Tommy Kono’s Insights

 

Strength-Building and Mind-Power Secrets from the 20th Century’s Greatest Weightlifter/Bodybuilder

     I love old-school bodybuilders.  If you’ve scoured this site, or have been a long-time reader, you’re probably aware of that.  My most popular articles at Integral Strength are almost all “classic bodybuilding” pieces.

     Old-school bodybuilders—especially before the ‘70s—were a different breed.  Like bodybuilders today, they trained for aesthetics and to have a pleasing physique, but they also trained for strength and power, for flexibility, on various “odd” lifts, and for all-around athleticism.  They were, essentially, one part bodybuilder, one part weightlifter, and one part gymnast.  But a few stood out above all others.  One of those was, without a doubt, the great Tommy Kono.  Superlatives such as “great” are heaped upon a lot of old-time lifters, but with Kono it’s no hyperbole.  Great may not even cover it, truth be told.

     In bodybuilding, Kono was a 4-time Mr. Universe champion.  He won the titles in 1954, ‘55, ‘57, and ‘61.  That alone—with his aesthetic physique, clean lines and dense muscularity—would make him a popular bodybuilder of the so-called “Silver Era” of bodybuilding, but get this: He was also a 2-time Olympic gold medalist, winning those titles in ‘52 and ‘56 (he won the silver in ‘60), and a 6-time world weightlifting champion.  He set a total of 26 weightlifting world records, 8 Pan-American Games records, and 7 Olympic records.  Due to a knee injury, he retired from weightlifting in ‘65, but went on to coach the Mexican and West German weightlifting teams before finally becoming the head coach of the U.S. team for the ‘76 Olympics.  The International Weightlifting Federation named him “Lifter of the Century.”

     With all those accolades, I suppose I need to write a piece just on his training alone, but here I want to do something a little different.  I want to discuss some of his insights into lifting and the mental side of the game.  There's a thing about insights, you see.  A lot of lifters miss them because they seem too simple or too obvious, so they’re overlooked.  For instance, take this quote of Kono’s from his book Championship Weightlifting: Beyond Muscle Power—“I would train for a weightlifting contest, but as soon as the contest was over, I would immediately start pumping up.”  He then said that, after a few weeks of “chasing the pump,” his body would become “interested” in moving heavy weights once again.  He also mentions that a lifter, for the first few years of his competitive life, should enter as many competitions as he can throughout the year.  Combining these two insights means that a lifter would train hyper-focused on a competition for around 6 weeks, then do 2 or 3 weeks of bodybuilding training once those competitions are over.  I can concur.  When I first started competing in powerlifting in the ‘90s, I would enter whatever regional competitions I could find, however many that would be—usually about 4 a year.  When the competitions were over, I would then train with higher reps for a few weeks, doing more bodybuilding-style training.  And, sure enough, just as Kono says, after a few weeks of that, I wanted to get under some heavy iron for low reps.  (I must mention that, once I became an elite powerlifter, I couldn’t do that anymore.  I could do, at most, 2 meets in a year at that point.  But training in the manner that Kono recommends is what got me to elite to begin with.)

     Putting this into something practical for you, here’s an 8-week training plan that would work well.  This is exactly the kind of training I used to do in my early competitive days:

Weeks 1-3:

All sets listed as “5 sets of 5 reps” are 5 progressively heavier sets, working up to one all-out set of 5.  You may not get 5 reps with your final set.  If you miss it for, say, 3 or 4 reps, stick with that weight at the next session.  If you do get it, add weight at your next workout for that lift.

Monday

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps

Bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps

Deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps

Wednesday

Barbell reverse lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps (each leg)

Military presses: 5 sets of 5 reps

Barbell curls: 5 sets of 5 reps

Friday

Front squats: 5 sets of 5 reps

Incline bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps

Power cleans: 5 sets of 5 reps

Weeks 4-6:

For the next 3 weeks, you will add 2 back-off sets to some of your core lifts, along with an additional exercise on the Monday and Friday workout.

Monday

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps

Bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps

Deadlifts: 5 sets of 5 reps

Power snatches: 3 sets of 5 reps.  Do these as “straight” sets, using the same weight on all 3 sets.  Only the last set should be all-out or close to it.

Wednesday

Barbell reverse lunges: 5 sets of 5 reps (each leg)

Military presses: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps (back-off sets optional)

Barbell curls: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps (back-off sets optional)

Friday

Front squats: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps

Incline bench presses: 5 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of 8 reps

Power cleans: 5 sets of 5 reps

Weighted chins: 3 sets of 5 reps (straight sets)

Weeks 7-9:

Now, it’s time for some “pump” work.  All sets listed are “work” sets, so make sure you have warmed up adequately before doing the sets.  The amount of warmup sets you need will depend upon your strength level and your genetics.  Some lifters will need 3 or 4 sets to get thoroughly warmed up, whereas others will only need 1 set.  On the work sets, don’t take any of the sets to failure.  Only the last set of each movement should approach failure.  So, hard but not all-out.

Monday and Thursday (lower body)

Double kettlebell front squats or goblet squats: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

Sumo deficit deadlifts: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Sissy squats: 2 sets of 10-12 reps

Stiff-legged deadlifts: 2 sets of 10-12 reps

Calf raises (standing or seated machine): 3 sets of 16-20 reps

Tuesday and Friday (upper body)

Incline dumbbell bench presses: 3 sets of 8-10 reps

Flat dumbbell flyes: 2 sets of 10-12 reps

Wide-grip chins: 3 sets of 6-8 reps

One-arm dumbbell rows: 2 sets of 8-10 reps (each arm)

Seated dumbbell presses: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

Barbell or cable curls: 4 sets of 10-12 reps

Lying triceps extensions (barbell or dumbbell): 4 sets of 10-12 reps

     On any, or all, of the weeks, feel free to do 2 or 3 sets of ab work.  You don’t have to do it at every workout.  Every other session might be a good idea.

