Skip to main content

New article: "From Russia with Strength and Power"

     I have a new article out.  It was posted yesterday on Mike Mahler's website.  (Mahler, by the way, is a heck of a strength coach.  If you haven't checked out his website, you need to.  If you like the stuff you see here, you'll definitely like what he has to offer.)
     The article focuses on the training methods—powerlifting, mostly—employed by a lot of Russian lifters, and lifters from other countries that were formerly part of the Soviet empire.
     Here is how the article begins:

     For years, the countries of Russia and others from the former Soviet Republic have dominated international powerlifting and Olympic lifting competitions.  And for years, there has also been an aura of mystique surrounding the methods they use to produce such phenomenal athletes, not to mention a lot of misconceptions about those methods.

     In this article, I’m going to clear up those misconceptions by laying out the methods they utilize, plus I’m going to outline a couple of routines based on these methods.  In fact, I think many lifters (including bodybuilders) in the Western world would achieve better results by incorporating these routines at least part of the year.  (These routines are also excellent for any MMA fighters that might reading this, as these workouts build a lot of strength and power—functional muscle mass, not just bulk.)

      I hope that whets your appetite.  To read the rest of the article, just go to www.mikemahler.com.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 28, 2017 at 12:39 PM

    I've read the article and I am wondering what the progression over the weeks should be in rep ranges and loads? Should it be conjugated like Sheiko does? Or linear? Do you have a sample 5 week program?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 21, 2022 at 1:08 PM

    CS, do you still think this is a viable program? IF so, any changes to be made?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. C.S. SloanOctober 25, 2022 at 9:59 AM

      Short answer: Yes
      Long Answer: I do think this is still a viable program - in fact, ANY program worth its weight should still be good no matter when it was written! Keep in mind, however, that the program that I included in this article is just an example, and it WOULD need to be modified as the weeks progressed. But the 6 "methods" that I list are not only still "viable" but their viability may be even greater these days with more and more "regular lifters" doing "functional" strength training.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave us some feedback on the article or any topics you would like us to cover in the future! Much Appreciated!

Popular posts from this blog

Full-Body Blast

George Turner’s Old-School Full-Body Program for Gaining 90 Pounds—that’s right, 90!—of Pure Muscle George Turner was in his 60s in this picture!      When it comes to old-school bodybuilders, George Turner remains one of my favorites.   Probably because of the fact that he was more than just a competitive bodybuilder.   He was a gym owner along with being a damn good writer of (damn good) training articles.   He was also a bit—how should it be said?—curmudgeonly.   But he was without a doubt curmudgeonly in the best possible way.   He was, in many ways, similar to Vince Gironda in that regard, just without the disdain for squats.   (That’s right, as much as I like Gironda, he wasn’t a fan of the barbell back squat.)   Myself, I love back squats.   As did Turner.      Anyway, that paragraphic preamble is just a way of writing that, as I was thumbing through an old IronMan magazine this morning, looking ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Train Heavy. Train Often.

       If you’re a natural lifter who wants to gain plenty of muscle mass but also the strength to go with it, I think there are three things that are paramount.   First, you need to train heavy.   Second, you need to train often.   And third, you need to remain fresh while doing the first two.      If you’re a student of the lifting game, and if something about my above statement seems vaguely familiar, there’s an explanation for that.   I basically paraphrased the great Russian strength coach Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, who, rather famously, said that the key to strength training was “to train as heavy as possible as often as possible while being as fresh as possible.”   That quote is well-known for a reason.   Following it judiciously will unlock a lot of strength and hypertrophy gains.      Of course, there are a couple caveats to that statement.   You need to be training with barbel...
Post a Comment
Read more

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

  The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan  magazine.      In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.”  I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time .  In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...
Post a Comment
Read more