Superman is alive and 19

[Guest Ido Portal]

-6mRbQG-PL4

I hope you can appreciate this phenomenal individual. This is a rare thing you get to see here today.

Ido.

[Blairbob]

He is pretty incredible, I saw the video post over at CF then PM.

[Tarun Suri]

I can't believe his snatch! Amazing.

[JL]

I saw this guy squat back when I came across a John Broz topic. From what I have read, he is using a Bulgarian-like protocol. Some people don't buy his (Broz) talk, however, saying he must have found a drug or stack which keeps the nervous system from burning out. The notion is that he is trying to save U.S. lifting.

[wingspan]

My knees have to look away when he squats! :shock:

[Joshua Naterman]

That snatch is just so fluid!

... why do I feel like I made a dirty joke saying that? :oops: :shock:

[Guest Ido Portal]

He didnt find any drug or secret.

Its all about work capacity. This kid trains under a coach that believes in multiple sessions a day.

When will people understand? Work capacity can be developed, and when it does, it is the best tool in the toolbox,

because it makes all the other tools much more stronger.

I have been using twice and three times a day training and have been training for 8-10 hours at times, and I have to juggle many things I train for, s&c is only a tiny part of the picture. People have shouted 'overtraining' at me and my students for years. These same people are weak and out of the game right now.

Ido.

[heinrich]

I'm not an expert but 200 kilos at a bodyweight of 130 kg/ 286 pounds is truly amazing :shock:

(I think world record is 213 kg in that weight class = 105+ kg)

Look at this video from the 1996 Olympic Games. Most of these guys struggle with less than 200 kg although heavier than Pat Mendez!

[Razz]

Saw this video a few days ago..it is truly insane

[Gregor]

Insane!!!

[Alvaro Antolinez]

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: definitely I don´t wanna be in bad terms with this boy!

That bar was flexing as being made of rubber!

[Blairbob]

Thanks, Ido for the input. What most of us seem to lack is the the patience and time to build up to the work capacity so we just chalk it and say, "overtraining" too early. Too much for many of us, not enough for some others.

[JL]

He didnt find any drug or secret.

Its all about work capacity. This kid trains under a coach that believes in multiple sessions a day.

When will people understand? Work capacity can be developed, and when it does, it is the best tool in the toolbox,

because it makes all the other tools much more stronger.

I have been using twice and three times a day training and have been training for 8-10 hours at times, and I have to juggle many things I train for, s&c is only a tiny part of the picture. People have shouted 'overtraining' at me and my students for years. These same people are weak and out of the game right now.

Ido.

I agree that work capacity plays a big role, and it is a common denominator among Olympic lifting programs. I have yet to see one that doesn't incorporate a lot of volume. Some of Broz qoutes are too extreme. Essentially, he has said overtraining is a myth, and that if you are feeling weak after a stretch of workouts, you need more. I listed some qoutes from John Broz, this kid's trainer.

3)this is a tough one to swallow for most... THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERTRAINING!!! if you can't do something you are not in good enough shape. Here is a story:

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

Sometimes maxing out on deadlifts and squats ect.

Max squats everyday, max deadlifts 2-3x/year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

this only so you can put more effort and energy into the competition lifts?

yes. We compete in the snatch and c/j not powerlifting

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

So you can let your guys train more frequent?

2x everyday and once on sunday

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

For example, do you let your guys do overhead squats?

Only if they snatch it first. We never do them as an exercise. If you snatch it and cant get up (pinned with a snatch) you would get laughed out of the gym or banished to the squat rack for 30 days.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

And if I understand correctly you let your guys max out often?

every workout, every lift

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

What do you do when progression halts?

IT WILL! Training lifts will eventually start to go backwards as you enter into the "dark times". When you are so sore and fatigued that you cant even imagine lifting weights. This time is CRUCIAL to training. You MUST persevere and continue to train! Eventually your lifts will begin to improve and you will make progress and PR's while in a totally fatigued state. When you can make progress when feeling like this, this is when you are going somewhere.

To quote Antonio:"the day will never come when you can't lift the bar"

To quote my first coach:" If you wait til you feel good with no aches or pains to train, you will never be here"

Quote:

Originally Posted by HolyMoly View Post

Basically, could you give us some more insight into your training protocols?

Train til you can't walk, eat, sleep, repeat.

[Guest Ido Portal]

JL,

first, the guy is trying to make a point, dont take everything too literal.

I am sorry, but I find people are too sensitive.

