Topic: Old-school training and Modern training.

[ViKtoricus]

To summarize what this post is going to be all about, I will simply explain to everyone the difference between the old-school, STRENGTH-BASED weightlifting training to today's more modern, less pressing more jerking type of training.



Today, training involves:

Squatting very frequently with heavy weights. Snatches, Cleans, pulls, and all their other variants are thrown in. About 70% of the total workload are spent on the DYNAMIC lifts while the other 20% are spent on squats. The other ten? Pulls and some direct posterior-chain work, such as good-mornings and Romanian deadlifts.



Training back in the day:

I don't exactly know how they train, but I do know this... Joe Dube (last USA men's gold medalist) trains with "high reps for stamina" as indicated in an interview with Arthur Chidlovski. As a result of this high-rep training, he reportedly had accomplished an amazing, 745-pound squat for 4 sets of 5 reps!



Let's talk about this... Do you think the reason why the United States is subpar with international-level weightlifting is because they still have that "old school" mentality? Joe squats 745 for 6 reps, but he has never cleaned and jerked more than 500 pounds (his best was 485).

Also, is high-rep training BETTER for improving squat strength? The smolov training cycle has periods of 6 repetitions per set.

[Arturo Gómez]

I think that in training, like in economy, there is not standard formula. You may find exemples in one sense or in other sense, because exemples are no sistematic. The goal, in my vision is understand that different persons need different training. This implies more work, and experimental design. Happily, today we count with statistical software to process the data for discover great significant factors, and techniques (as response surfaces) to approach the individual cases.
Summary, I think that modern approach should be use the technology and carry ideas and methods from other areas.

[Tom Sherwood]

IMHO if Joe was a lifter in this era, Just like all the rest (Kono,Davis,Schemansky, etc) He would still be winning medals. Training methods aside he had the attitude, trained hard, remained humble, etc.
Plus he would be lifting on a bar that spins better, has more whip, and wouldn't tire his legs doing three clean and presses.