans. When this occurs, a method for resolving these conflicts must be applied. Perhaps the best method involves placing the problem into the specific context of the ultimate (long term) interest of the athlete, i.e., his or her career. By considering the likely effects of shorter and longer term training plans, a clearer picture is developed.

For instance, performing extra sets or heavier sets in the snatch during a given workout, or even over a series of weeks, may be beneficial when the coach and lifter seem to be “on to something.” Perhaps the lifter has been working to correct a technique flaw for many months, or even years, without success. Suddenly a new approach is tried, and the lifter is making real progress in perfecting the new technique. If there are no important competitions around the corner and the load in snatches thus far has not been unusually high, there is likely to be no harm and much benefit in doing the extra snatches to reinforce this new technical breakthrough. On the other hand, if a key competition is pending or the lifter is already significantly overtrained, doing the extra snatches may conflict with the original objectives of the long term plan, i.e., performing well at an upcoming competition.

Resolving this conflict becomes easier when the coach and athlete consider career goals. If performance at the upcoming competition is truly critical (e.g., if it represents that lifter’s likely last chance to make an Olympic team or to qualify for a special training camp in which any technique flaws stand a better chance of being corrected), then the opportunity to correct the lifter’s flaws in the snatch may properly be subordinated to the need to prepare for the upcoming competition.

If the upcoming competition is not expected to play a particularly important role in the lifter’s career (e.g., if the lifter is qualified to participate but is not expected to place high or has already attained a similar placement in the past), it may be more important to correct a major weakness which might significantly change his or her long term performance. In such a case, the true career interests of the athlete may be better served by exploiting the opportunity to make the technical improvement, even if that means changing the long term plan. Naturally, in making such a decision, the coach and athlete must consider a wide range of effects. If the lifter’s work to improve his or her snatch technique were to result in a poorer performance at the Nationals, would that set the lifter’s enthusiasm back so far that any benefit would be offset? Is the breakthrough likely to be substantial enough to justify forgoing peak performance at an important competition? Is there some way to maintain some of the benefits without placing performance in the competition at risk? Once clear answers have been secured, the coach and athlete are in a position to make a decision that will serve the best interests of the athlete.

Seeing the Sport of Weightlifting as a Triathlon: A Key to Effective Short Term Planning

All of the means for planning the training of a weightlifter share an underlying similarity: a focus on process. The coach who plans workouts on the basis of varying loads through complex means (i.e., intensities, volumes and exercises) is operating on the premise that cyclical variety will produce favorable results. Similarly, coaches who follow a fixed-exercise approach to planning and those who use variety in exercises as a means to vary an athlete’s training are focusing on the process of varying loads or exercises as the chief means to improve performance.

A fundamentally different approach to planning the training of an athlete is to focus on the aspects of each competitive exercise that an athlete needs to improve in order to improve performance and then to focus on the athlete’s improving performance in the most critical and/or most fundamental of those areas. A coach who employs this approach uses variations in loads, intensities and exercises to accomplish specific effects in terms of the performance of the classical lifts. Therefore, the individual needs of each athlete determine which exercises are required in a given series of workouts. The nature of these needs is determined by the lifter’s developmental status (e.g., age, skills and physical conditioning). For example, for technical and conditioning reasons, a particular lifter may require more practice in the jerk in order to push the lifter’s body to a new level of adaptation. These needs will be considered in selecting the exercises that are most appropriate for correcting the lifter’s technical flaw(s) and in determining the load of those and other jerk related exercises in terms of training stress.

For purposes of planning a lifter’s training, it is very helpful to regard the sport primarily as a triathlon consisting of the snatch, the clean and the jerk. The logic of regarding the snatch and the jerk as separate lifts is obvious. Regarding the clean and the jerk as two separate lifts is less common. For planning purposes, the clean and the jerk should be viewed as two distinct lifts, linked only by the fact that they are performed in immediate succession in the competition. While many of the same muscle groups are used in a similar way in all three lifts, there are many differences as well. The exact combination of muscles used in each movement of the clean and the jerk is different; so are the sequences of force applications, the joint angles that are traversed and the lines of force that are experienced by the athlete. Moreover, there are virtually no exercises which improve both the clean and the jerk in the same way and to the same extent (even the C&J itself). While it is vital for the lifter to practice the clean and jerk together, more progress can generally be made on the overall lift by placing a separate emphasis on the clean and the jerk in at least certain phases of training. In essence, the coach should identify what the lifter needs to do in order to improve his or her snatch, clean and jerk. The exercises, the load and the points to concentrate on should all be planned separately. Then, particularly before a competition, the coach should look for opportunities to combine the clean and jerk into one lift.

The only major exception to this mode of planning should occur when the lifter notably falters in either the clean or the jerk when they are performed together rather than separately. For example, the typical lifter who can comfortably jerk what he or she cleans in competition generally jerks 5% to 10% more from the rack (assuming that an equal effort is put forth in that exercise and in the C&J). If a lifter cleans 100 kg. and jerks 110 kg. from the rack, then fails to jerk 100 kg. after the cleans, that lifter probably needs more practice in the C&J. Such practice, if properly focused on the rapid and complete transition in the athlete’s mental and physical preparedness from the clean to the jerk, should quickly develop optimal performance in both phases of the lift.

In using the triathlon perspective, the coach identifies the optimal training to be performed for each event, assuming that the other events will not be performed. (It is clear that in most cases a lifter who “specializes” in such a way will perform better in his or her specialty.) There is great value in understanding just what the optimal training routine will be for each classical exercise. This planning should be very complete and should consider exercise selection, the frequency with which particular exercises and workouts are scheduled and loading considerations (e.g., volume, intensity and number of repetitions per set). Once the coach has planned separately the training on the three lifts, he or she should then begin to look at the overall training sessions and consider how the lifts may complement or interfere with one another. For instance, a lifter may be experiencing difficulty with the second and third phases of the pull in both the snatch and the clean (for the same or different reasons). When planning the training for each lift, the coach may therefore create training programs that include a significant number of clean deadlifts standing on a raised platform and snatch deadlifts. When combined (as they will be in practice), these independently planned programs will place a large load on many of the same muscle groups in much the same way. This is likely to be counterproductive, especially when the change in loading from one to the next is substantial.

Faced with a situation in which exercise programs that were developed for each separate lift conflict with one another, the coach has several options. One is to emphasize only one of the lifts during the program. If it is determined that improving the starting strength and position of the snatch is more important at this time, the snatch might be emphasized and the clean deadlifts postponed to a later point in the training sequence.

A second approach is to employ both exercises but to use a smaller volume in one and a larger volume in the other, so that the combined change in volume and the resulting total volume are not too great. A third approach is to employ both exercises but to use a smaller volume of each than was originally planned, once again ensuring that the combined change in volume and the resulting volume are not too great. A fourth approach is to alternate the exercises for periods within the cycle; the snatch start might be emphasized during the first three weeks of a given cycle and the clean start during the next three weeks, and so on until the cycle is over. A fifth approach is to increase the training on both exercises but the to cut back to a smaller load after two to four weeks, so that the body has an opportunity to adapt gradually to the new stress level.

Once the relationships between exercises have been considered and adjusted for as necessary, the total load presented by the modified plan needs to be evaluated. Individual muscle groups are subject to the overstress from too drastic a change in training (with the unhappy consequence of overuse injuries). In addition, the total load imposed on the organism can have its own effects. If the overall load imposed on the organism is too great, the body can go into a state of overtraining with very negative consequences. (A discussion of overtraining is presented later on in this chapter.) Once the program has been adjusted to the proper level in terms of load, it can be implemented. But once implementation is under way, the coach must monitor the program’s effects, so that adjustments can be made as needed.

How to Select Exercises: Balancing Specificity with Variety

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of exercises have been used by weightlifters in an attempt to improve their performance. Some have yielded great benefits and others have actually led to a decline in performance. A wide array of widely used exercises, along with some general appraisals of their effectiveness, has been outlined in Chapter 5. However, generalized evaluations, regardless of their validity, will certainly not apply in all cases. An exercise that is usually effective may not be of help to an individual athlete at a particular point in time. Similarly, an exercise that is generally a waste of time can be helpful to a lifter at a given point in time. Therefore, special adaptations for particular circumstances, based on observation and experimentation, will often have to be made.

Some basic exercises which should always be included in a lifter’s training. Unless the lifter is injured or taking an active rest, no week (and for some lifters not more than three or four days) should go by without the lifter’s having done front and/or back squats, the classic lifts and/or power versions of them (e.g., snatches and/or power snatches). The only exceptions to this rule are when an athlete has injuries or physical limitations that preclude such frequency and when the athlete is in a phase of training that emphasizes recuperation from previous efforts, injuries or overtraining (e.g., during the classic transitional period). Otherwise, the aforementioned exercises are the lifter’s stock in trade. Why?

The classic lifts define weightlifting. They are what it is all about. Athletes must practice their events, both for motor skill development and to condition the body to withstand the loads presented by the classic lifts. This certainly does not mean that a lifter needs to handle maximum and near maximum weights in these lifts all of the time. What it does mean is that at least some practice of a skill is required in order to maintain proficiency (and even more practice is needed to improve).

Why practice power snatches, power cleans and power jerks? They provide alternatives to the squat or split varieties of the lifts, and variety itself can induce a stronger training effect. Power style lifts are generally less taxing on the nervous system than the full lifts, so maximums can be attempted more frequently. Perhaps most importantly, they are performed more rapidly than the classical lifts (at least in the second through fourth stages of the pull). There is significant evidence to suggest that exercises performed at faster speed than the event normally requires help the athlete improve his or her speed in the event itself.

Back squats are regarded as hip and leg strength developers without peer. Front squats develop the body’s capacity to stand up from the low position in the squat clean. An easy recovery tends to make the jerk more certain. One of the advantages of squatting is that it enables the lifter to concentrate on only one phase of the lift: the recovery from the low position in the squat. Another advantage is that the lifter can work with heavier weights than in the lifts themselves. Most lifters can pull to their shoulders in the clean less weight than they can front squat. Therefore, a maximum clean may stimulate the pulling muscles to a maximum, but the legs may not be fully challenged. Separate squatting can provide adequate stimulation to the leg and hip muscles.

Examining the reasons for each of the basic exercises leads to the basic principles for performing assistance exercises: a) to offer variety in the training stimulus and b) to stimulate certain adaptive responses more than others so that the overall training effect can be enhanced.

As noted above, there is evidence that variety itself can provide a stronger training stimulus than does training on a uniform set of exercises. The evidence for such a phenomenon is far from conclusive, but it is worth noting. The more important reason for variety stems from the mind and nervous system of the lifter. Some lifters will become very bored and/or suffer nervous system fatigue using an exercise program that repeats the same exercises. These lifters thrive on the stimulus of a new challenge and will tend to benefit from variety, if only because they will put more effort into training sessions that they find interesting.

The stimulation of better adaptations through more focused exercises is the other key reason for adopting them. A certain exercise may help the lifter to concentrate more on one particular aspect of a classical lift than the lift itself. Perhaps the simplest example of this would be practicing the jerk from the rack as opposed to the clean and jerk. When the lifter practices only the jerk, he or she is “fresh” when the practice is done, not tired or distracted by the clean. The lifter will be able to practice the jerk longer and harder than if the clean was performed before the jerk each time. This narrowing of focus is even more extreme when a portion of the lift is practiced (e.g., a clean from the dead hang). Here the lifter may concentrate only on the last three stages of the clean. If the lifter requires special attention in these areas, dead hang cleans may help. However, in order for the benefits of any kind of partial practice to be transferred, the lessons must be quickly integrated into the classical lift for which the assistance exercise is being done.

The advantages of a narrow focus can be applied to technique improvement, speed, power, flexibility or strength. The focus flows from the exercise and the way in which it is performed (including what the lifter is thinking while doing it).

Since the purpose of incorporating assistance exercises is to provide variety and special emphasis, these principles must guide exercise selection. If the athlete can perform only the basic exercises without being overcome by any undue feeling of monotony and has no special faults that cannot be corrected while practicing the classical lifts themselves, there may be no particular reason to do anything else (except squats and some remedial exercises designed to correct some muscular weakness). This is basically the approach that has been adopted by the great Bulgarian coach, Abadjiev, in recent years. A much more modest variation of this approach was also advocated by the famous Soviet theorist, Roman, in his later years. World Champion and world record holder Bob Bednarski of the United States was a great believer in sticking to the classical lifts and the squat, as is world record Holder and World Champion Antonio Krastev (even after leaving Bulgaria).

Bednarski had this approach to training ingrained in his mind by his coach, the legendary Joe Mills, but Bob was hardly a blind follower of Mills’ theories. He made many changes in the Mills approach as he advanced in his career. Similarly, Antonio Krastev was exposed to Ivan Abadjiev’s methods from an early age, but he was not reluctant to question a number of the Bulgarian coach’s approaches quite vigorously (to the point of negotiating the right to devise his own training programs during his most productive years when he won his two World Championships and set his world records). Both of these tremendous athletes doubted the value of most of the exercises that athletes perform, and both rarely performed reps in either of the classical lifts (relying almost exclusively on singles and the classic lifts as their training mainstays).

On the other side of the theoretical spectrum we find coach A. Medvedyev and athletes such as the immortal V. Alexseev (eight times overall World Champion, twice Olympic champion and the most prolific world record makers in the history of weightlifting). Medvedyev has an absolute devotion to variety in training. He has focused on this subject in much of his research, and it is clear from his recent book, A System of Multi-year Training in Weightlifting, that he believes variety to be one of the major keys to success in weightlifting. In his book Medvedyev cites more than 100 exercises; the higher the athlete’s level, the more important variety becomes, according to Medvedyev. In a similar way, Alexseev astonished more conventional coaches with his training methods because he so often performed assistance exercises and relatively high repetition sets fairly near to a competition.

In between these extremes is the more mainstream approach, which balances practice on the classic lifts with the performance of a limited group of “core” assistance exercises. For instance, in a number of studies performed during the mid and late 1970s, Soviet researchers found that high level athletes spent an average of 22% (a range of 18% to 27%) of their time performing snatches and snatch related exercises; 25% (21% to 27%) on the C&J and related exercises; 10% (8% to 12%) on the snatch pull; 10% (8% to 12%) on the clean pull; 22% (19% to 24%) on squats; and 11% (10% to 15%) on pressing and related exercises.

How can highly successful athletes and coaches disagree so much on these subjects? I believe that the answer lies in two directions: individual differences among athletes and trade-offs in the benefits that are and disadvantages of each approach.

There are two aspects of the issue of individual differences among athletes. First, athletes differ with respect to their needs. No two athletes have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses, and therefore, no two athletes should train in exactly the same way. Each must seek the training approach that will maximize results by addressing areas with the greatest opportunities for growth and by not permitting current strengths to become weaknesses. Second, athletes can have differing responses to the same training structure and load. Two athletes can train in the same way (as measured by external means), but those athletes will respond differently.

Individual differences aside, there are trade-offs among exercises in terms of their specificity and the degree to which they generate a training effect. The principle of specificity of training tells us that training on the classical lifts should have the greatest carry over to performance in competition. Practicing the classical lifts improves the athlete’s skills in those lifts, and the training stimulus received by the body replicates the stresses that are received while competing. In contrast, a significant variety in a training stimulus can by its very nature induce a large training effect and overcome boredom (which may be the major limiting factor in the training of many advanced lifters). The question is where the optimal trade-off between specificity of training and variety in the training stimulus occurs in general and for each athlete.

Clearly there are a number of drawbacks to training solely on the classical lifts. Such training can have an uneven effect on the athlete because the classical lifts are so complex. For example, let us suppose that a lifter has trouble arising from the squat position in the clean even though he or she shoulders the bar with little difficulty. That athlete could practice cleans with weights that were difficult to stand up with, and over time that lifter’s ability to stand up from the squat position would undoubtedly improve. Alternatively, the athlete could practice back and front squats and strengthen the legs. Most coaches would suggest the latter approach or some combination of the two. Few, if any, would suggest the former approach. That is because the lifter would be likely to get tired of pulling the weight to the shoulders and then standing up long before he or she had applied a maximum stimulus to the legs.

