If you remember the 1980’s, you’ll recall how dominant the Russians and Eastern Bloc countries were in all the international sports. Images of iron men, of machine-like strength and efficiency, of these robot giants of muscle and metal who could beat anybody at anything abounded. Even now, a couple of decades later, Russia still has that invincible mystique when it comes to its workout regimens and secret training techniques. What can we learn from them today, what advice can we get from them?

Take Adaption Into Account

The Russians figured out early on that bodies will adapt to any form of exercise in about 6 weeks, with more advanced athletes adapting as early on as even 2 weeks. What does this mean for you? This means you can train the same way, use the same weights for only up to six weeks, and then you have to change things up. You can derive enormous advantage and growth from changing your workouts every so often, challenging your body to adapt and continue growing. On a practical level, train systematically, rotating what each workout segment is supposed to achieve, whether it’s increasing volume and intensity, or focusing on your weak points, or whatever, and keep changing it up and doing different combinations.

Stretch Properly

Watch a bunch of track and field athletes, and they’ll all be doing static stretching, reaching down to touch their toes and holding that position for long beats before moving to the other leg. The Russians eschewed this approach, instead opting for ballistic stretching, where movement was involved, and you didn’t simply hold a stretch for long periods of time. While recognizing the value of increased blood flow to the muscles and warming them up over lengthening them. This was because static stretching can lead to injury due to your stretching out your ligaments and tendons, reducing your body’s ability to stabilize itself and maintain optimum balance. So warm up dynamically instead by either jogging or doing jumping jacks, bodyweight squats or push-ups.

Take Recovery Seriously

When you workout hard, you not only stress your muscles, but you also tax your central nervous system. Imprinting certain routines on your nervous system is key in sports, where your ability to react and perform without thinking and under pressure are dependent on extensive conditioning. Thus a hard workout will not only cause your body to become sore, but will also stress its ability to ‘learn’ what you are doing, and without resting properly, you will hamper your ability to learn as quickly as you otherwise might.

The Russians thus figured out that you need to allow your nervous system to freshen up and return to its flexible, impressionable state by doing a series of different kinds of recovery. Using foam rollers, Epsom salt baths and saunas, they helped themselves recover quicker. The key was to also vary which form of recovery you used. Don’t always do the same one.

Perfect Form

The Soviet reputation of being machines came as much from their perfection of form as it did their strength and discipline. They truly mastered the form behind whatever exercise they did, and thus did it with maximum applicable strength and efficiency. This meant better results, less injury, and outperforming everybody else who’s lax form made them work harder to achieve the same results. Thus you should focus absolutely on technique over lifting greater weights or doing more, or faster, or whatever. As soon as technique begins to fail, you’re hurting yourself. So watch form, and let your body improve gradually and with as much perfection as possible.

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Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: workout tips,static stretching,gym workout,muscle building,perfect form,bigger muscles,body building