Pavel 3 To 5 Method

[Lynn Hepler]

ConsiderPavel Tsatsouline's approach with the initial image: To become a better pitcher, you have to pitch a lot of baseballs. To become a better archer, you have to fire a lot of arrows. All of these motor patterns are skills, and skills need to be practiced.

This style of training is so named because it greases the neurological groove to help your nervous system rapidly become competent at performing a particular movement. Because it produces no significant amount of fatigue, it allows you to do more total reps per day and week than any other training method, maximizing the amount of practice you get.

Since grease the groove training works primarily via neurological adaptations and form practice, the benefits are mostly specific to the movement being performed. Doing GTG-style push-ups will make you better at push-ups, but have little carryover to the bench press, for instance.

A+A is a subtype of Soviet anti-glycolytic training (AGT). The above Kettlebells StrongFirst training plan is based on the research by three professors, three giants, two Soviet and one Swedish: Verkhoshansky, Selouyanov, strand.

Although originally A+A was developed for elite athletes, it can be scaled to any level through exercise and workload selection. (In contrast, some powerful all-around methods like The Quick and the Dead work only for experienced athletes.)

Since I have no other sports or on-the-job physical practice commitments and since I feel I coould work a bit on raw strength I was planning to combine 2 days of C&J program with.2 days of basic barbell training (specifically using Tactical Barbell planning using Squat/bench Press/Pullups, reasonably periodized over 6 week blocks, mostly 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps of 60-85% 1TRM)

Question about progression: When ready to progress and you begin adding a second clean (C+J+C), do you return the kettlebell all the way to the floor after the jerk? or do you return the KB to a hanging position with a pause and do the next clean from there? or do you transition smoothly/seamlessly from the jerk into another clean without the KB touching the floor?

Not Pavel, but if you can say the Pledge of Allegiance comfortably, you should be fine. A general rule of thumb would be that if your breathing returns to its pretalking rhythm by the third breath after you finish speaking, then you were able to talk comfortably.

The HR at which the talk test becomes UNcomfortable is your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR). Depending on how fit/trained a person is, this HR number can vary widely. My LTHR is currently about 182, so if yours is similar you should be fine at that heart rate.

I am afraid I will be missing out on the benefits of training Squats and Pullups, since they are sports specific, but I prefer to keep things simple and I would rather just stick to this program if I could maintain overall strength.

For your sports you do not have to add squats, with the exception of a few goblet squats for mobility and squat pattern maintenance. If you do decide to squat, the best squat for a climber is the Hack squat. This seminar is one place to learn it:

You get more power and power endurance benefits and dynamic quad loading with KBSF C&J plans but you are missing out on the many benefits of get-ups unless you incorporate them in your warm-up or periodically revisit S&S or the swing + getup + goblet squat KBSF plan.

What 20-30 minute training sessions can I combine with the C&J program to get everything I want back again (fat loss, strength, hypertrophy, conditioning, cardio, work capacity, etc.)? I enjoy training 4-6x/week when my sessions are short (30 minutes and less).

Could this be combined with two low-volume total-body 20-30 minute circuit-based hypertrophy sessions using dumbbells / kettlebells, resistance bands, body-weight, sliders, and TRX suspension trainer (no barbells)?

Say once reaching 30:00 easy repeats with 1*C+J and you start moving to C+J+C, instead of stopping once you fail the talk test, you drop back down to 1*C+J to finish the session? I figure this would allow the longer aerobic benefit, while allowing progression to more difficult variations.

Comrade Chief. Great read.. Thank you.

Any chance to limit the cleans and still do the protocol?

High volume cleans really affect the elbows.

I can Jerk and Push Press all day..

Thank you for your time.

Thanks for the post, Pavel. Otherwise, I would have overlooked the Kettlebells Strongfirst resource entirely, and it is such a good resource for non-fighters as well. I do have a question regarding the 30 min selection and applying these programs to strength-endurance sports such as OCR, where events may last well over 30 minutes. Should these practice sessions be extended beyond 30 minutes at times, or just use a heavier weight that still taxes you aerobically for the 30 minutes?

I wish I had the information I have learned through your writings back in my paratrooper days! Is this program sufficiently biased toward mitochondrial respiration to make it a good compliment to Q&D? Thank you!