Similarly, an athlete who was trying to improve his or her pull might discover that skill and the desire to go under heavy lifts had waned before the pulling muscles had been stimulated enough to generate an optimal training effect. Practicing high pulls would provide a good solution for such a lifter. Interestingly, some great lifters rarely practice high pulls, and others rely on pulls as their chief means to improve their pulling power. How can this be? Obviously, those who train exclusively on the lifts are receiving their training stimulus in the pull from the practice that they do in the classical lifts. In the case of those who pull a great deal, the training stimulus is probably derived more from the pulls than from the classical lifts. Although the second group of lifters benefits from the greater number of pulls in terms of developing pulling power, in terms of specificity of training, they no doubt lack something when compared to lifters who perform more classical lifts.

At least two characteristics determine the benefits of an exercise for any athlete. One is specificity of training and the other is the magnitude of the training stimulus. These may seem identical, but in fact they are not. Let us examine these issues further to see why this is true.

Let us make a hypothetical comparison between the training stimulus generated by the snatch and the snatch pull for a particular lifter. Let us suppose that this lifter requires at least ten attempts at 90% or greater weights a month in the snatch in order to generate any kind of positive training effect in that exercise. (We will stipulate that this threshold rate of improvement is 0.5% per month.) Let us further suppose that this lifter would actually improve more if he or she performed more than ten such lifts, and that the maximum training effect for that lifter would be generated by twenty such lifts (0.75% per month). However, it is established that doing more than twenty lifts would actually present something of an overload for that athlete and his or her improvement would be smaller with loads in excess of twenty lifts a month at 90% or greater weights. This is because the lifter’s nervous system becomes so fatigued by so many heavy attempts that he or she loses the ability to perform successfully in the snatch and because his or her joints become mildly sore when loads beyond twenty are performed (which hurts the athlete’s performance and technique somewhat). Therefore, while the training effect from doing thirty maximum or near maximum snatches a month is increased to the level of 1% per month, nervous system fatigue and soreness actually diminish the lifter’s performance by 2%. (This means that while the athlete’s pulling power might be improved by 1% after one month of training with thirty lifts at 90% of maximum or more, performance would actually decline by 1%.)

Let us further suppose that a snatch pull, because of its failure to duplicate all aspects of the snatch, exerts a zero training effect on the fifth and sixth stages of this lifter’s snatch and that even the pull during the first four stages of the snatch is only 80% replicated by snatch pulls. However, suppose this athlete can perform either twenty snatches or ten snatches and twenty snatch pulls with 90% or greater weights in one month with equal amounts of stress on the lifter’s nervous system and joints. In such a case, the athlete would clearly be better off doing the latter program. The lifter would have a performance increase of 0.75% doing the first program and a performance increase of 0.9% performing the latter program. In the latter case, a .5% improvement would be generated by the ten snatches, and 80% of an additional .5% (or 0.4%) improvement would be generated by the twenty snatch pulls. (Twenty additional snatches would have added 0.5% to the training stimulus, but we assumed that snatch pulls were only 80% as effective as snatches in stimulating improvement in the first four stages of the snatch.) We are also assuming that a training stimulus to substitute for the deficiency of the pulls in training the fifth and sixth stages of the snatch could be found (such as overhead squats), or that the lifter had sufficient reserves in these two phases of the lift to forgo any training effect for some time before anything like maximum capacity in those stages was tested.

Since lifters vary in the amount of stress they experience from performing the classical lifts and in the amount of stimulus they receive from performing variations of those lifts, and since lifters differ in their relative strengths in different phases of the classical lifts, the same program can have very different effects on two athletes. However, carryover values and relationships among lifts often remain stable in the same lifter over the long term.

Perhaps the most effective way to judge the carryover value of various assistance exercises for a particular lifter is to keep records of the relationship between that athlete’s performance in the classical lifts and his or her performance in various assistance exercises. Such records can help the athlete and coach judge the athlete’s capabilities at a particular point in time. In addition, but changes in relationships can highlight progression or regression on the part of the athlete in certain respects (e.g., if the athlete’s power clean and clean get closer over time, the change may signal a deterioration in the athlete’s clean technique).

Frequency of Exercise Performance

Once the desired exercises for a given training period have been identified, the next task is to determine how often the exercises are to be employed (generally in a week but sometimes over a period of weeks). The week, or some grouping of weeks, is typically used in planning because of the general tendency for human activities to fit into a weekly cycle, but it should again be noted that for the athlete who can train on any day, the “week” may not follow the normal constraints of seven days. Many athletes have found that training intervals which do not fit into the traditional seven-day week are the most beneficial. For example, some lifters find that two days of rest between heavy training sessions are very helpful and that heavy to maximum training days (at least for certain exercises) can only be handled every six days. Such lifters find that six-day cycles of training (e.g., two days of rest followed by a medium or heavy training day, two days of rest and then a heavy or maximum training day) are the most effective. Moreover, the ideal “week” for different body parts or exercises may not be the same. Recovery rates from bouts of exercise vary with the muscle group(s) involved and the way in which those muscle groups have been stressed.

One way to deal with the varying recovery rates for different muscle groups or exercises is to let them fall where they may, so that a heavy day for the lower back muscles may sometimes fall on a rest or light day for the squat. On another occasion it will fall on the same day, on still another occasion it will fall on a medium day, etc.. Alternatively, the lifter may vary the amount of training performed with two muscle groups, so that recovery from one is either slowed or accelerated to fall into the same recovery pattern as another muscle group (e.g., the athlete can include more sets and/or apply higher intensity in one exercise than the other in order to slow down the recovery process for the muscle groups involved in that exercise). In this way, training days for two muscle groups will never conflict.

Once the exercises and the number of workouts to be performed during a given period have been established, the exercises can be fit into the workouts. It is generally advantageous to spread exercise sessions on the same exercise as much as possible during the period being considered. For instance, if a lifter squats twice a week, those workouts might be planned for Monday and Friday. If there are three squat workouts a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday may make sense. If a lifter squats five times a week, Tuesday and Saturday workouts might be added, and if seven workouts are required, the lifter will squat once a day. These arrangements are generally more advantageous than squatting Monday and Tuesday when doing two squat workouts a week or three times Monday and twice on Wednesday when the plan is to squat five times in a week.

Similarly, if a lifter is planning to perform snatches from below the knee three times over a four-week period, he or she might perform them once a week (on the same day) for three weeks and then skip the fourth week, rather than doing them three times in one week and then forgoing them for the next three weeks.

There are three major exceptions to this rule. One is for situations in which the exercise planned is designed to teach a certain skill and then is to be phased out as the newly learned or improved skill is transitioned into a more classical exercise. In such a situation, snatches from below the knee might be performed frequently for a time and then be phased out in favor of snatches from the floor once the lifter had learned a targeted skill through practicing snatches from below the knee. Similarly, depth jumps might be used during one phase of training to improve an athlete’s ability to rapidly express force immediately after a muscle has been stretched. Once that ability has improved, the exercise might be phased out for months or years because it is possible for the athlete to preserve the effects of such training through the practice of related exercises (e.g., the dip for the jerk and rapid amortization and recovery in the last stages of a squat clean). In lieu of totally phasing out an exercise, an athlete might perform it periodically or for just a few sets, in order to preserve the learning that occurred while that exercise was emphasized.

The second exception is a situation in which the conditioning effect of the exercise in question will be replaced later with another exercise that may be more specific to the classical exercises. This can occur when the number of workouts in the squat is decreased and the number of front squat workouts is increased. The third exception involves peaking for a certain performance. When an athlete is peaking, the reduction or elimination of certain exercises from the athlete’s training in the final weeks before an important competition may help the muscular or nervous system of the athlete to recuperate in such a way that a noticeable improvement in performance is experienced. (The issue of peaking for competition will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.)

Planning for the Workout Day

The smallest realistic unit for planning the details of the workout is the day. An athlete may have none or several workouts in a day, but most coaches believe that there ought to be careful planning of the content of work within a day and that some of the most important relationships to be considered when planning a training program are those of the day.

There are several reasons for this. First, the athlete has only so much energy in a day. Second, there are daily physiological cycles which influence the quality of the work that can be performed. For most athletes, the best training periods are in the late morning, early afternoon and early evening. Few athletes are able to perform at their best immediately upon waking or just before retiring.

Considerations such as the time of day of the athlete’s most important competition(s) and what the athlete does during the day (other than lifting) should also guide the planner in deciding which exercises should be incorporated into which workout in the day. Still another consideration is the kind of training the athlete has done thus far in the day. Naturally, if the athlete has performed a record squat, there is little reason to schedule more limited squats later in the day. Similarly, if a lifter has executed a large load in a given exercise early in the day, there would be little reason to do much, if anything, with that exercise later in the day.

In contrast, if the morning exercise session consists of light exercise, there is little reason to place any significant restrictions on the activities performed during the evening. In addition, the morning workout might have emphasized an exercise that was intended to promote performance in an exercise scheduled later in the day. For instance, the lifter might have been performing snatches from the blocks in the morning with an emphasis on placing the shoulders in advance of the bar as the bar approaches knee  height. Snatches from the floor in the evening workout might pick up on that theme by having the lifter concentrate on reaching the same position that had been achieved during the morning’s training from the blocks. (The athlete might even warm up for the evening snatch workout with snatches from the hang or from the blocks in order to reinforce the lessons learned in the morning’s training session and to assist in the transition of that learning to the standard version of the snatch.)

The general pattern is to plan the most strenuous workout of the day and then to plan any other workouts around that one. Within such a workout, the progression is generally as described in the next section of this chapter (i.e., skills, speed, strength and endurance). In contrast, if only one exercise is to be pushed to a maximum in a given day, that exercise might be given precedence despite the general rule of order. For example, if the athlete intends to go for a squat record on a given day and no other maximum lifts are intended, the coach might wish to incorporate the squat relatively early in the training day and certainly early within the workout in which it will be performed.

The Workout Plan

Once the structure of the training day has been developed, the coach or athlete is prepared to determine the plan for each workout.

Basic Workout Structure

A basic structure for an individual workout based on experience and scientific evidence has evolved over the years. Prior to the start of the workout, many athletes perform some form of mental readying activities, a very advisable process (which will be discussed in Chapter 7). That process is followed by a physical warm-up, after which the body of the workout is performed. The workout concludes with a cool down period, which aims at restoring body temperature to the normal level and achieving a relaxed state (a process normally assisted by the workout itself). We will begin with a discussion of the warm-up phase of the workout.

Warming Up

The primary training effect that is derived from any workout session comes from the heaviest weights that are lifted in that session, and muscles can do only so much work before they suffer a temporary loss of work capacity as a result of fatigue. Knowing only these facts, an athlete might be tempted to begin his or her workout with maximum weights. Nevertheless, few coaches of weightlifting or weight training would advocate that a trainee lift his or her heaviest weights of a particular training session at the very beginning of the workout. The vast majority of coaches and lifters agree that at least some warm-p is necessary before attempting heavy weights.

Some coaches advocate a general warm-up which has the objective of raising somewhat the pulse rate and body temperature. This may be done with calisthenics, brief bouts of jogging (of the normal type or in place) and/or by emulating the lift to be performed with an empty bar or stick. Other coaches advocate warming up only with the exercise(s) that will be used early in the training session, beginning with as little as the empty bar but no more than 50% of what will be lifted that day. The lifter then works up gradually, increasing the weight on the bar to the heaviest weight of the day.

There tends to be a degree of transfer in the warm-p effect. If there has been a previous general warm-up, the need to warm up with the bar will typically diminish. (The transfer effect is more direct if the same muscles are used in the general warm-up as in the lift.) Similarly, if the lifter does several warm-up sets with the same light weight, there is a tendency to take fewer sets the rest of the way.

Exercise physiologists have not been able to agree completely on the scientific basis of or support for warming up, but most athletes and coaches agree that warming up is pleasurable and beneficial for both psychological and physiological reasons. There does not seem to be any point waiting for scientists to prove what trainees already know, although understanding the scientific basis would enable coaches to design the warm-up process more effectively. Younger athletes and those who have had no previous injuries tend to be more able to train without a warm-up than do more mature athletes and/or those who have suffered trauma to their bodies. For most Master lifters (thirty-five and over), there does not seem to be any choice about warming up; an extended warm-up is a must to get old joints moving freely and with minimal discomfort.

There seems to be growing agreement in the lay and scientific communities that vigorous stretching is not a good idea when the muscles and other soft tissues of the body have not been warmed up. Therefore, trainees should increase the range of motion gradually with each rep and/or set as they warm up, and no vigorous stretching should be performed prior to a general warm-up.

Some athletes have found that externally applied stimuli help them through the process of warming up. Some lifters like to have a vigorous and brief massage just before beginning their warm-ups (or a very brief massage in one or more areas of their bodies immediately before taking a heavy attempt, particularly in competition). As an adjunct to the warm-up process, other lifters like to apply liniment to certain areas of their bodies (usually to those areas that tend to be stiff or slightly painful until they are warmed up thoroughly).

As indicated above, the warming up process for a particular lift or exercise depends to an extent on what has preceded it. When a lifter is warming up for the exercise that is done first in the workout, he or she will generally start lighter and work up more gradually than when the second or later exercise of the workout is being performed. If a lifter is training a set of muscles that have just been used in another exercise, the warm-up period required can often be greatly reduced or even eliminated (depending on how closely the prior movement resembles the current one in terms of range of movement and the amount of weight handled).

Still another characteristic that can influence the length of the warm-up is the stage of development of the lifter. Beginners are often limited in their warm-ups for practical reasons. A lifter who intends to perform his or her heaviest set(s) of the day with 100 lb. might begin with the empty bar (which typically weighs between 25 and 45 lb. and then go to 65 lb. to 75 lb.) before lifting 100 lb.. An advanced lifter who intends to lift 400 lb. in his or her workout might begin with between 45 lb. and 135 lb. and work up in the following increments: 135, 225, 295, 345, 375 and 400.

While warming up, it is common for lifters to perform their earlier sets with higher numbers of repetitions and to reduce the number of repetitions as the workout progresses. For example, in the warm-up sequence for the advanced lifter described above, the lifter might do 135 lb. for 5 reps, 225 lb. for 4 reps, 295 lb. for 3 reps and 345 lb. for 2 reps, before doing singles with 375 lb. and 400 lb. This is done for at least two reasons. One reason is that each lift contributes to warming up the body, so that more reps warm it up more, to a point. Doing 10 reps or more with all but the very lightest of weights might “pump up” and fatigue the muscles, compromising the body’s ability to lift heavier weights on later sets. Using 2 to 5 reps minimizes the fatigue and pumping factors yet accelerates the warming-up process faster than single reps. Therefore, by employing more reps during the earlier sets (rather doing sets of singles), fewer sets and less overall time may be required to warm up. (However many lifters use only singles, except with the very lightest weights, and more than three reps are seldom used in the classical lifts—especially the C&J— even for warming up.) The alternative is to perform more sets and fewer reps (perhaps 2 sets of doubles with 135 lb. and 225 lb. in the previously listed workout sequence).

Regardless of the number of reps employed during the warm-up, that process takes some time. (The mind and body appear to need some time to get into “gear,” although we do not fully understand what getting in gear means, and the amount of activity that athletes require to reach such a state of full readiness clearly varies from athlete to athlete and in the same athlete on different occasions.) Performing several sets of a given exercise and taking the cumulative time that they entail appears to be unavoidable in order to accomplish a proper warm-up.

A second reason sometimes given for varying the reps with the weight on the bar during an exercise session is to attempt to accomplish multiple ends within the same workout, through a technique called “heavy and light” or “pyramiding.” (discussed in Chapter 3). It should be noted that this is not generally a sound method for training the classical lifts, as reps in excess of five are rarely used in the Olympic or related lifts (primarily because of the inevitable breakdown in technique which occurs on these lifts when fatigue sets in), and three is more commonly the limit, except with light to moderate loads. Moreover, for athletes who are interested primarily in development of strength (where hypertrophy is a means to the end of getting stronger, not an end in itself), a more effective approach is to work up to a maximum in a conventional way and then to reduce the weight after the heaviest reps have been completed in order to perform a final high rep set or sets.

