Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American [Paperback]

Pavel Tsatsouline (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2000

How would you like to own a world class body-whatever your present condition- by doing only two exercises, for twenty minutes a day?" A body so lean, ripped and powerful looking, you won't believe your own reflection when you catch yourself in the mirror. And what if you could do it without a single supplement, without having to waste your time at a gym and with only a 150 bucks of simple equipment?And how about not only being stronger than you've ever been in your life, but having higher energy and better performance in whatever you do?How would you like to have an instant download of the world's absolutely most effective strength secrets? To possess exactly the same knowledge that created world-champion athletes-and the strongest bodies of their generation?"Pavel Tsatsouline's Power to the People!-Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American delivers all of this and more.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Pavel Tsatsouline has burst onto the American health and fitness scene like a Russian cyclone. He razes the sacred temples of fitness complacency and smugness with his revolutionary concepts and ideas. If you want a new and innovative approach to the age old dilemma of physical transformation, you've struck the mother-lode." -- Marty Gallagher, World Masters Powerlifting champion and Parrillo Performance Press

"Pavel and his book are the best imports from Russia since Siberian Ginseng! A fountain of information... an elixir for the body." " -- Fairfax Hackley, Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic Martial Arts Seminar Director

"Whether you're young or old, a beginner or an elite athlete, training in your room or in the most high tech facility, if there was only one book I could recommend to help you reach your ultimate physical potential, this would be it. Simple, concise and truly reader friendly, this amazing book contains it alleverything you need to knowwhat exercises (only two!), how to do them (unique detailed information you'll find nowhere else), and why. Follow its advice and, believe it or not, you'll be stronger and more injury-resistant immediately. I guarantee it. I only wish I'd had a book like this when I first began training. Follow this program for three months and you'll not only be amazed but hooked. It is the ultimate program for "Everyman" AND Woman! I thought I knew a lot with a Ph.D. and 40 years of training experience...but I learned a lot and it's improved my training significantly." -- Jim Wright, Ph. D., Senior Science Editor, Flex Magazine, Weider Group Editor

About the Author

Pavel Tsatsouline, Master of Sports, is a former physical training instructor for Spetsnaz, the Soviet Special Forces, an articulate speaker, and an iconoclastic authority on flexibility and strength training. Pavel was nationally ranked in the Russian ethnic strength sport of kettlebell lifting and holds a Soviet Physical Culture Institute degree in physiology and coaching.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Dragon Door Publications; 1st edition (January 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0938045199
• ISBN-13: 978-0938045199
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Weight Training

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

94 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars best review of all, March 14, 2004

By 

eugene (La, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American (Paperback)

i found this review of the book on the sfuk website and found it to be a very detailed and nonbaised. here it is:
Power To The People : Russian Strength Training Secrets

Dinosaur Training author, Brook Kubik, wrote (in Hardgainer mag issue 44).."what do you do if you only have a barbell? - no stands, rack or bench?" He said you deadlift and press. "Don't you think you'd be big and strong all over if you could standing press big poundages and deadlift two or three times as much?"

Tsatsouline takes this philosophy and runs with it in Power To The People.

Tale of the Tape: PTTP is about 125 pages, including a few ads for his other books.

What's the book about?

Maximum strength using minimum exercise and training time
Using bare minimum equipment (a Barbell)
Very few sets & reps
Never train to failure
Flexible training cycles
Whilst it mainly concentrates on strength rather than size, Pavel does include his "Russian Bear" routine
Tsatsouline's book revolves around just 2 exercises, done for just 2 'work sets' each with just 5 reps in each set. Read that again. Yes, just 2 exercises and 2 sets of 5 reps! Your entire workout is done with 20 reps.

The first exercise is the the deadlift. Pavel much prefers it to the squat - although you wonder if it's because Pavel looks more like a deadlifter than a natural squatter.

His second exercise is the Side Press. - the old time strongman lift. Basically you hike a barbell overhead with one hand. Yes that's right, just one hand. Arthur Saxon could hoist over 300lbs that way and Pavel reason's that if you can get strong in that, then that's good enough.

Good Stuff:

Pavel thinks machines are crap - yey!
Pavel champion's the 'big exercises' - multi-joint 'whole-body' exercises
You only need a barbell
You don't need to train for hours (ten mins a day should do it)
Minimum fatigue! Yep, you read that right.
Good explanation of training cycles
Good instruction on deadlifting and side press technique.
Never trains to failure - echoing the way Olympic lifters train + similarities to John McKean and John Christy's writings.
No gloves, no belts, no mirrors and no fancy training shoes.
Easy to read - ecletic use of quotes from Mark Twain to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Not-so-Good Stuff:

The writing is a bit cheesy. He hams up the "Evil Russian" bit a lot.
Actually it'sa bit more than cheesy, it often comes over like those 3 page "Finish a Fight in 3 Seconds using Secret Russia Special Ops techques" adverts. eg. "Build Massive Muscles with a classified Soviet Special Forces Workout" - classfied? huh?
You need to buy a barbell or have daily access to one
Doesn't fully explain some of his theories, instead he asks you to trust him and says, "The Party is always right"
Could have been a bigger book, 125 pages isn't much - see above.
Pavel cherry-picks quotes from other Strength Writers that agree with his theories, yet the methods those writers employ are totally different to PTTP. For example, he quotes Dr Ken Leistner several times to support PTTP, yet at the same time, trashes the HIT method that Dr Ken avocates. Same with Ken Hutchins and Super Slow. And he quotes Stuart McRobert in his "Power to the People Manifesto" - even though he is against the training method that McRobert promotes. Odd.
The 2 page chapter on Power Stretching is just an ad for another book of his.

