More proof that Weightlifting isn’t just for men.  Just try and tell me again that lifting weights will make you look like a man.

This is a seminar Tommy Kono Gave at the Arnold classic this year on basic technique and why Americans in general aren’t internationally competitive anymore.

(note: if they don’t load well, you can find them Here

PART 1

PART 2

Doug Hepburn

the 1953 World Weightlifting Champion and Pioneer

of the Powerlifts interviewed by Robert O. Smith, CFMI Radio,

in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

RS: As a youngster in California, I was drawn to weightlifting through the inspiration of monthly reports in Hoffman’s old Strength and Health about weightlifters like John Davis, Norb Schemansky, and a thunderbolt from the North, Doug Hepburn, who astounded the world with his 371 ¼ pound press in 1953 that helped him win the World Olympic Lifting Championships in Stockholm, Sweden. Suddenly, my boyhood hero was the talk of strongmen everywhere. Who else could bench press 500 lbs., squat around 800 with only an olympic belt, a bathing suit, a t-shirt, and no knee wraps? Who could set 25 world records in the odd lifts and stand alone as the Strongest Man in the World? Doug Hepburn, from the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, that’s who. Today, Doug can still standing press 270 lbs., bench press 360, squat and deadlift with about 550. Doug is drug-free and always has been. He’s now 62 years old. I finally met Doug after moving to the Vancouver area to pursue a radio career. Doug has his own equipment business and a line of health food supplements.

We started our talk with the phenomena of “explosion” in lifting.

DH: I would say that it would be very difficult for a person to ‘explode’ if they didn’t have a very fast reflex. Reflex is the cause of explosion. I think reflex has more to do with mental attitude than people think. To a certain stimulus you could probably make a person move faster than they normally would. Even a slow moving person could be forced to move faster if they, for example, used electrodes in the muscles of his arm. If he got a shock, his arm would jerk very quickly. Why then could he not make it jerk that quickly, or ‘explode’ when he lifts a weight? It’s because there’s something lacking in the transfer of that impulse to the muscle itself. Before you can ‘explode’, you have to comprehend what the word means. What I experience when I do a lift, if I was to ‘explode’, and I’ve done it many times with a heavy press, is when I commence the lift, I don’t know about anything until it’s over my head. I’m unaware of what happens at the start. I go black. The concentration of my mind becomes so pinpointed that the sense of awareness of the outside environment disappears. This constitutes a complete ‘direction’ of power. Another thing I could do, which powerlifters can practice, is to sit in a chair, motionless, in front of the barbell that I was going to lift. I used to do the standing press and I’d take it off the racks and push out 400 pounds or whatever it was. I’d sit and look at this bar and not move a muscle and I could bring my pulse rate up to about 150. It was repetitive psyching and it became a conditioned response.

I would say that the greatest force can only result from a state of complete relaxation. A man needs one frraction of time before he commneces his all-out effort, when he should be under a state of complete relaxation. If the muscles are relaxed, you have a greater ‘length’ of contractual drive. If you get more speed from the start of the contraction and more distance to contract, you’re going to have a greater speed at the point when you push the bar through the lift. I say don’t get yourself tense when you start, but begin from a point of complete relaxaton, mind and body, and then suddenly explode.

RS: When I asked Doug about diet, he had a message that really summed up a wise philosophy for masters lifters.

DH: This is a fact of diet. I’ll try and put it as simply as I can. When you get over acertain age in life, certain life processes reverse themselves. When you’re younger, let’s say before the age of 50, the more you eat, the stronger you can get. When I was youngI used to eat and my system could absorb it and I used to build up strength. However, when you get over a certain age in life, it varies with the individual depending on condition, mental outlook, and so on, there’s a reversal that takes place where the body is literally, to some extent, dying more than it’s living. From birth to death we have the two extremes. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes is a point where the latter portion of one’s life is taking precedence over the beginning. What I discovered is this: if a person continues with the eating habits they acquired building strength, beyond the age of between 40-50, the process will reverse itself,and they won’t get stronger from it; they’ll make themselves sick.