Second, you have any right for your own opinion, but understand: this guy produces results. quick and on a regular basis. Not only this kid, but many,many others. Take a look at his youtube channel and see some 140lb guys cleaning 120kg like nothing.

His methodolegy works. Period. Yes, he pushes hard. Yes, it may be dangerous at times. Yes, it seems he doesnt 'rip' the benefits of the hard training at certain points by continuying to push hard, but... He realized a very important thing: there is nothing more valuable than a big work capacity. He is letting some short term results go, by applying a bulls to the walls approach with a lot of volume, because he understands that in the long run, building a HUGE work capacity is the best thing you can do. Once you have it - you are playing with the big boys and can really train hard and often and rip the benefits.

So, next time you disagree with someone like that, ask yourself, how many olympians have you coached?

Ido.

BTW, and no, most people will never touch overtraining in their lives, even if it does exist. Overtraining is a clinical syndrom that comes along with depression, rapidly decreasing bodyweight, irregular pulse, etc, etc... have you ever experienced that? I have trained 10 and 11 hours a day and never felt such a thing in my life. I thought I was overtrained, but nothing that I couldnt bounce out of in 3-4 days of rest, which only means I was overreaching a bit, and even that with this huge training volume. If you can bounce out of it so quickly, it means you are able to rip the benefits and make progress out of it - no overtraining.

[JL]

What doesn't make sense with the Bulgarian (Abadjiev's ideas) vs. other methods is that, if it is superior, why would anyone be training any other way? The Bulgarian method has been around since the 80's. Now, if nobody ever quite had it figured out, because they kept quiet the real key, sure. Hard to believe it is simply 2x a day 5+ days a week, because the Russians were doing that in the 70's. Paul Anderson was doing squats all day back in the 40's and 50's. If you are just making the point to forum goers that working out more can up your level, I agree. If you can swing the time commitment, it is probably the way to go for many. It is difficult buy into the idea that the only reason the U.S. has not been well represented in Olympic lifting is due to a stubbornness to implement a Bulgarian-like method. Maybe this sounds naive, but I just have to believe that a coach pushes to see what volume, frequency, and intensity parameters you can handle. Doing this over the years should have produced some good data to make a base model system from. One possibility is the lack of participants in the U.S. from a young age, and that might lead to our best genetically gifted athletes to pursue football. I know you read the talk about all the injured washouts Abadjiev created. If these football players and non-participants were the best genetic responders to extreme parameters, and enough were not in the data pool to be considered more than an outliers, then maybe that is the problem. Anyway, just a little further into my point of view.

[Joshua Naterman]

I'll say this, and before I begin let me go ahead and say that what I am about to write is hard to swallow, but the truth is the truth and what has happened has happened.

I think, to a large extent, what this coach has said is 100% true. Let me relate to you the story of Romero, a shipmate of mine. Davis, who I have talked about before, was a more complete athlete, but Romero was in a class of his own when it came to strength. He was 5'6 and 200 lbs, at less than 10% for sure. No drugs. I asked him how the hell he got to be so damn huge and strong, and this is what he said. I have no trouble believing him, he is honestly just too damn crazy to lie. I've never heard him make anything up.

He wasn't always like that. He worked in an iron and steel manufacturing facility in New Mexico for two years before he joined the Navy. His job was to pick up the rebar and other heavy objects that had been cast once they were busted out of the molds and cooled. These things were heavy as hell, and he got made fun of a lot at first because he just couldn't keep up, but apparently that is normal. We're takling about reaching down, grabbing 150-300 lbs of rebar and ripping it up onto your shoulders, walking 100-200 feet, and setting it back down. Reaching down and grabbing a 20 foot, 100 lb pipe in each hand and getting them up off the floor and walking the same distance. This is how things got moved there. 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. He said that he was completely exhausted for about 6 months. Straight. He stuck with it, because he's crazy as hell and he had nothing to fall back on. He said he just ate everything in sight, as much as he could get down as often as he could. Then he said things just got easier. He was lifting more onto his shoulders and not getting tired, and he went from 130-140 to almost 180 the first year. He was 200 lbs when he joined the Navy, and I shit you not when I tell you that I have seen him turn valves with his hands that I needed an 18 inch pipe wrench for, and that everyone else needed two people or a 36 inch wrench, or both, to turn. He was freaking scary. By the time I had left the ship he was down to 185, but still ripped and strong as hell. Benched 415 or something for 2-3 reps, that's for sure.

