Another nice Barbell Shrugged episode.
This time the crew had John Broz as a guest.
I think this episode can be summed up with “Developing a Champion’s Mindset”.
Audio Only: MP3
Best of Olympic Weightlifting
Best of Olympic Weightlifting
Another nice Barbell Shrugged episode.
This time the crew had John Broz as a guest.
I think this episode can be summed up with “Developing a Champion’s Mindset”.
Audio Only: MP3
Is there advice for the non-cheating athlete?
It is a very interesting interview. Broz lays out his philosophy for training and it is impressive how fast his lifters improve.
He also spoke about that he showed some of his lifters a video of the American Nationals after two years of lifting. At that point non of the lifters had ever competed. I am fascinated by his approach to set very high goals and not to be content with small goals. However, I think it is important to compete to get the experience. It seems to me that the plan is to train until a lifter is able to break world records and win the olympic gold medal. And only then he or she will compete.
But weightlifting is to a large party a mind game. And if you never played that mind game you might not succeed.
It was pretty obvious that Pat Mendes was very nervous on the big stage at the world championships last year.
And again he underperfomed like Broz’ lifters do so often.
I hope that some day his lifters show amazing lifts not only in the gym but also when it counts.
that is an excellent point.
Then ask youself, what could be the reason to take many years before/without competing?
Time not being tested…
Another point about the interview. Broz is of course speaking for squatting everyday as the most effective way. Powerlifters like Coan and Karwoski have demonstrated that one can lift gigantic weights with training much less frequently. They squatted once per week. So it doesn’t appear that one approach is necessarily better than the other.
yeah, and those who train like Ed Coan has much longer longevity in sport.
Powerlifting and weightlifting are very different. I’m not surprised to see less weightlifters competing at a high level past the age of 30 solely because of the speed component involved (which is usually the first to drop off as we age). Powerlifting is much more based on strength which doesn’t drop off nearly as much (or at least as quickly).
Coan’s had his fair share of major injuries too, but he did still squat 300kg at past 50!
And it’s crazy because both the Bulgarians in the 80’s, the sovjet school, the chinese system today and everybody else did og know, that you have to build up the athlete to this kind of frequency and tonnage over years.
And today a lot of young people without a proper trainer unfortunately tries to copy the avg. Broz style without understanding this. Plus to train like this you need a solid foundation (base), almost perfect movement patterns in the lifts, nothing else that takes up your energy and often some medical assistance.
– You need to be a professional athlete to train like one…
My weightlifting coach said once, and he might be wrong here, that the reason weightlifters often squat multiple times a week is because if a weightlifter did one extreme aquat day every week with the kind of volume and intensity that powerlifters often use, a weightlifter would have trouble working through the rest of the week. A powerlifter can just do benching and upper body accessory lifting in the following days and finish the week with deadlifting (or whatever). Thus the body doesn’t need to be able to handle the squats that come with snatches, cleans, and accessory exercises for a weightlifter basically every (workout) day of the week. Weightlifters still have to train their legs a lot, so they have to pace it out more evenly throughout the week.
That is an interesting point. Although it is also easier to recover from high bar back squat than low bar. However, my point was more general in that very different approaches have been used to get lifters very strong. And there is no real clue as to what we do today is efficient or even the best way. In fact it is very unclear whether athletes just spend enormous amounts of energy to get to a certain level. That is it is effective, but it is not clear whether it is efficient. In addition if you squat multiple times everyday to failure you are clearly doing much, much more work than any powerlifter could in his single session.
Again Broz approach clearly works. All his lifters have very strong squat numbers. However, Everett makes a good point. Squats are just an assistant exercise for weightlifters. Should one then not only spend the necessary amount of energy on squats?
Another axiom of strength training is that you don’t get stronger by lifting weights, but by recovering from lifting weights. My impression was that Mendes was very tired when competing. There was no hunger to lift big weights, but rather a tired expression. Now this is clearly just an assumption on my part, but it would explain why never performed his best in competitions.
An interview with Taranenko comes to mind where he talked about that he stopped back squatting after reaching 300 kg, because he felt it was enough and everything more would not yield a benefit and be potentially harmful. Alexeyev never squatted much above his best Clean and Jerk for similar reasons.
I believe this is a very interesting discussion.
You make interesting points. Slight correction though. Taranenko stopped front squatting after hitting 300kgx3. Not back squatting. He went up to something like 360-370kg in the back squat with a pause.
Thanks. You are right. I just checked the source.
I think he did 380kg with a two second pause, What would be a 410 kg regular squat.
Yes, this is indeed an interesting conversation, and you raise good points. Mendes seemed tired and beat up to me as well. His upper body is also huge compared to most lifters, altough that might be a genetic trait. Or maybe he was just nervous due to a lack of competition experience, as some here have suggested?
I don’t think my coach, for example, would ever recommend the Broz system to any weightlifter, although he admits that it works for *some* people very well. But squatting every day and squatting every day to failure are two very different things.
My only question is why there is such an emphasis on *squatting* every day. I’m a powerlifter, and squat is my favorite lift, so obviously that seems like a cool concept to me. But for a WLer, it seems that such time could be much better spent working on the fundamental movements themselves–snatch, CJ, and variations. As someone else remarked, many PLers can develop huge squats just squatting once or twice a week. Especially since the explosion of raw PLing, we see this demonstrated very clearly: people like Ray Williams, Jezza Uepa, and Blaine Sumner are back squatting over 400 kgs in just a belt.
Broz’s basic formula–that any time not spent under the bar is a negative, any time spent lifting is a positive–should perhaps be revised in light of the opportunity cost: any time spent squatting is time that could be spent CJing or snatching. Obviously, all are good, but when a WLer already has a huge back squat, I don’t think squatting EVERY day should be his/her priority.
See my reply to Leon on this matter. It might be a bullshit theory, but it kind of makes sense to me.
I also replied to you in my answer to Juho. I think you make an interesting point.
Wow, I stopped listening after half of the podcast. He just sounded like some bro scientist.
Nothing he said made sense to me. The worst: He basically said technique doesn’t matter, wtf.
Then his comment about small/great goals: disregarding small goals is pretty stupid and even more so without any justification. Breaking up big tasks into smaller short term goals is just so obviously better than going for your lifetime goal straight away. I cannot understand how anyone would believe anything he says after these two points alone.
The way I understood that part was, that he said technique doesn’t matter after a certain point i.e. when the athlete is already familiar with how to squat properly. After that it comes a battle of the mind of handling heavy weights meaning the mind collapses well before the body.