GSP talks about his training based on science from communist bloc in USSR

[bubbleboyjones]

Not sure if this was posted here, figured i would throw it up


"All of the training that I do now, it's based on scientific experiment. They did it during the Communist Bloc in USSR. Back then, if you remember, they had unlimited resources and budget because the USSR wanted to prove the supremacy of Communist. So, what they did, they wanted to build up the best athletes. All the results of the experiments that they've done, that's what I do. It's all based on that. They don't lift weights because it messes up their joints, so they do different kinds of workouts. It's about stability and mobility on the joints and the core."

 

[Gingervitis]

Not sure if this was posted here, figured i would throw it up


"All of the training that I do now, it's based on scientific experiment. They did it during the Communist Bloc in USSR. Back then, if you remember, they had unlimited resources and budget because the USSR wanted to prove the supremacy of Communist. So, what they did, they wanted to build up the best athletes. All the results of the experiments that they've done, that's what I do. It's all based on that. They don't lift weights because it messes up their joints, so they do different kinds of workouts. It's about stability and mobility on the joints and the core."

Que? Weren't the soviets all about weightlifting, hence all the ridiculous amounts of studies they did and all the manuals they produced (which is what a lot of our stuff is also based on)

 

[Squat More]

LOL @ This bullshit.

 

[belph]

Que? Weren't the soviets all about weightlifting, hence all the ridiculous amounts of studies they did and all the manuals they produced (which is what a lot of our stuff is also based on)

Pisarenko, not lifting weights.

 

[Gingervitis]

Pisarenko, not lifting weights.

It's a good thing he's not lifting weights, that would have ruined his joints if he did.

 

[Keosawa]

Spoken by someone with no knowledge whatsoever of the history of Soviet training methodologies. Whoever George's trainer is, he must be delusional.

 

[PowerHungry]

Here's the workout GSP told me about when I met him at a UFC convention.

All exercises should be done as explosively as possible unless otherwise specified.

"A" Routine -- the entire routine should be completed as a circuit with no rest between stations and only 3 seconds rest between sets.
1. Run 2 Miles
2. 100 burpees.
3. 500 hindu squats (sets of 250 x 2) supersetted with 100 muscle ups
4. 20 scapular pushups
5. 25 divebomber pushups
6. 6 x 100 yard sprints
7. Unilateral Poor Man's Roman Swings - 10 x each leg
8. 5 three minute rounds of shuttle runs
9. 10 Rampage powerbombs with a 200 lb sandbag
10. 30 clapping pullups

10 sets altogether -- should take about 2 hours

"B" Routine

1. TUT (Time Under Tension) deadlifts - 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down - 90% 1RM for 5 reps
2. Arm pistols -- 1 arm handstand pushups - 5 on each arm
3. Jumping rock squats -- Find a large rock from a nearby quarry and put it in a backpack and do box jumps at approx. 36 - 48 inches for time (typically sets of 4 minutes consecutive with no breaks)
4. Suicides - free throw line and back, half court and back, opposite free throw line and back, full court and back - 10 total, 5 on each end of the court while making sure to flex as much as possible on the pivots
5. Dips to failure - 3 sets
6. Tire flips - tire should weight 250 lbs and should be flipped for a distance of half a mile
7. Rock throws - similar to medicine ball throws, except you lie flat on your back and use the rock from earlier
8. Weighted dragonflags -- alternate holding 25 lb dumbbell between each foot on successive sets

4 sets total -- maybe 75 minutes altogether

You should be doing two-a-days from 6 weeks out to a contest or fight (Mon - AB, Tues - BA, Wed - AA, Thurs - BB, Friday - AB, Saturday - BB). In order to peak, the last week out you should increase to three-a-days but only for 5 days that last week (ABA, BAB, BAA, ABB, BBA, AAB). The last day before the contest, meet or fight, you should carb load to increase glycogen in muscle stores.

 

[National Acrobat]

When I saw that I interpreted it as his training per his rehab, but maybe he was talking about the whole thing.


Would be strange though, because it seemed like GSP was one of the guys that actually trained in an intelligent manner.

 

[ValveBJJ]

I'd like to here what Joel Jamieson thinks about this.

 

[miaou]

What differentiates the SSL program is that we prepare our athletes to be able to handle whatever adversity their respective sport may throw at them. We are truly trying to build the Perfect Athlete by improving all of the qualities that an elite athlete needs to be successful and not just his/her ability to move heavy weight in a linear fashion at a slow rate of speed. Athletes need coordination, rhythm, timing, balance, proprioception, joint mobility, muscle flexibility, muscle balance, all types of strength, awareness of space, reactive ability, foot strength, biomechanical efficiency, mental abilities, confidence, and of course sport specific skill. Conventional training methods that are solely focused on the maximum weight lifted do not adequately address the needs of ANY elite athlete. Our high school and college strength and conditioning programs in general fall far short from in terms of properly preparing athletes for their sports. We literally address all of the needs of each athlete from head to toe and it starts with a proper evaluation.

SSL Training Program Overview | Sport Science Lab


EDIT:

7. Unilateral Poor Man's Roman Swings - 10 x each leg

lulz

 

[PowerHungry]

What differentiates the SSL program is that we prepare our athletes to be able to handle whatever adversity their respective sport may throw at them. We are truly trying to build the Perfect Athlete by improving all of the qualities that an elite athlete needs to be successful and not just his/her ability to move heavy weight in a linear fashion at a slow rate of speed. Athletes need coordination, rhythm, timing, balance, proprioception, joint mobility, muscle flexibility, muscle balance, all types of strength, awareness of space, reactive ability, foot strength, biomechanical efficiency, mental abilities, confidence, and of course sport specific skill. Conventional training methods that are solely focused on the maximum weight lifted do not adequately address the needs of ANY elite athlete. Our high school and college strength and conditioning programs in general fall far short from in terms of properly preparing athletes for their sports. We literally address all of the needs of each athlete from head to toe and it starts with a proper evaluation.