I think I could have taken him pretty handily in a fight because he was just too stiff, and didn't have a lot of speed when trying to do combinations, but I swear to god he could probably break anything he hit on me. Anyhow, that's a separate issue.

That's the only time I've ever heard of this level of exhaustion held for so long, but our bodies can adapt to almost anything with enough time and good food. I remember wondering how that was possible, but considering that what he had to do was, in large part, explosive by nature, the parallel between that and the Olympic lifting coach does not surprise me. I actually think, at this point, that one of the determining factors in how well this will work for someone over the long term depends heavily on their shoulders and scapula. If you've got trap or rotator imbalances you will probably be doing things in a dysfunctional manner and you'll end up getting injured through over-misuse before your body adapts and can reap the benefits.

I do know that at BUDS we were pushed hard as hell, and even after just a month and a half I was used to it to the point where I could still go lift weights on Saturday and come back ready to rock Monday morning.

The constant maximal work on the squats doesn't surprise me at all, honestly. If you read Dinosaur Strength by Brooks Kubic you'll find that the singles strength program is all about working up to your workout max, every workout, and trying to surpass it by whatever fraction you can. Bottom line, it works. The old timers who were stronger than any of us here on this forum did the same thing. Many of them started out as true weaklings, so I don't think there was some sort of random, inherent genetic advantage they had. I think they just used solid principles, worked hard, and ate everything they could get. Obviously, their diet was a lot closer to a natural diet than ours was, due to the relative lack of processed foods. That probably had a little to do with it as well, in terms of food quality.

[Gregor]

I agree. Our body can addapt on almost anything if going trough correct program. If you remember when I was talking about I couldn't do more than 2 heavy workouts per week. Well I couldn't, and been overtrained!!! 3 days without of single minute of sleeping, before that week earlier 2 days without and on trainngs I couldn't remember what to do in combination of 4 elements in row.

This was year and a half ago. Now: 3 times per week heavy workout (wich is 50% more trainings) and workouts has gone from 3 to 4 hour of strength training (33,3% increase time per training), now I'm working much faster, so less rest time and 3x more strength elements (300% increse), more weighted elements,.....and so on.

Sometimes I'm so tired I don't know if it makes me laugh or cry, my legs ar shaking one hour after but didn't do single work for legs, even eating sometimes is pain.

Now I'm thinking I will have to do even more after a sesaon brake to achieve higher level of strength..

Year and half I had:

81cm around my belly

68 kg

start score: 5,4 or 5,6

Now:

75cm around my belly

71 kg

start score: 6,4 (at the end of year I could start 6,6 or so I hope)

Everything is possible if you want.

[Guest Ido Portal]

JL,

what is the big mystery? there are many reasons why it hadnt been adapted:

adapting the system to a democratic country sports system, finding enough people to actually go through this hell, russian research into their own training methodolegy and not into this type of training, etc,etc...

As for Bulgaria, here is a quote by John Broz about Bulgaria:

yeah, that's reasonable. A very small country only hundreds of miles from 14 others (USSR) has magically superior genetics that allow higher training volumes which result in the best lifting team in the world -  Because it's impossible that their training methods and coaching mentality were superior. Must be the feta cheese.

He should audition for last comic standing.

It is simple: work capacity, work capacity, work capacity.

Ido.

[Guest pkmg]

That is an interesting topic.

Is there an article from the mentioned coach about how to achieve higher work capacity or could you, Ido Portal, give me a rough idea on how to do that?

Is it just progressively more volume/frequency in training? Since you better not jump right into that training, how would one progress into it or build up work capacity? For example Coach Sommers Steady State Cycle, would that be an example for a gradual buildup in work capacity?

(On a side note, I guess when you say work capacity, you don't mean "work capacity" as in Crossfits fitness "definition", right?)

[Gregor]

(On a side note, I guess when you say work capacity, you don't mean "work capacity" as in Crossfits fitness "definition", right?)

What's their definition?

[Tarun Suri]

Coincidence... or more?

Eric Cressey talks about work capacity on his blog today.

http://ericcressey.com/cp-internship-bl ... ess-part-2

[JL]

I'll say this, and before I begin let me go ahead and say that what I am about to write is hard to swallow, but the truth is the truth and what has happened has happened.

