professor iam very inetrested  on the strength and conditioning of  the russian wrestlers besides alot of wrestling how else did they train for strength what type of weightlifting(olympic lifts,kettlebells,or bodyweight exercises)for stamina what type of running was done sprints or distance

Tommy Corona, United States (Postmaster add)

Dear Leo and Tommy,

to answer properly to your questions it needs a book. I try to answer synthetically.

I were not personally involved in the training of wrestlers but I know very well some of most important coaches and I know that in Russia the methodology in this discipline is very developed.

The Russian wrestlers use all the types of training mentioned by you: Olympic lifts, kettlebells and bodyweight exercises.

They use a lot specific strength exercises with machines build specifically for them.

The run exercises are mainly of aerobic endurance: all speed and power work is specific.

In the resistance exercises (weight training) they pay attention to the capacity of muscles relaxation. In the specific work (wrestling) they pay attention to the improvement of tactile sensitivity.

To Leo: I am not sure that all methods of wrestling, free or classic, could be transferred to judo.; only general methodological approach. The judo needs more explosivity and speed of movements than the other wrestling.

Yuri Verkhoshansky

Dear Shea Thompson,
Who would you research to find more information on how the Russian wrestlers were trained?

What are some things that they (Russian wrestlers) may have done differently in there training where they did not increase mass to much?

 The most important Russian sport training magazine is “The theory and practice of the physical culture and sport” in which there are a lot of publications about the methodology of the Russian wrestlers training. The big problem is that all these publications are in Russian.

The most important wrestling training expert that I knew many years ago was Alexandr Novikov. Now there are a lot of new experts who I don’t know, but I am sure that all of them are a very high level experts and they really don’t need my help.

Why?

The Russian Wrestling training methodology is elaborated at a very good level.

First, because Wrestling was always very popular in old Russian empery and in Soviet Union. During many years the practical experiences of many coaches that worked with many wrestlers have been shared between them and developed.

Second, because the Soviet Wrestling teams had always a high level scientific assistance that assured them the possibility to optimize the training process.

The optimization of training process allows to not perform work more that it’s y strictly necessary and to not do anything that is not useful (sorry if underline something that could sound obvious).

The optimization regards also the strength training. The strength training of Olympic sport athlete must be functional or, as I say, specific. So, it must be very different from Bodybuilding training and also from Weightlifting training.

The wrestlers need to increase the strength in particular movements joined in a particular structure. For this reason the Russian wrestlers use specific strength devises and specific training methods that allow to achieve the increasing of  the  power of specific movements and, if it’s necessary, without the muscle mass increasing. 

Yuri Verkhoshansky

Dear Shea Thompson,

the Alexandr Novikov you mentioned is another author, I was referring to Alexandr Novikov who was Wrestiling Soviet National Team coach.

Yuri Verkhoshansky