Been reading more about super minimalist guys.
I knew about Mark Chaillet, I think he did mostly singles, would Squat/Bench on Monday and Deadlift on Thursday, no other structured training.
https://functional-strength.org/mark-chaillet-powerlifting-ultra-minimalist/
Jeff Maddy had the world record in bench press at one point and was another minimalist, apparently only did singles in Squat, Bench and Cheat curl.
I couldn’t find Stan Efferding’s training method in detail but I seem to recall an interview where he stated when he set the world record total he would would bench once a week and either squat or deadlift on another day, so only 2 days of training.
Do you have experience training this way or have you seen it work for anyone else?
I dismissed this idea originally as Mark Chaillet and Jeff Maddy seemed to be genetic outliers - Mark had a close miss at 800 deadlift as a 19 or 20 yo and Jeff set a bench record of 470 while still in High School. So I figured minimalism worked for them because well anything would work for them…
However in another interview Stan Efferding revealed he was not really a “natural” when it came to lifting heavy weights (he was a college soccer player and had more of a distance runner’s type of build) and only started to make real progress when he did less and less volume and focused more on recovery and protein intake.