B!, absolutely. If you can do burpees without flexing your spine, you can apply the same protocol. If you are using a less comprehensive exercise, e.g., squats, I will explain how to do it in an upcoming newsletter.

Marcin, the plan works just as well with two bells; there are plans in the Kettlebells StrongFirst video. In a nutshell, do a set every minute, not every 30sec, in the listed plan A. But you need to check with your doc first; you might need therapy before starting C&Js.

My question: I love this routine so far and I am thinking of adding another day (training 3x a week instead of 2x a week) but I am wondering if it would it be more beneficial for GPP to just add a day (or 2) of heavy swings instead to have some of the benefits that Swings provide.

Great article. I have purchased this program and it is also great.

Always wanted to know if c&j plan A and B could be expanded into a 3 day a week program. Sounds like that will be covered in the emails to follow.

The twice a week frequency is optimal for people with high physical demands elsewhere (or a minimal effective dose for busy people). If your department does kill you with PT, feel free to bump up to 3 times a week (and even 4).

My father is well, thank you. Turning 85 this spring. After over a year of not touching a barbell and training with a 32kg kettlebell he deadlifted 300 the first time back and now is rapidly regaining his DL strength.

I had been doing S&S religiously in the spring, messed up my knee and stopped training. Now restarting S&S. Absolutely love the simplicity of it and how I become stronger over time. How does it compare to this program? Can I do both programs and alternate without overdoing things?

Let me be the first to comment and say that I am very excited about this article! If you are taking questions for the newsletter here, I would like to ask exactly how to program the kettlebell swing into six-week rotations of Q&D and A+A (as mentioned in your book).

I first met Pavel a few years ago at a course in Minneapolis. I had only recently rekindled my interest in strength training after a yearlong hiatus to study meditation and learn how to teach it to others, and was looking to get back into it. The description of the course read like an ad for the simple meditation techniques I teach: Simple, Easy, Cheap, Effective. Highly Effective.

I took that knowledge home with me, and with a few borrowed concrete weights, managed to deadlift 245 for 5 reps in a relatively short period of time. I had never deadlifted before, and started with 85 pounds or so. Great gains I thought. My travels and lifestyle took me away from weight lifting again soon after this, and I only picked it up again last spring. Using the 3-5 method, I worked up to 5x5 with a 300 lb. deadlift (I ran out of weights) and soon after that to a 3x3 240 lb one legged deadlift, both legs. I used the Bent press as my other lift of choice and was soon hefting 75 lbs overhead rather easily for reps.

You get the idea. Now, here comes the fun part. When you can no longer perform your allotted number of sets and reps in good form, drop the final set. For example your deadlift progress would look something like this, assuming your 5 Rep Max is 160 lbs:

This is a gain of 25 lbs to your 5RM in about 3 months, and probably took less than five hours total in three months working out (considering 5 minute rests between sets). Not bad. At this point, you may either rest a few days and try for a new one rep max lift, or rest a week and begin again, starting with weight based on your new 5RM of 180 lbs.

I used it these ways while I experimented with the Smolov cycle for deadlift. Worked nicely, although in retrospect, I probably did too much warmup work with cleans and snatches added before my DL exercise.

Power To The People: 111 pages with important pictures of Pavel himself holding a Barbell over his head. And other important pictures with Pavel holding his arms apart. Also, for some odd reason many pages not completed (gee I wonder why). If he wanted to the book could have been written in about 65 pages.

I love to draw on black paper with white charcoal. I use only sight-size method of measuring, which fits how I see and comes to me naturally. This method has advantage over other drawing techniques such as comparative and relational measuring techniques, because it's easy to see values on the subject.

Most art schools start teaching students to draw on white paper with a black pencil, unfortunately my mind resisted from the start, and over time I switched completely to draw with white pencil on black paper. I found it to be much more efficient, to seek and place the "visual light" of the subject on the paper. I focus my drawings (and painting) on the light source qualities - the intensity, angle and the effects of reflective light on the subject.

Pavel earned his Magister of Mathematics degree from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria in 1987 and his PhD in Mathematics in 1994 from Virginia Tech. His interest in the national labs and their work stems from summer internships at LANL during 1993 and 1994.

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