Poliquin - Healthy. Lean. Strong.

Training Articles

Tweet Print

Very Dumb Training Recommendations: Part 6

Let’s send the dangerous Litvinov workout back to Russia

Strongmen, powerlifters, and throwers in track and field have been known to challenge themselves with odd feats of strength and physical fitness. If these challenges motivate these athletes to workout harder, then I’m all for it – plus they make for some interesting stories to share with your training partners. But instead of recognizing these accomplishments for the anomalies they are, some strength coaches and “boot camp” instructors are enthusiastically recommending these bizarre strength and conditioning protocols to their clients. Case in point: the Litvinov workout.

The Litvinov workout was inspired by Sergey Nikolaevich Litvinov, a Russian hammer thrower who broke three world records and won a gold medal in the 1988 Olympic Games. Litvinov was only 5-foot-10 and weighed about 89 kilos, so being able to achieve these results demonstrates that he had remarkable explosive strength. His lifetime best in the hammer throw was 284.5 feet (86.74m).

The story that has been told is that American discus thrower John Powell saw Litvinov perform the following workout during the 1983 World Championships in track and field:

Front squat: 405 pounds x 8 reps, no rest
Run: 400 meters in 75 seconds
Rest briefly, and repeat the cycle two more times!

Impressive? Absolutely. Brutally hard? No question. Smart? No chance. But before I get into the physiological rationale – or rather, lack of it – for doing such a weird workout in the first place, it’s necessary to take care of some administrative details. Such as footwear.

For maximum performance and safety, it’s important to wear appropriate footwear for the particular sport. Pick up a running shoe in your right hand and a weightlifting shoe in your left. What you’ll notice is that the lifting shoe is much heavier than the running shoe. The running shoe is flexible to allow for the natural rotation of the feet during running; the lifting shoe is rigid to allow maximum stability. The lifting shoe has an elevated heel, a design that enables the shins to incline forward so that the back can maintain a more upright position during the squat. My point is that for optimal performance and safety, lifting and running require radically different footwear. As such, anyone performing this workout would need to continually change shoes, or they’d have to compromise with a cross-training shoe, which is not ideal for either squatting or running.
The next issue is where are you going to do this workout? – and for that matter, how are you going to do it? Let’s explore.

First, you need to work out in a gym that has an indoor track or is near a field – unless you plan on running in the street or around the parking lot (which brings us back to the issue of proper footwear). Of course, you could simply jump on a high-speed treadmill, unless you’re training in my gym, which doesn’t have a high-speed treadmill – or, for that matter, any cardio equipment.

Even if you do have access to such a setup, to avoid having to load weights and boot people off your squat rack, before you attempt the Litvinov workout it’s important to make the following announcement to the gym management and membership: “I will now be doing the Litvinov workout – so please do not use the power rack for the next 45 minutes even though much of this time it will be unattended.” Such courtesy will no doubt be greatly appreciated.

Next is the warm-up, which tends to be oddly missing from many of the articles that I’ve seen written about this workout protocol. It would take several warm-up sets to prepare for a max front squat for 8 reps, and at least a 30-minute warm-up would be necessary to safely perform three all-out 400-meter runs. More questions: Do you warm up for the run first? Or do you do all the warm-ups for the front squat, and then warm up for the 400? Or maybe a combination? Front squat 95 pounds x 8 reps and then a 100-meter jog; front squat 135 x 8 and then a 200-meter run, etc. (i.e., lift, run, lift, run, etc.)? A little more direction, please.

Now let’s look at the exercise selection. The front squat is a great lower body exercise, but it’s not advisable to perform it for higher reps. Not only does the pressure on the chest make it difficult to breathe during this exercise, but with higher reps the upper back postural muscles will tire quickly, causing the back to round. Rounding the back places adverse stress on the spine and often the wrists and elbows. Most elite Olympic lifters will seldom perform more than 3 reps in the front squat. If this lift is used for explosiveness, then higher intensities should be used and this would necessitate performing lower reps.

For the second exercise, it’s true that sprinters often display powerful leg development. In fact, the muscle mass of the hamstrings in sprinters often reaches such a level that the gluteal fold, which is the crease between the glutes and the hamstrings, virtually disappears! But the 400 meters is a run, not a sprint, unless you’re a world-class athlete (the world record is 43.18 seconds, by the way) – and a run will not be using the highest-threshold fibers as a sprint would, especially when those leg muscles are fatigued first with a heavy set of front squats. Thus, by itself, or in combination with squats, it would be wrong to consider 400 meters an optimal distance to develop explosive strength.

And adding potential injury to this workout insult, there is also the issue of how the squats will affect running performance. After you squat heavy, there is still some residual muscle tension in the legs that could affect the ability of the muscles to contract efficiently. And such inefficiency could result in an injury, especially if the athlete does not practice this type of training on a regular basis.

As for the idea that the Litvinov workout is designed for powerful athletes such as hammer throwers, I would look towards the training methods of Anatoly Bondarchuk, who is arguably the greatest hammer throwing coach in history. Bondarchuk has written many articles and books on his training methods, but I’ve yet to find any reference to the Litvinov workout schemes. I’ve also contacted a PICP coach who trained under Bondarchuk, and I was assured that he did not use such odd training methods.

So why did Litvinov perform such a workout? One possible reason is simply to psych out his competitors – gamesmanship, if you will. After all, when you see athletes who are better than you performing unusual training methods, it makes you wonder if you are using the best system to physically prepare for your competition. Russian weightlifters were thought to also practice the same sort of gamesmanship, performing odd lifts in the training halls prior to major competitions. And the Russians aren’t the only ones to have capitalized on gamesmanship: one elite hammer throw champion told me that Hungarian throwers claimed they swam 10 kilometers a day for conditioning

The Litvinov workout (as well as many spinoffs of this method that are also being promoted in cyberspace) is being prescribed to well-conditioned athletes, which is bad enough. What’s worse is that it’s also being recommended to individuals of all ages who just want to stay fit and lose a few pounds. Based upon the arguments I’ve presented, I hope you agree that recommending the Litvinov to anyone is irresponsible – and also just plain dumb.