More of this strawman horseshit. It's not so much that what they are advocating or trying to increase awareness of is a bad idea; it's just that they try to shit on resistance training at the same time in order to make their pitch sound better when it's complete nonsense. I love how in the bolded and throughout the whole thing there is ZERO consideration of weightlifting or weight training that might involve faster speeds to improve power, rate of force development, etc. Or just types of training that aren't about maximal lifts.

lulz

Glad that you liked that one. GSP is a true warrior.

 

[miaou]

More of this strawman horseshit. It's not so much that what they are advocating or trying to increase awareness of is a bad idea; it's just that they try to shit on resistance training at the same time in order to make their pitch sound better when it's complete nonsense. I love how in the bolded and throughout the whole thing there is ZERO consideration of weightlifting or weight training that might involve faster speeds to improve power, rate of force development, etc. Or just types of training that aren't about maximal lifts.

It would've been perfectly fine for them to have said "this is what we do, this is why we do it, this is how it will help you", and maybe give a bit more info about it. Good for them.

Instead, they attack a strawman to assert how they are superior to "conventional training methods". That's when it gets closer to a sales pitch, rather than their "program overview".

 

[miaou]

This is how they do their strength work:



"A heavy squat being predominantly a back exercise that hyper-trains the quads, it is not a functional exercise no matter how anyone wants to defend it. When you have to load the heels you're setting off a completely different muscle sequence than you are when you load the ball of the foot properly. And we can load the ball of the foot with no risk to the patellar tendon, which you can't do with heavy squats, and no risk to any of the bones in the foot, which you can't do either with heavy squats.

Plyometric movements are an elastic property. Power is energy, and you have to be able to store the energy and then use it in an instant. Weightlifting, the conventional style of it, the amount of time to apply force is too long to have any functional application in sport."

 

[LegioTitan]

So Miaou I'm confused. In your above post are these same guys supposedly basing their approach off of Soviet/Russian texts? I only ask because that is completely at odds with every bloc text I've ever read.

 

[miaou]

So Miaou I'm confused. In your above post are these same guys supposedly basing their approach off of Soviet/Russian texts? I only ask because that is completely at odds with every bloc text I've ever read.

GSP said this dude bases his training on methods developed in USSR for their athletes... which involve no weights.

I was curious, that's why I looked up his website. This is clearly not something any olympic USSR athletes did, as far as I know.


This is another video, that probably shows all the aspects of their training. It is really well produced, too:

 

[miaou]

And here is the claim in question:

The many training systems offered by SSL are based on the published scientific research studies done by the great Russian scientist, Yuri Verkoshansky, who passed away this year. His work is the basis for the fundamental principles that drive all the training modalities that exist within this domain.

About Sport Science Lab | Sport Science Lab



EDIT: also, he has misspelled Verkhoshansky's name. It figures!

 

[ripskater]

Que? Weren't the soviets all about weightlifting, hence all the ridiculous amounts of studies they did and all the manuals they produced (which is what a lot of our stuff is also based on)

I think they are referring to plyometrics here with the russians. SSL does a lot of plyometric stuff with light weight. Plyometrics trains the body to use elastic energy. I think its the most quick and powerful contraction when you utilize the stretch reflex. Or that's what I heard. You can really train yourself to jump higher with it. They just use it for other parts of the body too. Same type of exercises you saw BJ do with Marv Marinovich. He was doing plyometric bench presses using a jumping machine back when he fought Florian and Sanchez.

 

[miaou]

I think they are referring to plyometrics here with the russians. SSL does a lot of plyometric stuff with light weight. Plyometrics trains the body to use elastic energy. I think its the most quick and powerful contraction when you utilize the stretch reflex. Or that's what I heard. You can really train yourself to jump higher with it. They just use it for other parts of the body too. Same type of exercises you saw BJ do with Marv Marinovich. He was doing plyometric bench presses using a jumping machine back when he fought Florian and Sanchez.

The thing is, SSL uses as a central sales pitch the assertion that their method is better than conventional methods because training with heavy weights is not good for athletic performance. Then they assert their entire training method is based on Verkhoshansky's works.

The thing is, while Verkhoshansky was the "father of plyometrics", as he is credited as the person who first came up with that, he has written extensively about maximal strength training, how it should be periodized, how the realization phase (with jumps and plyometrics) needs to follow a heavy strength phase with proper timing because of what he called the LLTE ("long-term lagging of the training effect") in order for optimum peaking to be achieved in the day of the competition, and so on.

I mean, this dude asserted in his video that heavy squats aren't safe for the bones in your foot!

 

[bubbleboyjones]

Same type of exercises you saw BJ do with Marv Marinovich. He was doing plyometric bench presses using a jumping machine back when he fought Florian and Sanchez.

Heh you beat me to it, first thing I thought watching that above video was BJ Penn

 

[senri]

GSP said this dude bases his training on methods developed in USSR for their athletes... which involve no weights.

I was curious, that's why I looked up his website. This is clearly not something any olympic USSR athletes did, as far as I know.


This is another video, that probably shows all the aspects of their training. It is really well produced, too:

still does not make musch sense, a lot of track athletes lifted weights in the USSR era that weren't doing weightlifting, as a matter of fact they had crazy strength requirements before even dabbling in plyometrics for safety and effective reasons.