One final issue that often influences the warming up process is the nature of the exercise that is being performed. The primary aspects that can affect the warm-up process are: the degree of skill required by the exercise, the range of motion involved in performing it and the speed with which the exercise is performed. For example, in an exercise like the military press, there is little skill involved, and while the military press is a relatively full range of motion exercise, it does not require as extreme a range of motion for most of the joints involved as an exercise like the parallel-bar dip or the full squat. The difference is that in the press, the range of motion through which the arms and shoulders are exercised is limited by the bar touching the shoulders (i.e., regardless of the flexibility of those joints, the bar is never lowered beyond the top of the shoulders). In addition, the stress that is placed on the joints that are relatively fully flexed at the start of the press (the elbows) does not reach a maximal level until the level of flexion in the elbow joint has been considerably reduced. In the dip or the squat, there is no inherent limit on the range of motion achieved except the flexibility of the joints involved (if the shoulders and elbows in the former and the knees and hips in the latter). The military press is also not inherently an explosive exercise. Many trainers encourage the lifter to push the bar up as quickly and explosively as possible while doing presses (and there is substantial evidence that such a method has advantages), but speed is not an essential part of the exercise. Since the press does not involve an unlimited range of motion or a great deal of speed or skill, it can generally be performed with a relatively limited warm-up, perhaps two to four sets. (An older or injured athlete may require more of a warm-up.)

In contrast, the snatch involves a great deal of skill and speed and a very full range of motion. There is a tendency to warm up more on such an exercise in order to prepare the joints and muscles for an all out and explosive effort and to fine tune the athlete’s motor patterns. Because of the considerable motor skills involved in performing the snatch, there is also a tendency to use lower reps while warming up and training. (As indicated earlier, skills have a tendency to deteriorate quickly as the muscles become fatigued during the same set.) Therefore, more warm-up sets tend to be required in warming up for the Olympic lifts than in warming up for exercises in which higher reps can be used effectively. The common range of warm-up sets in the snatch would be three to five in the earliest sets and doubles and singles as the weight grows heavier (unless heavy sets of three reps were being performed, in which case the warm-up sets would typically never fall below two to three reps).

Regardless of the health and age of the trainee and the order of an exercise in the workout, the amount of warm-up varies greatly among trainees. Some employ one or two warm-up sets and others may use as many as eight or ten. The majority of trainees fall somewhere in between, with beginners typically taking fewer warm-up sets and the more advanced trainers taking a greater number before attempting their maximum weights of the session.

In an article in the Soviet 1985 Weightlifting Yearbook, R.A. Khairullin suggested that many athletes fail to perform optimally in competition because of inadequate warm-ups. The author then suggested the following warm-up sequence for the snatch: up to one minute of jogging; 5 to 6 calisthenic type exercises, each performed for 8 to 12 reps; and repeating a circuit of 3 to 4 exercises 4 or 5 times (e.g., snatch stretches for 6 to 8 repetitions with the empty bar, 5 to 6 good mornings with a plate held behind the head and 4 to 5 overhead squats using a plate instead of the bar as the resistance). Then the athlete performs 3 to 4 reps in the snatch stretch with 25% to 30% of his or her best snatch. However, after the bar is brought to arm’s length on each rep, the athlete lowers it to the shoulders behind the neck and then, while pressing up with the arms, descends into a squat position. With each rep the lifter goes lower and lower, until the full squat position is achieved on the last rep in the set. With 35% to 40% of his or her maxim, the athlete performs 3 to 4 power snatches (each rep followed by lowering the bar to the shoulders and then performing a drop snatch) and then finishes the set with 1 to 2 reps in the snatch from the hang above the knees. Finally, the athlete raises the bar to 50% to 60% of maximum and then deadlifts the bar to a point where it is one-third up the thighs, pauses and performs a snatch from the hang above the knees. After this preliminary warm-up has been completed, the athlete performs a series of 6 to 8 sets of classical snatching, with 1 to 2 reps on the earlier sets and singles thereafter, progressing up toward the athlete’s first attempt.

Khairullin’s concept in the C&J is similar, but the first set with real resistance is performed with a weight that is 40% to 50% of the lifter’s maximum. With this weight the athlete deadlifts the bar to a position one-third up the thigh and, after pausing, performs a power clean. This is followed by 1 to 2 front squats and 2 to 3 push presses. The resistance is then increased to a weight which represents 50% to 60% of the lifter’s maximum. With this weight the athlete performs a power clean, a squat clean from the hang above the knee, a push press and 1 to 2 classic jerks. At this point the athlete is prepared to begin a progression of 5 to 6 singles in the C&J up to the athlete’s opening attempt.

While few athletes perform as extensive warm-up as that recommended by Khairullin (e.g., I have seen very few athletes, and even fewer of the top ones, jog before they lifted), there is much to be said for a fairly extensive warm-up. Non-strenuous warm-ups can do little harm and may do some good. I remember watching Vasili Alexseev warm up during his last World Championships appearance in 1978, and he began his snatches with 40 kg. Alexseev always believed in a thorough warm-up, and he had one of the longest and most illustrious careers in all of weightlifting. While that kind of career can surely not be attributed to thorough warming up, it surely did not hurt the great Alexseev.

One thing that I cannot recommend during the warm-up period is extensive stretching. Despite recommendations to the contrary in the current literature, I continue to see athletes begin their warm-ups with stretching. It has been well demonstrated that muscles and other soft tissues which are “cold” (98.6^o) are not as pliable or ready to accept loads as muscles which are warmer following activity. Athletes who like to perform stretches before they lift should do ballistic or static stretches sparingly and only after they have done some preliminary exercises to warm up muscles and body. Moderate AI stretching is probably the most useful method for an athlete who requires pre-workout stretching to achieve adequate mobility. Regardless of the actual stretching method used, the warm-up should be carefully performed. Stretching after the workout is a better choice when the athlete is attempting to permanently increase his or her range of motion. When warm-ups prior to stretching are not performed, the athlete should proceed very carefully and gradually with any stretching.

As a sidelight, the reader may be interested to know that two-time World Superheavyweight Champion Antonio Krastev told me that he never saw any weightlifter in Bulgaria stretch (other than while performing warm-ups with the bar) before and after the workout. Further, he never saw any athletes, other than those from the Western countries, stretch extensively at the World Championships. He was astonished to see the amount of stretching that goes on in American gyms and found it ludicrous. In defense of the Americans, we have many more athletes who, because of lack of flexibility is specific areas of the body, would not have been selected for weightlifting in Eastern Europe: hence the need for many Americans to perform remedial stretching. Moreover, the mere fact that champions do or do not do something is no proof that their approach is best. However, Antonio’s observation regarding stretching probably has some merit.

The Order and Number of Exercises Within the Workout

Once the coach has planned the exercises to be performed in a given workout, the exercises should be assigned to a specific order. The general rule for the ordering of exercises in a workout (following a general warm-up) are: skill building exercises first, speed development second, strength development third and endurance development last. The idea behind this arrangement is that new skills (or improvements to existing ones) are best learned when the mind and body are freshest. When it comes to conditioning, muscles which have been fatigued by strength and/or endurance training are less amenable to speed training than muscles that are in a relatively rested state. Endurance work clearly compromises the muscles’ ability to contract maximally, hence its placement last in the workout. It also appears that speed and strength work have only a minimal negative effect on endurance, therefore the placement of endurance work at the end of the workout has only a minimal negative effect on performance in endurance exercises (if any are to be performed).

These general ordering principles are far from absolute. For example, master lifters (particularly mildly arthritic ones) often find that warming up with a strength exercise, such as squats, actually facilitates performance of the more skill dependent exercises like snatches. The squat warms up stiff joints and muscles and permits faster whole-body movements (such as the classic lifts) to be performed with less discomfort. In addition, some research in the area of motor skills suggests that a greater degree of learning takes place when the athlete is fatigued than when he or she is fully rested, perhaps because the athlete must focus more intently. However, tired muscles will perform less well than rested ones and bad habits can be developed when fatigued, so skill practice after an athlete is fatigued is not generally recommended, despite its occasional value.

The one aspect of the ordering described above that appears to be most universally true is that any endurance related exercises belong at the very end of the workout. However, since few lifters perform such exercises and there is virtually no reason to believe that they would have a significant positive effect on weightlifting performance, this is essentially a moot point in the training of weightlifters.

The skill, speed and strength ordering of exercises suggests that the classical and other exercises used for technique development come first and that strength building exercises, such as squats and pulls, should be performed later in the workout. It also suggests that any exercises such as plyometrics or jumping be performed after the classical lifts, but before the strength exercises, though in practice, jumps and related exercises are generally placed at the end or near end of the workout (they are certainly done before endurance work in done, if any is planned).

In addition to arranging the order of exercises within the workout, the coach must be cognizant of the limits on the number of exercises that can be performed. Obviously, the smallest number of exercises that can be performed is one, and there are athletes who do as many as a dozen exercises in a workout. The correct number of exercises that can be performed in a single workout is a function of the conditioning of the athlete, the athlete’s state at the outset of the workout (e.g., fully rested or fatigued), the kinds of exercises that the athlete will perform and the number and intensity of the reps performed in each exercise. A well conditioned athlete who handles a large training load can perform more exercises in a workout than an athlete who is not as well conditioned. An athlete who is rested will be able to do more in a training session and do it more effectively than an athlete who is not rested. Similarly, if an athlete is performing his or her second workout of the day, he or she cannot expect to do as many exercises as if the first workout had not been performed.

The more complex and strenuous the exercises, the fewer the athlete will be able to perform. If the athlete is doing the classical lifts, he or she may not be able to perform more than two or three exercises within the workout. If the exercises are of a remedial nature (e.g., hyperextensions and abdominal exercises), multiple exercises may be performed without causing undue overall fatigue. A high number of reps in an exercise, particularly a high number of reps per set, will reduce the number of exercises an athlete can perform within one workout. An athlete who performs a few sets of one to two reps in each exercise may be able to perform many exercises in one workout.

Finally, the higher the intensity of the training in each exercise, the smaller the number of exercises that can be performed effectively within one training session. An athlete who takes several attempts at a maximum weight in a complex exercise will not be able to successfully perform many other exercises at the same intensity. (This is particularly true if the exercise expends a great deal of the athlete’s nervous energy, as in a personal record in a classic lift, or involves a full-body effort, as in a maximum deadlift or squat.)

The most common range of exercises per workout is two to six, with the number varying both with the load intended for the workout and the considerations already mentioned. The coach or athlete will need to experiment to determine the average number of exercises that are most beneficial for each athlete and then adjust the plans for specific workouts.

 When it comes to balancing the volume and order of exercises, the process is often interactive. Order can affect the volume that a lifter can perform in a given exercise; a lifter fatigued by a given volume of exercise will be able to do less volume in a subsequent exercise than when fresher, although a prior related exercise will also diminish the amount of warm-up required during a subsequent exercise.

Cooling Down

After the workout has been performed, the athlete will cool down (his or her body will return to a normal resting state). Stretching and moving about after a workout are good practices, as is making a conscious effort to relax (although often such an effort will be unnecessary, as muscular and nervous system fatigue tend to have a calming effect). Although research has yet to demonstrate any link between the exposure of an overheated body to cold temperatures, many athletes feel that restoring the body to its normal temperature before venturing out of doors is essential to avoid colds and similar illnesses.

If the athlete is interested in permanent improvements in flexibility, the cool down period is the best time in the workout to accomplish such aims. The muscles are warm, and they will not be called upon to contract forcefully until the next training session, so any stretching that is performed will tend to leave muscles in a relaxed and lengthened state.

Extensive flexibility work is not a good idea if pain in any area has been generated during the workout and that pain does not subside upon stretching. When a minor injury might have occurred during the workout, the athlete is well advised to postpone any vigorous stretching until the nature and extent of the injury is ascertained.

It is useful for the lifter to close the workout with some mental practice by reviewing successes and correcting any mistakes. Rehearsal aids retention, and mental rehearsal will at the very least help the athlete retain what has been learned on the cognitive (if not the motor) level. Lastly, some final notes regarding the workout and what was learned during it should be made in the training log at this time. (If the athlete does not carry the training log to the gym, those notes can be mental ones that will be recorded when the lifter returns home.)

Determining the Volume Devoted to Each Exercise Per Session

Once the coach or athlete has determined the identity and frequency of the exercises to be included in the lifter’s training, the amount of training that can be devoted to each exercise is determined by a number of very practical considerations: a) the number of training sessions in which the exercise is included in a given training period (e.g., a week); b) the length of time devoted to each session; c) the total number of reps that will be performed and how those reps will be apportioned in terms of reps and sets; d) the proximity to the lifter’s maximum of the weights lifted; e) the nature of the exercise; f) the amount of rest that is taken between reps, sets and exercises; g) the condition of the athlete and his or her inherent energy levels and recuperative powers; and h) the general constraints in the human organism that limit the number of maximum or near maximum efforts that an athlete can perform within a given time period. The most important of these factors are the number of reps per set, the rest between sets, the nature of the exercise and the proximity of the load to the athlete’s maximum.

The higher the reps and the closer to the athlete’s maximum the load on the bar, the fewer the sets f twenty reps, it is doubtful that more than one additional set could be performed at a high level. If an athlete is performing five reps, the maximum number of sets with a weight close to the athlete’s maximum

for five reps is probably four to six (fewer if truly maximal loads are lifted on each set). With two to three rep sets, the athlete can generally perform six to eight sets with near maximum loads (for that number of reps) but may be able to do as many as ten sets or more when performing singles before fatigue really begins to hurt his or her performance. In exercises in which the bar is moving more quickly (e.g., the snatch), the athlete can often perform more maximum efforts. When the exercise involves slower motions (e.g., the squat), fatigue sets in more quickly. (An athlete may be able to generate five or ten really good attempts at a maximum weight in the snatch but will rarely be able to make more than one or two all out efforts in the squat.)

Generally, the more rest an athlete has between sets, the greater the number of maximum efforts that can be performed (as long as rests between maximums are not so long that the athlete cools down). The Bulgarian “segments” method of training that was described in Chapter 3 offers an interesting way of increasing the number of maximum efforts possible during a given training session. Under this system athletes perform one to six maximum efforts, then reduce the weight on the bar by 5 kg. to 20 kg. After this reduced weight has been lifted for one or more sets, the bar is raised gradually, or immediately, to the athlete’s maximum. This process is sometimes repeated several times in a single session. The end result is that the athlete has been able to attempt maximum weights more times than if he or she had remained at the maximum weight until absolute fatigue set in. Whether this training method has special merit is a question that remains to be answered by further research, but on a very practical level it appears to have been an effective method for the Bulgarian lifters (although there have been reports that a significant number of lifters are lost due to injury in the Bulgarian program, perhaps as a result of these rigorous training methods).

Rest Intervals Between Exercises

From a physiological standpoint, the amount of rest taken between different exercises should not be similar to that taken between sets of the same exercise. However, most trainers recommend a somewhat longer rest between exercises than between sets of the same exercise because they feel that the change in the movement and thought patterns and the psychological value of breaks suggest that some additional rest between exercises is beneficial. The learning literature tends to agree that some “interference” skills building occurs when different skills are used one after the other. In addition, for psychological reasons (such as motivation), breaks are more appropriate between exercises than during them. On a more physical level, a break between exercises makes more sense than a break between sets because too long a break between sets of the same exercise might require one or more additional warm-up sets, perhaps more overall work than was planned. There is customarily a warm-up for each new exercise, so the break between exercises creates little or no need for extra sets. The exceptions to this rule would be exercises like front squats performed after squat cleans or snatch pulls performed after snatches. When this kind of exercise sequence is used, moving directly into the next exercise can significantly reduce or even virtually eliminate the need for a warm-up in that new exercise

As with the other rest intervals described above, the guidelines for the rest intervals must be considered in the context of the purpose of a workout. Trainees interested in developing a high level of cardiovascular fitness (not in competitive weightlifting) may wish to move from one exercise to another with little rest in between (a technique known as circuit training). Bodybuilders pair two or more exercises in the “super set” fashion described in Chapter 3. Weightlifters may find this to be a time-saving arrangement of exercises when maximums are not being performed and the two exercises being done involve different muscle groups (e.g., squats and presses). Some trainers prefer to perform different exercises in entirely different workouts (even if there are several of these in one day) so that the athlete can devote his or her full attention to improving one exercise or group of muscles at each separate session. For most weightlifters who are doing more than one exercise in a session, three to ten minutes of rest between exercises will suffice.

Once the complex of exercises has been established, it is advisable to build the plan in the following order: from the microcycle (usually a week but conceivably more or less than 7 days) to the days within the week to the workout. After detailed plans for the week and the workouts have been formulated, the coach can revisit the general plan previously established for the mesocycle and determine how the short term plan can be reconciled with it and whether adjustments need to be made in the overall content of the mesocycle in light of exercise selection and content.

