"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
Part 6 in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." Complete table of contents here. Before Pavel came along, we did not deadlift. By “we” I mean young ironheads who wanted big muscles and got our (mis)information from dime store bodybuilding magazines. "[T]he deadlift is THE exercise of choice for anyone." In 1999 Pavel sounded... Continue Reading →
Part 5 in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." See Table of Contents here. Pavel Tsatsouline likens his programs to Kalashnikov rifles, which have just a few simple moving parts. You can strip the "Kalash" one-handed in the dark: pop off the top cover, pull out a spring and bolt carrier, and you’re left with one huge, solid main assembly. A rare but... Continue Reading →
The third installment in our series, "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." “Nothing is more practical than a good theory,” and Pavel Tsatsouline has always excelled at distilling exercise science into something immediately useful and dummy-proof. In his short, entertaining 1999 book, Power to the People, he changed popular strength training by drawing consequences that... Continue Reading →
This is the first installment in our series on the training doctrines of Pavel Tsatsouline. Pavel Tsatsouline entered my life through a side door. In 1998, on an internet forum hosted by the first man to squat 1000 lbs., “Dr. Squat” Fred Hatfield, I read a terse post by a polite Russian émigré. He introduced... Continue Reading →
20 Years of Pavel Tsastouline: IntroductionBefore the Russian Revolution: The Ancien Regime of 1999 Strength Is a SkillMinimalism: When All You Have Is a HammerOne Pull, One PressEnter the DeadliftPower to the People!
Rogozhnikov emphasizes that you are allowed to tinker with his plan. He emphasizes that he isn’t teaching a “routine” at all but an approach, and he tolerates much more customizing and fiddling from you, the athlete, than most Eastern European coaches would. And if you are reading this blog, you will probably need to tailor... Continue Reading →
We’ve seen that Rogozhnikov divides his training into light, medium, and heavy days, and he alternates bench press workouts with squat/deadlift workouts. He did not invent either of these practices, and we find American lifters using comparable building blocks in the popular Westside method. But Rogozhnikov is an artiste in how he stacks up the... Continue Reading →
I once heard Mark Bell say that advanced lifters have figured out the handful of exercises that work best for them, but intermediate lifters have to try everything under the sun so they can figure out what works for them. But Rogozhnikov does not permit that much variety. Except for assistance work (of which he... Continue Reading →
Part 6 of our series on Konstantin Rogozhnikov. On heavy bench day, Rogozhnikov has you choose an exercise that is very competition-specific. You could pick a straightforward competition-style bench press, but you also have a few other options. You could try floor presses or a slight incline press, and if you have experience with chains,... Continue Reading →
Part 5 in our series on the methods of Russian powerlifting coach Konstantin Rogozhnikov. Rogozhnikov designs his medium days as "bodybuilding" days. You “pump the muscles up with blood” with 3 sets of 8 using “a weight that you couldn’t just easily cruise through 8 reps with.” Timur Andreev, a former champion from Rogozhnikov’s stables,... Continue Reading →