Ivan Abadjiev died in 2017. I’m going to assume many of you know who he was. For those of you who don’t, Abadjiev is probably the most legendary weightlifting coach in history. He started the Bulgarian program from basically nothing in the late 1960s, building this tiny country’s team into a juggernaut that defeated the Soviet Union and rampaged through the sport during the 70s and 80s. Still to this day, the world gapes in awe at the Bulgarian lifters of that era. There’s never been another team like them, before or after.
 
Like many elite coaches, Abadjiev was surrounded by controversy. The drug scandals of the Bulgarian team, along with the brutality of his training program, gave him a reputation that was 60 percent greatness and 40 percent sinister. His workout regimen was designed with a simple principle: set up the hardest program known to man and pump thousands of athletes into it. Most of them will break, but the ones who survive will become world champions.
 
It worked. His lifters dominated the sport and the all-time record books, and an entire generation of coaches around the world searched for ways to incorporate his methods and principles into their own programs. However, despite the phenomenal success and influence of the Bulgarians, question marks have continued to exist about the physical risks that go along with how Abadjiev trained weightlifters. Nobody can deny the effectiveness of his ideas, but there are some scary cautionary notes that have to be acknowledged.
 
One of his cornerstone beliefs was the idea that weightlifters must be prepared to perform at maximum competitive level at all times. Traditionally accepted ideas about recovery phases and periodization cycles where the athlete starts at a low level of performance and gradually works up to peak results…Abadjiev scoffed at these. In his mind, a weightlifter needed to STAY at their peak condition year-round. If an athlete’s best snatch was 150 kg, he should be able to snatch in the neighborhood of 150 kg 365 days of the year. Needless to say, this required a maniacal level of training that basically never stopped.
 
Abadjiev summed up these ideas in an interview with the following: “In Bulgaria, many other sports disciplines are built on the methods developed by the Soviet experts. The main concept is distinct periodization, preparation stage, interim stage, competition stage. I threw it away at once. When a rabbit is being chased by the wolf, does he have an interim stage for running? Yes, he can hide in the bushes, but he is ready to start running 100 percent at any time. Is it logical to achieve outstanding results by hard work and then to stop and to go back to a lower level?"
 
This is an illustration of the SAID principle, which many of you have probably studied already. SAID stands for “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.” If you subject the body to constant heavy training, it will gradually adapt and adjust to handle the workload. That’s the idea. Keep pushing massive work requirements on the athletes, and their bodies will simply develop the ability to tolerate it, ultimately resulting in elite performance. The ones who CAN’T adapt will stagnate or get injured, so they’ll be the casualties of the system. The ones who adapt successfully will make progress and become champions. It’s not intended to be a system that fits everybody. It’s the weightlifting version of Darwinism. Survival of the fittest.
 
In this article, we’re going to take a look at this principle. Most of you are searching for the best training program you can find to maximize your weightlifting performance. We all know one of the fundamental questions when it comes to program design is, “How heavy should I go in training, and how often?” Stepping over the line in this department leads to injury, and not pushing hard enough leads to lack of progress. So…where do you fit in, and does Abadjiev’s approach sound right for you? Should you have back-off phases in your yearly training where your body gets a break from attempting maximum SN and C&J all the time, or should you slam the gas pedal to the floor and leave it there?
 
First, how heavy is heavy?
 
I think the first step in this examination needs to be some kind of definition of “heavy training.” Many of you think in percentages, so you’re automatically starting to put numbers together in your head. 90 percent, 80 percent, etc.
 