Once the final plan for the mesocycle has been established, the coach can review the next few months in the macrocycle to determine whether any adjustments can or should be made to those months. (Planning ahead by more than a few months is essentially futile because such plans will almost inevitably need to be changed considerably on the basis of the actual results attained earlier in that macrocycle.) At the completion of each mesocycle, the coach will want to review the balance of the plans in that macrocycle to determine whether they require any adjustments.

The Process of Developing Training Programs: Three Examples

Now that we have explained the principles of planning a training regimen, it is time to illustrate those principles in practice – as they are used to construct training programs for individual athletes with very specific training needs. In effect, you’ll be looking over the shoulder of an experienced coach as he does his planning. It should be noted that the names and certain details of these cases have been altered or omitted in order to maintain the privacy of the athletes involved and to make the situations of greater general interest, but the essential accuracy of the examples has been preserved.

In each case, we will describe the state of the athlete prior to the implementation of the new workout plan. Then we will describe how a specific workout plan (i.e., a short term plan or microcycle) was created on the basis of that athlete’s particular needs. Next we will show how the microcycle was integrated into the mesocycles and macrocycles. Finally, we will report on the results. This process should enable coaches to understand better how the principles presented thus far can and should be applied, enabling them to diagnose and prescribe for individual athletes who will have different problems, be in different training states and hence require different routines.

Alan Shrug is an eighteen-year-old lifter who has been training for three years. At a height of 5’8” and a body weight of 75 kg., his best lifts are a 102.5 kg. snatch and a 120 kg. C&J. Alan has been training five days a week, averaging 1,000 reps per month with weights 60% of his maximums or higher. He has been devoting 25% of his training time to the snatch and snatch related exercises and an equal amount of his time to the C&J. An additional 20% of his time has been devoted to the squat, another 20% to pulling exercises (equally divided between the snatch and the clean). The remaining 10% of Alan’s time has been devoted to other auxiliary exercises (such as pressing, hyperextensions and abdominal work).

Alan has recently gone off to college, and his coach at home has suggested that he find a local person to help him there. Had he remained at home, his coach would have planned for a total load of 13,200 reps per year (an average of 1,100 per month). Because Alan’s C&J is a little low relative to his snatch (his snatch is more than 85% of his C&J when the typical relationship is closer to 80%), his coach had planned to increase the amount of time Alan spent in the C&J and related exercises (the squat and the clean pull). As a result, Alan’s time allocation with respect to exercises would have been as follows: snatch and related exercises, 22%; C&J and related exercises, 27%; squat, 22%; clean pulls, 12%; snatch pulls, 9%; and other exercises, 8%. Alan’s coach would have woven these basic numbers into a periodized annual plan that would have had Alan peaking for the National Collegiate Championships in October of his sophomore year.

Alan’s new coach Bob Thinker asks Alan for his training records for the past six months. After studying them carefully, Bob concludes that more specific tailoring of Alan’s training would benefit him more than the overall plan outlined by his former coach. Alan’s limiting factor in the C&J is primarily his leg strength. He can easily pull weights to the shoulder that he cannot stand up with, but even when he stands up with great difficulty he has no trouble jerking the weight. In the snatch Alan’s limiting factor is a tendency to let the bar travel away from his body during the second stage of the pull. This results in inconsistency and inefficiency in Alan’s snatch, and he often “swings” the bar forward and then back to various degrees during the final stages of his pull. While his 102.5 kg. snatch is high relative to his C&J, he is very inconsistent in the snatch due to his technical errors in the pull, often missing with weights of 95 kg. and above. (The day he snatched 102.5 kg. he missed 97.5 kg. and missed 102.5 kg. three times before finally making it.)

Given this information, Bob constructs a very different program for Alan than what his former coach had in mind. During the first month of Alan’s new training program, he will perform fewer snatches than usual. (He needs some time to correct his technique, and merely performing more snatches at this early stage is likely to reinforce incorrect technique patterns.) However, the number of snatch pulls and deadlifts will be increased in an effort to focus on executing the second stage of the pull more correctly. In order to offset the additional work in the snatch, the number of cleans and clean pulls, particularly cleans and clean pulls from the floor will actually be reduced somewhat. The number of squats Alan will perform will remain the same, but there will be a change in the structure of his training. There will be fewer training sessions in the squat (three as opposed to five a week), but there will be more reps per set (an average of 4.5 versus the previous average of 2.5), and the intensity will be stepped up on the heavy days and reduced somewhat on the lighter days. This pattern of higher reps will help Alan build additional muscle mass as well as strength in his legs. (It is likely that he will ultimately compete at 83 kg. or even 91 kg., so building some muscle mass is a sensible process for this athlete.)

After performing an increased number of snatch pulls and deadlifts for several weeks (and correcting his technical problem while performing those exercises), Alan will begin to merge his snatches and pulls in some workouts. He will perform a pull followed by one or two reps in the snatch. The purpose of this is to permit him to “groove” the pull correctly while he is performing the pulls (when he has nothing to focus on but the pull) and then immediately to perform a snatch or two in the same groove). As Alan gains mastery in this compound exercise, he will begin to perform more snatches without the preceding pull, eventually returning to a point where most of his workouts in the snatch do not involve preliminary pulls. (Whenever he is having a problem with his technique in the pull, he will return to a set or two of pulls and then pulls with snatches, in order to regroove the pull properly.)

In terms of daily training sessions, Alan’s workout plan for the first month of his training is summarized in Table 21 (the number of reps above 60% is shown for each exercise).

As was indicated above,  over a period of weeks snatches will be emphasized more and snatch pulls and deadlifts less. It should be noted that snatch pulls will be performed with lower than customary intensity during this stage of Alan’s training. He will perform many reps in the 85% to 90% range so that the tempo of the snatch can be preserved. (Remember that at this stage the pull is being used to build skills as much as to increase strength and power.) Most of Alan’s squatting will be performed in sets of five reps in order to stimulate strength development and hypertrophy simultaneously.

Alan’s new coach plans to increase the number of reps that Alan performs in the snatch and the C&J as the year progresses and into the following training year; in this stage in Alan’s career he needs more practice in performing the classical lifts in order to perfect his technique. Over the next two or three years he must achieve true sporting perfection in his technical capabilities, while at the same time increasing his strength and power. The additional practice on the lifts will assist him in both of these areas.

A second case is that of John Power. John has been training for six years and has reached the Master of Sport level. At a height of 5’10’’, his body weight is 100 kg., and his best lifts are 155 kg. in the snatch and 195 kg. in the C&J. He is graduating from college shortly and will return to his home town to pursue a business career while continuing his weightlifting training. He will resume his training under his old coach Bill Sage; he began his career under Bill but trained under the guidance of Gregor Steel during his last three years in school. John’s lifts took off during the first year under Gregor’s regimen, but progress slowed during the second year and stopped completely in the third, partially as a result of John’s having to curtail his workouts because of minor but persistent injury problems.

John is becoming frustrated as he has not been able to advance to the international level of performance. In addition to a lack of progress, John has experienced some problems with overuse injuries to his knees. While he has had no problems that have required extended layoffs or surgery, he has chronic soreness in his knees. From time to time he has used anti-inflammatory medication to relieve these symptoms, but when the medication is stopped, the pain always returns. The pain, while never severe, is persistent and generally tolerable  when John is fully warmed up during his workouts. He notices that his pain is most significant in the hours after his heavy clean workouts.

John’s technique is good. He rarely misses lifts with below maximum weights unless he is particularly tired. His C&J has actually declined slightly over the past year as his practice of heavy C&J’s has been hampered somewhat by his knee problems. John performs just under 22,000 reps a year in his training, or 1800 reps in an average training month. He trains six days a week, doing two workouts on three of his training days.

When John returns home, Bill Sage asks for his training records; after studying them at length, he suggests a very different path for John’s future training. Bill states unequivocally that John’s first goal must be to eliminate his knee pain. Bill reasons that if John is to C&J 220 kg. required to be internationally competitive, he is not going to do it with sore knees (and if his present course of training continues, his knees surely are not going to feel any better with heavier loads). At the same time, John needs to get much stronger if he is to compete on an international level. His technique can be marginally improved in terms of efficiency, but most of John’s future progress will be derived from improvements in his physical capabilities (e.g., strength and power) rather than his skill.

During John’s first month of training, Bill has him perform his normal volume of pulls and squats but restricts the intensity of his snatches, and particularly his C&J’s, to 75% of maximum or less. Each classic lift is only performed once a week. Bill’s intention is to permit John’s knees to heal while at the same time maintaining John’s strength level. During this period, primarily as a result of the reduction of classic lifts that John performs, the total volume of John’s training is reduced by a third (as are the number of training days) from what it has been in recent months. A sample week of training appears in Table 22.

In order to reduce the likelihood that John’s knee pain will recur when John returns to more conventional training after his “healing” month, Bill takes several steps. First, he reduces the overall number of reps that John will perform during his workouts by approximately 15% overall (to an average of 1,500 reps per month versus his prior average monthly load of 1800 reps). The mere reduction in the overall volume of John’s training should afford him some relief from his knee pain. The primary means of reducing the number of reps will be to decrease both the volume and the intensity of the classical lifts performed during workouts. Second, John will perform squats somewhat less often than he has in the past, and he will vary the intensity more than he has in the past. Finally, John will reduce the height of his heels slightly (by approximately 1/16”), which in his case will reduce the strain on his knee joints in the low squat position.

After one month, provided John reports no knee pain, he will move back into a more conventional program (i.e., somewhat higher intensity snatches and C&J’s), although he will not return to his previous volume of training in the snatch and C&J for the foreseeable future, and the number of training days on which he squats will remain diminished relative to what he was performing before he rejoined his old coach. For example, he will perform one clean and 2-3 reps in the jerk in his Saturday workout, maintaining a more limited load in the exercise that irritates his knees most (the clean). He will also perform a few sets of light repetition lifts in the classical lifts several times a week (60-75% for 2-3 reps). This kind of training should serve to toughen his joints to the strains of lifting without irritating those joints (later the load of heavier lifts may be gradually increased, although probably never to its former level).

John will increase his reliance on snatches and clean pulls as an important means of improving his pulling strength. He will commence using a height gauge when he pulls, so that he will have a way to measure his progress in those exercises.

Within three months after beginning his new training program, John makes personal records in both the snatch and the C&J. After stagnation for some time, he is overjoyed to make progress once again. He enjoys two additional dividends as well. His knee pain remains at bay. There are occasional twinges of pain, but they are minor and quick to go away. John has not needed any anti-inflammatory medication during the three months of his new training regimen. Finally, John feels more rested and energetic than he has in the past. He looks forward to each training session with greater enthusiasm than he has in years and even leaves his workouts feeling pleasantly fatigued instead of exhausted. And, as an added bonus, he has found very productive ways to spend the time that he has given up in the gym, such as relaxing and employing some restorative measures to enhance his recuperative powers (activities far more effective for furthering John’s career than extra training would be).

John’s weekly training plan during the second month back with coach Sage is summarized in Table 23.

Our third case involves Cindy Starter, a fourteen-year-old who has just been introduced to weightlifting. She fell in love with it after she attended her first competition with a friend. Cindy has been somewhat athletic throughout her life, having tried her hand at a number of sports, but she has never really trained seriously for any sport.

When she is introduced to coach John Bear, she says she wants to be a weightlifter like her friend, but she wants to know what her prospects for success are. Coach Bear says that while there are certain physical characteristics that give athletes an advantage at the outset of their weightlifting careers (e.g., good flexibility and natural strength), the real determining factors in a weightlifter’s success are the desire to excel and the discipline to go through the entire developmental process without skipping a step. He emphasizes the importance early on of developing sound technique and makes it clear that if Cindy wants to be a champion, she will have to focus her initial efforts on becoming a master technician. The coach explains that using light to moderate weights at the outset will increase Cindy’s strength, while struggling with heavy weights will preclude her developing good technique and will not result in her gaining strength any faster.

During her first visit to the gym, Cindy is asked to observe the technique of the other lifters in the gym while the coach gives her some pointers on the fundamentals of weightlifting technique. Coach Bear then tests her flexibility in the extreme positions of lifting (the starting position in the snatch, front and overhead versions of the squat position and the overhead squat with a snatch and clean grip). Observing that Cindy has adequate flexibility in the elbows, legs and hips but is somewhat stiff in the shoulders, John demonstrates some exercises for increasing shoulder mobility and instructs her to perform those exercises at a moderate level every day.

John then shows Cindy how to miss. He emphasizes that knowing how to miss will prevent accidents and ultimately give her the courage to attempt even the heaviest of weights without fear, because she will know how to get out from under a missed attempt without injury. John then has Cindy perform several sets of eight to ten reps in each lift with a broomstick. In the snatch and the clean, the lifts are performed from a position at or above the knees. While Cindy is practicing the clean, John notes that a lack of resistance is causing Cindy to lift the stick far away from her body and to poorly time the exercise, so he has her perform two sets with a light bar, simply so Cindy can get the feel of some resistance. The coach corrects major errors in the broomstick lift after each set (sometimes after each rep if the error is gross enough). Cindy finishes her workout with two light sets of squats, a set of military presses, a set of abdominal exercise and some stretching for her shoulders. Coach Bear then tells her to return to the gym in two days and to bring a notebook for her training log.

In Cindy’s second workout, she works again on missing (this time with a light bar after warming up with a stick). She is taught how to make notations in her training log. She performs each of the lifts with a stick (a light bar is used when a little more resistance is required). If the coach observes that Cindy seems to perform her snatches and cleans more correctly from below the knee than above it, Cindy will spend most of her early lifting days practicing from that position. (While the hang position above the knees is the position most often taught at the outset, some athletes seem to perform more effectively with the bar beginning below the knee. Why force the lifter to practice a small segment of a lift when a larger segment of that lift comes more naturally?)

During these early training sessions, John places great emphasis on assuming the correct starting and finishing postures in each exercise. He also emphasizes the distinctions between what an athlete appears to be doing and what he or she is actually doing while lifting (e.g., the bar is not being lifted to the shoulders in the clean by the arms, rather the legs and back are throwing the bar and the arms are used to pull the body under the bar).

Because Cindy is so young and willing to work, her shoulder mobility training soon has increased her shoulder flexibility to the point that jerks with the bar well behind her head and overhead squats can be comfortably performed. She is taught the hook grip after a few training sessions and uses it on at least one lift per workout. Cindy is having trouble not using the arms prematurely in the clean, so John Bear decides to have her perform a few sets of clean pulls preceding her clean workouts. She then performs one or two reps in the clean pull immediately before each set of cleans (actually as the first rep(s) of each set of cleans). This kind of practice soon has Cindy performing her cleans with minimal unnecessary arm action.

During the early weeks Cindy’s training is very flexible, as she and the coach experiment with different reps and styles of lifting (from the floor, the hang below the knees and the hang above the knees). Many teaching systems specify a certain order in the exercises that a lifter is taught at the outset, but John Bear bases the sequences taught on a general approach that he follows, modifying it for Cindy’s abilities and her patterns of learning.

The order of exercises is also experimented with (some workouts begin with the snatch, while others start with the clean or the jerk). After several weeks a plan that will be loosely followed for a period if four weeks is created; this plan is summarized in Table 24. Each lift related exercise in this above program is performed in five to six sets of from three to five reps on each set with a very light resistance. But each assistance exercise (pulls, squats, presses and ab work) is limited to three sets of three to five reps. Moderate weights are used throughout, with the lifter being permitted to try a new higher weight every few workouts in each exercise. (Heavier weights are not permitted in more than two exercises per workout.) In no event is a true maximum effort attempted, only a weight that is more than that lifter has ever comfortably lifted before.

In each workout (and usually for at least several training sessions in a row), the coach emphasizes one aspect of technique. The athlete may be doing many things incorrectly, but the coach selects the appropriate error to be corrected on the basis of the prioritization method that was discussed in Chapter 2. Once an error seams to have been corrected and that corrected behavior has stabilized for several workouts, the coach begins to address other errors. However, if an error suddenly appears through what seems to be a lack of attention, the error is corrected immediately, so that the lifter maintains the technique that she has already established.

Occasionally, Cindy is permitted to perform the clean and the jerk together, but at the early stages of learning, separating the two exercises is generally preferable. Some workouts with either the snatch or clean performed from the floor are done; all pulls are performed from the floor. Because Cindy seems to pull as correctly from the floor as she does from the hang in the clean, she is soon performing more of her cleans from the floor than from the hang. She is not performing her snatches as smoothly from the floor as she does from the hang, so some lifts from each position, as well as some sets in which there is a blend of both methods, will be done for some time. Every two to three weeks Cindy has an unloading week during which she does lighter lifts, performs fewer reps in each exercise, and emphasizes general physical preparation as much as lifting exercises.

