Bulgarian Method

How to Apply the Revolutionary Weightlifting System to Bodybuilding Workouts

- Greg Merritt

Bulgarian. In weightlifting circles, the very word conjures up images of stern men in singlets with shaggy hair and consonant laden names hoisting barbells overhead again and again, day after day, in some torturous yet mysteriously effective program, and all while hidden away behind the Iron Curtain. In the ’70s and ’80s, when the Bulgaria weightlifting team dominated world competition, its unique training methods caused a sensation in the iron game that still reverberates today. What is the Bulgarian method, and can it be applied to body building?

IVAN’S INNOVATION

Meet Ivan Abadjiev. He’s 84 now, but back in 1957 he won Bulgaria’s first weightlifting medal. More important, he was Bulgaria’s weightlifting coach from 1968–89, when the small, poor country of fewer than nine million citizens dominated Olympic-style weightlifting. Whereas other programs avoided frequent work with low reps and focused on auxiliary exercises like high pulls, Abadjiev took the opposite approach. He believed the way to get better at an activity was to perform it over and over. This is called the law of specificity.