The Bulgarian Method was a brutal live or die weightlifting method developed by Ivan Abadjiev that led to his country competing with the Soviet Union in the 70's despite being unknown for weightlifting beforehand. The program features daily maxes on the Olympic lifts, with multiple sessions per day, all under the watchful eye of a coach while aided by a copious amounts of drugs. Powerlifter Greg Nuckols adapted the daily maxing and frequent training sessions for his own purposes, and published a manual detailing the program. I believe he published it seven years ago; I haven't heard much since about it. The lifting world is powered by Youtube bro-influencers shitting out information that's about as useful to a veteran lifter as whatever a hobo on the street will tell you about... well, anything. Anyway, in the past, I have done very well with high-intensity, high-frequency training. My most successful training block the past couple of years featured constant rep maxes and training frequencies of at least five days a week. Unfortunately, the deadlift maxing basically killed me, and I had to step away from that sort of thing for a couple of years, during which I've just been churning my gears, doing bodybuilding work. It's not satisfying training; I've always lifted for strength rather than appearance, and now, as a nearly 41 year old man, I've noticed the onset of middle age. My recovery is prolonged; I can no longer drink alcohol hardly; I'm getting lines around my eyes. I would like one final challenge, however, before I ride off into the sunset as a broken old man, and so, I'm trying Nuckols' Bulgarian strategy. Two weeks in, it's surprisingly do-able. As for how sustainable it will be, and how much success I'll have, we'll have to see. Here's what I'm doing.
Daily Maxes, all the time. In Nuckols' program, you squat and bench at least four times a week, working up to a daily max. A daily max is a heavy weight that you can hit any day of the week without psychological stress--it should be 80 to 90 percent of your true one rep max. For the squat, I've started out with 275 lbs, which I've blown past every single day so far. Yesterday, which was my third day squatting in a row, I hit 325 lbs for a smooth single. These daily maxes should increase, but every training session will not be as smooth as butter. If you hit your daily max and it feels like shit, you're supposed to take some weight off the bar and do some doubles or triples. That's the program in a nutshell. Heavy weights every session, but low daily volume. For the deadlift, you're supposed to do five to ten reps between 60 and 70 percent of your max once or twice a week. Assistance work is optional. I've been doing curls, rows, and pullups, but nothing else.
The demands of my job are brutal right now. The heat is constant, the humidity thick, and my traps are often riddled with muscle knots. I'll often do my training while washing apples. It's quick, it's low-rep, and I'm excited to do it. I woke up this morning feeling pretty good, despite squatting 325 lbs yesterday. My pecs, which were really sore early in the week, have already recovered. Perhaps I'm uniquely suited for this type of training, or maybe it's just the placebo effect of trying something new. In any case, I think I'll start posting a training log at the end of the week detailing my accomplishments. I'd like to squat 400 lbs and bench press 300 lbs again. We'll see if I can do it.
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