A few comments on Cindy’s specific case are in order. Because Cindy is a true beginner, Coach Bear bases his training regimen on a number of ideas that are worth making explicit. The first of these is individualization. On the day that any person decides to pursue a career in weightlifting, he or she becomes a “beginner.” While most beginners share many qualities (e.g., the need to learn technique and the need to increase their strength), there will be many characteristics that make individual beginners different as well. One beginner may have a background in weight training and another may not. The lifter with a weight training background may be better conditioned for at least some forms of weightlifting training than the non-lifter but may have picked up some bad technical habits along the way or may have developed uneven levels of strength in certain lifting areas.

One beginner may be more flexible in the shoulders and less flexible in the ankles than another. Therefore, in certain ways, there is no such thing as a fixed and optimal training plan for “the” beginner (any more than there is such a program for the lifter at any other stage of development). Nevertheless, meaningful guidelines for training beginners can be provided, as long as the coach recognizes the importance of adjusting any general approach to the individual needs, abilities and qualities of each beginner.

When a lifter first begins to train with weights, virtually any lifting that he or she does will have a training effect (at least with respect to that exercise). The biggest single mistake a beginner can make is to interfere by overworking with the adaptations that the body is trying to make in response to the training stimulus. Overwork leads to fatigue. A truly fatigued lifter is more likely to use poor technique, more likely to be injured and, perhaps worst of all, more likely to become discouraged about his or her training.

The special susceptibility of a new lifter to these problems arises out of three kinds of adaptation that are taking place simultaneously (at last two of which are related). At the outset of training, the body is developing the ability to perform a greater volume of work with less disruption to the body’s systems, and it is adapting to the higher intensity of the work being performed. Developing both of these qualities (the ability to work harder and to lift more) seems to place a greater strain of the body’s resources than training separately on one or another of the capacities (although there is always a significant degree of interaction between training both capacities). A third adaptation has to do with motor learning. The new lifter is learning to contract his or her muscles more rapidly and forcefully and to coordinate new patterns of movement. This learning places a significant stress on the athlete’s nervous system. Care must be taken in planning the training of the beginner to assure that this combination of demands does not overcome the lifter’s ability to adapt.

When it comes to building strength, I generally encourage the new lifter to begin training with one moderately difficult set of each strength building exercise that needs to be done. (The lifter should end the exercise when one to three additional reps could have been performed with considerable effort, i.e., each rep that is done should be performed smoothly and without assistance.) The use of a single set (after one or two warm-up sets) that entails a moderate effort (one in which one or two extra reps would probably be possible) gives the body a nudge in the direction of developing both its work capacity and strength. The number of workouts in which the “one set” routine is used depends on the age and overall condition of the athlete as well as the number of exercises the athlete is performing in the workout. Naturally, a young athlete who is well conditioned, perhaps from training for another related but non-weightlifting sport, is able to increase the training load relatively readily and may even be able to begin with more than one set. An athlete who has done weight training that included the exercise in question can of course perform more sets at the outset. An older athlete, particularly one who has been inactive for some time, might do well to keep training on one set per exercise for two or three weeks or even longer. Then the workout can be increased to two sets per exercise per workout, and then to three sets after two to three more weeks.

Prepubescent athletes can and should use even lighter loads than those described in the previous paragraph, both because caution in loading young athletes must always be observed and because Soviet research has shown that younger athletes actually improve more rapidly when they train with 70% weights than when they train with weights that are 80% to 90% of maximum (the mainstay for strength building in more mature and higher level athletes).

Many people feel that they are not doing enough when they do only one set of several basic exercises in their early workouts. They insist on doing more sets and more exercises and on prematurely increasing the weights used. The end result is often a classic case of overtraining or injury. The new trainee experiences this (generally after a period of ten days to several weeks) as a loss of interest in the training process, fatigue, constant soreness or an aching feeling in the muscles and/or joints and a general feeling of malaise. (These sensations are not the same as the acute pain of delayed onset muscle soreness, which generally first appears from several to twenty-four hours after a workout, reaches a peak at twenty-four to seventy-two hours after the workout and then goes away within from one to several days.) Many people quit at this point, concluding that weight training is not for them (that it hurts them, makes them sore, is too strenuous, etc.). They do not realize that by abandoning progressive resistance training they are thereby resigning themselves to a life of progressive muscle atrophy, weakness, unnecessary demineralization of their bones and a loss of flexibility, all of which could have been prevented with regular exercise with weights. The decision to quit lifting weights may well be one of the most tragic they will ever make, and it was caused by a failure to follow the basic principles of proper conditioning. (This point applies to progressive resistance exercise overall, not only to the classic Olympic lifts.)

The appropriate training for beginners who are Olympic lifters is a special case. When an athlete is trying to learn a skill as well as to condition himself or herself (as is the situation when trying to learn to snatch or C&J), it is necessary to do considerable practice (i.e., many sets of the movement being learned). The ability of the beginner to handle multiple sets of Olympic lifts without undue strain on the body is made possible by several factors. One is that the athlete learning technique can use very light weights initially, thereby keeping bodily fatigue to a minimum while still improving motor skills. Second, since the snatch and C&J, particularly with light weights, are rapid movements, the muscles are not able to develop the degree of tension that they do when slow movements are performed. Therefore, some of the training and fatiguing effects of more strenuous resistance exercise (in terms of muscle tension) are avoided.

However, given the factors mentioned earlier, there is a limit to the number of sets a new lifter should perform. A trade-off can be made between the number of sets and the difficulty of the set. For example, if instead of using a weight that is moderately difficult, the lifter stays with a weight that is even easier, more sets and reps can be performed without overcoming the body’s reserves. Even a new lifter might be able to perform three to five sets in the first few workouts in the classical lifts without experiencing any undue stress, if the weights are very light. The number of sets can be increased to four to six after several weeks, as long an most of the sets are light, but this should not be done in all exercises in the same workout. (Select one exercise per workout for several weeks and add a second exercise per workout after another several weeks for the increased number of sets.)

Beginners can use a stick to practice the lifts and complete as many as five to ten reps per set merely to learn the motion (once more resistance is added as time goes on, the reps will fall to the 2-5 range). Further, there is no need to use weights which are difficult in any way. Six sets of three to four reps with 40% to 50% can be quite useful for purposes of learning the skill associated with performing an Olympic lift. (For a further discussion of weight selection, see Chapter 2).

What kind of progress can an athlete expect to see? A correlation has been noted between the starting age of the athlete and the time it takes an athlete to reach the status of Master of Sport. For instance, one study performed in the former Soviet Union found that athletes who began at age twelve typically required four years to reach the status of Master Of Sport. Athletes who began at twenty-one only required thirty months to reach that standard. Athletes in heavier weight classes take significantly longer, on average, to reach high levels of performance. It should be noted that while a champion lifter’s rate of progress during his or her early stages of training is generally significant, even a lifter who may ultimately be outstanding can find it slow going in the early years as the search for proper technique and sound training methods is under way. Similarly, a lifter who starts at a relatively high level of performance and progresses rapidly early on can hit a “wall” quite easily if the foundations for future high performance were not carefully laid.

Although the case histories presented above are different, they share the same theme. The athletes had particular needs, and addressing those needs became the focus of the training plan. The fit within the long term plan was considered in each case, but the needs of the athlete, rather than the annual phase of training, governed what the lifter actually did in his training. (In Cindy’s case, the long term plan is of no great significance except to assure that Cindy is not overloaded in her early training; competitions at this point are of no particular interest.) This distinction between setting priorities on the basis of some preconceived model or training progression and objectives and an individualized focus is crucial for the development of effective training plans.

What does it matter if the calendar lists an important competition if conditions for an individual athlete suggest otherwise? As an example I am forced the recall the case of an athlete that I knew whose schedule called for an important competition in the near future. He had incurred an injury a couple of months before this competition and relied on medication to try to relieve the symptoms. The medication helped, but the lifter was still bothered by the injury, which was to an area of the body that undergoes tremendous stresses during the performance of the classical lifts. Because the competition calendar called for it, the athlete decided to compete. He faced unexpected competition and was forced to attempt some near maximum weights in order to win the competition. On one of those attempts, he was injured seriously, and that injury changed the entire course of his career. In retrospect, that lifter surely recognizes that the “important” competition was not so very important after all.

There is a fine line between conjuring up an excuse not to compete or not to make an all out effort to perform well at a given competition and ignoring legitimate factors which should influence planning. When the intense pressure of preparing for a critical competition looms, it is easy to find an excuse or to ignore signals of impending disaster. Careful judgment is the only tool the coach and athlete have to guide them through these difficult issues. But the first step in exercising such judgment is the recognition that the individual athlete’s needs are for more important and relevant to making calls about his or her career than long term training models developed by theoreticians or statisticians. An individual athlete is not a statistic, and theories (critical as they are) must be tested and modified in the arena of reality. If either Alan or John had felt that a particular competition was important enough, training could have been arranged to accommodate the competition. However, what really counted in their training was that their weaknesses were effectively addressed by considering their needs rather than some preconceived notion of what they should be doing or what some idealized long term model of training suggests.

The Special Needs of Powerlifters and Other Strength Athletes Who Convert to Weightlifting

Athletes who have been engaged in strength training for a significant period of time (e.g., powerlifters and weight throwers) must employ a very special approach to training when they become weightlifters.

First, they must recognize that learning to be a skilled weightlifter will take years of work. There are no shortcuts to learning the skills of weightlifting–no matter how strong one is. The athlete who intends to convert to weightlifting must swallow his or her ego and accept the lot of a beginner (a very strong beginner with major advantages over the typical beginner, but a beginner in a number of important respects nonetheless).

Second, strong beginners face a challenge that normal beginners do not. They may actually be able to lift enough early on to injure themselves. A high strength level and lack of skill are a dangerous combination. It is not unlike teaching someone to drive in a Corvette, or skiing for the first time on an expert slope–accidents are likely to happen. Consequently, emphasizing the development of sound technique is even more critical for the strong beginner than the weak one.

Third, strong beginners are not in condition to lift heavy weights in the classic lifts. They would be making a mistake to attempt it–even if they had the technique and flexibility to carry it off. As was noted in earlier chapters, training is very specific. Only when the body is conditioned to accept a particular load (the speed, mechanics, intensity and volume of the loading must be prepared for) can it effectively handle that load without being overwhelmed.

 The good news is that by training technique with light weights the athlete can both learn to lift properly and condition the body to accept the loads that the very strong athlete will ultimately be able to lift.

The smart strength athlete who is planning a conversion to weightlifting will do several things. He or she will find a good technical coach. The athlete will have his or her weightlifting flexibility assessed and will begin to work on any areas of deficiency immediately. The athlete will continue to train on the exercises that made him or her strong if they are related to the strength required for weightlifting. But those exercises will be modified as needed to be more specific to the classic lift.

For instance, if the athlete has been performing power squats (squats to a depth where the thighs are just below parallel to the floor, the bar is held on the upper back and a wide foot stance is generally employed),  he or she will begin to do more squats with the bar high on the shoulders and the feet closer together than powerlifters do. This should be a gradual process where the athlete does only lighter sets in this manner for a time, gradually performing with heavier and heavier weights in the new style.

As the training weights on the classic lifts and related exercises increases, the other exercises should be gradually reduced, and, in some cases, be phased out altogether (e.g., wide stance squats and round back deadlifts can eliminated in favor of heavy close stance squats with the bar placed high on the shoulders and the lifter squatting as far down as possible).

Similarly, deadlifts, particularly round back and Sumo style deadlifts, would be phased out in favor of deadlifts in a position identical to that of the first three stages in the pull.

Muscles that have may not been trained in the past but that are important for weightlifting performance (e.g., overhead pressing) will need to be gradually added to the program. The athlete should begin with a small number of sets and moderate loads (perhaps threes sets, including warm-ups and finishing with a weight that is relatively comfortable in the last rep of the last set).

It will take several months for a strength athlete’s skills and conditioning to prepare him or her for serious training on the classic lifts and related exercises. Even at that point, the athlete is advised to train like a beginner or novice. That is, training should only occur three or four times per week. Over time the training can be increased, but the lifter must not rush into daily heavy training because his or her body will simply not be up to the task. It will take years (at least 2-3) before the athlete is mentally and physically ready to demonstrate anything near his or her true maximum abilities in the snatch and C&J. This is not to say that they can’t lift heavy weights even earlier but any such lifts will not be near their ultimate potential (remember it takes a typical beginner 5-7 years to reach anything close to his or her potential, so the background that a strength athlete from another sport has can cut that time by as much as half).

I have heard a number of powerlifters and other strength athletes say that they “tried” weightlifting and it hurt their joints and I have witnessed it myself. But in every case I am aware of this has occurred because the athlete has not learned proper technique and allowed for proper conditioning.

It is only natural for the powerlifter or other strength athlete to want to “try himself or herself out” to see if he or she “has it”. The truth is that no one “has it” and the only way to get “it” is to train for it. The athlete who wants to see if he or she is really strong should be content to perform some squats to a fairly low position with a fairly close stance, with the bar high on the shoulders and with no supporting gear. Such an athlete will learn respect for weightlifters who can take a squat with 600, 700, 800 or more pounds to the bottom. In some cases these relatively new athletes may demonstrate truly extraordinary strength. Even in that event, the new weightlifter will need to be content with that form of strength expression (and improving upon it) until he or she develops the skill and conditioning necessary to express his or her strength through the classic lifts.

Strength athletes should not be discouraged by the advice that has been provided above. If they prepare properly they will ultimately be able to demonstrate their abilities in the most competitive strength sport in the world. The strength training that they have done will make the road to the top shorter than it will be for most others. In addition, other skills that they may have developed while training for competing in other strength events (concentration, poise under pressure, good training habits) will all give them and advantage as they make the transition.

There is nothing I would like to see more than the best powerlifters and other strength athletes of the world develop the strength and skills needed to compete with the best in the world in weightlifting. This influx of new athletes into the sport of weightlifting will no doubt raise the competitive “bar” for everyone. But only the intelligent, dedicated and patient athlete making the transition from another weight sport to weightlifting will get the job done.

The Actual Training Programs of Three Champions

So far in this chapter, we have presented detailed explanations of the concepts of planning training programs for weightlifters of varying levels of experience and accomplishment. We have followed that discussion with some illustrations of the process of programming as it was applied to individual athletes with specific needs. Now, as a sort of climax to our discussion of planning, we are presenting training programs that have actually been used by several of weightlifting’s great champions. However, some words of caution are in order before we take in in-depth look at these training programs.

Many books on weightlifting and other sports include a series of sample or recommended workouts. Sometimes these are offered merely as very generalized examples of what full workouts look like. In other cases the workouts are somewhat more specific. For instance, they may be presented in such a way that there are workouts for athletes of different levels (e.g., beginner, intermediate and advanced). While these approaches can provide valuable concrete examples of the application of workout planning theories, they can and do lead to a number of serious misunderstandings. There is a tendency for readers to assume that these examples are the actual workouts that athletes should endeavor to perform. Sometimes authors intend this because they believe that they have developed “the ideal” workout and want others to use it. In other cases the reader assumes this, even though the author may caution against it. In reality, there is no ideal workout for all lifters, all lifters of the same level or even all lifters with the same strengths and weaknesses. As has already been discussed, different lifters react to the same workloads in different ways.

There are unquestionably universal principles of training that apply to all lifters. These principles have already been presented at length. The challenge for the coach and the athlete is to apply these principles properly. That is why we are providing the training programs of the champions as examples of training approaches, not as “off-the-shelf” solutions. Before proceeding we will warn the reader once again that the programs being presented cannot be followed blindly. They are programs that were developed to meet the individual needs of the lifters and were based on the judgment of the lifters or coaches who formulated them at that time (which means that they may or may not have been optimal for those lifters at that time). The purpose of illustrating them is to show how planning principles have been applied rather than how they should be applied to you or your athletes, different individuals with different needs and abilities.

 I have selected the programs of three lifters: two-time World Superheavyweight Champion, Antonio Krastev; the 1994 Women’s World Champion in the 50 kg. category, Robin Byrd-Goad; and 1976 Olympic Silver Medalist, Lee James. The first two workouts are presented as they were related to me by the athletes in question, and the last one is presented as it appeared in the 1978-1979 issues of Strength & Health magazine.