One thing I know for sure about the Bulgarian program is that it didn’t run on percentages, for the most part. I never spoke to Abadjiev about this point specifically, so I can’t pretend to know the exact explanation for it. However, I do know one of the main reasons is the simple fact that their athletes were usually expected to be operating at the top end of their capability, and percentages weren’t an effective way to manage their training loads. Let me try to explain this through an example:
 
Let’s take an athlete with a personal record snatch of 150 kg., and then let’s pick a percentage that sounds like a pretty high level of work. Say 90 percent. 90 percent has that close-to-maximum feel to it, right? Well, 90 percent of 150 kg is 135 kg. For a 150 kg snatcher, 135 kg is nowhere near the attempts the athlete would be taking in competition. If a 150 kg snatcher lifted in a meet, his opening attempt would likely be around 145 kg, or maybe 143 kg if he was trying to stay on the safe side. If the athlete was planning to attempt a new personal record in the competition, which was always the intent in the Bulgarian program, his attempts would probably be something like 145-150-152. In other words, weights in the mid-140s would be considered competition-level weights for this lifter. Therefore, this is an acceptable level of work. 135 kg, even though it’s 90 percent and 90 percent sounds like hard work, just isn’t a serious weight for this lifter. By competition standards, it’s a warmup. According to Abadjiev’s approach, this lifter should be able to snatch 145 kg anytime, anywhere, no matter what. That was the basic expectation because if you want that lifter to eventually break through to snatching 155 or 160, you can’t be fooling around with 135. You don’t go from a 150 kg snatch to a 160 kg snatch by dillydallying with 135 kg. You have to be pushing that 150 kg barrier as hard as possible with the expectation of progress. 145 kg is just a normal day at the office, and should be treated as such. And once we get into the 145ish range for a 150 snatcher, we’re talking about 96-97 percent. At this point, percentages aren’t very useful because we’re simply always hovering close to 100 percent. I hope this makes sense.
 
You might be asking yourself, “Does that mean the Bulgarian lifters were snatching and clean and jerking at 100 percent every single session?” Not necessarily. They didn’t attempt new personal records every workout, 52 weeks a year. But they stayed pretty close to their records at all times. That 150 kg snatcher could definitely snatch 140-145 kg reliably, all the time. And when they were approaching any kind of competition, they were swinging for the fence every time they went in the gym.
 
Sounds physically impossible, right? Understandably, most people look at a training program like this and ask, “How LONG could you handle this workload?” It doesn’t seem like the human body could stay at that level of performance for long, does it? Well…it can’t. Trust me, longevity was not intended to be part of the Bulgarian program. Their lifters were expected to win World and Olympic titles in their early 20s…mid 20s at the latest. By the time they were 25, their bodies were usually starting to give out, and that was an understood part of the process.
 
And then we have to mention the drugs. As the world knows, the Bulgarian program (like all elite world weightlifting programs) was heavily aided by anabolic steroids. Steroids drastically increase an athlete’s recovery ability, which makes heavy training with high frequency more realistic. This was a big component in Abadjiev’s methods. He would have told you that himself.
 
So…could any of you handle this kind of training? That’s what this article is all about: trying to figure out if regular people could (or should) train like a Bulgarian. If you’re older than 25 and you don’t take drugs, can you implement this methodology into your weightlifting career? Or is it a recipe for disaster?
 
Kinda, sorta…
 
Let’s break this up into two questions. 1) Can you do Bulgarian training without drugs? 2) Can you do Bulgarian training when you’re older than 25?
 
1) Can you do it without drugs? Yes, you can…with some limitations. I know this from experience. During my career at the national level, I trained with the Calpian weightlifting club in Washington. I started with the Calpians when I was 20 years old and stayed there until I was 32. Our coach, John Thrush, was heavily influenced by the Bulgarian methods, so he designed our training accordingly. We trained five days a week, and our weekly workload was exactly like I described with the 150 snatcher example. Our guys who could snatch 140 kg were going to snatch in the 130s basically every time they did a snatch workout. Our women who could clean and jerk 90 kg were never going to do workouts where they didn’t go into the low-mid 80s. We trained this way full-time, and we weren’t on drugs. Many of the top US lifters I knew from different clubs around the country trained the same way, and most of them were clean as well. So yes, it’s possible to do Bulgarian-style training without drugs. You might not be able to train 12-14 times per week like the Bulgarians, approaching world records in each session. Drugs are needed for that, sure. But you can definitely use the Bulgarian principle of staying within striking distance of your personal records at all times without the use of anabolics.
 
