Bulgarian Method

Squat...Every...Day

"If your family was captured and you were told you needed to put 100 pounds onto your max squat within two months or your family would be executed, would you squat once per week? Something tells me that you'd start squatting every day." - John Broz

I first heard about the concept of squatting daily from Greg Nuckols, an expert in the field of exercise science. I picked up his free e-book "the bulgarian manual".

In his book Nuckols explains and lays out something called Bulgarian Method (Light). In short, the Bulgarian Method (Light) consists of squatting/benching to a MAX every single day. 

Notice how I put (light) in there, the original Bulgarian Method is believed to be founded by a man called Ivan Abadjiev, a former Bulgarian weightlifting coach. Below you see an example of how Abadjiev would structure a normal training day for his athletes.

11:00am - 11:45 Front Squat 

11:45am - 12:15 Break 

12:15pm - 1:00 Snatch 

1:00pm - 1:30 Break 

1:30pm - 2:00 Clean & Jerk 

Alright, so his athletes had plenty of rest time between exercises? What's so extreme about this program?

Indeed only 3 exercises. 

But, all of them to a 1RM (1-Rep maximum)

Oh yeah,

They did this every day.



Abadjiev's athletes won several gold medals using his methods. It's funny because most strength athletes that you'll find today will already start to sweat just by the thought of doing a max attempt weekly.

"Oh no, the CNS (Central Nervous System) Fatigue will be too great, you'll overtrain."

"Oh no, You'll just get injured."

This brings me to Matt Perryman's Squat Every Day, a second book I recently read on Bulgarian training. It costs only €7 but has given me insights that I yet have to find in a €80 priced textbook. If €7 is still too much for you, you can find some golden nuggets below. 

• Practice

Training every day leads to more opportunities to practice under (near-)maximum weights and gives you the chance to diminish the exhaustion of high-volume workouts. You improve through repetition and consistency. Strength is a skill, you have to teach your brain how to handle a heavy weight with the right technique. 

• Overload

The Bulgarian Method uses progressive overload, your 1RM strength should trend upwards over time. Because your volume is auto-regulated, your volume should naturally go up as you get stronger.

• Overtraining?

Doesn't squatting and benching every day lead to overtraining? If you would work up to a TRUE MAX every day, then yes you may eventually burn out. This isn't Bulgarian training though, a key concept to remember is "auto-regulation", if you feel really good on a given day you have the option to squat really heavy. If you don't feel that great, you simply lift a "daily minimum" 

(a weight that you can lift anytime, under any circumstance - @85-90%1RM / 9RPE). 

When training Bulgarian style you DO NOT emotionally/psychologically arouse yourself through listening music, sniffing ammonia, etc. No grinding on reps, no form breakdown.

You train like a monk. Calm and confident.

It's no secret that hard training releases a stress response in the body. Let's say you jump out of a plane for the first time, you'll probably scream like a little girl (I know I would). Now let's repeat this activity for a month straight, will you still be screaming at the end of that month? Probably not, because your body (psychologically and physically) gets used to the stressor. This is the habituation of a stress response. You may end up enjoying the view. 

Same applies to lifting heavy on a daily basis. There's a reason humans have survived all these years. Adaptation.

- 'Burn out” or staleness in strength training is a consequence of training too heavy, with high emotional and psychological arousal, rather than the amount or volume of training. When you go stale, performance plateaus, weights feel too heavy, and motivation evaporates.'

• Developing The Mental Edge

- 'There’s something to be said for treating physical training as mental exercise. Training has a belief-dependent quality which matters perhaps more than any of the physical explanations. If you don’t believe that your goal is achievable or your program is going to get you there, then your entire condition ― psychological and physiological ― will respond as if that were true. That goes for medical interventions and I’d be highly surprised to find it has no impact on athletic performance.
Part of making daily training, any training, work is the belief. Your mind follows your thoughts. If you don’t believe that you can toughen up, push through dark days of sore muscles, and come out the other side as a more robust and fatigue-hardened lifter, then it won’t happen. You’ll give up and go complain about how overtrained your CNS got. You’ve got to practice the mental along with the physical.'

This is, in my opinion the best part about a Bulgarian set-up. Thinking outside the box, throwing (almost) every piece of conventional wisdom out of the window. 

Sample Bulgarian Method Progression

To optimize results it's important to keep the law of diminishing returns and the biological law of accommodation in mind. Starting out with just the squat & bench is fine in my opinion. Over time you'll need to switch things up, if only it's to not get bored. Below you'll find a template of how Bulgarian can be run, by no means it's the be-all & end-all. Freedom of choice is a definite characteristic of Bulgarian. Every phase should be run until you get bored/experience a lack of results. 

Phase 1 : Base

• Low-Bar Squat 1RM 
• Pause Bench 1RM
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

(Start Phase 1 3x/week, then 4x/week, etc. until you reach 6-7x/week.)

Phase 2 : 

• Low-Bar Squat 1RM + 1-2 Back-off Sets 2-3 reps @85-90%
• Pause Bench 1RM + 1-2 Back-off Sets 2-3 reps @85-90%
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

Phase 3 : 

• Low-Bar Squat / Front Squat 1RM + 3RM 
• Pause Bench / Close-Grip Bench Press 1RM+ 3RM
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

(Alternate variations / rep ranges each day.)