The Training of Antonio Krastev

Between the fall of 1991 and the fall of 1993, Antonio Krastev, two-time World Superheavyweight Champion and many time world recordholder and the man who snatched 216 kg., the greatest weight ever recognized by the IWF as a world record, trained in our gym in New York City. When he arrived, he had not trained for an extended period, and lifts of 120 kg. and 150 kg. gave him a great deal of trouble during his first workout with us. However, over a period of several months, he regained a significant amount of his former condition and was doing lifts of 185 kg. and 230 kg. Over the next year or so he trained irregularly because of job commitments and other issues which made training difficult. Then, toward the beginning of 1993, things settled down for Antonio, and he trained seriously through May of that year. At the end of that period, he performed lifts of 200 kg. and 250 kg. in training, equaled the snatch in competition, clean and jerked 235 kg. in the same meet and cleaned 245 kg. relatively easily, narrowly missing the jerk. In a matter of months, Antonio had worked himself into shape and very nearly lifted the highest total made in the world that year.

That Antonio Krastev is a remarkable athlete is obvious by his lifting ability. However, he credits much of his success to the training approach that he has developed over more than two decades in weightlifting. Unlike the other Bulgarian lifters of his day, Antonio constructed his own training programs when he did his best lifting (from 1985 to 1987 when he won two World Championships and set his amazing snatch record of 216 kg.).

When he was able to train full time in Bulgaria, Antonio trained six days a week, twice a day. His workouts were founded on the six exercises that the Bulgarian elite lifters of the mid and late 1980s performed: snatch, C&J, power snatch, power clean, front squat and back squat. However, Krastev also performed his version of a high pull approximately once a week with each grip. (His method of performing the pull consisted of lifting the bar in an identical fashion to the classic lift, with a very explosive effort at the finish of the pull but never bending the arms or permitting the bar to rise above the position in which his body was fully extended, leaning slightly back and on toes.)

In his morning workouts Krastev would typically perform the snatch and C&J plus some kind of squatting (he would often substitute a power snatch or power clean for the squat versions of those lifts). He worked up to a comfortable maximum in each exercise, training exclusively on single lifts. (Krastev rarely performs a double and never does more than two reps in any weightlifting related exercise in training.)

In the evening Antonio would again work up to maximum in both lifts and either the front or back squat. While he could not work up to his best lifts every day, he found that he could usually equal or exceed his best C&J once or twice a week and do the same in the snatch two or three times a week. His experiences were similar in the squat. In the pull Antonio would work up well in excess of his best lifts in the snatch or clean respectively, always emphasizing an explosive effort.

When he trained in the United States, Antonio modified his approach somewhat because he worked during most of his stay here. He therefore generally omitted the morning workout. He also introduced a greater degree of variability of volume and intensity into his training. His training was based more on how he felt on a given day. For example, in the spring of 1993, the day after he snatched 200 kg. for the first time in the United States, he came into the gym, worked up to a power snatch with 90 kg. and ended his workout. He felt that much was enough on that day. With respect to cycling, Antonio rarely varied the reps or exercises that he performed. However, during lighter months or weeks, he merely lifted at a lower level of intensity.

While much of Antonio’s success can be attributed to the physical side of his training, much of his tremendous performance capabilities must be attributed to his mental preparation. To watch Antonio train is to experience a truly unusual level of intensity. While he relaxes between sets, when Antonio wraps his hand around the bar, he is all business. His concentration is awesome, and he prepares himself for every lift (light or heavy) in the same way in terms of focus. (He obviously becomes more aroused emotionally when he prepares for his heaviest lifts.)

When Antonio gets ready to lift, the observer feels that he would not notice if the building collapsed. This kind of focus not only pays off in terms of his ability to perform heavy lifts on a regular basis but also explains his consistency. Over the two years that I watched Antonio train, I did not see him miss more than a handful of lifts in either the snatch or the clean (and when he did miss it was with a maximum attempt). Moreover, his skill is so great that it is rare for him to have a lift that is out of the groove or requires any adjustment as he lifts. Virtually every lift is rock solid and is performed with exemplary efficiency and explosiveness.

During Antonio’s peak, his best lifts were: a snatch of 222.5 kg.; a C&J of 265 kg.; a power snatch of 200 kg.; a power clean of 220 kg.; a squat of 410 kg.; a front squat of 310 kg.; a power jerk of 250 kg. (last performed in 1980 when his former coach Abadjiev had his lifters abandon them); and a jerk from the rack of 270 kg. (last done in 1981 when Abadjiev abandoned them as well).

The Training Program of a World Champion: Robin Byrd-Goad

November 25, 1994, was a magic moment in United States weightlifting history. For the first time since the Women’s World Championships began in 1987, the United States had an all around world champion weightlifter: Robin Byrd (recently married to U. S. National Weightlifting Champion Dean Goad and now Robin Byrd-Goad). Robin has had a long and illustrious career in weightlifting, setting world records in the snatch in both the pre-1993 and post-1992 weight class eras and winning silver medals in World Championships on three occasions. Finally, in 1994 Robin received her greatest reward to date. She was the true queen of the 50 kg. division at last!

How did Robin prepare for the 1994 World Championships? The complete answer includes a decade of hard and intelligent training and a great deal of determination. But in terms of the immediate period prior to the 1994 World Championships, Robin has been gracious enough to provide me with her actual training log for the nine weeks prior to the event during which she worked herself into the best shape of her career. As it turned out, Robin was able to be conservative on the day of the meet and did not have to exceed her training bests in order to win (although she is fully capable of doing so when necessary).

During the period from nine weeks to one week before the competition, Robin trained five times a week on average, but her workouts varied from three to six days in a given week, depending on her energy level, the degree to which she felt recuperated from prior workouts and the available training time. Most of her training was done once a day, in part because of the demands of her employment as a teacher. (Unlike most competitors from other countries, Robin holds a full time job, proving that an athlete can work and still achieve championship performance levels.) Obviously, with the constraints on Robin’s training, her workouts had to be highly efficient at generating results.

In her pre-competition training, Robin employed a total of fifteen different bar exercises: snatches. power snatches, snatches from the block, C&J’s, jerks, power cleans and jerks, snatch pulls, snatch pulls from the hang, snatch deadlifts and shrugs, clean pulls, clean deadlifts and shrugs, stop squats, squats, front squats and presses. She averaged three exercises per workout but did only one exercise in some workouts and as many as five exercises in others. She spent nearly 25% of her training time performing C&J’s and related exercises and about as much time performing snatches. A little more than 25% of her training time was spent performing snatch and clean pulls and deadlifts (with snatch related exercises of this type comprising a little more than half of the total number of reps), while another 17% was spent on squatting. The balance of her training was devoted to presses and other remedial kinds of exercises.

The single exercises Robin performed most often in her training were the snatch and the power clean and jerk, which she did a total of twelve times during her training sequence. Snatches and snatch deadlifts were next in terms of frequency, being performed eleven times each. C&J’s and power snatches tied for third place with ten training sessions on each.

Robin performed jerks from the rack only four times during the training cycle. However, in one of her workouts, she jerked 105 kg., her all time best. She preferred snatch and clean deadlifts with a shrug about 3.5 to 1 over pulls with either grip and performed front and back squats with nearly equal frequency.

Robin would typically handle 95% to 100% of maximum in her deadlifts for three sets of three reps. Front squats were generally in the 95% to 105% range in relation to her C&J for two to three reps, while back squats were generally performed with from 122% to 132% for sets of two to three reps.

During the two training months prior to the World Championships, Robin did a total of approximately 1000 reps. She performed singles and doubles most often in the classic lifts and related exercises, rarely doing more than three reps in these exercises. However, sets of three reps were her most common pattern in squats and in pulls.

Approximately six weeks prior to her World Championships victory, Robin competed in a local competition as a sort of tune up for her World competition. At that competition, 3 kg. overweight, she made lifts of 82.5 kg. and 97.5 kg., actually trying an 85 kg. snatch. She made no special preparations for that competition, other than reducing her training load during the week preceding it. In the final week prior to the competition, Robin trained only twice. She performed the power snatch, C&J and a few jerks from the rack five days out. Snatches and C&J’s with approximately 85% of maximum were handled during the last workout, which was two days before the competition.

Robin’s workouts were curtailed a little more than they normally would have been before a competition, both because she had a long trip to the competition and because she had a kidney infection that nearly prevented her from competing at all. Only quick thinking on the part of her personal coach (and that year’s Women’s World Team coach), John Coffee,  resulted in her getting the treatment she needed, permitting Robin to enjoy the most glorious moment of her career and the brightest moment in recent United States weightlifting history.

While he tends to maintain a low profile, John has coached more of the US’s top women lifters than any other coach in the history of US weightlifting. His women have won more than ten National Championships and he has had more than one of his athletes on virtually every international women’s team ever fielded by the US. The breadth of John’s knowledge and success is often overlooked because of his unassuming ways, but he is truly one of the sport’s unsung heroes.

The Training of Lee James

Lee James had a meteoric rise to weightlifting success during the mid-1970s. He took fourth place in the 1974 Nationals in the 82.5 kg. category but made the 1974 United States World Weightlifting Championships team through some very good fortune. In 1975 he took second at the U. S. Nationals and had good fortune second time as the champion, Peter Rawluk, was injured during the championship, and Lee got to represent the United States once again. He went on to win the Pan American Games that year and then really caught fire. He moved up to the 90 kg. class and over a period of less than a year added 20 kg. to win a silver medal at the Montreal Olympics.

Lee injured his knee in Montreal and, after wrestling with the problem for some months, finally had surgery in 1977. Many wrote him off after the surgery, but he fought back, setting American records once again, winning the Nationals in 1978 and looking as if he would be a real contender at the 1978 World Championships, which were to be held in the United States later that year. Unfortunately, disaster struck shortly after the Nationals, as Lee reinjured his knee once again; he was unable to lift at the World Championships and never fully recovered after that.

His post-injury program during 1977-78 is of particular interest because it shows how a lifter coped with an injury by reducing the number of classic lifts and relying on strength and power building exercises more than the classic lifts to restore him to his former competitive form and beyond. It must be remembered that Lee was already an established lifter with good technique when he embarked on this program, so the need for him to practice the classic lifts was not as great as it would have been for a lifter of less skill or experience. It should also be noted that Lee emphasized good technique during all of this strength building work so that his newfound strength could be converted to improved performance on the snatch and C&J as much as possible

In the latter part of 1977 and the first half of 1978, Lee trained on a program of four days a week and two workouts a day. The workouts were performed on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, giving Lee the weekends and one day in the middle of the week to recuperate from his grueling program. He believed in focusing on one of the lifts each training day and hitting that lift from every angle. He then performed some kind of squatting exercise on each training day. On two of his non-training days he would do some jumping and stretching.

He followed the practice of setting up four-week mesocycles, with similar percentages lifted in each lift during each week. Reps performed were higher in the lower intensity weeks and lower in the high intensity weeks Table 25 depicts his workouts. The percentages shown on the table refer to the percentage of maximum that was lifted in the top set(s) of each training day that week. The “maximum” refers to the Lee’s maximum for that exercise. For example, Lee did his pulls to a height gauge, so the percentage referred to in that exercise is of the heaviest pull that he could do correctly and touch the height gauge (when Lee snatched his personal best of 170 kg. his best snatch pull was 185 kg.). Percentages are all of the maximums for that exercise. Unless otherwise noted, each exercise was performed for seven sets (Thursday’s and Friday’s shrugs were performed for five and four sets respectively).

Lee performed his shrugs up to 85% with no preparatory leg bend but with a rise on the toes and shoulders pulled as high and as explosively as possible. With weights above 90% he used some leg drive to assist in the shrugging motion. Pulls to the knee were performed standing on a 2” block with two-second pauses on each rep 2” above the floor, below the knees and again 2” above the floor on the way down. (He just brushed the floor between reps.) On the hang pulls Lee lifted the bar form above the knee. Good mornings were performed with the knees bent and the torso lowered to a position parallel to the floor. Abdominal work was done after the Tuesday and Friday workouts.

Approximately four weeks prior to a competition, Lee modified his workouts to focus on the competitive lifts. (See Table 26.) He reduced his training volume significantly through a reduction in reps and sets. He did singles in the classic lifts and began his pulls with three reps but reduced them to singles with the heaviest weights of the day. Front squats were reduced to five sets of three reps throughout this cycle and were eliminated entirely one week before the competition. Back squats were reduced to five sets of three reps two weeks before the competition. All exercises were staggered in terms of percentages from workout to workout (ranging from 70% to 100%). He would attempt a maximum C&J fifteen to twenty-one days before a competition and a maximum snatch approximately ten days out (trying to have seven days between the maximum training C&J and snatch). His focus during this period was on explosiveness and technique. Lee tended to move quickly through his workout, resting approximately 45 seconds between most sets (except for squats, where he typically rested for 2 minutes between sets).

Lee always felt that mental training was at least as important as physical preparation and that most less successful lifters got the results they did because of lack of mental training rather than poor physical preparation or genetic deficiencies. He feels that development of mind, spirit and heart is the most important factor in a lifter’s success—a contention with which few people who have raised themselves to success in any endeavor would disagree.

The James workout approach would have to be considered atypical, but they have worked well for him and for some other athletes who have tried similar ones, modified for their own circumstances.

Peaking Methods

To this point, we have focused primarily on training to improve overall capabilities. In this section we will focus on training methods that will enable the athlete to express whatever abilities he or she has on the competition platform (i.e., to arrive at the competition in the best possible condition). This special training process is often referred to as “peaking.”

As has been indicated earlier in this book, training is a process of applying a stimulus of sufficient strength to the body in order to cause an adaptation by the body. However, in order for the body to generate an adaptation, it must be given time. Applying another stimulus before the body has adapted to the first is unnecessary. Moreover, if another stimulus is applied before the body has adapted to the first, the body can be stressed to point at which its adaptive energies are diverted from the process of positive adaptation to mere maintenance. If unnecessary stimulation continues, the body can be overwhelmed to the point at which it regresses or becomes injured or sick. Consequently, getting adequate rest is one of the keys to weightlifting progress.

Adequate rest can be even more critical before a weightlifting competition. There is a tendency for lifters to overtrain in preparation for a meet (primarily due to the need to prove to themselves that they are in top condition by repeatedly demonstrating that condition to themselves). A second reason is that stress arising out of concerns about the competition is often high just prior to that event. This extra stress can overwhelm a body that was otherwise in balance with regard to the relationship between rest and training. Therefore, extra rest immediately before a competition can assure that the body will be adequately rested on the day of the meet. It can also provide the added reserve that may be needed at a crucial moment in competition.

While extra rest is desirable, some lifters let the quest for extra rest accomplish the opposite of its intended purpose. Rest may help build the reserves necessary to handle stress, but if worry about rest itself becomes a stressor, little is accomplished by attempting to get extra rest. Lest the emphasis on extra rest become exaggerated, it should be remembered that a healthy athlete who has properly prepared for a competition will have the capacity to perform well, even if the rest he or she gets immediately before the competition is not optimal.

Proper preparation should build a lifter’s reserves so that he or she will be able to prevail regardless of any last minute conditions. Several steps should be taken to accomplish this. First, the training volume should generally be reduced somewhat prior to a competition. Second, the lifter should set aside a little more time than usual for relaxation. Third, the lifter should also be sure to get adequate sleep. Finally, the lifter should attempt to reduce sources of stress. For example, the weeks before a major competition are not the ideal time to change jobs, cultivate new love relationships, confront major family problems or undertake any major changes in living habits.

Skill is required to combine these extra rest factors, and that skill consists primarily of proper timing. If extra rest begins too early and is too extreme, the athlete can actually begin to lose some of his or her adaptation to the training. If the rest begins to late, it will not have enough time to exert a full positive effect. Timing will vary among athletes and within the same athlete depending on that athlete’s condition immediately prior to beginning the special energy conservation effort.

To determine proper timing, I recommend a “condition assessment” approximately six top twelve weeks prior to a major competition. Such an assessment is far from scientific, but it can be vital. During the condition assessment, the lifter should consider such issues as his or her present physical and emotional state and the career and family obligations that are likely to arise before the competition. If the lifter feels a little overtrained, this is the time to correct that problem. In contrast, if a lifter is undertrained or coming off an injury, it may be appropriate to plan a gradual increase in intensity up to the competition. If extra emphasis on some minor aspect of technique or strength needs to be applied, this is the time for this. If a significantly stressful event is anticipated, this is the time to consider how to reduce the level of such stress. Plan to make travel arrangements far enough ahead so that stress with regard to that process is avoided; five to six weeks before a major competition is a good rule of thumb. Repair or replace any personal equipment (e.g., get the heels of your lifting shoes fixed if they need it). Arrange things so that only unexpected events are likely to require any extra effort part as the competition draws closer.

