There have been plenty of advancements in the strength and conditioning world over the past 25 years, new pieces of equipment are constantly being invented, technology is being used in a way that it never has before, even the diet of an athlete has changed immensely. But for all the progress we’ve made, not all change is good. Some things do in fact stand the test of time.
One of these things is the training methodology that produced some of the greatest weightlifters in the history of the sport, the old soviet weightlifting system.
(Rudolf Plukfelder, Olympic champion, many credit him with helping set up the soviet weightlifting system)
Again, despite all the advancements we have made in the world of strength, some of the totals that were produced by Soviet weightlifters have NEVER BEEN BEAT.
(Yuri Zakharevich, Olympic/3xWorld champion)
Yuri Zakharevich totaled 440kg in the 100kg weight class, a total that was never matched by a 108 or a 105kg lifter. Ilya Illin came close in 2015 with a 437kg total at 105kg, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Need more examples? No problem. Viktor Solodov’s 422.5kg total in the 90kg class was never beaten by a 99 or a 94kg lifter. The great Kakiasvilis came closest with 420, but he was 9kg heavier. Perhaps the most impressive example of this is Yurik Vardanyan. In 1984 he totaled 405 at 82.5kg, Pyrros Dimas came closest to breaking this record with a 392.5kg total at 83kg, and the current 81kg record stands at 378kg.
(Yurik Vardanyan, Olympic champion, 7x world champion, set and broke multiple world records)
A lot of people will think it was the use of performance-enhancing drugs that led to these numbers, and yes, the soviets did take PED’s, but so do the athletes of today, and in 2021 the drugs are better than ever. So how, despite all our advancements of the past 25+ years, do the soviet numbers still stand? Maybe it wasn’t drugs. Maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with the way they trained. In part 2 of this little series, we will look deeper into how the soviets trained.