The strength in the latter age of life comes not from the food you eat, that’s secondary. It comes from vitality. Vitality is dependent upon the amount of food you eat. If you overeat, you detract from your vitality. For example, if somebody could do a transplant and put the internal organs of the young man into my body, the muscle, even at 62, would begin to develop. What happens is as you become older, your body loses the ability to absorb food. If you overeat, you detract from your vitality. For example, if somebody could do a transplant and put the internal organs of the young man into my body, the muscle, even at 62, would begin to develop. What happens is as you become older, your body loses the ability to absorb food. If you keep putting it in and there’s no absorption taking place it builds up toxic waste, which causes disease. Most people literally eat themselves to death. I’ve experimented on myself and I’ve found that if I’ve gone all day and eaten very little, I’m stronger than if I eat a lot.

Through the conditions of our society, the way that we live, and the way that we’re brought up, we form habits, including eating habits. They go much deeper than we think. For example, a man of 50 years may be sitting at the table and he’s actually eating too much, but his children are there, and his wife is a wonderful cook, so he’s gobbling it up and digging his grave. What would people think if the man suddenly threw up his hands and said, “This is it. I’m not going to go this route and and end up sick. I don’t want any more. I want to eat when my body tells me to eat.” Now, this is a very important thing. When a man’s older, he should only eat when his body tells him to eat. You do not eat just because it’s a certain hour of the day and it’s supposed to be breakfast, lunch or supper time. That’s a killer.

RS: Powerlifters have idols like Doug Hepburn, Paul Anderson, Bill Kazmier and the like, but who started the inspiration going in Doug Hepburn?

DH: You know who my idol was? John Grimek. Yes sir, that was my idol. That’s the man, when I was young, who influenced me more than any other. I’ve been in John Grimek’s house and he cooked breakfast for me once. He was my idol.

RS: What about Bob Hoffman?

DH: I first met Bob Hoffman when I went to York. He did an awful lot foir weightlifting, but he was very particular about his American team. Being a Canadian, he accepted me, but I still wasn’t one of his boys, let’s put it that way. He did say to me, “Through your lifting and what you’ve done, your internal organs are not those of an ordinary man any more.” He meant that my digestive system, my heart, my lungs, were those of a super person. Parially from genetics, but heavy squatting influences those internal organs, they function better, you get ‘taller’ in there. Especially in the apparatus that develops muscle tissue in the body.

RS: Today, his close friends know Doug as a singer, poet, reader of fine literature, avid bike rider, cartoonist, non-drinker and inventor. He has a gadget for sale similar to the Marine Corps exerciser of yore, but more versatile and compact, and something that’s serious exercise equipment, the Dynatron.

DH: The Dynatron will build muscle. It will pump it even more than a weight sometimes. I have guys make gains on it. It’s more than what it seems to be. I’ve got the United States patent granted on it. I also own all the tooling, the injection molds and so forth. With backing I could turn out about 4800 of those units every 2 days. To some extent it will replace the barbell, and I’m not just saying that because I invented it.

RS: What about training the deadlift, for instance?

DH: You wouldn’t be able to do a heavy deadlift, but you could do a front squat. By holding the bar up it will work your legs. it won’t go over 200-250 pounds, but because you don’t have to stop the exercise to change the load, you can keep going. It gives you a new dimension in training because you can do a set, turn the dial back, and continue. In a given period of time you can almost double your workload.

I have other machines that I’ve invented. There’s something that once came to mind, a powerlifting machine. It’s a big bar, on chains, with a big dial in between and you can the dial and go up to 2000 pounds. A guy could be doing 1000 pound squats in his living room. This machine would allow you to do something that’s very unusual. You could pull yourself down into the squat. Ever use those muscles before?

Interview With The Master Bulgarian– Ivan Abadzhiev
Feature Articles @Lift Up

Ivan Abadzhiev: Very Heavy Weightlifting
by Yelena Vaytsehovskaya, November 1999
Translation by Arthur Chidlovski

I wasn’t ready for this interview. I wasn’t ready to bump into Ivan Abadzhiev himself in the dark section of the Peace and Friendship stadium in Athens. But it happened. At the moment when the greatest coach was opening the door to the training hall that journalists are not allowed to enter, I decided to call his name: “Ivan!”

Abadzhiev stopped and looked at me.

- Wait! I would like to introduce myself. And if you don’t mind, I would like to take an interview with you.

- What for?

- I think there are not too many coaches of your caliber in the world. And, unfortunately, not too many new names were added in the recent years. Too tough of a business.

Abadzhiev looked tired.

- What can you possibly know about it?

- My father was a head coach of the Soviet national swimming team. But you probably don’t know him.

The coach grabbed my accreditation card and flipped it to read my name.

