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Three videos below, from Poland, from somewhere around early 1970's.....
These are some of the most powerful fitness methods I have ever seen on film.
This is a good amount of video, so please, take your time watching and let's REALLY get a discussion going in the comments area with our thoughts, comments and questions.
Also, please share this video with your friends and colleagues by clicking on the "sociable" buttons below for facebook, twitter, etc....
This stuff should have had you taking notes and getting your mind rolling with ideas.
Look at those olympic weight lifters, they are world champions some of them, yet they look lean and mean, almost like a hybrid of a wrestler and a gymnast!
They utilize many different forms of fitness training to improve their main focus, olympic weightlifting.
Drop your comments, thoughts and questions.
I think we can crank this and get some more nuggets of gold if you guys drop your wisdom and share with one another.
The goal? 100 Comments. GO!!
Peace!
--Z--
PS: I am about to hit the road and head home, I have filmed amazing info, much of which will be posted at http://UndergroundStrengthCoach.com where I unleash some serious gold! I'll see you there!
41 Responses
The former soviet countries were so advanced in terms of training. Man, check those forms!!! Absolutely perfect!! Strength, power… Everything is there!
I can’t understand what could have happened to fitness to become what it is now…
Clearly Eastern Europe really knows what they’re doing! But considering most of the techniques they’re doing are fairly advanced i wonder how much of this would be useful to the average person who doesn’t have as much time as them to perfect all the form required for something like a jump squat (which i’d imagine would really kill your knees otherwise!)
Still, awesome stuff. These athletes really have a good power to size ratio and their explosiveness is just through the roof!
olympic lifts rule BIG TIME. they can make you strong, fast and also enduring. a hard set of snatches leaves everyone breathing hard. I love them!
I am really impressed with these videos. My favorite was the first video, more specifically the clips of the lifters doing power cleans from blocks, heavy squats resting on the pins, and the heavy eccentric only deadlifts! That impressed the hell out me. Very cool stuff, these videos are golden. I am actually experimenting with some new protocols (well, at least to ME) starting next week with alot of these same principles shown in this video.
I think it’s going to work great. Also going to start incorporating Alex/Kelly B’s TAQ training into my warm up, as well as with a female HS soccer player who starts with me on Monday. Lots of cool stuff here, thanks for posting these videos?
Who else has had success utilizing explosive/quickness/reactive work into their programming before lifting? I use this stuff with the “non-athletes” I work with before training too; they love it, feel athletic, its fun, and is great to get them prepped and ready for some heavy lifting!!
Good stuff Coach! What amazed me was the overall rigidity of their frame and core. The level of focus and lack of emotion in their lifts. These guys were freakin mechanical.
Thanks for dusting this off and letting it out.
Chris
YO,That first video is tight bro
The Eastern Bloc understood GPP and how it needed to be a continual part of the training cycle. Early specialization has become the curse of youth athletes in this country. Thanks for finding this.
Coach Z,
Great combo of info here! I especially like the fact that you are touching on several facets important to power and generation of power around the joints. Flexibility / Muscle Mechanics / & Strength.
In Olympic Style Lifting one of the main skills involved is Quadruple Extension; that is extension around the ankle, knee, hip and shoulder joints. (*coincidently these are the same muscles used in the Vertical Jump…hmmm ballers and Olympian Weight Lifters-one in the same?*)
The first pre-requisite to execution of this skill is functional flexibility. You have done and excellent job covering this component with your own narrative explaining that you do this with your athetes and their neuro-muscular excitation prior to training and with the video on body weight conditioning from the Underground Vault (Sick!).
The second component- “muscular mechanics” involves breaking each composite lift into smaller partial ranges of motion. Through repetition within these micro-movement patterns we are essentially building everlasting muscle memory and more important smooth movement and proper mechanics and skill.
Finally in transitioning to “strength” we can now increase strength through each partial range of motion thereby making our overall lift stronger, faster, and more explosive!
In combining all of the repetitious partial reps into the full lift we see flawless execution!
Great posting Coach. One small request though; Can we get some footage of a complete Underground Warm-up?
AGE QUOD AGIS
Christopher
Woahh this guys are freaking strong and powerful…their legs looked unbreakable…
Why cant everyone train like this?
well knowledge is power…
keep the vidoes coming Z
Peace
awesome stuff. gives true meaning to the word athlete. strength, power and athleticism all in one package. no leg curls or tricep extensions there.lol. need more of this sort of video.
Those russians must have replaced there lifters with robots, textbook form with big ass weights.
very cool video zach
These videos are golden…you really can’t say enough about overall athleticism – no matter what your sport is!
The first video was sweet. ove of the things I noticed was that except for one guy, they all really focused on keeping their knees out while squatting, even with a close stance. A lot of guys forget this.
Thinking of trying the explosive good mornings as well. Looks like it could be interesting.
Finally, we had THE EXACT SAME universal machines they had in the video. The one with the 6 stations and the leg extension/wrist roller combo machine. im also pretty sure they were still there when my brother graduated in 2000.
Jason
z,
this stuff is priceless bro!
a person could simply live of videos like these and become a complete beast.
these dudes knew what they were doing and did it well!
keep the old videos coming!
anyone notice that these guys look as if they could be a cross between wrestlers snd gymnasts, yet they are world champion olympic lifters!?!?!
awesome, right??
what about the equipment used, one of their machines looks like the back attack which you may have seen in westside barbell videos.
