Smolov Minus One

[BCS]

Gary and others, Do you do this 4 week cycle repeatedly with a deload in between? Or are you carrying out the full 13 weeks including the Fed... intensity cycle and then repeating?

[Gary Gibson]

I like to do the four-week cycle repeatedly. You're SUPPOSED to separate the cycles by periods of lighter training...but I'm so greedy that I rarely do. I just finished a Russian Squat Routine and then just three days later I began my latest bout of Smolov base phase.

I've never done the entire 13-week cycle, but notice that even there, there is a week of rest after the 3-week base phase and then a couple more weeks of active rest called the "switching phase" in which you do all kinds of jumps, depth jumps and heavy negatives. This is to give your body a break from the actual squat and to recover some of the speed you will surely have lost by then. So the 13-week cycle essentially has 3-week block of rest/back-off built in.

The full Smolov-Feduleyev shouldn't be done more than twice per year, maybe even just once depending on age, infirmities, etc.

I feel the base phase can be done 2-4 times per year, but again, how often depends on the trainee. I'm experimenting with alternating the RSR with the Smolov base. I'm treating the RSR as a "break-in" to the Smolov base. That could be 50-80 lbs of gain in 9 weeks. I'm also thinking of following it up with the switching cycle and the Feduleyev peaking cycle, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

After all this, I may have to take a few weeks off from squatting.

[BCS]

You sir, are a madman. A very impressive madman. That is some crazy volume and intensity for squatting. How are your other lifts? Do you have a contest that you are going to time the Feduleyev peak phase with? What is the RSR program?

[StLRPh]

When you are doing the Russian Squat Routine how do you program the other lifts and/or accessory work?

Thanks in advance,

Matt

[ZKP]

Hello all

Solomov is a nightmare to say the least. When I die, if I have a soul, I just dont want it to go to Solomov. It Burns you out, destroys your morale, strikes fear into you over the mere thought of the next workout......and then there are the ones it DOESN'T work for.....
A light day, 70%x3x5 or 5x3 thrown in every third workout helped me a lot, allowed me to finish and put at least 50 lbs on my squat. The program was documented in the 1976 USSR Yearbook (Weightlifting Encyclopedia, Drechsler) originally. It's not technically Solomov with the added light day but who gives a shit if it works better, and it seems to then for the bulk of us who aren't injecting ourselves. There is a 1974 version works better if you can find it, but it's basically the 76' with the light day thrown in (making a Heavy, med, light day a week) and a deloading week every third. That breather also gives you a day to push a little harder on everything else, and thank whatever gods you believe in for having some more time for your ribcage down to recover. The original is suicide towards the middle-end and I've not heard of anyone completing it all the way unless the shot way the hell low on their 1RM in the beginning. Good luck.

[h k]

One of the things that might affect the outcome of the program is that apparently you're not supposed to use your 1RM for calculating the weights, but instead a training max (prikidka or something in russian). It is supposed to be a weight that you can hit with relative ease all the time for one repetition.