We have been digging through old issues of Powerlifting USA for a while now. This is a new series, and it comes from a different kind of magazine.

Soviet Sports Review was a quarterly made up of articles translated from Russian sport journals. The masthead of this issue says it was formerly the Yessis Review of Soviet Physical Education and Sport. Michael Yessis is listed as editor and publisher, with translations by Michael Yessis and Bill Penner, and it was published out of Laguna Beach, California. Each article is a condensed translation, with the original journal and year printed under the title.

If you don't know the name Yessis, read The One American Universal Tie to the Soviets. It explains how much of what we now call plyometrics, special strength, and periodization reached American coaches through his translations.

This is the March 1980 issue, Volume 15, Number 1. It covers track and field, volleyball, soccer, and weightlifting, so I'm not going to walk through every article. I'm pulling the ones that matter to lifters and coaches and going deep on those.

What Was in the Issue

Here is the table of contents. The pieces most useful to strength athletes and coaches are marked, and those are the ones covered below.

Page	Article	Authors
1	Psychological Preparation for Competition	B. Blumenstein, N. Hudanov
5	Weight Training for Sprinters (strength)	Y. Popov, O. Stepanenko
9	Selection Criterion: Relationship Between Running Pace and Heart Rate	N. Fomin, M. Gorokhov
12	The Volley (Goal) Kick	Vladimir Kazachenok
14	Evaluation of Preparedness (Soccer)	E. Skomorokhov
16	Defensive Tactical Preparation of Volleyballers	Z.D. Zhelezniak
20	The Psychological "Set" in Volleyball	M. Saparbaev, A. Mukhamadaliev
22	Clean and Jerk Technique of Valery Shary (lifting)	R.A. Roman, M.S. Shakirzyanov
29	The Effect of Different Seconds on the Competing Weightlifter (lifting)	U.L. Hanin, V.S. Kopysov
31	Psychological Aspects of Weightlifting Competition (lifting)	P.M. Kasyanik
34	Shotput Technique Analysis: Udo Beier	O. Grigalka, V. Papanova
37	Training Program for High-Level Javelin Throwers	O. Konstantinov
41	Who Should Play the Center Line	G. Radchuk
44	Nonstandard Solutions to the Direct Free Kick	V. Simakov
48	Through the Olympic Prism	Oleg Solodukhov

The opening piece by Blumenstein and Hudanov is worth a mention. Studying jumpers, they sorted athletes into "steady" and "explosive" emotional styles. If you have coached a meet, you have seen both warming up side by side.

Deep Dive 1: Weight Training for Sprinters (Popov and Stepanenko, p. 5)

This one is from Legkaya Atletika, 1978. Coaches disagreed about special strength exercises for sprinters, so the authors set out to build and test a set of speed-strength methods. They looked at more than 20 of the most commonly used exercises with 120 runners, ranging from Class III up to Master of Sport.

They did it in three stages.

• Stage one: find the load. They measured which resistance produced maximum power output, and found it depended on the athlete's skill level. In their words, each level had a "natural zone" of weight resistance. Inside that zone the load could shift by about 1.5 to 2.0 kg either way for Class II and III athletes, and only about 1.2 kg for the highest-rated athletes.
• Stage two: find the reps. Figure 2 shows power holding flat for a stretch of reps and then dropping off a cliff into acute fatigue. That flat part of the curve was used to set the number of reps, sets, and series.
• Stage three: rank the exercises. The exercises that looked most like running in their "technical-dynamic parameters" were ranked highest, and maximum speed of execution was the top priority.

The exercise list is loaded jumps and stepping drills: squat jumps with the knee angle at 130 to 140 degrees, step-ups with alternate legs off a box set so the shin and thigh form 90 degrees, a deep lunge walk, scissor jumps, jumps from a deep squat, straight-legged jumps, and running with a high thigh lift. The drawings show a bar across the shoulders, and the cues are all about full, fast extension through the knee and ankle.

Then they give you the weekly plan for the highest-level athletes. Strength work was "combined with the main training."