Pavel's methods have certain similarities to the way Olympic lifters train - ie. Very low reps, never to failure, long rests between sets, frequent training (if you follow Pavel, you'll know he's up for training 2-3 times a day). It was also very similar to John McKean method of 'Single-ing" (McKean is a champion weightlifter in Old-Style lifts, like the Hip lift - he also trained his phenomenally strong son).

PTTP also shares similarities to John Christy & Stuart McRobert's work to a certain extent - ie. abbreviated routines to avoid overtraining. His "Russian Bear" routine is very similar to the German Volume Training (GVT) that was trendy a few years ago - so in theory it should work.

But does it work?

Yeah. Sort of. I tried it after a very long layoff and within 8 weeks moved my deadlift from 80kgs to 200kgs. Training was novel and fun. Doing only 4 work sets lets you fit a workout in pretty much anytime day or night. However my own gain was a strength regain - ie back to previous levels of strength. After that I needed to cut down on frequency - Deadlifting once a week was better. Which brought me back to a McRobert style of training. However, your recovery abilities may be better, so it's worth a shot.

In theory it works, but I wonder if the 2 exercise, 20 minute a day regime is tailored as a 'quick fix' sales pitch than actually the most effective way to train given the same amount of time per week.

Conclusion

Really enjoyed the book. Well worth getting if you have an interest in strength training. It's particularly good if you're looking for a way to train with minimal equipment.

It's cool to be able to fit in a quick workout at anytime of the day - eg. you can get one in whilst waiting for the kettle to boil for a cuppa - and doing only 2 exercises for 2 sets is a refreshing change. Because you never train to failure, the routine doesn't leave you wiped out, like, say a HIT routine.

But I don't think I could recommend it to a skinny 'hardgainer' looking to gain strength and mass. The Brawn series of books would be much better for that, as I know it works. However, if you've got a few years of weightlifting under your belt then it's well worth a blast - and you could use the same methods to train Olympic style exercises like the Push Press, Overhead Squat, Power Clean etc.
Author : Pavel Tsatsouline | Reviewer: Jonathan | Score : 7 out of 10

102 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good info, purposely limited to sell another book later, April 23, 2004

By 

. (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American (Paperback)

This book is essentialy about deadlifting and overhead pressing. Deadlifting has been the subject of much agreement in the fitness world as the most important barbell movement to enhance athletic performance. The varieties of and tricks for improving DL performance can be put on two pages. Overhead presses are treated as the pushing equivalent of the DL's pulling. SP's are rightfully more imporant than bench presses, or for that matter, perhaps any other single movement. Ok. Another two pages. Pavel makes it a whole forty dolllar book, and charges another forty for two more exercises in another book,(pushups and squats), in his -Naked Warrior-Pavel makes a big point of the superiority of building strength without mass due to the possibility of losing the mass, and thus the strength, in harsh circumstances. The -reality- is that strength built without mass must recieve constant training to be maintained, and is very specific to the way it's trained, while mass is much slower to be lost,(along with its strength), and is applicable to whatever strength you apply it to, with a little bit of training. Unless you are training for powerlifting, the possible damaging effect of the heavy weight eventually needed in this method far outweigh the benefits. (add 10.08/05): In Arthur Jones' "Nautilus Bulletin" #1, chapter 9, Jones essentially recommends the same program in Pavel's book,(overhead presses and deadlifts), with the addition of squats. This was originally published in 1973, and the individual ideas had been stated by Jones long before that. The point is that: 1/this stuff isn't new, 2/the split between 'functional ' trainers and bodybuilders is a modern creation with no meaning to clear thinkers such as Jones, and 3/ it's free!(on the internet).

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is worth the price., February 11, 2001

By 

Christian Campfield (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American (Paperback)

Reading the other reviews of this book helped me decide to go ahead with the purchase. I have been lifting weights on and off for over ten years. After some consistant training I always had a problem of getting too tight and feeling restricted in my movements. This was even more of a problem as I got more and more involved in martial arts. After all these years I finally found a method to get stronger without feeling like I am loosing flexability (I think I've even gained some range of motion). So far (2 months) I find the claims the author makes on the back cover to be no exaggeration - he's all he is cracked up to be.

If you are interested in strength, I recommend this book over all others. Don't waste you time or money on anything else. The author's ideas are contrary to the popular methods in use. But, I find that his ideas match my actual experience. For example, the basic rule of "bulking up" is to do heavy weight for only a few reps. Absolutely not true. For years I bought into that theory. Luckily I came accross this book.

Lastly, I recommend this book to all martial artists. You don't have to look like a freak off a California beach to be monsterously stong. In fact you can be equally as strong, probably stronger in MUCH less time. Finally there is a safe way to get strong for those of us that are "chemically challenged."

(I should also mention that although I have been getting consitant and powerfull results, I don't know if it works for everyone.) Good luck.