Gym Zen - The Will to Truth

I don't remember the exact time that I started to stop lying to myself about sport, but I have a pretty good idea. I had just gotten back from a very successful dryland bobsled camp in Park City. I made all the qualifying times for the combine and actually scored relatively well (numbers translated to "World Cup brakeman", whatever that means). One of coaches had said I should stick with it and keep working because I had great potential. Surely my invite to winter camp in Lake Placid was just a phone call or email away.

I checked my email religiously. Nothing.

I checked voicemails like it was my job. I "star-69'd" three telemarketers in the hopes that one of them was the head coach of USA Bobsled, extending a heartfelt congratulations and asking when I could move into the OTC.  Nothing.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that this wasn't a communication breakdown. I think it was somewhere around the time that summer combine dates were announced in the following spring. Yes, I have a very thick noggin from rugby.

I can, however, tell you when I finally stopped lying to myself about sport. It was about twenty minutes after I finished an awful Olympic meet (see "How to go 2/6 in an Olympic Meet") last December. I spent that summer/fall training as Ivan Abadjiev had trained his Bulgarian champions. I trained every day, twice on the weekends, and did the classic exercises daily. I also squatted daily. For some variety, I did a max jerk and some chins to give the legs a "day off". I also managed through a new job working in derivative trading. There was only work, training and sleep. My body felt great and set PRs for the first eight weeks, then went to hell in a hand basket right before the meet. My results speak volumes.

Where does this incredibly long-winded example get us to? Shobogenzo! Dogen believed that the Will to the Truth is a vital aspect of Zen Buddhist study. And it sounds great, right? So easy; just seek the truth and accept the truth as it is. Everyone seeks the truth, right? Everyone wants the truth and everyone wants to accept the truth, right?

Can I handle the truth?

Everyone thinks that they seek the truth and they will accept it, but do we really?

I think most people see "Seek the truth and accept it for what it is" as a call to identify all of your faults and all of the shitty things that you've been glossing over. This is FALSE. Well, it's sort of false. It's true that we should fully realize and accept the faults or things that we have been lying to ourselves about, because this is the first step in addressing them or at least the first step in reducing their power over you.

One of the biggest issues as it relates to acceptance of the truth is the need to compare ourselves to one another. We measure our success by creating an imaginary battle in our minds between ourselves and some we classify as a "measuring stick". Conversely, we find someone at the top of the sport (Klokov, the strong guy in the gym, etc) and logic dictates that, if we train as this person trains, we will have comparable results. We "know" that these methods aren't rational and untrue, but we haven't accepted it.   

I think that I'm starting to seek the truth. Well, I think I've always looked for the truth, so it might be more accurate to say that I'm starting to accept the truth. The main thing I'm starting to wrap my head around is as follows:

"I am no longer qualified to train myself as a competitive athlete"

This stings, as I have what you'd consider to be decent credentials and previous experiences. I've held CSCS and USAW certs, an undergrad in sports medicine, two years spent as an intern and as an assistant strength coach at a Division I university, a couple Top 3 finishes in lightweight strongman, an All-American year of collegiate rugby and some close calls with the US National rugby team plus the previous brush with bobsled glory. I troll EliteFTS and I consider Michael Keck, Jen Comas Keck and Jen Sinkler to be friends. Surely I'm qualified to train myself for athletic endeavors, right?

No, I am not. That is the truth. I am qualified to make adjustments specific to my body. I'm ok at coaching other people as far as technique and making suggestions, but not in writing any sort of full training program. In no way, shape or form am I qualified to be giving myself a full program. I also have too many biases to previous training experience and certain methodologies. Upon full realizing this, I made some decisions and reached out to some coaches to provide higher level guidance. This has lead to some PRs and a nice reduction in BF from 14%-sub 11% through some nutrition coaching from Michael Keck. Yes, I mentioned Mike twice (now three times), because he knows his shit.

So what can I say? Find some truths (positive AND negative) and fully realize them for what they are. In realizing and accepting the truths, they cease to have power over you and you can either address them or simply move on from them. As with most things (especially as it relates to the gym and sport) this is a very simple endeavor, but it is not easy. Fully realizing truths, whether they are positive or negative, will lead to making good choices. As the below scientific diagram shows, good choices = awesomeness.

Thanks to Steve Pulcinella for the above graphic as well as his help writing my training program and providing some coaching for Highland Games. Steve's lifting program as well as throw coaching has yielded mucho PRs. Some slow-motion throwing breakdowns here, but be warned: I practice in Rehbands and they do not leave much to the imagination.