2) Can you do it over 25 years? Yes, you can…but you have to be precise about how often you train. Let me go back to my personal example. I started training like this with the Calpian club when I was 20. I could handle the Bulgarian-style workload five days a week until I was around 25. When I got to be 25-26, it started to get a LOT harder to recover every day. I started to have pain that I couldn’t beat, even with the help of anti-inflammatories. I spoke to my coach and asked him if I could switch to a four-days-per-week program, which he agreed to. This was a great move, and I was able to stay competitive at the national level for a while longer. I competed in the Olympic Trials and won bronze at the American Open when I was 32, and that was pretty much the end of the road for my top stuff. From those years between 25 and 32, I trained four days each week (and sometimes only three), and I was still able to maintain that Bulgarian close-to-maximum-every-workout level. There’s no way I could have done it five days a week, but 3-4 worked okay. So my personal opinion is this: it’s possible for a lifter to train using basic Bulgarian principles above 25 years AND without drugs, but the frequency of the workouts will have to be adjusted according to age and recovery. You can still hit near-maximum weights every time you lift, but you probably won’t be able to do this as often when you’re older and drug-free.
 
But how about when you’re REALLY old?
 
My personal example went up to the age of 32. Many of you are in your 40s or 50s, which is old as hell by weightlifting standards. Therefore, a question still remains here. Is it possible to train Bulgarian style near-maximum-throughout-the-year when you’re WAY past 25?
 
This is where the answer becomes highly individualized. People don’t age the same. Some lifters are still youthful and capable of relatively heavy workloads when they’re in their 40s and 50s, while others are shot to hell at those ages. The only way to know for sure where you fit into that equation is to experiment with your training and see how your body responds. If you can’t handle a certain workload, your knees and your back will tell you pretty quickly.
 
My opinion, and the opinion of many successful weightlifting coaches, is that the Bulgarian mentality of staying close to maximum level at all times is the most effective way to train Olympic lifters. I think this is true regardless of age. However, once you’re in the masters division, the main goal is finding a training system that works best for YOU.
 
Let’s look at another example. Say you’re 46 years old and you currently snatch 90 kg, with a goal of 100 kg in the future. You’re not going to move from 90 kg to 100 kg if you spend most of your training time snatching 81 kg. You have to push the envelope harder than that.
 
But let’s say your body just won’t cooperate with pushing the envelope. Let’s say you spend an extended amount of time trying to snatch close to 90 kg most workouts, with some occasional attempts at breaking new ground with 92-93 kg because you eventually want to get to 100. If your body breaks down and you simply can’t tolerate that workload, you might be getting your answer. As heartless as it sounds, 90 kg might be the top of the mountain for you. If you want to continue being a weightlifter into your 50s or whatever, the goal might be to hang on to as much of that 90 kg as you can for as long as possible.
 
Do these thoughts and statements cover every individual situation in the sport? Absolutely not. Are there different methods of training that could get that 46-year-old from 90 to 100 without using Bulgarian principles? Maybe. But you have to remember that if you want to move from 90 to 100, you’re going to have to snatch 91, and then 92, and then 93, and then 94…etc. See what I mean? 10 kg of progress is going to require a situation where your old PR eventually becomes normal daily working level, and that’s only going to happen if you push your limits. If your body will tolerate this, be thankful. The weightlifting gods are smiling down on you.
 
If your body can’t tolerate it, find a training system that allows you to keep doing the sport you love for as long as possible, getting whatever level of performance you can reach and being happy as hell that you still get to be an Olympic lifter. Ivan Abadjiev would have told you himself that his system wasn’t built for everybody. Elite weightlifting performance isn’t for everybody. It’s a cruel sport sometimes. If you can’t settle up with that, go curl up on a couch with a blanket and watch movies about people who have tender feelings. That’s always an option. But if you want to find out what you’ve got inside and you’re willing to take some risks, consider some of these ideas. Trust me, they can make you great if your DNA cooperates.