Best of Strength and Conditioning in August, 2012: Meta-Analysis of Training Olympic Weightlifters
This month of research led me to one primary study I wanted to summarize and expand on, which was the details of training Olympic weightlifters. As always, big thanks to Bret and Chris at www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com. If you are into the latest sport research, they make a weeks worth of sifting through journals an activity that can take you only an hour. The title of this month’s meta-analysis is listed below.
Unique Aspects of Competitive Weightlifting Performance: Training and Physiology, by Storey and Smith, in Sports Medicine, 2012
Olympic lifters have often been hailed as superhuman in terms of their explosiveness, speed, and leaping ability. Stories of lifters like Yuri Vardanian, who could high jump 2.15m (7 feet) from 3 steps, or Dave Rigert running the 100m dash in 10.4s got me thinking of how vital this type of lift training would be to my athletic improvement. The strength of these lifters has been a fascinating area to me, especially when I first learned about them. Growing up, I didn’t really have any solid foundation on the principles of getting stronger, and when I first came across tables showing a high volume weekly training plan of Bulgarian lifters, I was astounded.
For much of my life I was really stuck on the idea of lifting twice a week, as that is what worked for me the best when I first started lifting seriously, and figured that a west-side style format of a max effort day once a week and a supplementary effort once a week was really the way to go to increase strength. Of course the volume all depends on your goal in training, as well as other things you have to train for, and finally your training level: novice, intermediate, or advanced. (Advanced athletes need greater volumes to keep progressing) Before we get too much more into training philosophy, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of the lifting regimens of the two world superpowers in Olympic Weightlifting, The Soviet Union, and Bulgariaas shown by the meta-analysis of Storey and Smith.
Soviet Olympic Lifting Practices:
Olympic lifting behind the red curtain involved a periodized model with preparatory, competition, and transitional phases. The Soviet Unionutilized a large amount of variability in their training by switching intensities and volumes to avoid overtraining. They hit yearly volumes of around 20-25k reps per year in their multi-joint lifts (Olympic lifts and variations, squats, etc.) which comes out to around 60-65 reps a day! In those 20-25k lifts, 15-35% were in the 80-90% range, and only 4-7% exceeded 90% of the one rep max. As you can see, they were very conscious about not overtraining their athletes.
It is important to note, as mentioned in “Science and Practice of Strength Training”, that the training %s were taken from a competitive 1RM, which exceeded the training max. This would effectively bring all of those %’s up in respect to the average trainee. For example, if my training max is 150kg in the clean and jerk, my competition max may be 160kg, as the atmosphere and emotional excitement will cause increased strength levels. 90% of my 160kg competition max is 144kg. 144kg comes out to 96% of my training 1RM. The average trainee or person reading this article likely does not have a competition max, especially if they are a track or basketball athlete training for sport. We can say then, that perhaps the average rep for the Russian lifter was in the 85-95% range.
Bulgarian Olympic Lifting Practices:
The Bulgarian lifting scheme was a bit further down the spectrum. They incorporated more frequent maximal attempts than their Russian counterparts. Bulgarian lifters performed 1,400 to 4,000 maximal attempts each year. This comes out to4 to 11per day! Bulgarian training time was divided into 10% warm up exercises, 45% competition lifts and 40% complementary strength exercises. 5% was given to supplementary work and cross training. Training would work in 2-3 weeks of increasing volume before a 1 week reduced volume week was brought in. This, of course shows that you can’t train like a beast forever before your CNS (or your joints) break down, so the Bulgarians knew to have mandatory deloading periods.
The success of these two countries has lead to other countries adapting their training methods. Is that to say that high frequency training is the best possible system? The answer would be yes, but the intensity and rest-recovery periods are always the “art” of the program that is left up to a skilled coach. I believe high frequency work is essential in creating a good weightlifter, but it takes a experienced and knowledgeable coach to make the best of any athlete.
More practices of international lifters
International weightlifters in general will typically have two or more resistance training sessions which will incorporate loads greater than 80% of the 1RM each day. They will train like this 6 to 7 days out of the week. The more technical the lift, the more sessions that lift will typically see in a week, especially during the pre-competitive season. In preparing for the 1996 Olympic Games, Greek lifters performed 13 snatch sessions in 6 days, compared to 11 clean and jerk and 9 front squat sessions. Coaches and athletes wonder how anyone can sustain this volume, and there are two (really three reasons). The first two are that the total workload was split up in to several sessions each day and therefore recovery was higher. The lifters also didn’t have to deal with the stress of life, as training was their only job, which also boosted recovery. The third factor is the use of anabolics, which can allow the Olympic lifter to recover significantly faster than the average non-steroid user. Lifting programs taken from the 1980’s especially need to be seen from the prespective of the rampant steroid usage.
