Which sheiko program

Everyone is going to be training like this in the future. Start now and get ahead while you still can. Remember me Login. Lost your password? See where this is going? At each turn the machines crunch the numbers and find the best way to move one step closer to victory. Like it or not, this is our world now. Only this time, the machine is on YOUR side. How it works. You train Sheiko Gold, then it trains you Your job is to lift. We do things that no one has ever done before. Extensive physiological modeling See the timer color change as you wait for your next set?

Find and fix weak points Sheiko Gold will sometimes assign you new exercise variations to test out. See how you do with them then rate your performance post-workout. Sheiko Gold will remember your ratings and take them into consideration when creating future workouts. Stress test new variations 2. Identify weak areas for targeting 3. The last two weeks essentially behave as a deload with the intent for you to compete or set new bench press, squat, and deadlift records on the fourth and final week.

As you can probably tell, these 'versions' 29, 30, 31, and 32 of the Sheiko training program were clearly designed with the specific purpose of preparing an athlete for competition through the use of periodization principles first noted by Soviet scientist L. P Matveyev after studying why some Russian athletes performed well during the and Olympics while others performed poorly. What he discovered would become known as sports periodization and go on to be widely published by PhD.

Tudor Bompa who is now regarded as the father of sports periodization. The goal is simple: to increase work capacity and performance in each of the three lifts, while slowly decreasing volume to encourage recovery and a supercomensatory phase, topped off by a deload to ensure maximal strength on week Because of this and already stated earlier but worth noting again , this program is not intended for beginners or general strength trainees.

The Sheiko program is unnecessarily complicated for novices. Furthermore, it actually slowly progress by increasing weight at a much slower rate than necessary for beginners. New lifters should embrace their 'noob gains' in order to progress more quickly and discover their actual 1RM values as they develop the basics of each lift.

Once noob gains are exhausted, however, a program like this that includes intelligent periodization is required to continue making progress.

If you are a competitive powerlifter and have a solid level of training experience under your belt, the Sheiko program will serve you quite well and it is recommended that you, at the very least, adopt some of the core ideas into your routines. If you are experiencing form issues in particular, the Sheiko program serves as an excellent 'reset' by placing focus on perfecting form through high volume of repetitions.

This also goes for those working to fix muscular imbalances and deficiencies. While the workouts are longer, changing to a plan consisting of just 3 days a week with ample rest time between each high-volume workout may be to your liking. Overall, it is recommended for intermediate to advanced lifters who have, but not for beginners or people who aren't interested specifically in getting stronger in the big three.

Sheiko 37 is another routine used in conjunction with 30 and A Google spreadsheet available for download can be found here. Simply input your lift maxes and the excel calculations will do the rest. It also has some interesting graphs that help put the plan's periodization into visual perspective. It allows one to see the breakdown of volume and intensity for each lift as training progresses.

Taking a close look at the graphs it is clear to see the pattern: volume starts high and slowly decreases over time as intensity increases. Mentioned previously, many of the cookie-cutter 'numbered' programs are actually just a mash-up of different examples floating around online and in books. Regardless, they all work to accomplish the goal of building strength with the added aim of peaking at the end of the program. You have likely noticed this 'version' of the program 37, 30, 32 utilizes two blocks from the previous option 29, 30, 31, The most obvious difference is the use of only three training blocks compared with four making the entire training cycle a month shorter.

Additionally, it has a different starting block: Block 37 is a preparatory block similar to 29, but with a higher level of overall volume and a lower average intensity. While both of the training blocks improve work capacity and prime your body for increasingly heavier loads, number 37 really lays on the volume thick with a total of reps over the course of training compared to 'only' reps found in Sheiko This amount of volume will absolutely shred you to pieces if you're a novice who is accustomed to high workloads.

If you are new to lifting or maybe have taken a bit of a hiatus, completing a plan with this much volume is not recommended for the reasons listed earlier: less-than-ideal progress and a higher chance of injury from overuse and recovery issues. Delayed onset muscle soreness DOMS can be common when completing this training method.

DOMS is a symptom that accompanies many forms of intense exercise, and is experienced consistently in the realm of strength sports and lifting weights. The negative side effects of stiffness, tenderness and reduced muscle strength are caused from muscular damage at the microscopic level as muscles fibers literally tear throughout the course of heavy exercise. Tearing your muscles may sound extreme or even worrisome, but it's actually a positive thing because it is a direct indicator that your body underwent enough of a training stimulus to breakdown and adapt by building lean body mass and developing strength.

In simple terms, the fibers respond to the brutal beating by repairing themselves and becoming stronger than before. During this time, strength levels can drop significantly. Keep this in mind throughout the course of the training method—your strength and abilities will increase significantly at the end when volume decreases and recovery increases.

In short, trust in the process and know that it works—extremely well. With all of that said, just because you may have a workout or even series of workouts that do not produce DOMS, that does not mean you aren't progressing. It simply means you did not undergo enough stimulus and muscular trauma to cause soreness. It is very common for advanced lifters to get sore much less often—they are simply much more adapted to the muscular trauma caused from lifting weights.