- Is Sergey Vaytsekhovsky your father? Of course, I heard of him.

He paused for a second.

- Stop by the hotel. I am there up till the lunch time. Our lifters don’t compete in the B groups.

MAD MAN

Abadzhiev became the head coach of the national Team Bulgaria purely by accident. He dreamed about a career of an artist. But too many things happened to him by accident. It was an accident that he came to the gym as a gymnast. Then he switched to weightlifting. In 1953, he terrified his coaches when he became to train twice a day. He won a silver medal at the world championship and he was the first Bulgarian weightlifter to be awarded with the title of the Merited Master of Sports. Then he became a sports functioneer. He pushed papers and pencils in the sports committee and once in a while spoke up about the stupid training methods of the national Bulgarian team. In 1968, Bulgaria flopped at the Olympics and the sports leaders overheard one of the loud comments of “mad man” Abadzhiev. “Who is he? Smart guy, huh? Let him take the national team and let’s see what he can do… We have nothing to loose anyway!”

At the 1972 Olympics in Munich Bulgarian lifters won three gold and three silver medals.

THE FIRST TRIUMPH

- Theoretically, we expected just two silver medals, – remembered the coach. – But it’s only theoretically. As a matter of fact, our featherweight hopeful was Norair Nurikyan, my student and prayed to God that he will make to the top 6. There were at least six equally strong lifters in his class. Dito Shanidze was an obvious leader. But we got lucky. Nurikyan showed an unexpectedly good result in the first lift type and he got a chance to compete for the second place.

I was already pleased. Before that, Bulgaria had no medals at the Olympics. I knew that Shanidze would start clean-and-jerk with 147.5 kilos. Then he will lift 152 and then he will try 155. This will make him an Olympic champion for sure.

I made only one mistake in my predictions. Shanidze failed with lifting 155 kilos.

- You know… The coach is never positive 100 percent if his lifter will win or not, – continues Abadzhiev. – Sometimes, it’s enough to catch an eye of your opponent and to loose confidence in yourself. At the Olympics, it’s the end of the story. But I saw Nurikyan going to the platform without any sign of a doubt on his face.

There was this deputy of our sports committee sitting next to me. He turned to me and whispered loudly: “Will he be able to lift it?” I was ready to kill him. “Are you crazy? Of course, he won’t be able to lift it!”

While we were arguing, Nurikyan got it.

David Rigert was a middle heavyweight favorite. In those times, he was winning over his Bulgarian opponents by 10-15 kilos in each lift. So, I wasn’t worried. Andon Nikolov was supposed to get the silver or bronze anyway. And all of a sudden, our team doctor came to our room and told us: “Rigert bombed out!”

I couldn’t believe it. Anyone could have failed but not Rigert. You won’t believe me but I dumped my guys and ran outside to see the scoreboard. It was true – three attempts, three zeros…

At the moment, I felt really bad for David. He was supposed to win. I guessed that he wanted to win with a big advantage and started with a too big of a weight.

- How many years have you been working with the national team?

- Since 1969. 30 years. I would have retired long time ago. I wanted to do it many times. But I can’t afford it. I won’t be able to support my family. Although, many Bulgarians think I am a millionaire.

TOP VICTORY

Abadzhiev became a legend in the world of Olympic weightlifting. Bulgaria was never especially distinguished in sports began to challenge the Soviet Union. And it happened in the sports of weightlifting. At the 1976 Olympics, Abadzhiev’s team won two gold, three silver and one bronze medal. Four years later, they brought two golds, four silvers and two bronzes from Moscow.

There were different interpretations. Some said that Bulgarian training methods didn’t make any elementary sense – no diversity in training, no basic training, no conditioning. Only weightlifting. Maximum weights to be lifted in the training. Someone came up with the saying: “Had Paganini instead of playing violin 15 hours a day played also a flute, he would have never become the greatest.” There were talks about Bulgarian lifters using banned anabolic substances. Although, everybody knew that the Soviets were following the pharmacological prescriptions with the same extend.

The real panic came in 1984 when all Eastern Bloc countries followed the USSR’s boycott of the Olympics in Los Angeles and went on with the alternative Friendship Cup. Bulgarians won in six weight classes, the Soviet Union in four classes. After that Abadzhiev was told to resign by the Bulgarian sports committee. The coach refused.

