Topic: Why I Believe in the Naturalistic or Anarchistic Method of Weightlifting

[ViKtoricus]

I do agree with Chris, just in a less philosophical and less anarchistic reason.



One of the observations that Abadjhiev had with athletes is that there are no universal athletes. It's always either you are the best at your sport or you are merely good at several sports. People may believe that squats and deadlifts have great carry-over to everything, but in truth, they are only a small part of everything. Just because you front squat 600 pounds and strict press 400 pounds does not automatically mean you have a 500+ pound clean+jerk. And just because you have a 500+ pound clean+jerk does not automatically mean you have what it takes to be a football player.

The Bulgarian weightlifters, at some point, had several exercises in their arsenal for the improvement of the classical lifts. But when Abadjhiev decided to refine the training system, he eliminated the lifts that he considered to be unnecessary and focused on the back squat, front squat, snatch, and clean+jerk. This does NOT mean ALL of his athletes should strictly adhere to this rule. These athletes must first develop their "readiness" with these lifts by doing a much broader and more generalized training approach before tackling with THE Bulgarian system.

The human body has a limited recovery capacity. It can only recover and adapt to so much stress. If you spent a year of your career bodybuilding, it means that you wasted a year of your career that could've been used to improve your clean+jerk. If you spent a month focusing on the power-clean, it means you wasted a month that could've been used to improve your clean+jerk. This is not the same as using the power-clean as an assistance exercises as this will provide a different training stimulus, believe it or not.

I believe the "Naturalistic" approach to training is to put yourself in a situation where you will either improve your lifts or die, either by actually following an established training program, or just lifting as frequent as you can with great effort.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Anarchy is properly defined as a condition where there are no rulers, no one above the law. In weightlifting, this means no coach ruling over the athlete, only coaching via voluntary influence. Authoritarianism is indeed chaos, including in weightlifting like everything else, and you make this point well Simon. Instead of the order of each athlete planning their own training, with chosen advice, you have the chaos of every athlete looking to a central planner, who cannot possibly have as much information about them all as they have about themselves. Thus athletes inevitably *will* set aside the plan to the extent they can get away with it or they will ultimately achieve less. Again, I'll refer to everyone choosing their own clothes to wear or putting one person in charge of what everyone wears, or a bureau in charge. Inevitably, with central planning of the clothing, people will end up with clothes that they don't like, clothes that don't fit, etc and very quickly a "black market" (anarchy) would form to correct the errors of the central planner, at a loss of efficiency over just doing it that way in the first place. The bulgarian approach takes a more anarchistic approach in that it does not attempt to restrain the athlete's day to day performances according to the plan of the coach. I can't speak to whether it was a purely anarchistic like I am describing because I wasn't there, but its more in the direction than the soviet style by far, which looks to micromanage every detail of every athlete's training by a centralized supposedly superior mentality.

When people ask me to separate my philosophy from weightlifting, they ask the impossible. Freedom is best for everything, including weightlifting. To ignore this fact is to go down the wrong road from the very start.

[Simon Klimesh]

A coach once told me that the Bulgarian way of training is self regulating and I think he was right. If you try your best everyday, sometimes your best isn't going to be very good, other times you might make PR's. In that way I think I know what you mean Chris. There is no need to make assumptions and predicts about what's going to happen, just lay your cards on the table and see where you end up for the day with no fear and no regret. I also think you get a LOT more opportunities this way than with periodization where you basically have a certain period where you have to come up with the goods and if you fail, what was all the periodization all for anyway? I also think attitude effects training philosophy. Your "naturalistic" approach is probably the way you are wired and who's to say it's not best for you.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Self-regulating is a good analogy akin to self-government which is a "nicer" way of saying anarchy. You state the case well again in terms of opportunity cost. Planned gains in the future from a written program are of no importance compared to achieving immediate progress. We know that gains are just about always repeatable and thus gains achieved now means future training can focus on going farther.

The argument for waiting relies primarily on the theory that the return will be greater later if potential goes untapped now. However this entire idea and its model are built on faulty epistemology. Periodization and similar methods, which take an empirical-positivist approach, fail to understand that there are *no constant relations* in human action/performance and thus their efforts to control as many variables as they can to find constants they can rely on is futile from the start. Or in weightlifting lingo- its unlikely that any two lifters would ever react to the same programming stimulus in the same way/to the same degree (to put it mildly) and its just about as unlikely that the same athlete would react to the same programming influence in the same way/to the same degree in two different training sessions, since the combination of variables which produced the performance in the first session will never be repeated exactly the same again. This means periodized programs lack any and all legitimate scientific support and are really just intuitive guesses based on the experience of people operating under a false model of reality. Any success in such programs thus cannot be attributed to the programs themselves and in fact should be considered to have occurred in spite of the plan, at least until there is some evidence to support the model.

[rjohnston435]

I would have to agree with Chris and respectfully disagree with whomever suggested the 'Bulgarian' approach isn't a natural approach.

Effectively, Uncle Ivan is saying roll the dice and let them fall where they may that day. Those who are destined to be great will be great and the rest of us, well we will sit here and shake our heads while we watch Liao Hui jerk 198kg or wonder how Kahki did 235kg that one Olympics.

There's no more natural approach than letting the strong survive and the weak perish.

[ViKtoricus]

This thread has been filled with wisdom. I feel fulfilled now. lol

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Again, freedom works better for athletes of all talent levels, not just the very best, and for all the same reasons. Yes, an anarchistic approach will not allow them to become the athlete they were not meant to be but it will allow them to fully explore their potential, unlike an authoritarian program of another.