Ever since Bulgarian Olympic lifting coach Ivan Abadjaev (you will see this spelled about 12 different ways) reinvented training for Olympic lifting in the 70’s or thereabouts, it’s common for his ideas to propagate through other non Olympic lifting sports. And every 5 years or so someone will come along and try to reinvent Bulgarian powerlifting. Recently an ebook to that effect was written.
When I originally wrote this article I did not name it but then the author, Greg Knuckols and Omar Isuf got butthurt by this article so I’m happy to provide the cover now since he outed himself.
So I want to look at what the Bulgarian approach actually is, then look at how it’s usually attempted to be applied to PL’ing. And then I’ll tell you why it never actually works and why you should forget about Bulgarian training.
Pre-Abadjaev OL Training
Prior to Abadjaev’s rewriting the rules, most Olympic lifting training of the day followed a more or less Soviet and classical periodization model. … Keep Reading