- I said “Why? Because we won over the USSR?” I knew the answer anyway. I heard the conversation between the IWF General Secretary and our sports deputy. It was about that it’s not good that two countries are so far ahead of the other countries. It slows down the progress of the Olympic weightlifting overall.

Of course, the actual meaning was that the USSR is a big and powerful country and it’s acceptable that they are so far ahead in sports. But it wasn’t allowed for some Bulgaria. Everybody knew that when Bulgarians beat the Russians, it went beyond the sports and had a political connotation. I realized quiet clearly that the main goal the Soviet weightlifting authorities had wasn’t the World and European championships but to win over Bulgaria. But we kept winning.

In that conversation with the General Secretary, he asked me: “Is it OK that only one country keeps winning?” Of course, I said: “It’s not OK” He jumped and even began to kiss me.

Four years later, before the Olympics in Seoul, Abadzhiev was approached by one of the top sports officials in Bulgaria. “That’s it. You can only win two gold medals. If you win three, they will chop your head off. And mine too.”

THE DARK SIDE OF THE OLYMPICS

- I knew alot about the Soviet lifters’ training, – says Abadzhiev. – I knew that they were not as well prepared as we were. Of course, you experts knew what was going on in our team. With all these said, the IWF was helping the Russians. No one helped us. But even I couldn’t understand why your officials predicted five gold medals for the Russian team.

- For the whole world, the Olympics in Seoul were associated with the weightlifting scandal. Bulgarian lifters were disqualified and the whole team left for Bulgaria before the end of the competitions.

- It was a very strange story. In Bulgaria as well as in the USSR, we had local doping control tests before competitions. We made over 50 tests. And despite this, they began to catch our lifters with the furocemide. It belongs to the diuretics. At that time we studied how it worked. We did research how it changes by hours. It was practically impossible to detect it 72 hours after you took it. However, according to the Seoul tests we had a monster of a dosage detected via those tests. Needless to say that positive tests were shown in the weight classes where we were competing against the Soviet athletes. For example, Grablev was disqualified and Oxen Mirzoyan got the gold medal. After Gerchev’s positive test, Militosyan got the first place. And their lifts were weak. And in the classes where the Soviet lifters didn’t compete, Bulgarian tests were clean.

When the scandal just started to take place, we decided to set up a meeting with the Soviet delegation. We met in the part – we were afraid of microphones and that someone will tape the conversation. Bulgarian chairman asked Marat Gramov to help and to make test of Bulgarians in the Russian lab. They lied to us. They said there was no Soviet lab there. It was there. It was on the boat. I knew it for sure.

MERITED SECURITY GUARD OF BULGARIA

- You are Russian, right? – Abadzhiev paused for a moment.

- Yes.

- It’s not very good that I tell you all this. But it’s the truth. You know I love Russia. You can see I am fluent in Russian. I admire Russian painters – Repin, Surikov, Kramskoy, Polenov, Vasiliev, Shishkin, Ayvazovsky, Levitan, Serov, Vasnetsov… I think I know more Russian songs than you do. Your singers are not as well known as the ones from the Western Europe but they were outstanding. By the way, we brought Lemeshev’s recording with to Athens. I love to listen to Vinogradov. He san in the war and post-war times… As for the weightlifting, it’s a different story.

- Did you leave the national team Bulgaria after the Olympics in Seoul?

- No. I worked for one more year. We changed the whole team. I put together a very young team and we won again. Then they kicked me out. Right after the European Championship.

… He came back to Bulgaria where no one wanted to see him. During the 20 years of coaching, he prepared 9 Olympic champions, 57 world champions, 64 European champions and he couldn’t find a coaching job even in the peripheral sports clubs. He tried to coach abroad but the foreign federations politely refused with “we can’t afford to pay to a coach of such a high qualification”. His phone at home got quiet. He had two children and a wife who left her job. Desperate Abadzhiev landed a security guard job in a kindergarten. Then he worked for a firm manufacturing metal doors for the apartments. A few years later, at the 1993 European Championship in Sofia, Abadzhiev decided to attend the competition. No one approached him there.

And then the fortune became nice to Abadzhiev. He became a coach of a badminton team. Two years later, on December 15, 1995, he got an invitation from Turkey where his favorite student Naum Shalamanov defected two years before the Seoul Olympics. In Turkey, the lifter got a new name Naim Suleymanoglu, won two Olympics, was considered the main contender for the third one in Atlanta and… desperately needed a coach.

