Knowlege is POWER....long read:
BULGARIAN LEG TRAINING SECRETS
By Angel Spassov, Ph.D., D.Sc. and Terry Todd, Ph.D.
Almost a decade ago, a retired Soviet hammer thrower came to the
conclusion that traditional forms of squatting were not the best way to
strengthen the muscles of the thighs and hips. Many in the Soviet Union
considered this heresy, as the squat was the king of leg training in that
country just as it was, and is still, in the United States.
Ten years ago, the full squat was the foundation of exercise programs for
almost all elite athletes in the Soviet Bloc nations, whether they were
weightlifters or not. Soviet athletes - be they wrestlers, runners, fencers,
soccer player or swimmers - all squatted. But because the retired hammer
thrower had won the gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games and because
he was a respected graduate of the Central Institute for Physical
Education and Sport in Moscow, his opinions were taken seriously. His
name: Anatoly Bondarchuk. His studies led him to conclude that a
particular form of what we’ll call the high step-up had two significant
advantages over the standard back squat. Bondarchuk concluded that
high step-ups, firstly, produce greater gains in thigh and hip power and
secondly, cause fewer injuries.
Bondarchuk does his research and coaching in Kiev. His fellow Soviet
coaches and sports scientists were skeptical about his conclusions.
However, as time passed and he was able to convince a few athletes and
coaches, in a variety of sports, to drop squats from their routines and
adopt the high step-up, it became clear that be had made a significant
breakthrough. Many of the athletes using his “new” exercise began to
make gains in power that were far beyond what they had made using only
the squat.
We qualify the word “new” because, in one form or another, the step-up
has a fairly long history. A review of dozens of pre-1900 books in the
Physical Culture Library at the University of Texas revealed that the step-
up was commonly practiced before the turn of the century. In fact, Dr.
Dudley Allen Sargent, who was for years the director of physical training
at Harvard University, used a form of the step-ups as he was devising one
of the first known methods of cardiorespiratory testing.
Sargent’s method, first used over 80 years ago, is called the Harvard
Step-Up Test. It involves stepping up, at a timed pace, onto a bench or
chair approximately 20 inches high for a set period of time and checking
the pulse rate at predetermined intervals.
But the step-up was also used to strengthen and develop the hips and
thighs. As weight training grew in popularity in the 1920s and ‘30s, the
step-up with extra weight began to appear in books and magazines of
that era. However, the squat with added weight was also given an
enormous boost in America during this same era thanks to several crucial
factors: Firstly, the wonderful lifting of the young German immigrant
“Milo” Steinborn, who could do a full squat with more than 500 pounds,
secondly, the publicity given to Milo’s world-record-breaking abilities in
weightlifting, and finally, the career of Joseph Curtis Hise, who not only
gained a great deal of strength and muscle size with high-rep squats but
also had the ability to fill other bodybuilders with enthusiasm for this
arduous but effective form of training.
Who knows whether the step-up with weights would have become more
popular had Steinborn and Hise not appeared on the scene and raised the
reputation of the deep knee bend, putting it at the top of any serious
trainer’s list of “must” exercises? In any event, the squat became the
dominant hip and thigh exercise in America in the 1920s and has
remained so ever since.
BULGARIAN LEG TRAINING SECRETS
By Angel Spassov, Ph.D., D.Sc. and Terry Todd, Ph.D.
Almost a decade ago, a retired Soviet hammer thrower came to the
conclusion that traditional forms of squatting were not the best way to
strengthen the muscles of the thighs and hips. Many in the Soviet Union
considered this heresy, as the squat was the king of leg training in that
country just as it was, and is still, in the United States.
Ten years ago, the full squat was the foundation of exercise programs for
almost all elite athletes in the Soviet Bloc nations, whether they were
weightlifters or not. Soviet athletes - be they wrestlers, runners, fencers,
soccer player or swimmers - all squatted. But because the retired hammer
thrower had won the gold medal in the 1976 Olympic Games and because
he was a respected graduate of the Central Institute for Physical
Education and Sport in Moscow, his opinions were taken seriously. His
name: Anatoly Bondarchuk. His studies led him to conclude that a
particular form of what we’ll call the high step-up had two significant
advantages over the standard back squat. Bondarchuk concluded that
high step-ups, firstly, produce greater gains in thigh and hip power and
secondly, cause fewer injuries.
Bondarchuk does his research and coaching in Kiev. His fellow Soviet
coaches and sports scientists were skeptical about his conclusions.
However, as time passed and he was able to convince a few athletes and
coaches, in a variety of sports, to drop squats from their routines and
adopt the high step-up, it became clear that be had made a significant
breakthrough. Many of the athletes using his “new” exercise began to
make gains in power that were far beyond what they had made using only
the squat.
We qualify the word “new” because, in one form or another, the step-up
has a fairly long history. A review of dozens of pre-1900 books in the
Physical Culture Library at the University of Texas revealed that the step-
up was commonly practiced before the turn of the century. In fact, Dr.
Dudley Allen Sargent, who was for years the director of physical training
at Harvard University, used a form of the step-ups as he was devising one
of the first known methods of cardiorespiratory testing.
Sargent’s method, first used over 80 years ago, is called the Harvard
Step-Up Test. It involves stepping up, at a timed pace, onto a bench or
chair approximately 20 inches high for a set period of time and checking
the pulse rate at predetermined intervals.
But the step-up was also used to strengthen and develop the hips and
thighs. As weight training grew in popularity in the 1920s and ‘30s, the
step-up with extra weight began to appear in books and magazines of
that era. However, the squat with added weight was also given an
enormous boost in America during this same era thanks to several crucial
factors: Firstly, the wonderful lifting of the young German immigrant
“Milo” Steinborn, who could do a full squat with more than 500 pounds,
secondly, the publicity given to Milo’s world-record-breaking abilities in
weightlifting, and finally, the career of Joseph Curtis Hise, who not only
gained a great deal of strength and muscle size with high-rep squats but
also had the ability to fill other bodybuilders with enthusiasm for this
arduous but effective form of training.
Who knows whether the step-up with weights would have become more
popular had Steinborn and Hise not appeared on the scene and raised the
reputation of the deep knee bend, putting it at the top of any serious
trainer’s list of “must” exercises? In any event, the squat became the
dominant hip and thigh exercise in America in the 1920s and has
remained so ever since.
