July 29, 2014 Pavel Tsatsouline

The Origins of StrongFirst Programming:

The Soviet System
There are many ways to get strong.

Most are mediocre, some are e ective, a handful are extraordinary.

One—if not the only—system in the third category is the Soviet

Olympic weightlifting methodology of the 1960s-1980s. Names of
Vlasov, Rigert, Alexeev, and many other Soviet champions of that era
were written in stone in the history of strength. Some of their records,
e.g. Vardanyan’s and Zakharevich’s, are still untouched thirty years
later.

Yes, drugs are a part of that story—but let us not kid ourselves that the
opponents were clean and that steroids were an exclusive domain of
the Soviets. Everything else being equal—with everyone juicing—the
best method still prevails.

The Soviet System Built Strength to Last

Recalls David Rigert:

“I am not crazy about Bulgarian seventeen-

year-old world champions. They are gone too
quickly. I am convinced that weightlifting is an
occupation for men… Our weightlifting school is
most reliable. For instance, Vasily Alexeev lost
to no one for almost ten years.  And more than
that—he kept setting world records until he was
36 years old!”

“I should not complain either ” continues Rigert who broke 63 world

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I should not complain either, continues Rigert who broke 63 world
records over a decade. Several years after he hung up his lifting belt to

became a coach, David decided to challenge one of his students, the

super-heavyweight world record holder of the day, to a clean pull
contest. The much lighter Rigert who had done no lifting apart from
coaching demos for four years matched the young gun’s best deadlift.

David Rigert, a product of the Soviet system

David Rigert’s coach Rudolph Plyukfelder won the Olympics at a tender

age of 36—a feat never repeated in the sport of weightlifting. Today
eighty-some-year-old Plyukfelder casually does rock bottom jump
squats with 200 pounds for reps.

Strength to last indeed.

The System did not have a single author; it grew out of corroboration
between Medvedev, Vorobyev, Chernyak, and other scientists, many
former champions themselves. While all these giants had their own
take on details, in principle they agreed on the following:

1. A High Volume of Li s With 70-80% 1RM as the

Foundation
Yuri Vlasov explained:

“An increase in the volume of training loads

leads to long term [structural and functional]
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changes in the organism… builds a foundation
The Origins of StrongFirst Programming: The Soviet System | StrongFirst

for increasing strength… Of course, strength

grows at the same time, but not too much.

[Then] an increase in intensity assures a quick
conquest of new results. But by itself intensity
does not produce deep adaptive responses.”

The lion’s share of this foundation volume must come from moderately
heavy weights. Half of the Soviets’ lifts were with 70-80% 1RM.

Yuri Vlasov, decades after his Olympic glory days

2. Training Loads Must Be Highly Variable

In the West, the key word in strength planning is “progression.” In the
East, it is “variability.”

You might nd it crazy, but the Soviet system did not chase rep PRs.
Where an American powerlifting cycle is carefully laid out to set
personal bests—the best set of ve, the best triple—a Soviet coach just
put the reps under the lifter’s belt in a sophisticated loading pattern
that was anything but linear.

Did you know that the popular-in-the-West scheme of three weeks up

and one down was used only by low-level Russian athletes? It was not
unusual for the elite to have their tonnage double from one week to the
next—only to fall like a rock again in week three and do something
equally unexpected in week
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also changed suddenly.

Prof. Arkady Vorobyev discovered that sharp changes in training loads

pack a punch like nothing else. A classic experiment by a researcher
from his team, A. Ermakov, demonstrated that a training plan with load
“jumps” was 61% more e ective that a plan with traditional smooth
waves.

3.  1/3 to 2/3 of the Max Reps You Could Do Fresh

In most cases, Soviet weightlifters would do only 1/3-2/3 of his RM, be
it in quick lifts or squats and presses. For example, if 70% is your 10RM,
you should keep your reps with this weight in the 3-6 range. If 80% is
your 6RM, 2-4 reps per set are what the doctor ordered.

Note that the above formula applies only to weights in the 70-90% 1RM
range. Heavier than 90% weights are all lifted for singles. For weights
below 70% the rep count is typically around 1/3 of the maximum
possible.

Although the Olympic lifts are not my specialty, I pay attention because
the programming principles discovered by Soviet specialists in this
eld are universal for all strength training. A case in point, the training
system of today’s victorious Russian National Powerlifting Team was
designed by Boris Sheyko, formerly a weightlifting coach. If you are
familiar with my work, it will be obvious to you that my most e ective
programs like “Grease the Groove” and the “Rite of Passage” are also
rmly rooted in the above principles discovered by the great minds of
Olympic weightlifting.

Although “Grease the Groove” and “Rite of Passage” have been

remarkably successful, for a long time I have been unsatis ed, unable
to apply many gems of the Soviet weightlifting science to strength
training outside of competitive weightlifting, especially when it came
to waviness of the load. Some of the weightlifting periodization
schemes were too sophisticated to disassemble and reassemble to
bene t anyone but rare strength nerds. Many tactics refused to be
translated into use with kettlebells due to large jumps in sizes. But I
kept at it, trying to develop algorithms that would enable any
reasonably intelligent person without a specialized background to
design exceptionally powerful
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barbell, or bodyweightThe Origins
fully in compliance with the methodology that
of StrongFirst Programming: The Soviet System | StrongFirst

won Mother Russia so much gold.

I believe I have succeeded.

Thirteen SFGs with a starting max of a 40kg strict single-arm kettlebell

military press followed one particular plan. After eight weeks, eleven
out of the thirteen—85% of the subjects—were able to press 44kg.
(Two of them put up the Beast, but one admitted his starting max was
closer to 44kg than 40kg.) On a similar plan for the ladies with a 20kg
max, a third of the subjects advanced to 24kg and the rest repped out
with the 20. Anyone who tried to push up his or her military press once
they have reached the point of diminishing returns will tell you that
this is some serious progress. You are dealing with small muscle groups
with high neurological e ciency and, unlike the squatting muscles,
they are very reluctant to get stronger.

Many of the subjects commented how unexpected and seemingly

random were the load jumps from day to day and week to week. Yet
they were anything but random. American program design may be
compared to a photograph, and Russian to an impressionist painting.
An experienced eye can easily see the logic behind an American
powerlifting plan. A Russian plan, when you look at it up close, is just
noise. Remember the scene at the museum in Ferris Bueller’s Day O ?
Cameron zones out in front of George Seurat’s spectacular painting. His
eyes unfocus and the image of a little girl washes out into a blur of
colorful dots.

You have to step a lot farther back to see the pattern in what appears to
be chaos.

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Thank you.

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