Since daily lifting is not something you can write out as a program, you might still find yourself confused. To see it in action, I’d like to walk through the strategy I used and my observations about what happened and what might be worth exploring.
Before we dive in, I want to remind you that these are only examples. This style of training depends heavily on the tacit knowledge arrived at by doing the thing, and tacit knowledge doesn’t summarize into neat lists and tidy sets of rules. There are going to be a lot of vague suggestions and loose ends that won’t fit into a fixed workout template, and that’s okay.
Lists of exercises and sets and reps should only be a skeleton in the first place. What actually happens in your workout depends on what actually happens in your workout, so what you’re reading here is best understood as a recounting of a story, not a workout strategy as such.
I understand that some of you aren’t comfortable with that, and that’s okay too.
There are plenty of programs that will fill your need for certainty and control, and you can learn while you’re doing one of those.
As I’m not an Olympic weightlifter, and my goal was to see how this worked with
“slow” lifts, I had to make some big changes from the systems used by Abadjiev and Broz, so I don’t even consider my template “Bulgarian”. Bulgarian-inspired, maybe, but in reality this is just a system of very-frequent strength workouts. I took as much from Anthony Ditillo, Doug Hepburn, and Jamie Lewis as the Olympic weightlifting routines that inspired me.
My workouts were set up to focus on two main exercises, which were a squat and a press, and then anywhere from one to three accessory moves depending on my motivation and energy level. It was almost always one upper-back exercise, either chin-ups or dumbbell rows, and then if I felt like it, a few sets for arms. Back squats and bench presses were the bread and butter, with front squats making an easy substitution if I wanted a lighter day. Also, if you have any concern about your overhead pressing strength ― and I did ― you might want to rotate it in as well. I alternated days between push press and
bench.
The first time I ran through this, I alternated back and front squats, as well as bench and overhead presses, each workout, for a total of five days a week. I found this made for a nice heavy-light contrast between days. In a later cycle, I stuck to back squats but alternated between belted and non-belted lifts as a way of tinkering with the daily effort levels. Since I get a fairly consistent 10-15kg boost from a belt, that works well for me (more on exercise variety below).
I aimed for the daily max as I outlined in the last chapter, and it quickly turned into a focus more on the daily minimum ― after a week or two, I knew what I’d be able to hit as a “no-brainer” weight for the day, and I always made that my benchmark. If I could do more, I would. If I wasn’t feeling so hot, I’d hit it and call it done. When that weight wasn’t on the table, because I was achy or just couldn’t get the juice to switch on (you will come to know what this means), it meant I needed a couple of days off.
There isn’t much more to it than that, really. It’s just a matter of tinkering with the details.
Ramping It Up
I tried two ways of warming up to the top lift, each having pros and cons. The “small jumps” approach gets in a lot of volume, easily 10-12 sets before you get anywhere near daily-max territory. I found this was useful for building “strength fitness”, since the small change in weight combined with low reps means you don’t have to (or want to) rest very long.
If you’re doing this every day, though, it can get boring, and sometimes you don’t want to go through all the motions. Eventually I wound up at the “big jumps” warmup, which is exactly what it says. I’d take as few sets as possible to get near the day’s training weight, and then see where I stood. Most days, I’d stop there or add maybe five kilos if I was feeling good. An exceptional day would hit anywhere from 10-20kg over that baseline weight.
As I said previously, after you get into a habit of daily maxing, most days turn into
“punch the clock” workouts where you can predict the weight you’ll hit any day of the week (allowing for injury, illness, and random bad days). That’s your target for the day, the weight you will attempt before making any decisions.
Taking small jumps can mean a lot of sets. At a point when my daily baseline was 160kg, I’d start with the bar (because why not? It still gets blood moving and joints mobilized) for a set or two, add a plate for a few sets of 8, two plates for a set or two 5-6, then start with 10kg increments for doubles or triples on up to three plates, then 5kg increments for singles on up to the top lift. If a weight feels heavy, you can repeat it for 2-3 sets on the way up. This quickly adds up to a lot of sets, but you don ft have to rest all that long either (and if you are resting a long time, try to bring that down. Part of the rationale for all the sets is to “get in shape”, and if you’re too tired to hit an ego-lift as your daily max after all that, well, good.)
Notice also that you aren’t really hitting a lot of high reps. I found it was better to cap the reps at say 5-6 on the light weights, maybe as much as ten with the bar, and then limit it to triples on anything beyond the first plate or two (if you’re a lot stronger). You make up for that by doing multiple sets at each weight.
Going with big jumps, I’d start with the bar, add a plate at a time up to three plates, and then make the call from there. If you’re weaker or stronger, you’ll again make adjustments to this, adding big wheels or dimes and quarters as the case may be. Making big jumps makes a tremendous difference in your daily volume, and you’ll need to play around to see how these differences affect your top lift.
Which do you pick?
I think that big jumps are best when you’re going hard-out, hitting the lift every day or near to it. After 5-6 consecutive days of squatting or benching, you won’t need much of a warmup.
That means the opposite if you’re only hitting the lift twice or three times. You’ll get more play from a lot of sets on the way up.
On days when you don’t feel switched-on, it’s a judgment call. You might want to make the big jumps and call it done, but I found that a lot of these days I came in feeling bad were misleading. I’d get 5-6 sets into a warmup and suddenly the lights would come on. You might find that doing more warmups gets the power flowing.
I think there’s something for doing more warmups on exercises you’re bad at, too.
For example, my pressing strength is embarrassing compared to squatting, and I’ve always found that benching and overhead work benefit from a lot of warmups in comparison. There’s just something to building a weak lift with volume before you tackle more intense max-lift training.