My Trip To Bulgaria...and I didn't even get a passport stamp

One of the most hotly debated topics in athletics is the "Bulgarian" method. Developed by Ivan Abadjiev, the premise is to take maximal attempts in the classic lifts (snatch and clean and jerk), as well as the front squat, as the vast majority of your training. This runs counter to many of the generally accepted truths about weightlifting training regarding CNS burnout, injury, accomodation from limited diversity of movements, etc. Despite these reservations, it seems to be working pretty well for many of the Eastern European champions of the past 30-40 years as well as lifters of California Strength and Average Broz Gym. Me being a glutton for punishment, I decided to give it a shot for this meet cycle, from mid May to mid December.

Note: David Woodhouse wrote an extremely good article on Abadjiev on Weightlifting Exchange, found here. There is also a translation of the Bulgarian documentary School of Champions as well as a lecture (with English notes) from Abadjiev found here. These resources formed the basis for my initial training thoughts and I borrowed some ideas from Cal Strength and Average Broz along the way.

The whole thing became an amalgamation of ideas. My goal every day was to get a max snatch, a max CJ and a squat. I used snatches and cleans from the box, the power lifts and the classical lifts as well as the front and back squat. Including presses and jerks, I believe I used around 10 barbell exercises in total during the 24-odd weeks. I still did a very small percentage of supportive work (lots of pullups, a little ab work and some Prowler).

The theme for this training was this: "To Get Through It, You Have To Go Through It". Simple concept, but not easy. These methods go against everything I'd read from the Russians, everything I had learned during my undergrad and CSCS as well as what I'd learned from listening to the US coaches speak. On the other hand, I'm a great believer in Knowledge Without Mileage = Bullshit (thank you Henry Rollins). If I don't "go", I'll never "know". So I went.

Results: the first month or so was great. I set a new clean max at 130kg and a new snatch record at 100kg. I equalled this 130 clean 5 separate times over the first 5 weeks. I matched my snatch record twice and surpassed it twice, hitting 102 on two separate occasions and having a couple near misses at 105 and 107, along with a miss at 107 that nearly decapitated me. My back squat reached a PR of 190kg, suprassed later in the cycle at 195kg. My back jerk topped out 140kg, which I later surpassed at 142kg. I set records in the power snatch, topping out at an ugly 95kg. My power CJ topped out at a pretty ugly 125kg. Oddly enough, my front squat actually regressed to 140kg; I've done a triple at 160kg in the past. My push press topped out around 110kg for a set of 5 and I did multiple sets of 5 at 100kg.

So the first month looks great right? PRs, records, velvet ropes parting, champagne falling from the heavens! Around week 5-6, while all this is happening, my body was slowly descending into the Smackdown Hotel. My CNS went to hell. I noticed when speaking that my words wouldn't quite come out right. This isn't really a new problem, but it's usually for something I say rather than not being able to finish a sentence. I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours a night for weeks in a row. My joints got brutally stiff when I trained, even worse if I skipped a day. My waking HR, usually in the mid 40s, started getting up into the 60s. I noticed myself getting short and snappy with people and my eyes were pretty much constantly hurting and bloodshot.

This is part of the beauty of the system: you're programming/brainwashing your body to perform a limited number of motor tasks. Accommodation becomes your best friend. After that first month, despite feeling completely awful and sickened by the sight of a barbell, I was still hitting 90-100% of my max snatch and CJ each and every workout. My squats also stayed high, but the drop was a bit more pronounced since I always performed the squats at the end of the workout. I didn't need to warm up with anything besides a set of reverse hypers, some pullups and bar work. Had I tried to introduce brand new stimuli here (sprinting, strongman, etc), there is no doubt I would've become injured. The fact that you have limited biomechanical means to stimulate the organism removes that aspect of variation. The loading becomes the sole means of stimulation as the body has become accustomed to the movements.

This is probably one of the most psychologically damaging aspects of this style; the monotany creeps into your psyche. I have anecdotally read that many of the athletes did not fail physically, but rather psychologically. One must also understand the conditions these athletes operated under were far different than the conditions of US-lifters; for these lifters, their total was their livelihood as well as the livelihoods of their families. The comparison is not "apples to apples", so I hesitate to use this as support for the physical demands.

After progress stagnated around week 6 or so, there was a point where I could've made a different decision. In looking at my log, I see that this was an excellent time for a deload, maybe keeping frequency but only working to 80-85%, anything to take my foot off the gas. BUT, in my limited research, this was something that every source seemed to agree on: when you reach this point, you had to keep going. The key was to drive through the "dark times" as this was precisely the time where the body is retooling. So I kept going. I upped my use of the back squat as a means to increase the absolute loading and kept driving hard for new maxes.

At this point, I was basically alternating the following 7 days a week:

Pwr Snatch, Full CJ, Back Squat
Full Snatch, Pwr CJ, Front Squat

I was still hitting my 90% minimum, but it was getting more and more difficult and I was moving further and further away from my all time PRs. Some technical flaws started becoming a little more evident; I started leaving the bar in front on my snatch, catching it low on my clean and not getting my heels to the ground. Trying to catch a snatch or a clean is tough enough; try doing it on your toes!  I also had a slight scare with my back during this time and I dialed down the intensity for a few weeks. This didn't help and I think it may have thrown my body into all sorts of jacked-upded-ness (write that down).

