Soviet Strenght Training Periodization

Bigger Stronger Leaner Christian Thibaudeau Coaching
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Hello coach,

I would like to ask, if you know more about the following topic - considering that once every serious coach has done his research on these “soviet secret methods” I suppose… I came across your “4 paths to strenght”-article, which I found to be a very fascinating read.

What do I define as the soviet training programming?
According to my internet research the core principles are:

  • most lifts between 70-85%, average intensity around 80%, 5% of lifts above or at 90%
  • train calm, it is not about how you feel, approach it as learning and work
  • manipulate the volume, but keep the frequency and intensity the same. That means every week, every month, and every training day you vary your volume by roughly 20-30% but keep the average intensity at 80%.
  • a lift was roughly trained 3 times per week, with a low, medium, and high volume day (20-30% difference in volume, with varying rep schemes to confuse the body)
  • rest 4-6 min after sets
  • reps are 2-5 reps depending on intensity, but always stay away from failure, so it is about bar speed and technqiue!

The trouble begin by trying to apply:
So while I understand these principles and the general philosophy behind their approach to training, I lack guidelines in how to apply these principles. Especially, regarding putting a holistic training for 4 days per week together. I can find guidelines for single lifts like the bench press (300-400 reps per months) … but I do not find any guidelines for buiding a coherent plan out of these “single lift” guidelines.

I can write a plan with these principles, but just for 1 lift… As soon I add a second lift I start to ask myself questions… I mean what happens when you pick Bench press and overhead press as main lifts? Do you simply reduce the number of lifts by 50% because you have 2 pressing movements? …

I ask myself…:

  1. How many lifts per day did the soviets do that? (and how many training days? They must have had at least 3 to make it “low”,“medium”,“high” volume…)
  2. Can you do supersets? Otherwise the training would take hours… (400 reps for bench per month → on a high volume week, with a high volume day… that is I guess 50-60 reps… and that for sets of 3-5 reps with 5 min rest… takes forever :open_mouth: -especially for multiples lifts a day… + it is at 80% intensity average!
  3. What are good monthly recommendations in terms of volume for the main lifts? Is 200 deadlifts per month much? 300 squats? 400? What if I squat and deadlift on the same day? … Many questions… I know the russians had the Priplin chart! But is there a Priplin chart equivalent per month?!
  4. My main lifts are at the moment the following 6 : Zercher Squat, Stiff-Leg Deadlift, Sumo Deadlift, Chin-Ups, Bench Press, Overhead… (I could add many cool lifts :smiley: ). But these would be the lifts I would like to focus on, however questions 1-3 already make me realize, the soviets must have done that differently… I cant do 6 lifts like that on a training day or train 6 times per week…so I am confused. Did they only train 3 lifts? 2? And used other programming guidelines for the rest of their exercises?

My goal:
My goal is to train now for maxium strenght. I want to reach a 660 deadlift and a 440 bench by end of 2022! (PRs: 550 and 420). I though these soviet principle based training would give me a nice approach to follow and enough freedom intellecutally to get creative with my training, so thats why I am so fascinated by them! I see the patterns in volume and lifts per week :slight_smile:

Best wishes
Konos

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I might adress your question, but to be honest it’s a bit outside the scope of this Q&A section and would require at least an article, if not a series of articles to even brush the topic properly.

You must also need to know several things:

  1. There was NOT a Soviet system. Dr. Mel Siff addressed this in great detail in the past. You had several schools of thought in the USSR just like we have here. For example, you had the traditional Medvedyev model, which was more of a linear progression (intensity gradually increasing while volume decreased, over a long period of time). You had the Bondarchuk model which was the first form of block periodization and had dramatic changes in exercises and loading in every short block. The Vershoskahsky model which used concentrated loading, where you would only train one specific physical capacity in each block (e.g. 4 weeks strength, 4 weeks power, 4 weeks speed). And within these general ideologies, you had tons of variations from coach to coach.