• Day 1: step-ups with alternate legs (90-degree knee), 50 kg x 20 for 6 sets, recovering to a heart rate of 120 between sets, at maximum speed. Then jumps with alternation of legs, 50 kg x 20 for 5 sets, same recovery. The 2 to 3 minutes between the two exercises was filled with walking and medicine ball work "for maintaining optimal CNS excitability."
• Day 4: jumps from a half-squat, 45 kg x 20 for 8 sets, 2 series. Jumps with changing of legs, 50 kg x 20 for 5 sets. Running with high thigh lift, 45 kg x 20 for 3 sets, 2 series. Maximal speed, with rest to full recovery. They said the variety was there to avoid "stereotyped repetition."

Lower-rated athletes used much lighter loads (30 to 35 kg, 10 to 15 reps) but spent more time on it across the week. In the preparatory period, strength training took up 25% of total weekly training time. In the competitive period it dropped to 10 to 12% for the top athletes and 15 to 20% for the lower-rated ones.

What it looks like in the gym today

The part I like most is stage one. They didn't pick a round number. They found the load where power peaked for that athlete and treated it as a narrow window. Today you'd do that with a bar speed device, a jump mat, or a coach who knows what fast looks like.

I also like the heart rate rule. "Recover to 120" is a cheap way to keep speed work from turning into conditioning.

Where I'd push back is volume. Eight sets of twenty loaded jumps is a lot of ground contact for most people reading this. Take the principles, not the numbers: find the load that moves fastest, stop the set before power drops, and rest long enough to do it again at full speed. If you want the horizontal side of this, Bryan Mann's Using Squats and Sled Pulling for Sprint Speed Development is a good companion read, and a Prowler or a dragging sled covers the work without a bar on your back.

Deep Dive 2: The Clean and Jerk of Valery Shary (Roman and Shakirzyanov, p. 22)

This piece is from Tyazhelaya Atletika, 1979. The authors start with Shary's résumé. He jerked 182.5 kg at the 1969 World Championships in Warsaw and took silver in that lift. In 1975 he became Soviet and world champion. In 1976 he won the Olympic title. In 1977 his best jerk was 205 kg.

The analysis is of a 195-kg clean and jerk at lightheavyweight, with a cyclogram of the bar path and a full photo sequence. Here is what they measured.

• The start: feet about a foot-width apart, toes slightly out, back slightly arched at roughly 30 degrees to the platform, hips higher than the knees, and shoulders a bit in front of the bar.
• First pull: leg extension stops when the knees reach roughly 150 degrees, with the shins vertical and the trunk about 30 degrees to the floor. That leg drive took 0.65 seconds. The whole first phase took 0.75 seconds. The bar came back toward him and was closest (8 cm on the cyclogram) at knee level. Peak bar speed was 1.24 m/sec.
• Top pull: 0.15 seconds, with bar speed reaching 1.8 m/sec.
• Getting under: the bar topped out at 103 cm, then dropped 33 cm and was fixed on the chest at 70 cm. The whole squat under the bar took 0.8 seconds.
• The jerk: a 14 cm dip in 0.5 seconds, knees at 114 degrees, then a 0.2-second drive with the bar reaching 1.6 m/sec, and a split under the bar in 0.4 seconds.

Then comes the part that makes this more than a highlight reel. They criticize an Olympic champion's technique, with numbers.

In the top pull, they say Shary doesn't fully extend his knees and hips and barely flexes at the ankles, "which reduces the effect of the top pull." On the catch, he lets the bar drop too far. They put the norm for that drop at 16% of height, which in his case would be 28 cm, not 33. He fixes the bar at 70 cm, or 40% of his height, while other athletes averaged 44%. Their conclusion: tighten up the catch and he could pull the bar to a lower height, which "would give the possibility of lifting a barbell of heavier weight."

The jerk gets the same treatment. His dip was 8% of his height when others averaged 10%, and his 114-degree knee angle was short of the 100 to 110 degrees they called optimal. So his drive was weaker and the bar only went up 23 cm, or 13.2% of his height, against an average of 16% for athletes his size. They noted this made overhead fixation hard and "occasionally leads to failure in the jerk."

What it looks like in the gym today

This won't turn a powerlifter into a weightlifter. What it shows is a way of coaching. They measured an Olympic champion, compared him to the norm, and named the two things costing him kilos. That's good coaching in any barbell sport.

