Topic: Review of Secret Bulgarian Training For Seoul DVD

[Simon Klimesh]

I watched this dvd today, it's an hour and fifteen minutes of watching the Bulgarians train prior to the 1988 Olympics. You mostly see snatches and clean and jerks with a few squats. A few things surprised me, a couple guys were cutting depth on the squats and a couple others were doing the jerk without recovering from the split much like doing a snatch with out recovering from the overhead squat. There was no commentary which would have been nice. My favorite part had to have been watching the middleweight Borislav Guidikov train. No one is really the star of this movie, you get to see the whole team train, from the small guys to the big bellied Krastev. I've heard of the Bulgarians getting praise for good technique because they practiced the lifts so often but I would describe everyone's technique in the video as "good enough" or rudimentary. I'd say they were making their lifts with effort and speed of movement more so than "perfect technique". It didn't look like there was a Bulgarian technique either, the team all had their own idiosyncrasy's. They get a lot of credit for that jumping back pull, but I think it was more of coaches letting the lifters do what was natural than anything else. On a final not it seemed like the weights didn't appear as difficult as they should have been. For instance a lifter would be snatching a very big weight but it just looked easy. I can't remember anyone "saving" a lift which is typical of heavy training.

[bobbyatopk]

i was thinking of getting unbelievable bulgarians, i think that one has commentary etc. have you seen it ?

[Simon Klimesh]

They should call the Unbelievable Bulgarians DVD the Unbelievable Zlatan Vanev, He's filmed more than anyone else. It's very inspirational.

[ViKtoricus]

i was thinking of getting unbelievable bulgarians, i think that one has commentary etc. have you seen it ?

I own the DVD. The lifters are hard workers. One of them had like 6 attempts on the clean+jerk. He kept failing, but he gets closer and closer to getting it each time he tried.

[John Way]

some of my early Hawthorn Club training years were highlighted watching  the bulgarian A team training around december 1986 Marinov, Grablev, Naim, Toporov, Petrov, Varbanov, Zlatev, Krastev and others, meeting Taranenko after he got back from the big one in canberra, he sat down in one of those platic seat backwards with his stomach touching the seat, and seeing Kuznetsov and Zachervich training in early 1989. These guys were very laid back when the coach was out of sight but very serious when missing a lift under the coaches eyes. They didnt miss much! Very common to see the bulgars incomplete the jerk recovery, can remember Kunev and  Vlad also doing this. Some of the Hawthorn lifters also did this.

[Simon Klimesh]

I forgot to add that many were using straps on snatch AND clean and jerk.

[Shaun Le Conte]

William Vargas explained in a Cuban video from the late 90s that without the straps the skin of the hands would not be able to handle the training. Then he went on to say in the video that if somebody is training 3x a week, they should go without the straps

You see Ivan Ivanov doing clean and jerk with straps also in the Ironmind Bulgarian video from 1990s

[Simon Klimesh]

Shaun,

That sounds about right. I wonder if that also means that going without straps three times a week is a good idea if you train very frequently with straps? I asked this question to Dursan Sevinc of Turkey and he said if you want you only have to go without straps on Friday. He also told me my legs are weak, coming from a man with 300kg front squat haha!