Today’s episode features Max Aita, head coach of Team Juggernaut weightlifting.

Max has been involved in the sports of Weightlifting and Powerlifting as a coach and athlete for the better part of 2 decades.  Having trained under legendary coaches Ivan Abadjiev and Steve Gough for weightlifting and alongside the likes of Mark Bell for powerlifting, Max’s experience and knowledge is extensive.

Max is a masterful coach who has studied Soviet training systems extensively, and has coached National Record holders in Weightlifting (such as Alyssa Ritchey who recently set the US record in the 49kg category in Olympic weightlifting) as well as All Time world record holders in Powerlifting.

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed is chatting training with coaches of various disciplines, in general physical preparation, track and field, baseball, swimming, and in this case, Olympic weightlifting.   A quote I like is “not being able to read the label while you are inside the bottle”, and by that I feel that by not talking with coaches processes outside our own particular field, we lose insights our own field may not have considered due to contextual restrictions and habituation.  By talking to expert coaches of all individual sport disciplines, we can better understand the global training process and Max is an incredible coach we can all learn from, regardless of our corner of the field.

Although many coaches would look at a chat regarding Olympic lifting in terms of potential transfer to non-strength sport athletics (we do talk about this on the first 1/3 of the show), this episode is really about Max’s training process for Olympic weightlifters, his periodization, and how he approaches special and maximal strength.  For those familiar with this podcast, and/or, Soviet training methods, the Bondarchuk influence on Max’s system is significant, and concepts from Max’s training organization can be carried over to any sport process.

On today’s episode, Max talks about Olympic lifting in context of training non-strength sport athletes, the use of the Olympic lifts (and any other non-primary sport movement) as a tool, what Max has learned from the Bulgarians and beyond, as well as the nuts and bolts of his own training design and sequencing.

This podcast was recorded in person at Max’s Gym in Emeryville, California.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.





Key Points

Max’s description of the Bulgarian system
The hardest training time period Max has gone through
How Max would approach utilizing (or not utilizing) the Olympic lifts in a non-strength sport environment
Exercise sequencing and selection for Olympic lifting and subsequent principles for training any athletes
What Max has learned from training with the Bulgarians and what his training looks like currently
What Max’s periodization for his Olympic lifting program looks like
Max’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the Bulgarian system into his own training process
The importance of rest and recovery in Max’s system
Max’s thoughts on the squat-weight bias in the Western training world relative to other sport skills




“Coaches biggest problems is that they construct a framework around their thinking, and then try to fit situations into their framework”

“You (some elite athletes particularly) can get away with an enormous amount of unproductive work”

“(In the aftermath of Bulgarian style weight training) Now my perspective is how can I do less, how can I maximize training to be the most effective it can possibly be”

“Some people are trying to fix things all the time, but they are not even in the right (athletic) position”

“If you just try to pull the bar as high as you can or go as heavy as possible, you might get benefits from that in the short term that seem productive,