In essence, the purpose of this planning session is to cause the lifter to pause and re-evaluate the situation. Perhaps more importantly, it allows the lifter to pause early enough to make meaningful corrections and preparations. The final aspects of the peaking process are planned during this phase.

There may be as many peaking methods as there are lifters, but most methods can be characterized in one of two ways: decreasing volume and increasing intensity or gradually increasing intensity and maintaining relatively stable volume. The first method is probably the more popular of the two, but both methods can work if they are tailored to the lifter. Elements of both methods are often combined. For example, volume can be traded off for intensity, and intensity can increase gradually. Naturally, circumstances can favor the use of one over the other.

Peaking by Reducing Volume and Increasing Intensity

Peaking for competition by decreasing volume and increasing intensity is typically part of a larger overall training plan based on periodization. The reduction in volume as the competition nears virtually guarantees that the lifter will be able to increase the intensity of his or her training without experiencing undue fatigue. Therefore, the athlete should be well rested on the day of the competition, even though he or she has made a relatively high number of maximum and near maximum attempts in the classical lifts in the month(s) immediately before the competition. Additional assurance of arriving at the competition in a rested state is attained when the lifter further reduces the volume and intensity of training in the final days before the competition.

In order to use periodization for successfully when peaking, the coach must constantly monitor the progress of the athlete and make adjustments to the program as necessary. If the athlete enters the competitive period in a state of fatigue, the normal reduction in volume and increase in intensity during the competition phase will not peak the athlete effectively. If the athlete is performing at a very high level in the classical exercises during the preparatory phase, there may not need to be as long a competitive period as was originally planned. These and a multitude of other considerations must be factored in as the coach observes the lifter in training.

In addition to the information that has already been presented in this book, a significant amount of research has been performed in Eastern Europe regarding the preparation of an athlete for a major competition in the closing weeks before the competitive month. On the basis of such research, Robert Roman, the late writer from the former Soviet Union, provided a number of guidelines for preparing for competition in his works. In one of his later works, Roman suggests that athletes not attempt maximums in the snatch closer that seven to fifteen days from the competition. Weights 95% to 97% of maximum should not be lifted within six to twelve days of the competition, and weights 90% to 92.5% should not be lifted within five to nine days. In the C&J, he recommends no maximums within nine to eighteen days of the competition, no weights 95% to 97% within seven to fifteen days and no weights 90% to 92.5% within five to thirteen days. He believes that 94% of all heavy squats in the month should be performed during the first three weeks of the competition month and that all heavy clean pulls should also be done during those weeks. In the squat, he recommends that the athlete not handle weights in excess of 120% of the C&J ten to sixteen days prior to the meet, weights 110% to 117.5% eight to twelve days before or weights 100% to 107.5% six to ten days before. Finally, in the clean pull, he warns against handling weights in excess of 120% within eleven to nineteen days of the competition, weights 110% to 117.5% within nine to fifteen days and weights 100% to 107.5% within eight to twelve days.

In terms of pre-competition training, with the competition scheduled on the eighth day, the athlete should perform a total of seventy lifts on the first day at below average intensity. On the third day the athlete performs a total of fifty lifts, with the highest lifts reaching maximum levels of intensity, does a total of thirty-six lifts of moderate intensity on the fifth day and rests on the sixth and seventh days. According to Roman, athletes in heavier weight classes should employ a somewhat different pattern of preparation during the competition week, performing fifty lifts on the first day (hitting a maximum or near maximum in the snatch and a near maximum in the C&J). The athlete performs a total of sixty-five lifts with below average intensity on the third day, a total of forty lifts of moderate intensity on the fifth day and a total of thirty-five lifts of minimum intensity on the seventh day (the day before the competition). Athletes in higher classifications (up to the MS classification) tend to do more lifts at higher relative intensity, but there is a drop off in the number of lifts with athletes of even higher classifications. The athletes who achieve the best performances in competition tend to increase the number of reps that they perform in competition related lifts but reduced the number of classical lifts, the number of reps in the 70% to 79% zone and squats and pulls with weights exceeding 100%.

Maximums (100% efforts) are typically attempted once or twice a month (but usually not within eighteen days of a competition, never less than ten to fourteen days out). First attempts at weights in the C&J are generally performed up to eight days out from the competition, first attempts at the snatch four days out (give or take one or two days). In recent years some coaches have suggested heavy attempts be made even closer to the competition, but I do not find their arguments very compelling, and I think there are some very good reasons for not doing it.

At least one study conducted in the former Soviet Union suggests that there is a correlation between the distribution of the loads lifted in the four-week period prior to a competition and performance in the competition. It compared the preparation of two groups of lifters; one group repeated their training performances in the competition and the other improved upon their training performances in the competition. The lifters who failed to improve had a distribution of weights 90% or greater as follows: lifts with 90% to 92.5% of maximum comprised 56% of the total load of weights in excess of 90%; lifts with 95% weights accounted for 17%; lifts with 97.5% weights comprised 7%; and lifts with 100% weights constituted 20% of the load. In contrast, the lifters who improved did 65% of their lifts above 90% with weights that were between 90% and 92.5%, 20% of their lifts with weights 95% of maximum and 15% of their lifts with weights 97.5% of maximum; they made no attempts at 100% weights. Another study by Kuzmin, Roman and Rysin (published in the 1983 Weightlifting Yearbook) suggested that the number of lifts performed with 71% to 90% of maximum correlated with the results attained in competition but that lifts in the 95% to 100% range had no correlation. I have detected similar patterns of performance in the athletes I have observed over the years.

Recommendations for the distribution of a month’s load into individual weeks are different when there is an important competition at the end of a training month. A clear reduction in load takes place as the competition nears. For example, Medvedyev recommends one of three loading patterns in pre-competition months (with deviations plus and minus 2% to 4% for individual athletes): a) 26/35/23/16; b) 36/28/21/15; or c) 24/38/25/13. In his textbook Weightlifting, A. Vorobyev recommended the following loading patterns before a competition: 25/37/23/15, 36/30/21/13 or 25/38/25/12. He prefers the first variant. R. Roman recommends the following variants of weekly loading for a competition month: 36/28/24/12, 29/25/35/11, 28/33/26/13 or 32/26/29/13.

Although the weekly loading patterns that Medvedyev, Vorobyev and Roman suggest vary considerably, they have some common characteristics. The last week in the month is always the lightest in order to give the athlete rest before the competition, and, in all but one variant (Roman’s second), the week with the largest load comes either in the first or second week. (The third week is always a medium week.) In my experience, older and heavier athletes tend to have the greatest success with a pattern like Medvedyev’s second pattern, and younger and lighter athletes tend to benefit from his first pattern. However, in virtually every case the individual needs and circumstances of the athletes are the most important factors in selecting the arrangement of the loading.

Peaking by Gradually Increasing Intensity and Volume

When a lifter is out of condition because of an injury or a break in training, he or she can often peaking for a competition by gradually increasing intensity and volume. This method can be particularly helpful when there are only four to eight weeks to prepare for the competition.

Perhaps the most amazing application of this method that I ever witnessed was former National Champion and American record holder Peter Rawluk’s preparation for the 1970 Philadelphia Open. Peter had just completed a term of service in the Air Force and had been stationed in Alaska until just before the competition. Training conditions were not the best in Alaska, and Peter had taken some time off from training after his discharge. He arrived in New York several weeks before the Philadelphia Open, looking like a shadow of his former self. His body weight was approximately 154 lb. (in peak condition he would weigh approximately 173 lb. and then reduce to 165 lb. for competition). Peter snatched 180 lb. on his first day of training, and it did not look very easy. (He then held the American record at 305 lb., a lift he had performed approximately six months earlier.) After snatching 180 lb., Peter confidently declared that he would break his American record at the upcoming competition. Those who were present to hear Peter’s declaration were probably evenly divided with respect to their reactions to his statement; half doubted he would do it and the other half was sure he would not!

Peter trained steadily over the next several weeks, gradually adding both intensity and volume to his training during the first few weeks (after which the volume of his training remained at a more or less fixed level). His body weight increased steadily along with his strength, and by the end of his preparation he weighed a solid 173 lb. Incredibly, he managed to add 20 lb. to his snatch at each and every Saturday workout, until he reached 280 lb. a week or two prior to the meet. At the competition, he snatched 290 lb. He pulled an American record 310 lb. to arm’s length, but the lift was slightly out of position and as he fought to hold it, he dislocated his elbow, missing the lift. Nevertheless, despite this setback, Peter’s performance was a remarkable example of a lifter knowing just how to peak and having the confidence to execute a daring plan.

There are those who will argue that getting into condition so rapidly is what injured Peter Rawluk, and they may be correct. Injury certainly is one of the hazards of increasing volume and intensity at the same time. In addition, such a method can result in sudden exhaustion. (An increase in both volume and intensity provides a training stimulus that is so strong that it can overwhelm the body over a relatively short period of time.) Nevertheless, a well planned peaking cycle of this kind can be very useful for a lifter who is well rested and therefore well prepared to withstand several weeks of progressively increasing demands. If the weights handled at the end of the peaking cycle are not too close to the lifter’s maximum, a gradual peak practically precludes being overtrained on the day of the competition.

Naturally, combinations and variations of both cycles can be effective. The general rules that I recommend, regardless of the peaking method that is used, are as follows:

1) Eliminate extremely heavy back work two to three weeks out from the meet. Any limit on good morning exercises, clean deadlifts and the like should be eliminated at this stage.

2) Eliminate extremely heavy leg work and pulls ten days to two weeks out from the meet. Limit squats and pulls at 100% or above (particularly clean pulls) should be eliminated.

3) Do no snatches or C&J’s that require you to draw on your nervous energy ten days out from the meet. Allow no more than one miss at a weight. If you miss more than once on a given day, reduce the weight to a level at which you are certain of success and stop there, whether you make the lift or not.

4) If your nervous energy seems a little depleted during the last ten days before the meet, substitute singles in the pull up to your starting attempts for the snatch and clean lifts and do a few moderate jerks from the racks in one of your workouts five to ten days before the meet. This can do wonders for restoring your energy and desire to lift prior to the meet. Toward the end of his career, Tommy Kono used to train with bodybuilding exercises two weeks before the meet. He said such training kept his muscles strong and left him with a great feeling of freshness and desire to lift on the day of the

 meet. It should be noted that Tommy was not unaccustomed to such exercises as they were often a part of his normal training.

5) Experiment with different last workout schedules. Some coaches believe that there are magic weights above which no one should go. This is more common among older coaches, and the most popular weight is 60 kg. This choice probably stems from the days when the only Olympic bar plate with a full 45 cm diameter was the 20 kg. plate. By going up to 60 kg., the lifter was able to simulate the height of the bar in relation to the floor when it is lifted in competition. These coaches also tend to recommend that the last workout before a Saturday competition be on Wednesday or Thursday, giving the athlete two or three days of complete rest. In contrast, many Eastern European athletes train the day before the competition with as much as 90% of maximum (though 75% to 80% is more common). The last workout will probably have little or no effect on the lifter’s competition performance, unless it further tires the overtrained athlete, further conditions the undertrained athlete or causes an athlete to expend significant nervous energy.

6) Do not panic. The single biggest mistake lifters make in preparing for a competition is to place too much emphasis on performance immediately prior to a contest. They somehow come to believe that as they perform in training, so they will perform in competition. While the classical lifts actually performed in training are one indicator of what to expect in competition, they are only one indicator. If a lifter has to use every bit of nervous energy that he or she is able to marshal in order to make particular lifts in training, the lifter may be exhausted at competition time. In contrast, if a lifter manages only mediocre classical lifts in training but is well rested and strong, he or she may turn in an outstanding performance.

The moment of truth comes when that lifter realizes the most important aspect of preparation is not lifting the maximum weight in training in the classical lifts, but, rather, in assuring that he or she is rested enough to perform at his or her best on the day of the competition.

Pre-Contest Control Competitions

In addition to peaking programs designed to bring an athlete to maximum performance readiness on the day of a competition, special pre-meet workouts that are designed to replicate meet conditions are recommended by many coaches. In Eastern Europe, these are often referred to as “control” competitions. Such workouts normally take place in the training quarters, but otherwise the conditions are the same as in a competition. The lifters dress in their lifting uniform and warm up and compete on different platforms. Each lifter has three attempts in the “competition,” and the time limits for attempts are the same as those in official competition. The purpose of the control competition is to give the lifters more experience and training under competition like conditions and to help the coaches select those athletes who are most likely to perform well.

A number of coaches in the United States have advocated variations of control competitions. For example, Bill Starr, a former editor of Strength and Health and still one of the most influential writers in the American weightlifting community, has written a fine little book on preparing for competition, called Defying Gravity. In his book Bill recommends what amounts to a control competition two weeks before the meet. According to Starr, the Olympic lifter should work up to heavy singles (singles or doubles for powerlifters) in each of the competitive lifts. The lifts should be performed in the same order as in the competition. Bill also recommends that the lifter train at the same time as the contest during the last two weeks, that he or she wear the same clothes and that other conditions of the competition be duplicated as far as is possible (e.g., not training in front of a mirror, having someone give referee signals and practicing longer with shorter rests between lifts than is normal).

I agree with the general notion of simulating meet conditions in training, but not without some reservations. First, some lifters adjust to competition so well and concentrate so effectively that such preparations serve no real purpose. This is especially common when training conditions are already similar to competitive conditions. Second, some lifters will become too excited by meet like conditions and will burn up excessive mental energy during and after control competitions.

But the single biggest mistake is relying on control competitions as a gauge of what can be expected in competition. Some coaches place great and unnecessary stress on the lifter during such a mock competition. The lifter with such a coach has two competitions to worry about: the control competition and the actual competition. Such lifters can burn up so much nervous energy during the control competition that they have nothing left during the competition itself.

Decisions about a given competition should never be based on the outcome of one training session, regardless of how much the conditions under which it is done resemble those of a competition. Decisions about contest attempts should be based on the overall level of pre-competition workout performance, the lifter’s appraisals of those performances and conditions on the day of the competition. For example, if a lifter trains at a body weight 6% above the class limit and gets very excited in training, that lifter may be lucky to come within 10 kg. of his or her best training performances in competition. In contrast, a lifter who trains alone and finds it difficult to get “up” for a workout may routinely lift 15 kg. more on each lift in a competition than in the gym.

Modern weightlifting competitions are most often conducted in temperature controlled auditoriums and gymnasiums. However, on occasion, climate control can be lacking. When such a possibility exists, the athlete should prepare by training under the climatic conditions that are likely to prevail. If the climate is likely to be warmer than the one in which the lifter trains, the lifter can either turn up the heat in the gym during training or wear warmer clothing while training. When colder conditions are anticipated, the lifter can train at lower temperatures or wear a lifting suit instead of a sweat or warm-up suit in training.

Fatigue and Overtraining

The most common fatigue that a weightlifter experiences occurs during the performance of an exercise. The muscle tires to the point where additional lifts are difficult or impossible without some rest. If a lifter has not reached a state of complete exhaustion during a given set (i.e., has not made an all out effort), the lifter then finds that, with rest, the same amount of weight can be lifted for the same number of reps once again. Eventually, if the athlete continues to do set after set, a point will be reached where the same performance cannot be achieved on each set. The exact point where this occurs depends on how strenuous each set is, how much rest is taken between sets and the condition of the athlete. If the athlete continues to exercise at this point, performance will continue to decline.

At first the sensation of fatigue will be felt as a lack of muscular response. The athlete will push on the bar but it simply will not go as far or as fast as it did before fatigue began to set in. (If the cumulative reps performed are high, particularly in one set, the athlete will also begin to feel “pumped.”) If the athlete continues to train, some pain will be experienced in the muscles, and, eventually the lifter will be virtually unable to move the bar through the full range of motion with the same load.

When a muscle works at a low enough level of intensity, the body is able to restore the muscle’s function on an ongoing basis. The muscle does not necessarily become fatigued or trained to any significant extent (unless the duration of the activity extends well beyond what the athlete is accustomed to, in which case endurance is ultimately improved by the training effort). If the immediate ability of the muscle to maintain its steady state of performance is overcome, it will reach a state of fatigue as described above.