Bottom line: getting sore is great, but if you aren't getting sore that's perfectly fine as long as you are following the program and staying consistent. Like any effective coach, Boris Sheiko is an advocate of training safely; that's one of the main reasons why he encourages training with the supervision of a coach. When this isn't possible, you must be able to adjust and modify your program from day-to-day depending on your given performance level. The practice of lending attention to how you 'feel' on any given day is a common trait found among different eastern European training methods.

The Bulgarian method , for example, is built around this concept as lifters must alter their weights each training session depending on the subjective variable of how strong or weak they feel. Bulgarian training shares many similarities with that of the Russians which is to be expected given the geographic closeness. In fact, Boris says he analyzes each week of training twice.

First, he analyzes the written program for the next week by comparing it to the volume and intensity of previous weeks and then he follows up with an analysis that takes into account how the lifter actually performed during the previous week. Simply put, if you found yourself lagging and having difficulty, you should reduce the workload for the next week. Conversely, if you found it to be a breeze, step up the volume or intensity a bit to fit how you're feeling.

If you do decide to increase volume or intensity, do so slowly and incrementally. It can be easy to get caught up in the pursuit of making gains and become oblivious to obvious red flags. While the Sheiko method is designed to be challenging, it isn't supposed to be painful or injury-inducing. A large aspect of being an intermediate or advanced lifter is simply being mature enough to understand when to back off.

Anyone can train hard, but very few can do so in a mature and intelligent fashion that makes sure progress stays and injuries never surface. You will lose much, much more time to even moderate injuries than you will lose from simply taking some time off for a deload or a complete vacation from lifting. Mike Israetel, who holds a doctorate in sport physiology from East Tennessee State University and is a leader of Renaissance Periodization, has repeatedly touted the benefits of taking two-week periods off from lifting throughout the year to fully recover and keep injuries away.

While DOMS can be a nice excuse to couch surf all day, active recovery can be much more beneficial. Sometimes this can be as simple as going for a short walk, or as Boris recommends, taking a few light laps in the pool and then spending time in the sauna.

As with anything in the realm of strength sports, experiment to find what you respond to best. You may even choose to complete light accessory exercises or other forms of resistance training as well if you feel your body can handle it. However, always make changes slowly and incrementally to better understand how your body responds and adapts. There are several measures one can take to reduce the symptoms of DOMS, but the real 'cure' is simply rest.

Using ice, applying pressure and compression, performing self-massages, and as a last-case resort taking NSAIDs Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs like ibuprofen are all useful for dealing with painful swelling and stiffness. Finally, there are several steps one can take to avoid more severe cases of DOMS that can be literally crippling for short periods of time; exercising the calves vigorously when they haven't been trained regularly is one example of this—you won't be able to walk properly.

The main key to preventing these more severe cases of DOMS is to simply increasing volume gradually over time to allow the body to properly adjust and acclimate to the changes.

As you are very likely aware at this point, Sheiko programs are very high-volume and require a strong strong base of strength and overall work capacity in the realm of lifting weights. Attempting to use a plan too advanced for your current numbers or training experience is a sure-fire way to experience severe DOMS and even get injured. Boris has made it very clear that the universal programs should be used only as a starting point from which further changes should be made to accommodate for individual needs, weaknesses, and preferences.

This is just good advice that you should apply to all programs and training you do. Just because something is written a specific way doesn't mean you have to follow it blindly. Remember that everything was simply created by someone else, for someone else. If something isn't working efficiently within the plan, don't be afraid to make changes. With that said, before making any adjustments complete the plan in full as is. This will allow you to better understand what changes should be made, and more importantly why they should be made.

As with much of the training doctrine published by Boris, there are many similarities. The most vivid commonality is the desire to prepare athletes for competition. The 3-month plan is no exception and provides a powerful alternative to the 4-month plan outlined earlier in the article.

Boris believes top-level competitors can only perform at their absolute maximum about one or two times a year, and therefore recommends planning for peak performance during the athletic events that are most important to you. This competition-centric point of view plays out naturally through the course of intelligent periodization—the body adapts best through an undulating form of training sometimes hard, sometimes easy and Boris' high-volume approach very much accounts for this periodization phenomenon.

Instead of trying to peak and hit maxes year round, focus is given to what actually matters: training hard and making progress. Enough preamble. You probably want to know what this looks like.

The Sheiko program has you lifting loads well below your maximum. This is all about familiarizing you with the weights, near-obsessive specificity, fine tuning your form without overtraining your body, and taking full advantage of hypertrophy. The goal here is to get all of your reps in, not work yourself to failure. Getting all of your reps in while ratcheting up the weight over the course of your workout is a clever combination of strength training and encouraging muscle growth.

This is spreading your efforts all over your body. The Russian Classification Chart compares your weight class to your raw cumulative weightlifting ability and places you into a class based on that. The Sheiko program is about keeping tension on your muscles.

The high volume you can get in the means more microtrauma your muscles will be enduring. Microtrauma means your body will send out signals to repair and beef up your muscles. Rest is just as important as working out. Working out without resting is a waste of your time.

Your strength comes from your muscles. Goodluck with Sheiko man! My mate started Smolov and after the base cycle went from kg to a kg squat way below parallel! Which Sheiko Program is Right for Me? What Sheiko program should I be doing.

Or should I even be doing Sheiko? I started with