A Brief History: Special Exercises
Reframing Special Exercises for What They Are: Internal Strength Training - A Primer
Special Exercises
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Søren Kierkegaard
While the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard likely had zero idea what special exercises are, his quote still conveys an important point. Any coach who reads the works of the Soviets will inevitably come across the term "special exercises." When encountering this term and understanding the success of the Soviet sports system, a coach might believe that mastering special exercises will make them a better strength practitioner – and they are correct.
To effectively use special exercises in the future, we must first understand their genesis and evolution. By doing so, strength practitioners will grasp the potency of this concept. We will follow up with a subscriber video on this topic as well.
Absolute Definition of Special Exercises
Let’s start with a simple working definition of special exercises: any exercise that is specific to an athlete and targets their biological limiting constraint on high performance. When executed optimally, this training work stimulates the development of that specific constraint.
The Genesis of Special Exercises
Exercises intended to target specific limitations affecting high performance originated from the former Soviet sports system. Soviet strength coaches referred to them simply as "Special Exercises." While it's unclear who first developed the concept or coined the term special exercises - perhaps it was a logical conclusion convergently reached independently by various coaches - it is known that all the renowned Soviet strength coaches we still discuss today, such as Verkhoshansky, Medvedev, Prilepin, and Bondarchuk, extensively utilized these exercises in their training programs.
Soviet Coaches Who Utilized Special Exercises
We want to briefly introduce and give credit to the strength coaches who came before us. By learning about the innovators of this concept and their successes, we can better understand how to apply the concept of special exercises to the training populations we work with.
Dr. Verkhoshansky (Track and Field Coach and Sports Scientist):
He was one of the first Soviet coaches to systematically utilize special exercises in training for high performance in the 1970s. In his manual, "Fundamentals of Special Strength," he discusses the concept of special exercises. During this time, Soviet track athletes began incorporating 20-45 special exercises into their training.
Prilepin and Medvedev (Soviet Olympic Weightlifting Coaches):
These coaches systematically utilized special exercises with their absolute strength athletes, developing at least 100 different weightlifting snatch and clean and jerk special exercises. Coach Medvedev's "A System of Multi-Year Training in Weightlifting" emphasizes the importance of performing special exercises and lists the most effective ones for different Olympic lifts.1
Anatoliy Bondarchuk (Olympic Gold Medalist & Soviet Hammer Throw Coach):
Like his peers Verkhoshansky, Prilepin, and Medvedev, he systematically utilized well over 100 different special exercises in the training of his hammer throwers. In his books, he coined the term "transfer of training" and demonstrated in his research the transfer from certain special exercises to higher levels of human performance in specific sporting events.
Special Exercises: In the West
No surprise to subscribers of Absolute that the strength coach responsible for bringing the Soviet concept of special exercises into the West was Louie Simmons. During the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, he was one of the few strength coaches in the West who read about the Soviet strength coaches mentioned earlier and actually applied the concepts he learned from them to train his powerlifters.
After suffering multiple low back injuries during his own powerlifting training, he invented and subsequently patented machines like the reverse hyper. This special exercise enabled him to rehabilitate his spine. The reverse hyper became synonymous with Louie Simmons and contributed significantly to his worldwide renown.
Special Exercises in 2024: Internal Strength Training?
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