GH Reflection

Things went pretty well from a training standpoint up to the time I attempted to record maximum lifts in both the snatch and clean & jerk.  I would say I completed 100% of the training sessions.  I did miss a couple of days in favour of watching Blue Jays playoff games but I made up for those days by doing training protocols for the session I missed plus the regularly scheduled session on the same day.

The training method I used from the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, Oleksiy Torokhtiy of Ukraine, resembles that of a Soviet style training program.  In competitive weightlifting, the Soviet Union was the dominant team pretty much from the 1950s up until the disintegration of the USSR and since then Russia and the former USSR satellite countries have remained strong.  Two main programing styles prevailed during that time, one coming from Russia and one from Bulgaria.  Here is a quick breakdown of  main differences between the two systems based on what I've learned:

Russian style

• Many support exercises used in addition to the competition lifts
• Variation in loads used.  Weights used in training are based on percentages of a lifter's 1 rep maximum. Percentages used are from 50% - 100% with the majority of loads used falling in the range of 70% - 80% of the lifter's 1 rep maximum
• Periodized training cycles. Throughout the macrocycle (eg. 1 year), there will be multiple smaller cyles (eg. 8 - 12 weeks) with their own goals and varied intensities.

Bulgarian style

• Primarily uses few lifts: the competition lifts and a squat variation (back or front squat)
• Little variation in loads.  Weights used in training are consistently at or near a lifter's 1 rep maximum. The majority of loads used are around 90% of the lifter's 1 rep maximum. 

In short, the Bulgarian style used heavier weights more often (all the time) and fewer exercises in a very linear progression.  Once you could lift 200 kg, you tried to lift 205 kg.  The Russian style used used lighter weights but weights that were heavy enough to create a training response, focused heavily on technique which was facilitated by using the lighter weights and cycled their lifting schedules in a way that promoted longevity as opposed to burn out.   To visualize it, think of the Russian style as a series of rolling hills trending upward while the Bulgarian style is more of an upward sloping linear graph.