Anyone know any olymic programs from when the press was still a contested lift?
My linear progression will likely come to an end in a couple months, and when its complete I'd like to focus more on the olympic lifts. For the past few months now, I've been learning them from a qualified olympic coach. So far I've learned how to do full cleans and I already implement them in my program instead of power cleans. I've also done overhead squats in preparation for learning the snatch but I haven't progressed to snatches or jerks yet. Since it'll be quite a long time before I compete in weightlifting, if I ever do at all, I was thinking of doing a little programming experiment after I get the contested lifts down, just for the memes. I really like the old school lifters such as Rudolf Mang and Vasily Alexeev, from back in the era when the press was still part of weightlifting competition.
The press is my favourite lift overall, and I'm curious to see what the results of training it as if it were a contested lift would be. However, information on how people's programs were structured during the heyday of the press appears to be very limited. I have found an article by Bill Starr where he provides a few details about a program used by Sid Henry during the press-era (sid henry program - Bill Starr | strength training for sport), but unfortunately his description of it is somewhat vague. Other than that, I've essentially found nothing. After seeing descriptions of olympic programs and Starr-style progression schemes in Practical Programming and having read The Strongest Shall Survive several times over, I've toyed around with the idea of using a modified Starr routine. However, this may not be entirely representative of how press-era lifters actually trained. Does anybody know any old school programs where the press was trained as a contested lift? If not, how would I go about programming with this in mind? Are there any books from back in the day that I should read?