You can do a simple version with your phone. Film from the side, look at the bar path, and compare your positions to a standard instead of to how it felt. Keeping the bar close as it passes the knees is the same thing we chase in a deadlift.

If you use the power clean with athletes, Clint Darden's demo below is a good place to start. If you are setting up a platform for it, you need real bumper plates.

Deep Dive 3: Why Lifters Miss Weights They Can Make (Hanin and Kopysov, p. 29; Kasyanik, p. 31)

Two short weightlifting psychology papers run back to back here. Together they are about what happens between the warm-up room and the platform.

Hanin and Kopysov: who is handling you matters

This one is from Tyazhelaya Atletika, 1978. Thirty-four weightlifters rated their anxiety during competition depending on who was seconding them, meaning the person handling them. The scale ran from 5 points (no anxiety, "psychic comfort") to 20 points (very strong anxiety, "psychic stress").

Second	Number surveyed	State of anxiety
One's own coach	34	9.60
Friend	11	10.74
Several coaches	24	13.38
Someone else's coach	31	14.02
Second is absent	24	12.80

Your own coach was the calmest option, with a friend close behind. Someone else's coach was the worst, worse than nobody at all. Without a second, the authors say, lifters struggle with the warm-up, the empty time between attempts, and figuring out attempts. And the job is bigger than talking: a good second steps in and corrects the competition plan in time.

They add one more point that is easy to miss. The goal is a mentally favorable state, "but not necessarily optimal," because for some athletes a bit of extra anxiety helps them mobilize.

Kasyanik: the first attempt decides the day

Kasyanik's piece is from Teoriya i Praktika Fizicheskoi Kultury, 1978. He calls a miss followed by a make on the next attempt a "mobilization failure." The lifter had the strength and didn't bring it. He gives three main causes: poor control of your mental state before the attempt, technical instability, and an inadequate warm-up.

• Across 32 of the biggest international competitions of the period, about half the competitors had mobilization failures.
• In 1976 the time allowed between attempts was cut from 3 minutes to 2, effective January 1, 1977. Mobilization failures went up in 1977.
• There were more in the snatch than the jerk. He puts that down to the snatch being a faster, one-motion lift that needs more concentration.
• The most failures came on the first attempt. In his words, "it is as if the athlete uses his first attempt as a warmup."
• 17.3% of competitors bombed out. Add the lifters who missed twice before making their third, and the figure was 33.7%.
• In a survey of 52 top lifters, 96% said psychological preparation before lifting was critical, but only 10% had been taught a method and used it in training.

Then he tested a fix. Lifters tried to reproduce a set amount of effort on a dynamometer under three conditions: after a slow "feel" pull with the bar, after "ideomotor tuning" (mentally rehearsing the effort several times, focusing on the back muscles working), and after their usual psych-up. Ideomotor tuning produced accurate efforts in 23.6% of cases, the test lift 16.6%, and the usual psych-up 7.85%. His conclusion was that mental rehearsal could replace "testing" the weight and do it better.

What it looks like in the gym today

Every powerlifting meet still has lifters treating their opener like a warm-up and paying for it. The fix is the same now as it was in 1978. Pick an opener you can make on your worst day, warm up so that you arrive at it on time and ready, and have one handler who knows you. Matt Gary's Table Talk on attempt selection below covers the attempt side. Josh Bryant's Readiness to Fight: Soviet Sports Psychology covers the mindset side, from the same Soviet tradition.

Ideomotor tuning is what a lot of good lifters already do behind the bar when they run the lift in their head. The difference is that Kasyanik's lifters practiced it and he measured it.

5 Actionable Takeaways from March 1980

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This is what made these translations worth hunting for. Nobody in this issue is selling a program. They measured something, wrote down what they found, and named what didn't work, even when it was an Olympic champion's technique.

The tools changed, but the questions haven't. How heavy should speed work be? When do you stop the set? Why did you miss a weight you hit in training? Who is next to you in the warm-up room? We'll keep going through these issues one at a time.

Live, Learn, Pass On.
Dave Tate
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