  2. Periodization was different from sport to sport. Some used a very long training cycle with a gradual, linear progression and a single peak. Others used very short cycles with frequent peaking. I was trained by a weightlifting coach who used the Soviet weightlifting periodization model, but this had nothing to do with the approach used by the sprinters or throwers (for example).

  3. They did accumulate a lot of data and published “averages” and people in the west took these as state-approved guidelines. For example, they might say that a master of sport lifter did 900-1000 lifts per microcycle during the general physical preparation period (made-up number for the sake of the example) but that was just really looking at the data from all the coaches logbooks and making an average… there was A LOT of variation between coaches and athletes. Some might do 500 lifts per microcycle others 1500.

  4. The Soviet system produced a lot of dominant athlete for 5 reasons:

a) Better recruitment. Soviets did a lot of anthropometric testing and looked at genetics to select kids to assign them to sport-schools in which they would eventually be assigned to a sport. The sport they were best suited to excel in. And they had to do that sport, whether they wanted to or not. So right off the bad, TONS of kids were exposed to various sports from a VERY early age thus improving athletic potential immensely. To give you an example, at one point in the 1980s, there were 100 000 registered weightlifters (meaning that they engaged in organized weightlifting) in the USSR. The change of finding a freak with that volume is much greater than if you have 10 000 lifters.

b) More drug use. Don’t get me wrong, there was drug use in the west too. BUT Eastern athletes either used more (Soviets) or were a lot more scientific and precise about the effect of each substance on training progress and recovery (East German). Here athletes basically used word of mouth to build their drug protocol.

How important is the drug dosing thing? Well look at the current state of weighlifting in Russia: they use the same system as they used to, just a few years ago where they dominated weightlifitng but not they can’t win medals at the world championships or Olympics. That’s because with the many recent scandals, Russia is watched a lot more closely and has to be tested more. They now cannot use the same amount of drugs that they use to take. You’ll notice that their female lifters (or athletes other than weighlifters) are still doing good. Why? Because they don’t require as much drugs to perform and thus did not have to lower their dosage with the increase in testing. The point is that while the Soviets/Russians were NOT “all-drugs”, the system was built around being able to recover faster and handle more workload because of the drugs.

c) A superior support system: if you read the book “Speed Trap” by Charlie Francis, there is a chapter where he asks Gerhard Mach (who built a dominant track and field program in Poland at the time, then was hired by Track and Field Canada to do the same in Canada) how he was able to build such a dominant program and why it didn’t work in Canada (at the time). He answered that he had full state support: the best training facilities, lots of massage therapists, physical therapists, doctors, working full-time with the athletes and the athletes provided lodging and food. At the time in Canada, the coaches had to do the massage themselves, and athletes needed to pay for physical therapy from their own pocket. Charlie explained how some of his athletes, olympic hopefuls had to share an apartment and were living on breakfast cereal.

d) A better approach… at the time: to be fair, the Soviets did study the impact of training quite a bit and came up with lots of novel approaches, at the time. But all of that is being done everywhere now. The Soviet system of the time would actually be archaic compared to what the best coaches are doing now. I think that the “Soviet system” (there was not a single system) is romanticized and we think that they had high-performance secrets. The reality was a lot more pragmatic and less sexy.

e) More motivation: sure, every competitive person wants to be the best. But in the USSR of the time, being an olympic gold medalist, world record holder or world champion was a way out of a miserable life. And life DID suck for the average Russian back then. When winning was a way out, a way to live a better life and assure a better quality of life for your family, not only do you want to win, you NEED to win. Those who have not been in that situation cannot understand how much hungrier and more motivated it makes you.

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But if you still want to use the “Soviet secrets” (there is no such thing, we are decades ahead of where they were) for powerlifting progression you can either look up Boris Sheiko’s work or the book Power to the People: Professional edition (NOT the original Power to the People) by Pavel.