THE SECRET OF A MASTER

In Atlanta, Suleymanoglu won his third gold Olympic medal. Halil Mutlu also became a champion. It was two gold medals versus one silver and two bronze medals of Bulgaria. “What did you want the most at the time?” I asked Abadzhiev in Athens. “I wanted to win over Bulgaria. Least of all I expected that they will offer me to come back and that I will not turn the offer down.

- Why?

- I was mad at them. I could have left Bulgaria long before the Seoul. But I couldn’t even think about it. I thought that my methodology was our national treasure. That’s why I kept it in secret for so many years.

- What about now?

- Not now. Too many Bulgarian coaches and lifters are working all over the world. And then it’s too late. Though when I just started to work on it, they called me a mad man.

- Because of your methodology?

- It wasn’t like any other method in the world. It contradicted every basic principles. In Bulgaria, many other sports disciplines are build on the methods developed by the Soviet experts. The main concept is distinct periodization, preparation stage, interim stage, competition stage… I threw it away. When a rabbit is being chased by the wolf, does he have an interim stage for running? Yes, he can hid in the bushes but he is ready to start running 100 percent at any time. Is it logical to achieve outstanding results by hard work and then stop and go back to a lower level?

I began to think about it and then I saw a very interesting research study of Swedish scientists. You know each muscle consists of various textures. The fast ones – the one that the lifters need the most, and the slow ones. Under certain training intensity, the slow ones can turn into the fast ones and the other way around. The first process requires a long-term work and high intensity, the latest happens instantly… just decrease the intensity. That’s what happens in the interim stage.

- But it’s very hard to train with a constant high intensity and stress.

- And how about the adaptation theory? It’s a science by the way: if you place a body into a certain environment, it begins to adapt to it.

- Too tough.

- Professional sport is a tough activity overall.

- But Olympic weightlifting is not the sport where competitions go one after another one. I know that the Russian lifters have three to four competitions per year.

- I tried to set up as many competitions for my lifters as I could. Even in the old times, when our team was definitely the best in the world, we had nine to ten competitions per season. The first one was always the national championship. We mixed the big sports competitions with the commercial ones. So, the lifters had a better motivation.

- Do you have any dreams as a coach?

- I don’t have dreams anymore. I stopped to enjoy competitions. I think there is a limit for neurological reserves. My heart hurt. I am tired of arguing with young coaches who at first don’t want to listen and then couldn’t understand why they underachieve in the results. Besides, I am not sure if I can achieve more than what I already did. For example, there won’t be a lifter able to lift a three-bodyweight lift. Shalamanov whose bodyweight was less than 60 kilo could do it. He cleaned 202 kilos. It was over 10 years ago. I was very proud of him. It’s very different in Bulgaria now. We had to sell the whole team to Qatar in order to finance the one that was left. And I am still not happy with the world championship results. We have a world champion – Galabin Boyevsky. He won both lifts, set world records in total and clean-and-jerk. But in training he lifted much more. Two month before the championship, he relatively easy cleaned-and-jerked 205 kilos.

- Do you think that the lifters should always lift their maximum weights on the platform?

- It’s a good question. On the one hand, I don’t like heroics – it’s just too easy to get an injury. Boyevsky simply didn’t lift what he was ready for. Many people blame me that I overload lifters in the training. 15-20 kilos more than needed for the win. They say that it’s enough to lift 2.5 kilos more than an opponent does and you are a champion. What is 2.5 kilos? Nothing. You get a light cold before the competition or a small injury and that’s all. Someone else will win. Even if you win, 2.5-5 kilos doesn’t give you any psychological advantage. But I am tired to argue. After Sydney, I’ll quit the weightlifting.

- And then what?

- That’s it. I am very old. I don’t think I will live much longer.

- I used to know one old lady who all her life, up to when she turned 105, lived in a small village, had a small farm and a cow. And then decided that she is too old for early morning wake-up, farm work. She gave her cow to the neighbors. And then she died in a few months.

- When a person stops to work intensively – whatever he’s doing – his body loses it. He gets ill. But… I’ll think about it. Maybe I will keep my cow for a while.

Words to describe Olympic champion-styled workouts:

BORING

HARD WORK

…but there is a big payoff. (medals).

–Dan John

While bordom is not exactly something to be cultivated, there is truth to the notion that consistency coupled with specificity has a large payoff in all areas of life.