The past few weeks I've dialed things down as I'm getting ready for a meet on Dec 10. I will still take maximal classical lifts and squats leading up to the meet, but at a reduced frequency and I'll probably add some lower level power lifts (something along the lines of a dynamic day ie 10-12 reps of each at around 60-70%) to groove the lifts and get my CNS snapping. Something I read from Medvedyev that has stuck with me: highly skilled athletes have the ability to tense their muscles faster than others, but also the ability to relax their muscles quicker than others. Think of an Oly lifter like Ronny Weller, who doesn't set up the lift so much as drop and go. That ability to tense is what Louie Simmons references when he expounds on the benefits of dynamic squatting off of a box. Squatting on a box requires you to generate a ton of muscle tension quickly with no room for the stretch reflex to use elastic energy.

So, as I sit here, assessing the last few months and debating where my training should go after this meet, what did I learn?

1. Intensity is King. Periods of maximal and submaximal loading (90-100+%) are beneficial/necessary and something that I hadn't done with regularity since I was previously using my interpretation of the conjugate system. If you're a proponent of using blocks, maybe program 2-3 weeks of a limited exercise range and 90-100% lifts, especially around 4-6 weeks outside of your meet date. Use Prilepin's chart and aim for 4-7 lifts over 90% of your max for that day. Read that again; your max ON THAT DAY, not your absolutely maximum. This goes along with some re-reading I'm doing from Medvedyev and Siff, essentially stating that the average weight of the barbell lifted has a high correlation to making new records. Implication: more repetitions performed at a higher %. I also found some interesting info on 90-100% lift guidelines, but I haven't fully fleshed those out as of yet.

2. Waving Works. Many of my best results in the snatch and CJ came after missing weights multiple times. I would work up to a couple misses in the snatch, then drop 20-30kg and work back up. The first time I made 102, it was on a third wave where my initial miss had been at 90 and second wave miss had been at 97. I believe it was my 5th or 6th miss of the session before I made it. The CJ is a little different and I only used one wave since the load on the barbell (as well as complexity/CNS impact) is much higher than the snatch. Also: I'm much more comfortable snatching than cleaning. I haven't tried waving squats, but for the quick lifts (the Oly lifts as well as the jerk) the response was very positive.

3. Ignore Recovery Methods At Your Own Peril. As I tweeted a few days ago, the Russian lifters averaged 400-500 hours of restorative work per year. This equates to 65-82 mins PER DAY of restorative work. I did nearly nothing as far as restoration outside of eating, sleeping, supplementing (very bare bones: protein powder, fish oil, creatine, multivitamin, mineral supp, curcumin) and some foam rolling. Massage, epsom salt baths, contrast shower and many other means can be done to assist in recovery. I wanted the "full effect" and I ignored some of these methods intentionally to see how the body would respond. Maybe not the smartest idea, but one of my themes of this block was to Trust My Body to be smarter than me and find a way.

I say that with a caveat: recovery methods need to be cycled. The point of training, after all, is to irritate the organism to the point that it adapts to imposed demands. Going overboard with recovery can actual blunt the training effect. Medvedyev addresses this in stating that recovery should be emphasized on "rest" days, or days in which fundamental loading is minimal or non-existant (ie GPP days) so as not to interfere with the training effect from fundamental loading sessions. Even in the weekly training cycle, the Russians are making a reference to a High/Low methodology (introduced to my by James Smith of Power Development Inc).

4. Eating Patterns Matter. A modified Warrior-style of nutrition works incredibly well with this type of training. Michael Keck gave me some ideas that I put into practice during this cycle. Never once did I come into a workout feeling hypoglycemic or cloudy from my eating; I was always just a little hungry and on edge. I carried out this style of eating through the entire span of this cycle, starting out weighing 223 and currently sitting at 208 as I type this (with a belly full of Wahoo's Fish Tacos). The weight loss came with no real cardio and I see how this style, coupled with morning track work or cardio, can yield great body composition results. For my purposes, it kept me feeling edgy and sharp both in the gym and in my career. I anticipate using this style for the forseeable future; Thanks Mike!

Do I think the Bulgarian system "works"? Obviously. It has produced (and continues to produce) great results in the world of weightlifting.

Is it the best system for a 31 yr old professional with long hours in a fairly high stress job? Maybe, maybe not. I definitely didn't set myself up for success, but I had a plan and excluding the one setback with my back, I executed it about as well as I could have hoped. Win, lose or draw, it has been an excellent learning experience, one that makes me a better lifter and gave me a deeper knowledge about my body and its abilities.

The proof comes in two weeks.