And it might even work. I mean, it is still good programing and there might be a placebo effect from believing that the program is something magical. And if it motivates you more to follow a “Soviet plan” then you will train harder which will lead to better results.

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The Prilepin table is ONE “recommendation” in ONE Russian book by ONE Soviet coach/statistician. It was NOT applied universally. I even doubt that many soviet coaches at the time even knew about it. Furthermore, it was designed based on stats from olympic lifters, not powerlifters. The snatch, clean, jerk and related exercises should not use the same loading parameters as squats, deadlifts and benches.

Futhermore, one thing that you get from a lot of translated Soviet texts (e.g. The Training of the Weighlifter or Managing the Training of Weighlifters) is that volume recommendation varies depending on the level of the athletes… WHICH ESSENTALLY GOES AGAINST THE PRILEPIN TABLE which recommends a single set of parameters for all level of athletes… and it does so because it is NOT a guideline, but an average from all the data accumulated.

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There was NO Soviet powerlifting system for the simple reason that there was no powerlifting in the Soviet Union. The organized, state-sponsored sport was weightlifting (olympic lifting). I’m not saying that there was nobody training for “powerlifting” but there were no interest because there was no money and no support. The state invested in sports and athletes that could be used as a propaganda tool for the Communist party. Which meant olympic sports as these are the sports in which you compete against other nations and can thus prove the superiority of your nation.

Nowadays, because powerlifting is more popular than weighlifting, you have many good Russian lifters (or lifters from former Soviet republics) and, more importantly, coaches who come from weightlifting and have adapted weighlifting training to powerlifting. The most notable being Boris Sheiko. And you can easily find programs and books by him online to see what it looks like.

But you are correct, the system is based on doing lots of volume. But remember that at the time of the Soviet Union, athletes were state-sponsored. Meaning that training was their full-time job. That makes a HUGE difference in how much volume and frequency you can tolerate. Obviously, someone who has to work for a living cannot apply the system… sure they can do it with a lower volume/frequency but the whole intensity/volume relationship is based on accumulating a certain amount of work. If you can’t do the volume and recover from it, then you cannot apply the system and simply lowering the volume will not work.

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PLUS, if the Russian system was better than every other system, it stands to reason that they would dominate raw powerlifting. Which they are not as there are 6 of the top 30 raw powerlifters in the world that are from Russia. The US has a lot more.

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@Christian_Thibaudeau I don’t really care about “Soviet secrets” one way or the other, but just wanted to say your knowledge and pursuant analysis are incredible.

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Not gonna lie, this is a topic that is a particular interest of mine. This is why I said that giving a proper answer would require a series of answers.

I come from weightlifting and back when I started lifting, there was still this mystical aura around Russian training and my good friend actually competed against some of the top soviet lifters and saw many more in action so I was the recipient of many Soviet lifter lore and legendary feats of strength.

Because of that I began researching their methods very early on. In fact, the Soviet influence can be seen in many of my old articles as I was still fairly new to the game and under the spell of the mythical Soviet “system”.

But the more knowledgeable I became about training in general and in the system used in many countries, the less impressed or subjugated I became with the Soviet “system”.

In a way, it is the same thing we see with China now: unlimited state funding, super-advanced selection process, making athletes “professionals” as early as 12 years old, and huge incentives to do well.

And the Chinese system goes even deeper because of more advanced means of genetic testing. For example, you can predict body type but also muscle fiber dominance and even small things like the UGT2B17 polymorphism variation. This genetic mutation (highly present in Asian populations) dramatically (up do 20 folds) reduces testosterone excretion. This means that you can actually select athletes who will be able to inject testosterone right up to the competition without testing positive!

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Weird how the fewer things you do, the better you are at each. As if we all only have so much capacity…

Anyway, love the writings! I love how you do more than just report; there’s an in-depth analysis borne of both your research and experience. It makes every topic an opportunity to learn.