Phase 4 :

• Low-Bar Squat / Front Squat / High-Bar Squat 1RM + 3RM + 6RM
• Pause Bench / Close-Grip Bench Press / Floor Press 1RM + 3RM + 6RM
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

Phase 5 :

• Low-Bar Squat / Front Squat / High-Bar Squat / Box Squat 1RM + 3RM + 4RM + 6RM 
• Pause Bench / Close-Grip Bench Press / Floor Press / Slingshot Bench 1RM + 3RM + 4RM + 6RM 
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

Phase 6 :

• Low-Bar Squat / Front Squat / High-Bar Squat / Box Squat / Pin Squat 1RM + 2RM + 3RM + 4RM + 6RM 
• Pause Bench / Close-Grip Bench Press / Floor Press / Slingshot Bench / Touch n' Go Bench 1RM + 2RM + 3RM + 4RM + 6RM
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

Phase 7 :

• Low-Bar Squat / Front Squat / High-Bar Squat / Box Squat / Pin Squat / Beltless Squat 1RM + 2RM + 3RM + 4RM + 5RM + 6RM 
• Pause Bench / Close-Grip Bench Press / Floor Press / Slingshot Bench / Touch n' Go Bench / Spoto Press 1RM + 2RM + 3RM + 4RM + 5RM + 6RM 
• 2x/ week Deadlift 5-10 singles @70-85%
• Minimal accessory work (Horizontal, Vertical Pulls / Overhead Presses)

Again this is an example, by no means should this represent the definite version. Switch up rep-ranges, exercises, add accommodating resistance (bands/chains), work in pendulum waves, add back-off sets, etc. 

BE CREATIVE

Things to remember

• The Dark Times

Without a doubt, you'll feel like crap the first weeks of running this method. John Broz refers to this as "the dark times". These weeks are the period where your body is completely confused on what the heck is going on. This is the period of adaptation to the stressor - you're jumping out of a plane every day, and you're scared.

Although these "dark times" should be expected, the negative effects of them is dependent on how fast you jump into the program. If you kick up the weekly frequency slowly, the "dark times" will be more tolerable.

• Hyper-Specificity 

This one relates to the base program, which only includes regular squatting and benching for 1RM's. In order to see continual progress from this method, and to bipass the law of accommodation, you'll have to (eventually) step away from the basic template. Meaning that whatever the circumstances, program modifications will have to be made in the form of changing intensities (1RM's VS. 6RM's), altering total volume (more/less sets), and changing the original stimulus (exercise selection). 

This isn't necessarily bad, just don't get too much in love with the basic template. The original Bulgarian system did stay with their basic template, but eventually they were training 3x/day. They increased the volume over time, but I guess not many of us have that kind of time.

• Untraveled Roads

Although there has been some research conducted on high-frequency, high-intensity "programs", it isn't comparable to the large database of research on let's say, linear progression. 

Effects of Bulgarian methods on long-term progression isn't clear, other methods/programs may be more compatible for long-term progress. If you aren't cool with stepping into reasonably uncharted territory, then maybe Bulgarian training isn't your thing.

• Beginners / Volume Needs

If you're a novice lifter, your volume needs aren't as high as trained athletes. Let's say you can recover from a total volume workload of 300 kg per training session, and a total weekly workload of 900 kg. So you're optimal training frequency is lifting 3x/week. (900kg/300kg=3) 

You could do a single training session where your total volume is 900 kg, or in another scenario, you could split up that 900 kg into 6 sessions of 150kg of total training volume (900/150=6).

The problem here is that both of these cases result in a less overall adaptation for the exact same amount of total volume, because they stray too far from the optimal frequency.

This is the reason that beginners probably won't benefit from a higher frequency program. (among other reasons)

Following that theory, you can argue that at some point, high frequency training is a necessity for advanced athletes. If you could recover from 7000 kg of volume a week, and your optimal volume per session is 1000 kg --> 7000/1000=7. You should do 7 sessions a week.

Of course, these are just theories. There is a place and a time for everything, just be conscious about where you stand in the training hierarchy (novice-intermediate-advanced), your personal training history, etc., and base your decisions off of that.

• Patience & Ego

Because the Bulgarian Method is highly auto-regulated, there is a responsibility on the user.

Don't allow your ego to get into your way, and base how much you'll lift on a given day on your readiness. Don't expect to hit a new PR every single day, some days you'll hit your daily minimum and go home. Slow and steady progress is the aim.

End note :

Although I've yet to experience this method, I've no doubt in my mind that something like this can give you great strength gains. Browse around internet-forums and you'll find that people who ran this are (for the most part) positive about this method. There have been people that put 100 pounds/50kg on their squat in around 3 months. Deadlift-strength increased organically alongside the improved squat-strength. Although you probably shouldn't expect a 100 pound/50kg increase on your bench press in such a short timespan, you can expect similar results relative to the squat.

The Bulgarian Method is a solid way to train, IF you're qualified to be training this way. Don't fall into the trap of choosing this program because you're looking for quick progress in exchange of destroying yourself short-term. Think long-term.

This was a introductory to Bulgarian training. If you're interested in more details I would highly advise you to read the books I've listed below.

Thanks for reading

Thomas

Bibliography: 

• Squat Every Day - Matt Perryman 
• The Bulgarian Manual - Greg Nuckols
• http://www.powerliftingtowin.com/the-bulgarian-method-for-powerlifting/
• https://www.t-nation.com/training/max-out-on-squats-every-day
• Distribution of strength training volume into one or two daily sessions and neuromuscular adaptations in female athletes. By Häkkinen and Kallinen (1994).
• Comparison of 1 day and 3 days per week of equal-volume resistance training in experienced subjects. By McLester, Bishop, and Guilliams (2000).
• Comparisons between twice-daily and once-daily training sessions in male weightlifters. By Hartman, Clark, Kilgore, and Bemben (2007).
• Influence of Resistance Training Frequency on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men. By Schoenfeld, Ratamess, Peterson, Contreras, and Tiryaki-Sonmez (2015)
• How do the Best Powerlifters in the World Train? By Kirketeig and Wolf (2012)