The Powerlifter

Trained with a competitive power lifter yesterday at the gym.  Allow me to tell you a little about him before I go into how ridic awesome he is:

Age:  30
Height:  5'8"
Weight:  184 lbs
Yrs in the biz:  eternity (17 yrs)
Squat record:  545 lbs (8/6/2013)

The man is a beast considering his height.  When I saw him in person he's much shorter than I imagined from his YouTube videos.  I would have been suspect of this 545 if I hadn't seen the video earlier that day before I saw him.  In fact, he did 495 lbs right in front of me.  My mind:  blown.

Bulgarian-Style Training

Even though he's been training for 289146 years, he just started Bulgarian-style training about a month ago.  If you're not familiar with Bulgarian weight lifting, they've basically dominated the sport for the last 30-40 yrs, no joke.  They either currently hold or have broken almost every record and have won 81461 medals in the Olympics since the 70s.  Apparently the one year they weren't "that good" they still had multiple people on the podium.  So there's that.

Ivan Abadjiev

Essentially, the Bulgarian style is all based on the teachings of one man:  Ivan Abadjiev.  His style:  train as hard as possible every time and the body will adapt accordingly.  It's not rocket science but it's hella effective.  You're constantly working at 80-100% of your personal max with this program and building towards working out 8 times 6 days a week.  You start off with three days a week...then add a morning session...then a fourth day...and a fifth day...and another morning session.  Basically you're looking at 8 multi-hour workout sessions.  Of course this is built over time...and not American minutes...like eastern Soviet block minutes.  It takes months get fully get into this routine, which is why it doesn't work for most Americans.  Unless you're training professionally or a jobless moocher, you'll likely not have the time to workout several hours a day, several times a week.

But if you find your little American self with that magical mixture of unrestricted time and access to a gym, this style might be for you.  Feel free to read here before you start.

Our Session

We started off with some squats, surprise surprise.  What did actually surprise me was the fact that he warmed up with just the bar.

*SN*  I'm seriously not understanding this epidemic of people not doing cardio in their workouts.  The only reason I let him slide was because he's trying to bulk and actually has a hard time keeping weight on.  (must be nice)

I guess I'm kinda old school when it comes to lifting, but I always aim for at least 8 reps when I'm doing a set.  That's not the case with power lifters.  They aim for a quality 1.  Granted, he did eventually lift like 500 lbs, but still.  'Tis very odd to me.

"When you're too short for other sports."

My max is 185 lbs.  That's the most I can do and keep good form and not pass out or topple over.  I won't reveal my weight cuz that ain't lady-like, but I'm significantly under 185.  The goal is to eventually get to 1.5x my body weight, which is approx. 200 lbs.  This fella weighed 184 lbs.  When I tell you we almost rand out of 45 lb plates...America...we had people in the gym giving us looks every which way.  At one point this man had eight 45's, two 25's, and two 10's.  I was blown away, and so were the people around us who had stopped lifting to watch.

After the squats we did the bench.  Now I'm gonna be honest with you, I never do the bench because I don't want to mess up my hair/put my head on that nasty bench 1892461 people have used before me.  I do 89124 other chest exercises to make up for it, so I wouldn't say I"m deficient in that area, but my heard did skip a little when he mentioned it.  But it actually went well.  I'm a far cry from my high school max weight of 200 lbs, but that's OK since I was only able to do one rep at that weight anyway.

Conclusions and Other Things of that Nature

Essentially I learned it's entirely possible for small people to lift great amounts of weight. This is important, considering I will never be big.  It's important to note here, that this man was (supposedly - and I believe him) doing this naturally.  As you can see from his height/weight ratio, he is small.  In person, he's not even a big dude.  He even complained about having a hard time keeping weight on.  I don't know what that's about since I ain't never had a problem in that category, but I can imagine his plight considering the field he's in.

I also learned that a single rep is all you need to brag about your accomplishments (although my personal philosophy has some reservations about this).  Constantly stopping after one rep is annoying as (insert expletive here) boring, but it gets the job done for the purpose.  I always feel like I haven't really done anything because I keep stopping every 10 sec.  I suppose I would have exerted more energy if I didn't have that huge break in between sets when he would go, but whatevs.

Last but not least:  I like power lifting.  Don't plan on doing too much of it though, since you really aught to have a spotter when lifting weight like that.  Even this guy used a spotter in some of his videos.  Since I don't have friends a spotter, I'll stick to manageable weight for the time being.