Not sure who devised that back attack, but this was from 1970 or so, at the least they were 2 decades ahead of their time!
very impressive!
–z–
I saw these on youtube a while back and wanted to send them to you but thought you might already have them – you did. Just awesome videos. these dudes know how to train, just raw, hardcore, kick ass training. I go to the gym, I mean meat market, LA fitness and can’t stand the meat heads trying to be studs on roids and crap spending 2 to 3 hours a day in the gym. I am trying to get my gym at the house finished so I can train at home. slowly but surly it will come together. these videos inspired me to keep on keepin on and get it done.
Thanks bro!
Zach,
thats some killer footage from my neck of the woods! The facilities look like the one I visited back home in Slovenia, hella old school and everybody in there is killing it!
Just shows that to go forward sometimes you have to go back, back in time.
Great vids, really gave me some ideas for the next training cycle.
Luka
Zach I’ve got a stupid question. I’ve seen this one picture of you where you’re standing by a body of water smiling at the camera and you were totally jacked. I was wondering if you still look like that, or whether you’ve become a big fatty cos I only ever see you with really baggy t-shirts on?
Hey Zach,
Great videos. I wish they had training facilities like that for everyone to utilize. I currently work in a gym and it is an insult to fitness. This place does not even have a squat rack, it only has smith machines. Personally I do not like smith machines and the place is all machines in general.
It must be our culture or something because I believe many people forget what training is about. I notice people either grinding away with the weights or doing cardio or half-a$$ing doing both (sorry for the language). People really need to realize that there needs to be a combination of strength, speed, power and endurance of all three. I know I am preeching to the quire but it annoys me to see these people working out and getting nothing done.
Anyway keep up the good work and thanks for the great blogs you post. They are always a great inspiration.
Cool old school bodyweight video Zach! what’s old is new again.
Nabeel, I’m still jacked 🙂
And stronger…except in the squat….the squat game changed for me ever since my ACL surgery
other than that, strength and overall performance, way up!
Bruddahs, let us NOT forget, we might be the rarity, don’t think everyone understands these methods viewed above
Some might copy the exercises, but understanding how to put em together is a different ball game!
–z–
Great videos Zach.
Started utilising this type of training after the basic mobilisation warm up gets the guys/gals fired for the main lifting sets. Thanx for the great info.
i think the bodyweight training was the coolest, i mean weve all seen heavy lifts but the synchronization involved in all those explosive bodyweight movements was really cool, thanx 4 sharin zach
Love the old stuff. I actually have a copy of this on VHS…Polish Weightlifting Techniques…I think is the name.
Zach, awesome video of the old time Olympic lifters. This is how to acquire pure freakin strength. WOW!
Hey, nice video.
Lots of frontal squats, lots of free-free weight (I mean, not even a stand to do squats, directly from the floor!)
I’ll try the full range “kettelbells??” swings(those things they are swinging are not kettelbels, just a huge cilinder with handles)
By the way (3ºvid.) – Why is so hard to get people to do sprints?? Joggers don’t sprint, and then they are worried because theirs legs are so thin, lifters don’t sprint and then they are worried that they are too slow…
I love how so many so called “new and advanced” products and ideas like to claim they are the first with regards to strength. I mean just look at all the infomercials out there for this or that. They are either complete crap or revamped ideas saying they are so damn original when they are just a rip off of some other truly good idea.
Well I for one am going to believe in the hard work that you need no matter what your goals are. No simple fixes and no truly new,advanced, or half assed way to get to your strength goals. Just good, old fashioned hard work. If you don’t put in, you don’t get out.
Awesome videos
Just shows that simple workouts are usually the best.
My focus the past few weeks has been on cleans, presses, various squats/lunges . . . and my workouts have been solid! I’ve finally figured out with your help Zac that it’s about getting weight up and bypassing all the mumbo jumbo isolation moves. I want the legs of the guy in the first video about 4 min. in! The form and ease with which they do the moves is so smooth. Great stuff.
ZAC,,WHATS UP BROSKY,,THE FIRST VIDEO SPEAKS FOR ITSELF,,PEOPLE FORGET SPEED EQUALS POWER,,SO BASICALLY MORE SPEED MORE STRENGTH,,ZAC PLEASE ANSWER THIS POST ASAP,,,WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE SPEED VIDEO,BY YOUR BOYS ,SO I CAN ORDER IT AND PUT IT IN MY,,ARCHIVES,,,,SEE YOU SOON ,,UNTILL THEN STAY STRONG,IRON WARRIOR!!
ooo geeze i love powerlifting, cool vids
Nice. Can you imagine these guys at LA Fitness? (Please don’t drop the weights, no sweat on the machines, no excessive noise etc…)
They’d be asked to leave in 30 seconds!
I think the thing that most strikes me is the
determination and obvious teamwork that went into these sessions. Everybody’s 100% focused to be the best, but also 100% to make their teammates the best too. Kinda reminds me of WSB.
Cheers Zach.
Those vids get me pumped to lift today!
thanks Z
yo bro like the video its cool seeing stuff like that..
gota ask have you ever checked out istvan javorek?
he got a book called complex conditioning that to be fair to all those seeking explosive power is a giant step in the right direction..
case in point he the person who done the big fun program if you havent heard of it ..well you been missing 8weeks of some hard core conditioning..
well peace out dude and keep up the great work
Interesting article