Simple: Juice, coaches, and it’s their job.
The Bulgarian’s believe in specificity…that’s why they don’t do many other auxilery lifts. They basically believe that doing pulls/bend-overs does not help the athlete when in his mastery because the technique of doing these exercises is actually different enough that it doesn’t carry over to the contest lifts. Plus, they also believe that one has a certain amounts of “lifts” per day, so why waste them on things other than the contest lifts. The younger lifters do more “strength building” exercises as they build up to the Elite status though, so it’s a progession to do less and less lifts with mastery.
The lifting 4-6 times a day is a bit over-blown…their lifting sessions rarely last longer than 20 minutes per session, and there’s also quite a bit of restoration that goes on throughout the day as well. Also of note, this is their job, so this is all they have to gear up for each and every day.
Another interesting Bulgarian training fact is that they always start the training day with some type of squat to “prepare” the body for the rest of the days lifting. The highest level of mastery lifters don’t really squat all that much over their best Clean. Again, they don’t want to waste time on an auxilery lifts, so the training effect is purely neural to help prepare the body for the days lifting. Their squatting is pretty much 20kg or so above what weight they’re going to train at that given day.
Their rep range is pretty much one rep for nearly everything. Warm-ups they’ll take to maybe three, but that’s about it…they’re training for one rep only.
So, can this system be done here? Sure, but you have to make it your full-time job as they do, and you pretty much have to have access to restoration techniques and restoratives. I experimented with doing triple sessions, and while I got much better in the contest lifts, it got to the point that I could only muster enough energy to do the contest lifts. I think a double-session is do-able but only if you have no job or a pretty low stress job that will accomodate for your training schedule.
I did the Bulgar system full-time for a while after meeting and talking with Antonio Krastev. Looking back I would have eased into it more slowly than I did, as I ended up getting the worst case of inflammation in my shoulders and rear foot from all the frequency I wasn’t used to. I think I went from lifting four times a week to twelve, something I can see getting away with only under certain circumstances(unlimited access to massage, supplements, sleep, etc.) Still made great strength gains before I tightened up, though. There’s an article floating around the web somewhere that plans out a slow, thrice weekly training regimen that gradually goes up, and I would recommend this. From the people I talk to, I hear they don’t lift more than once a day now, although they still go very heavy daily. And anyone who gives all the credit to the drugs is a pussy. I’ve said this before, all throughout the seventies and eighties our guys had the cleanest, most potent, and widest variety of drugs of any nation on the planet, while our communist counterparts made do with testosterone and a very shitty dianabol and dominated nonetheless. American drugs were the envy of the world in those days. And yes our guys who trained at the OTC also did nothing else but lift and receive various restorative therapies too, so the only real difference is either in the training or the mindset of the athlete. Our guys never really believed that they could do world-record lifts, so they never did. Glad to see the weightlifting exchange plug got through, I tried it a couple of times only to get it shot down by the mods.