Ivan Abadzhiev, American Weightlifting’s Program Director developed a radically different training system that is now known as “The Bulgarian Training System.”

Traditional weightlifting practices call for workout sessions to include 48-72 hours of rest between working different muscle groups and to change over time the amount of workouts per week, a process known as “Periodization.” This is based on the understanding that the muscle needs to rest, repair, and grow stronger between workouts. One “Period” starts out with only a few workouts per week and lighter weights to many workouts per week (even multiple workouts per day) and heavier weights; the weightlifter than “peaks” with a new personal best. The athlete then needs to rest to avoid over-training before starting again.

Mr. Abadzhiev turned the system completely around in the 1960’s and 70’s and started developing his own method. He felt that during training the athlete’s body enters into a “trained state” and that by continuing to put the body under that stress he could create a better environment for getting stronger. As such Mr. Abadzhiev’s training system meant that the athletes needed to train multiple times per day in short bursts, most of the time with near competition weight.

In the 70s and 80s, the Bulgarian national team was one of the most dominant weightlifting teams in the world. No other team produced medals and champions on an international basis as consistently and as frequently as the Bulgarians.

The significance of this is that the population of Bulgaria is some 8 million; in comparison to the US, the Soviet Union, China, etc., Bulgaria had a much smaller talent pool to train from, and yet it was the Bulgarians who dominated the medal stands, and it was the Bulgarians who ranked at the top of the end-of-year list every year. So Mr. Abadzhiev’s system worked!