     When you’re finished with the 9 weeks, you can repeat the program again, doing the same movements or substituting “same but different” movements.  You can also move on to something completely new, though you would do well to keep the “structure” the same.

     The above program is good.  It’s similar to ones that I’ve put lifters on in the past.  But, more than that, it’s also representative of the kind of program that Kono himself used, which brings us around to the next insight of Kono’s that I want to discuss.  You may have noticed that the first 6 weeks of the program—the strength component—is, essentially, a heavy/light/medium routine, one that lets the exercise selection itself dictate whether the day is heavy, light, or medium.  What does that have to do with Kono?  He once said, in the ‘60s, after his retirement and once he was coaching, that American lifters need to train the “American” way instead of following the “trendy” (at that time) programs coming out of Soviet-bloc countries, such as the Russians and Bulgarians.  The “Russian method” was, and is, very systematic, using exact weights at each session based on percentages.  The “Bulgarian method” was based on maxing out at every single session—that’s right, every session.  Now, I like the Russian and Bulgarian systems—my training is highly influenced by Russian-style training—but I also think that Kono was correct.  By the “American system,” Kono meant the kind of program that I outlined above, or something quite similar.  He said that lifters just needed to get back to rotating between heavy, light, and medium workout or ones that we might call hard, easy, and moderate.  You slowly build up your strength and work capacity through frequent training—but not too frequent—using largely full-body workouts.  You let how you feel determine the weights you end up lifting for the day.  Some days, especially once you get more advanced, you may lift less than you have in the past on the same lift for the same day.  That’s okay.  As you persist, your lifts will go up.

     Aside from the program above, what would your workouts look like using Kono’s insight?  I think your training would look largely the way I recommended in my recent essay “Basic Lifting, Instinctive Training.”  The kind of training I recommended there works this way: Each day that you train, you know the lifts that you’re going to utilize, and you know whether it’s going to be a hard workout, a moderate workout, or more of an active recovery session, but you let how you feel determine just how heavy you go or how many sets or reps you do on a lift.  It does require a degree of training maturity.  If your “instinct,” for instance, keeps telling you to do less sets and less work on heavy back and squatting movements but more for your chest and arms then your instinct is, well, pretty damn wrong!  It also won’t work if your “instinct” keeps telling you to do more and more work at each session.  You have to know when to train hard and heavy, and when to back off.  That requires, in the words of Bradley Steiner, a “mature muscle man.”

     I want to discuss one final thing about Kono, and that’s not his muscle power but his mental power.  Kono once remarked that it’s not about mind over muscle but mind over mind.  Though, as far as I can tell, he wasn’t a particularly “religious” person, he was heavily influenced by “New Thought.”  New Thought is what I prefer to call positive mind metaphysics.  There are insightful, “good” versions of it and pretty nonsensical, even narcissistic versions of it.  Nowadays, it’s often intertwined with New Age stuff, but lifters (and athletes of all types) can use it as part of their mental training and make great progress.

     Kono was influenced by Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking”—which swept America in the 1950s—along with Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich.”  Hill’s work, despite its self-serving title, has some real gems for lifters.  I’ve written two essays on the blog inspired by Hill’s works—A Definite Chief Aim and The Law of Proximity.  I recommend reading both of those if you want more detail but back to Kono.  In addition to American books like Peale’s and Hill’s, he was also inspired by Zen due to his Japanese heritage.

     “Too much emphasis is placed on the physical side of lifting when in reality it should be ‘mind’ training,” Kono said.  He believed this, and not just his physical prowess, was the key to his success.  Here are two other quotes from him that emphasize his process: “the mind and body cannot be separated for the mind wills the body” and “the mind must be groomed for success.”

     As far as Zen goes, Kono once cited this quote from the Hawaiian Zen master Tanouye Tenshin Rotaishi: “Among all the sports, weightlifting is closest to Zen.”  I have written about this similarity myself in other articles.  In an essay titled “Nothing Special: Lifting Zen,” I wrote: “There's nothing special about lifting weights, not really.  It's a very simple exercise.  Pick weights up, put weights down, repeat—that's about it.  Of course, it's the sheer simplicity and very Zen-like nature of lifting that does make it special, and therein lies its true worth.  And after doing it for a length of time, it simply becomes something that one does, but also something that one cannot but do.”

     Here’s an incident from Kono’s life that reveals the application of this thinking to competition.  At an international meet in ‘58, the U.S. coach John Terpak tried to tell him what lifts he would need to make to beat his Soviet competitor.  “Don’t tell me how much I need,” Tommy retorted. ”Just put it on the bar and I’ll lift it.”  He did!

     Time magazine, in an article entitled “Atlas Comes to Life,” wrote: “To Tommy Kono, the secret lies in the power of positive thinking. ‘Successful weight lifting is not in the body,’ says Kono. ‘It’s in the mind. You have to strengthen your mind to shut out everything—the man with the camera, the laugh or the cough in the audience. You can lift as much as you believe you can. Your body can do what you will it to do.’”

     Shortly before his death, he said: “life is for the living to enjoy the journey while you can.”

     For those of us lifters on this side of death, may we all enjoy the journey.  Tommy Kono was one that revealed the way.  All we have to do is follow it.

Sources

“TOMMY KONO AND THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING: THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF AMERICA’S GREATEST WEIGHTLIFTER,” by John Fair, from the July/August 2017 newsletter Iron Game History

“Championship Weightlifting: Beyond Muscle Power, The Mental Side of Lifting” by Tommy Kono, HKC publishing

“Atlas Comes To Life,” Time 75 (27 June 1960)