I think, to a large extent, what this coach has said is 100% true. Let me relate to you the story of Romero, a shipmate of mine. Davis, who I have talked about before, was a more complete athlete, but Romero was in a class of his own when it came to strength. He was 5'6 and 200 lbs, at less than 10% for sure. No drugs. I asked him how the hell he got to be so damn huge and strong, and this is what he said. I have no trouble believing him, he is honestly just too damn crazy to lie. I've never heard him make anything up.

He wasn't always like that. He worked in an iron and steel manufacturing facility in New Mexico for two years before he joined the Navy. His job was to pick up the rebar and other heavy objects that had been cast once they were busted out of the molds and cooled. These things were heavy as hell, and he got made fun of a lot at first because he just couldn't keep up, but apparently that is normal. We're takling about reaching down, grabbing 150-300 lbs of rebar and ripping it up onto your shoulders, walking 100-200 feet, and setting it back down. Reaching down and grabbing a 20 foot, 100 lb pipe in each hand and getting them up off the floor and walking the same distance. This is how things got moved there. 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. He said that he was completely exhausted for about 6 months. Straight. He stuck with it, because he's crazy as hell and he had nothing to fall back on. He said he just ate everything in sight, as much as he could get down as often as he could. Then he said things just got easier. He was lifting more onto his shoulders and not getting tired, and he went from 130-140 to almost 180 the first year. He was 200 lbs when he joined the Navy, and I shit you not when I tell you that I have seen him turn valves with his hands that I needed an 18 inch pipe wrench for, and that everyone else needed two people or a 36 inch wrench, or both, to turn. He was freaking scary. By the time I had left the ship he was down to 185, but still ripped and strong as hell. Benched 415 or something for 2-3 reps, that's for sure.

I can believe that story for the most part. I have had similar experiences; worked a labor job in college. At first, I had the strength to move and press overhead most items, but my grip strength was not good enough to do certain task for a long amount of time. During the 1st few days, I even strained my forearm. It hurt a bit for a few days, but I was able to work around it enough to let it recover, even though some stress was still being applied. In essence, sort of an overreaching followed by deload kind of pattern.

[JL]

JL,

what is the big mystery? there are many reasons why it hadnt been adapted:

adapting the system to a democratic country sports system, finding enough people to actually go through this hell, russian research into their own training methodolegy and not into this type of training, etc,etc...

As for Bulgaria, here is a quote by John Broz about Bulgaria:

yeah, that's reasonable. A very small country only hundreds of miles from 14 others (USSR) has magically superior genetics that allow higher training volumes which result in the best lifting team in the world -  Because it's impossible that their training methods and coaching mentality were superior. Must be the feta cheese.

He should audition for last comic standing.

It is simple: work capacity, work capacity, work capacity.

Ido.

After re-reading his qoutes, he does give enough leadway to where if I saw his routines in person, I might say that makes sense, and is possible. He doesn't really talk of a deload, or taper, which is one mechanism for it all to make sense. With all the parameters he talks of, I can envision a routine which is far from impossible. What throws me off is when he says, leave when you can't walk.

[Joshua Naterman]

... leave when you can't walk.

I don't know anything about Olympic lifting really, but I squatted this way four years ago and I have never had better leg growth. It was awful, mind you. I threw up a few times in the power rack... but it was like 2 am so no one was there. My friends used to get me some wet towels and a shake of Vitargo and protein while I lay pretty helpless on the floor, it took a few minutes to be able to get up, and about 15 minutes to actually feel up to getting up. I swear to god, that stuff is a miracle when you're wrecked like that. The first time I didn't have any and I was on the ground for almost an hour, until my friends came back with some chinese food lol! Rice helped.

[JL]

... leave when you can't walk.

I don't know anything about Olympic lifting really, but I squatted this way four years ago and I have never had better leg growth. It was awful, mind you. I threw up a few times in the power rack... but it was like 2 am so no one was there. My friends used to get me some wet towels and a shake of Vitargo and protein while I lay pretty helpless on the floor, it took a few minutes to be able to get up, and about 15 minutes to actually feel up to getting up. I swear to god, that stuff is a miracle when you're wrecked like that. The first time I didn't have any and I was on the ground for almost an hour, until my friends came back with some chinese food lol! Rice helped.

LOL. I did the same 8-10 years ago using high reps. I only squatted 2-3 times per week, however. Just, like you said, beat yourself up until it hurts. Poliquin's German Volume (10X10 reps, I believe) was good for a thrashing. Never threw up, but did get dizzy a few times. Also, I would wait for the pump, then stretch my quads hard between sets. The leg development was excellent, and it was fun.