If the athlete rests sufficiently after a bout of exercise, the fatigue factors will be overcome, and full muscle function will be restored. If the stress applied during the exercise is sufficient (and not excessive), an adaptive response will occur, and the muscle will become capable of more work than it had been prior to the exercise.

While fatigue and adaptation are related, they are not synonymous. A bout of exercise can cause fatigue without stimulating much of an adaptation, and an adaptation can be stimulated without the lifter’s experiencing a sense of fatigue (although a feeling of not being able to perform another rep will often be experienced). Recovery from fatigue is the body’s automatic effort to restore the body to a state of equilibrium. Adaptation is the body’s effort to reach a level of readiness for stress so that its equilibrium cannot easily be disturbed once again. The latter response is at the core of the training effect.

If the exercise stress in a given workout or series of workouts is carried to extremes, the muscle’s ability to adapt to the stress can be completely overcome, and damage or injury can result. This point marks the dividing line between training and overstress.

Fatigue, no matter how extreme, falls within the body’s responsive capabilities by restoring the body to a state of equal or greater functioning (with sufficient rest). When a state of overstress has occurred, full restoration of function will not occur. By the time recuperation has occurred, there will also have been a detraining effect. The muscle then recovers its ability to function, but that ability is less than it was before the exercise that fatigued the muscle was commenced. This specific and localized kind of overstress can be referred to as overtraining, but the term “overtraining” tends to be applied only to a more global or “full body” state.

When a combination of stresses reaches a certain threshold (whether through overstress being applied to multiple muscle groups or by other causes), the body’s overall adaptive energy can be overcome, and systemic fatigue can be experienced. This generalized overstressed condition is commonly referred to as “overtraining.” The athlete experiences both physical and psychological fatigue, and the body slips into an overall state of performance stagnation or decline. Ultimately, the body’s capabilities can be so completely overcome that illness and/or injury result.

If an athlete carefully balances training and rest and sees to it that he or she never to outruns his or her adaptive capabilities, overtraining can be completely avoided. However, most athletes who are anxious to improve their performance never feel comfortable simply waiting to recover from their workouts. Instead, these athletes will forge ahead as soon as reasonable muscle capacity has been restored (even if adaptation, also known as overcompensation, has not occurred).

The phenomenon of overtraining is perhaps less well understood than many of the body’s reactions to training. Researchers and sports specialists cannot even agree on what overtraining is. For example, at least five kinds of overtraining have appeared in the literature: monotonous, addisonic, basedowic, sympathetic and parasympathetic.

The “monotonous” variety of overtraining is different from the other four variations in that it appears to be more of a mental than a physical reaction to training. There are no physical symptoms associated with it. Rather, it has been defined as a cessation of progress (or even regression) and a loss of motivation. Therefore, it is questionable whether it is a form of overtraining at all. Boredom and a general loss of enthusiasm with training can result from psychological causes (such as a perceived loss in the connection between training and fundamental goals and values) and may have no physical basis at all. Such a phenomenon is not linked to the training load per se and therefore is not properly the subject of this chapter, except to the extent that variety in training can help an athlete avoid the experience of monotony. (Motivational aspects of training are discussed in Chapter 7). In contrast, an athlete can exhibit such symptoms as a result of burnout, a true state of overtraining in which so much stress has been placed on both the mind and the body that a physical and psychological reaction occurs.

The other four varieties of overtraining all appear to have a physical basis (although they may have a psychological causes as well). The addisonic and basedowic varieties of overtraining appear most often in the Eastern European literature, while the sympathetic and parasympathetic varieties tend to be more widely accepted and discussed in the West. (There are clearly many overlapping areas in these states, which is not surprising when different specialists are attempting to define the same or similar phenomena.)

Addisonic overtraining has been so named because the symptoms are allegedly similar to those of Addison’s disease, in which there is a deficiency in the secretion of adrenocortical hormones. With such overtraining, athletes reportedly experience a slight overtired feeling, a low resting pulse rate and hypotension. Addisonic overtraining is thought to result from an overall overloading of the athlete, particularly in terms of training volume.

Basedowic overtraining is so named because of its apparent resemblance to Basedow’s disease (a hyperthyroid condition). With such overtraining, the athlete reportedly experiences accelerated metabolic and heart rates, irritability and restlessness, an increased rate of perspiration and weight loss. Basedowic overtraining is thought to result from overloading with respect to intensity and/or mental stressors.

Sympathetic overtraining is reportedly associated with such symptoms as decreases in motivation, body weight and lean body mass and/or increases in heart rates, blood pressure and cortisol concentrations. Depression, insomnia and a depressed immune system are also symptomatic of such an overtrained state. The athlete who becomes overtrained in this way is likely to experience a feeling of chronic fatigue and a plateauing or regression in terms of performance.

Parasympathetic overtraining is reportedly associated with lowered heart rates and blood pressure, depressed physical and mental behavior, an increased requirement for sleep and a depressed endocrine response to stressors.

Are the types of overtraining mentioned above all encompassing? Do they overlap? Does it matter? It is likely that the definitions of overtraining are imperfect. They may include some nonessential symptoms and exclude some important ones. There is probably some degree of overlap between at least some of the types identified. In reality, overtrained athletes may experience most, or only one or two, of the above symptoms (in part because the bodies of different athletes are overcome to a different degree and in a different way by the overtraining). What is important here is to understand that there are systemic responses when the combination of an athlete’s training, psychological and environmental stressors overcome the athlete’s ability to adapt.

The most obvious and universal symptom of overtraining is a general and persistent decline in performance, especially in the classical exercises. Often the lifter will be able to force a reasonable result in the first or second exercises in the workout when the overtrained state is first detected, but the athlete will note a more rapid than normal onset of fatigue. Adequate rest, proper nutrition and a reduction in the stress levels to which the athlete is exposed are the only ways to recover from overtraining. (Restorative techniques, such as the use of saunas, whirlpool baths, massage can also be of some help in this area.)

Many trainers advocate training to achieve an overtrained state (I used to be one of them). They believe that overtraining is necessary to achieve results and that a certain amount of overtraining is beneficial. However, I would argue that training to a point of significant fatigue is beneficial to the degree that it stimulates the athlete’s adaptive capacities but that the best results are generated when training stops short of pushing the athlete into an actual state of overtraining. This means that the athlete is briefly subjected to a greater than normal training stress, but that stress is reduced before any signs of overtraining develop or, at least, at the very onset of signs of overtraining. Such a process stimulates but does not overcome the body’s adaptive capabilities. Overtraining (in the overall and systemic context) may be one means to stimulate an adaptive response, but it is surely neither the only means nor the safest. In order for it to pay dividends, it must be handled by a very skilled trainer who has a very good level of communication with the athlete, so that reliable information on the athlete’s actual and perceived states is available at all times.

In general, overtraining is one of the biggest threats to an athlete’s success. It precludes progress and kills the desire to train. It can weaken the immune system, making the body more susceptible to illness. Further, it clearly exposes the body to the risk of injury, both directly and indirectly. The direct exposure is in the nature of overuse injuries. The indirect exposure is in the form of the weakened immune system, which is believed to predispose the body to injury.

Perhaps the worst aspect of overtraining is that while it has little or no positive effect on the organism (and presents all of the risks previously mentioned), often the only way that the athlete can overcome it expeditiously is to reduce the training load significantly and for a long period, a step that will preclude any progress until some time after the overtraining has been overcome it and a more normal level of training has been resumed. Therefore, athletes are generally well advised to avoid a true state of overtraining, particularly for a prolonged period. As with many aspects of life, hard work is a prerequisite for success, but those who work smarter are far more successful than those who simply work harder. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing!

The Training Log

All lifters should maintain a written record of all of their workouts in a sort of training diary. Many beginners and even some more advanced lifters apparently see no purpose in studying their past reactions to training, believing that they will always remember precisely what they have done in the past. They are completely mistaken. The study of a lifter’s past training and his or her reactions to it is one of the most important tools that a coach and athlete have for improving future planning. After a lifter has performed hundreds or thousands of workouts, it will be virtually impossible to remember the details of each one. (Some lifters have trouble remembering what they did during their last workout.) So the training log is the lifter’s means of preserving a near perfect memory of the lifter’s entire career and is therefore in many ways his or her most valuable possession.

In a training log, it is typical to devote separate sections or pages to each workout, recording the date, day of week and the hour of the day of each workout. Many athletes enter notes on how they felt prior to and during the workout (e.g., “I felt tired emotionally but fine physically as I began the workout, but as the workout went on, I got excited watching Jack and Jill make personal records in the snatch, and the second half of the workout was done with great enthusiasm”). Others comment on their readiness to work out (e.g., “I came into the gym with my mind on other things—my misunderstanding with my boss—and I was tired due to having gotten only five hours of sleep last night”). Still other lifters include comments on their diet (e.g., “started taking an extra 500 mg. of vitamin C a day on Monday”). Most athletes record their body weights (usually at a consistent time each morning, before the workout, etc.) and include some commentary on any injury or illness that may have affected their performance.

Virtually all athletes who keep logs list the exercises done, generally in the order in which they were done, the amount of weight lifted on each set and the number of reps performed with each weight. The notation that I recommend is to list the weight lifted first, the number of reps done with that weight second and the number of sets done with that weight third. This approach is very logical in that if a lifter does a single rep and set with a given weight, he or she need only indicate the weight (the rest is understood). If the lifter fails with a given weight, he or she can merely show the weight with a line through it, showing that an unsuccessful attempt was made with that weight. I add a comment after the line to clarify the nature of the miss. (If I am doing C&J’s and miss the jerk, I simply write “jerk” after the crossed off number; this reminds me that I attempted a given weight and that while I missed the jerk, I did make the clean.) If more than one rep is performed, the weight can be listed, followed by a times (x) sign and the number of reps performed. If more that one set of the same number of reps with that weight was performed, an additional times sign can follow the number of reps indicated, and that can be followed by an indication of the number of sets. Therefore, three sets of five reps with 100 kg. would be noted as follows: 100 x 5 x 3.

If the lifter takes his or her training log to the gym (a practice that I do not necessarily recommend because of the potential for leaving this critical record behind) and is attempting 100 kg., he or she can write down “100” before the attempt. If the attempt is successful, nothing further need be noted (unless the lifter wishes to make some comment on the lift). If the attempt fails, the athlete puts a line through the weight attempted and possibly a comment. If more than one rep is made on that set, the number of reps can be written down after the times symbol. If the athlete intends to do more than one single with a given weight and he or she makes the first single, any notation about this can be withheld until after the second set. If the next attempt is successful, the athlete can then add “x 1” to the number already written, followed by another “x.” (If the athlete plans no further immediate attempts with that weight, he or she writes the number 2 following the last “x,” indicating that two sets of single reps were performed). If the athlete intends to attempt at least another set, he or she can delay filling in the last number indicating the number of sets until all of the attempts at that weight have been made. (To keep track of the sets successfully done so far, the athlete can put two small check marks above the weight being attempted.) When an athlete is doing an uneven number of reps from set to set, it is easier to simply indicate the weight being attempted and then the number of reps done on each set, separated by commas (e.g., 100 x 3, 4, 5 means that 100 kg. was lifted for a set of three repetitions, then a set of four and finally a set of five reps). If any reps are missed on the three sets in the example, the athlete can write: “100 x 2 (did not stand up on the third rep).

This notation system enables the lifter to avoid having to make any corrections for unanticipated misses, and it gives the athlete information about any misses or successes that have occurred. Unlike the Soviet system, it also lends itself to recording in a spreadsheet like Lotus. The Soviet method of notation uses a structure similar to that of a fraction, with the weight or percentage of maximum being placed in the position of the numerator, the number of reps appearing as the denominator and the number of sets appearing to the right of the fraction like notation of weight and reps. For example, four sets of three reps with 100 kg. would be noted as following:

100 ₄

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Finally, the lifter should circle any set in which a personal record is made, whether that is the lifter’s personal best for a single or a set of five reps. In this way it is relatively easy to locate records. (Lifters who have trouble remembering their personal records can list them, along with the date, in a separate section of the log.) The final section of the workout diary consists of comments about technique, ideas for improvement and other insights, such as explanations for poor or good performances. In general, you can never record too much, and most athletes record too little. Therefore, the extra space at the end of the log page or the section for a given day should be generous.

Once a month, the athlete should scan the workout book or diary, noting personal records, technique tips and training insights gleaned from the workout records for that month. These should be recorded in separate sections at the end of the diary. There should be sections for technique, training insights, psyching tools, injuries (hopefully you will never have one, but if you do, it is important to describe it, note the date of onset, when it stabilized and when it ended, as well as what you did to bring it to an end, e.g., rest, therapy, and change of exercise, etc.). As suggested earlier, there should be a personal record listing at the end of the book.

 It is also a good idea to record things like the total training volume, reps per exercise by zones, etc. While the value of these measurements has probably been exaggerated by some trainers, they can be useful when employed as part of an overall program of monitoring and planning training. Such averages tell little about the all important microtraining process or the effectiveness of one workout scheme versus another, but they can help to explain why you suddenly feel like your body is falling apart or is not recovering from your workouts. (The training volume may have crept up by 20% in a relatively short time and with no intervening period of unloading to let the body have time to adapt; you may not be able to sense what has happened intuitively, but the training log helps to identify the problem through its monitoring of aggregates.) Capturing aggregate numbers also enables the coach or athlete to assure that he or she is proceeding in accordance with the overall training plan.

The ambitious and computer-literate athlete and/or coach may wish to enter data from all workouts in a data base like DBase IV, Data Ease or Paradox. This will take a little extra effort in terms of recording the workouts (i.e., identifying the necessary fields of information to be entered into the computer and then performing the entry process) but doing so will make analysis much easier to perform. Fortunately, there is an even easier way to track and analyze workouts today. It is called “Electronic Weightlifting Journal.” The program, which was developed by Mark Gilman, runs on virtually any IBM-compatible PC. It enables athletes to record all of their workouts and then to analyze them in terms of a wide array of volume, load and intensity measures. The program can be purchased from Mark Gilman by writing to him at: 31 Park Lane East, Apt 3, Menands, N.Y. 12204.

Apart from the analysis on the quantitative level, a training log will give you the ability to analyze your training on an informal basis from any number of perspectives. You cannot possibly know how you will want to use all of the data when you enter it, but if it is all there and is relatively well categorized, you will be able to find what you need without too much wasted time and effort. For example, you may wish to find out how many times you have had a certain injury and if you were doing certain exercises when it occurred. First, you look for the listing of the injuries. Then you go to the actual workout records to see what exercises you were doing, beginning several weeks to several months before the injury. Perhaps you can find an exercise or group of exercises which uniformly preceded the injuries. Perhaps there will be a pattern in terms of training volume or how you said you felt for several weeks before. Perhaps you will find no pattern at all. However, the data is still there, ready to be analyzed from some other perspective or on the basis of some other hypothesis.

The importance of the training log cannot be overemphasized. By giving a lifter a good sense of where he or she has been, it can provide invaluable data upon which to base future planning. It has been said that a person stranded in the woods with no compass will very gradually walk in a large circle. Similarly, an athlete training without a log will find themselves making the same mistakes, repeating ineffective techniques and ineffective programs and mistreating recurring injuries. As the old adage goes: “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Your training log is your insurance against that process if you record your workouts in it without fail and if you analyze them rigorously and regularly.

Summary

In this chapter we have presented the elements of programming the training of athletes from the beginning through the elite level. Conventional as well as more innovative planning approaches have been presented. By now the reader should have a good conceptual grasp of how to put together an effective training plan. However, only through practice in preparing, evaluating and modifying actual plans will the athlete or coach master the planning process. And no matter how effective the planner becomes, there is always more to learn and try out. This continuous process of programming, testing, revising the program and testing again is part of what makes weightlifting the mentally and physically challenging sport that it is.

The reader who has reached this point in the text has learned the elements of proper technique, how to create a training stimulus for improving strength, power and flexibility, how to select and use weightlifting equipment, what exercises can be used to improve weightlifting performance and how to combine all of this knowledge about technique and training into training programs that will generate continual improvement. Now it is time to address the development of the weightlifter’s (or any person’s) greatest key to success—the mind. Effective use of one’s mind enables one to build a burning desire to succeed, to control emotions and mental focus and thereby to achieve the ideal performance state. Those are some of the topics covered in Chapter 7.