Russian Power Training Revisited

Slovenian powerlifter Erni Gregorčič at Worlds 2014 in Sydney, Australia

The other day, I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if I still felt the same way about strength training - specifically Russian strength training, for some reason - as I did years ago. He asked this, he said, because I hadn't published very much on the subject in the last couple of years. I replied that, of course, I still feel the same way about the efficacy of strength and power programs that I recommended 10 years ago as I do today.

There really is nothing new under the strength and power building sun.

With that being said, for those of you new to Russian-style training, here are the "rules" of Russian-style training as recommended by strength guru Pavel Tsatsouline*:

1. You must lift heavy.

2. You must limit your reps to five.

3. You must avoid muscular failure.

4. You must cycle your loads.

5. You must stay tight. Tension is power.

6. You must treat your strength as a skill and "practice" with iron rather than "work out".

7. You must strive to do fewer things better.

The only caveat I would add is that all rules can be broken under the right circumstances, but we'll save that for another post...

*As listed in Pavel's book "Beyond Bodybuilding"

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