Why do olympic lifters train everyday?

[cfc]

Never understood this.

Is this anything to do with technique?
And how do they recover?
I thought that strength builds during rest.
So when do they rest?

And why don't powerlifters train so frequently like Olympic lifters?

[steven-miller]

Not every olympic lifter trains everyday, but most of those that are competing at the highest levels certainly do.

In my opinion this has a lot to do with recovery from the competition lifts and their derivatives being a lot easier than from heavy squats, pulls, presses etc. So with that high of a training frequency most of the volume will be from explosive lifts, which in a typical powerlifters training plan will only make up a very small percentage of the total volume.

Why so much volume on the explosive lifts? Technique is the one thing, psychology and confidence at higher weights is another. Also, doing the competition lifts often gives you more chances for succeeding at PRs. You can grind out a squat PR set when your training plan demands this weight to be lifted. You cannot grind out a snatch. So your day-to-day form has a higher impact on your daily maximal weight for the snatch and clean & jerk. Programming the quick lifts with a low frequency therefore bears an increased risk of failing pre planned PRs.

All that being said, I am of the opinion that meaningful progress can be made in the olympic lifts even with minimal time spent doing those exact lifts. Provided that one is increasing ones strength base, is reasonably consistent in ones olympic lifting technique, is not yet an advanced lifter (I don't know about those yet) and does not want to compete at the highest levels, in other words nearly everyone, doing the quick lifts heavy 1-2 times a week can be sufficient to produce fairly regular PRs.

[PurpleNurple]

I think a lot of it is the age that they start, not to mention superior genetics (which is why they were chosen) to begin with.

[Kyle Schuant]

Top athletes mostly train every day. This includes powerlifters. There's a black iron gym in my city where there are lots of people training several days a week - and lots of people totalling 600, 700kg. One of Australia's top lifters Stephen Pritchard says,

I am a big advocate of frequency.
I currently bench 3-4 times per week, squat 2-4 times per week and deadlift 2-4 times per week. All heavy.
My split looks like this:
Monday- bench & assistance
Tues- squat and deadlift
Wed- deadlift and bench
thurs- rest/stretching/mobility
Fri- bench and assistance
Sat- squat and assistance
Sun- deadlift and squat+ assistance

What you do as a beginner or intermediate is different to what you do when advanced and competitive. Just as you build your strength you can build your work and recovery capacity.

[Dastardly]

You need that much time to get the work done. Not Just everyday, but often multiple sessions per day. Quality comes from hammering away at just below your max max, as much as possible. Especially for olympic lifts which are technical.

If you tried to condense it into 3-4 days per week, it would be very hard to get enough done. Plus those sessions would be brutal and give you a run off of poor performance for following days. A solution is complex periodisation. Which is a ball-ache and risky. Training daily or multi-daily, more closely resembles natural physical work patterns and adaptation and is therefore more effective.

Rest and recovery overlap, the athletes are always overloading and always recovering. They do not try and "cram" insults to the body into one day/one session, but take a more modest approach spread over a week and below intensities that would would cause the massive dip in function that stops you training. There is a fuckload more work done overall though.

Dont think there is anyone or any teams that are world class who do not train full time.

[Sean Herbison]

Page 200 of Practical Programming

"As a general rule, exercises strictly dependent on absolute strength for their execution at heavy weights are harder to recover from than technique-dependent exercises that are limited by skill of execution and power production and that are typically done without a significant eccentric component. This is why the Olympic lifts can be trained with a higher frequency than the power lifts."