John Broz Interview

[BendtheBar]

John Broz interview:

A Few Words with Weightlifting Coach John Broz

JB: Change the mindset of the lifters and the coaches – they need to change their target goals. It seems that just about everyone in this country thinks that to be a national champion in the US is a great goal, which is really sad. In my gym we only have international lifters on our videos and we only have the world records on the wall. Who cares about the American records? – our goal is to be the best in the world. If you break American records on the way, that’s great, but it’s just one step in the process and it’s not the apex of what the lifters at my gym are shooting for.

KG: What is the main difference between the way the Russians and Bulgarians trained when they were dominating world weightlifting?
JB: Specificity and periodization. The Bulgarians stick to performing the lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk, and a few other lifts such as squats. The Russians perform a lot of strength lifts, such as the bench press; I think their philosophy was that if you’re bigger and stronger in every way possible, then you’re going to be a more powerful athlete and lift more weight. The Bulgarians were like, “I only need to be great in the snatch and clean and jerk, and nothing else matters. If I have weak arms and shoulders and cannot press 80 kilos, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not pressing.” Also, the Russians use periodization methods and the Bulgarians tend to go heavy all the time.

I think a triple in the back squat determines the amount of volume you can handle in the snatch and clean and jerk, but I believe there are times when you have to do a heavy single in the back squat. It’s the difference between training for power and training for strength. When you are doing a triple, speed is very important, as you are trying to develop power; but the problem is that if you never take a heavy weight for a single, how are you going to be able to move ten kilos faster? So the approach is to build overall strength with singles and use triples to develop power. Often We always combine the two methods, doing a max single and then dropping 10 or 20 kilos and doing doubles and triples.

KG: You’ve said that if you train every day, your muscles will stay fatigued and this will make you less likely to get injured. What do you mean by this?
JB: Your connective tissue is avascular and doesn’t recover as quickly as the muscles. What happens when you train every single day is that the entire system becomes fatigued, which means your muscles cannot contract hard enough to put the connective tissue in danger of injury. If you take a day or two off from training, the muscles are able to contract super hard, and the next thing you know you have an injury. I’ve talked about this for years, and one day I did exactly what I shouldn’t have. I had taken two days off completely from training and was feeling pretty good, so I decided to go heavy like I always do. I was squatting 220 kilos, and the result was that I got two partial tears in my quads and a partial tendon tear. When I train every day, I never, ever have problems like this.

[HERC410]

Broz has an extremely interesting philosophy on training, and I do plan to Squat every day once I have the time and resources.