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Hello CT, thank you very much for you detailed and thought-out responses! I realize my questions go beyond the scope of any forum discussion and were based on “wrong” assumptions or a “wrong” perspective. So besides the factual information I also leared that it is important to put things:

  • into a broader context
  • and analysed/solve the broader context / all factors for a solution

What spiked my curiosity about “their” (now I know there were many schools of thought, so my “their” is highly general) system is that (in the online articles I have read) it was presented as highly empirical. I was wondering myself - what happens if you had access to all training logs around the world, maybe even with background information, and then search in the data for the success patterns?

I realize in your “4 paths to strengtht” article you have given a basic categorization model and then I though the “soviet system” solved for one “school of thought” the details by finding these success patterns… But as you described it seemed the information was too specific to professional athletes paid by the goverment and specfic to certain sports (for weights: Olympic Weightlifting), as well as lots of average calculation… + archaric compared to the current state of art :open_mouth:

I never really followed a training system and always trained by feel, all the “programming” talk was suspicous to me - especially the prices to sell it to me :smiley: so you as a true expert coach - does such programming or “magic” “patterns” do exist and make a difference? We assume that all the factors for success are met: a good coach, effort, recovery, will to win, good exercise selection, … just the training plan or underlying pattern/periodization would be different.

The information about the gen testing and testosterne thing is completley new to me :open_mouth: Amazing what is going on in professional sports these days! Thanks for the book suggestions, I actually know this work by Pavel, it also sparked my interest to read more articles.

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This thread has been legit fascinating.

Hope if you ever get the chance in your busy schedule you do a series of articles, or better still a more comprehensive book/ebook which covers this kind of thing. Would happily pay for such a work, as I’m sure would many others.

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No, they don’t.

At least not in the sense of having a specific training schedule that lead to shocking results.

Now, there exist some training methods that can deliver very rapid gains over a short period of time but nothing that will deliver shocking results over and over and over.

The body has a limited amount of strength or size it can add per unit of time. It varies depending on experience level, genetic factors and nutrition. But you can’t exceed that rate of gain regardless of the approach you use.

You CAN very briefly get a slightly higher rate of improvement with the use of certain methods, but it is not sustainable and normally comes at a cost.

HOWEVER, it is possible to get what seems like a sped-up rate of strength gain if you switch to a training style that addresses your main issue(s).

For example:

  • One of the various neurological factors involved in strength production (intra/intermuscular coordination, muscle fiber recruitment, fibers firing rate)

  • Muscle mass

  • A lagging muscle group

  • Technical efficiency

  • Inhibitory protective mechanisms

So for example, if you are someone who always used the max effort method to get stronger, and you switch to the Russian approach which uses more “strength-skill” work, you can get neurological improvements and improvement in technical efficiency. So you can have a faster rate of progression than before. But it’s not because the program is magic but because it addressed your main problem.

So it’s more a matter of understanding what your limitation is and then figuring out the best approach to fix it.

That’s why I don’t have a system either. I understand how various methods and styles of training impact the nervous system and muscles and know which approach to use to fix certain issues.

With clients I also always work by blocks, meaning that I design a block (4 weeks normally) to address a specific issue with everything I got and, ideally, in the next block we focus on a new problem area (provided that we fixed the issue).

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Probably, I think it’s an interesting topic

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Thank you coach! I understand it now way better - the goal is always to fix the weakness / missing link, a problem oriented thinking - and this will “dictate” the approach/system.

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lot of excuseswith drugs for eastern wining ,about everywhere and everytime in the past

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you are wrong… sovie’st athlete not allowed to compete in US l ong,long years

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Are you making your own points, or you’re just here to disagree?

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What does competing in the U.S. have to do with worldwide powerlifting rankings?

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what mean "worldwide powerlifting rankings " ?! 90% of powerlifting meetings are US based. events. no international atheletes , my friend

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disagree is point of veiw :smile:
anyway i’ll stop my reply