Other interesting points taken from this analysis were that the amount of type IIA fibers (fast-oxidative) were much higher in the Olympic lifters than untrained subjects. Research has shown that strength training does cause a conversion from type IIX (fast-glycolitic) to IIA, but looking at the power generation abilities of an Olympic lifter, I don’t think it has hurt them to convert their IIX’s to IIA’s. Backing off from strength training will typically cause an overshoot of the IIA’s back to IIX’s but in greater amounts, so this is hardly a reason to avoid strength training. Generally, I think the title “How to target fast twitch fiber’s, or how to target type IIX fibers” in any training article or site should cause the reader to be wary of the site’s information. Clearly Olympic lifters are incredibly powerful, and the fiber type shift hasn’t hurt them in terms of strength or RFD. Perhaps areas where the athlete may want to be careful of fiber conversion would be the area of sustained top-end speed, such as a 200/400m runner in track and field.
There is a very large difference that exists between the approach of training Olympic lifters and powerlifters. Olympic lifters train around 10x a week, while powerlifters train each lift twice. Why the difference? And who is more successful comparatively speaking? Well, obviously the Olympic lifters are going to win in a vertical jump or sprinting competition, but it is not because of their training volume. Rather it is the nature of their exercises and mobility. I believe that the higher frequency of Olympic lifts compared to powerlifts is really due to three things: Higher skill needed for the O-Lifts, the fact that powerlifting is very few’s full time job (and thus lower recovery levels), and finally, the fact that maximal squatting and benching (especially powerlifting range and banded/shirted efforts) are going to be a bit tougher on the body than maximal O-lifts which are performed through larger ranges of motion and with less weight. There are, however, powerlifters that do break the mold of the Westside Barbell model and are very successful with it.
Bottom line of the above study, in my opinion, is that if you want to be good at a given skill, you need to practice that skill specifically, and practice it often. Check out this article on elitetrack for some more detail on this subject. Jumping and sprinting are skills that do require a good amount of intra and intermuscular coordination and should be practiced to some extent each day. It is important to know too, that in order to jump high and run fast, the efforts need to be close to or at maximal levels. If you are practicing driving a race car, it doesn’t do you much good to constantly be practicing in 4th or 5th gear and never do any work at 6th gear. The same principle exists with the human body.
There are some skills however, as listed in the linked article above, that do not always fall into the “more is better” scenario, such as high jumping and deadlifting. These skills are two completely different animals, but yet they share a similarity as to why they shouldn’t be performed in great volumes. I personally feel that a deadlift packs a bit bigger punch in terms of the fatigue brought because of two things: A short ROM and loading on the spine. Skills with a shorter ROM are going to be tougher on the body and the central nervous system due to the fact that they can be performed with more weight and will cause higher loading on the joints. Compare the deadlift with a squat which has a larger ROM and a bit less loading on the spine due to the more vertical torso angle, and the squat can be performed more often.
High jumping is a little different animal, however, but the specific overload from high volumes can be a similar case. In a high jump, the range of motion is small, and the forces are extremely high, especially in the lower leg at the ankle joint. It is also a small and focused motor pathway, similar to how a deadlift is a shorter and more focused motor pathway than a squat. High jump is also a more violent reversal of direction than the long or triple jumps, and carries with it a more jarring impact on the body. Performing this short and intense movement over and over carries with it similar effects to partial squatting with heavy weight on a regular basis. I feel that when training high jumpers, to keep volume to a level high enough to promote adaptation in advanced athletes, a variety of styles of jumping over the bar should be introduced (straddle, hurdle, tuck), as well as jumping with the opposite leg.
High jumping is a dynamic event with frequency implications of the powerlifts
Summary:
Bottom line: The more complex the skill, the more often it needs to be practiced. Olympic weightlifters have traditionally had success from many sessions each week, although the total intensity of each session has varied by country. Exceptions in volume can be made for simpler, more intense, and smaller range motor tasks. If you are a competitive athlete, make plenty of time to practice your primary sport; the more skill required in it, the more you need to practice it.
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