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

Pavel Tsatsouline (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1999

Discover: How to get super strong without training to muscle failure or exhaustion. How to hack into your 'muscle software' and magnify your power and muscle definition. How to get super strong without putting on an ounce of weight. Or how to build massive muscles with a classified Soviet Special Forces workout. How to mould your whole body into an off-planet rock with only two exercises. How to increase your bench press by ten pounds overnight. How to get a tremendous workout on the road without any equipment. How futuristic techniques can squeeze more horsepower out of your body-engine. How to maximise muscular tension for traffic-stopping muscular definition. How to minimise fatigue and get the most out of your strength training. How to ensure high energy after your workout. How to get stronger and harder without getting bigger. How to become super strong and live to tell about it.

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

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Dragon Door Publications; 1st edition (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0938045199
• ISBN-13: 978-0938045199
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (128 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Weight Training

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 110 people found the following review helpful

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

By eugene

Format: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

110 of 124 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 . VINE™ VOICE

Format: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).

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth it July 25, 2000

By Sang O. Kim

Format:Paperback

The great thing about the book "Power to the People!" is that it tells the readers what not to do when training for strength and why not. As you read the book, you will keep saying to yourself: "so that's why I'm not getting stronger!" Pavel points out all the things that are wrong with conventional weight training(and there are lots of it)and shows the readers what they need to do to get stronger, but not necessarily bigger. Although there are some technical details that maybe unclear to beginners, Pavel summarizes everything into five principles: 1)Lift heavy 2)two sets only 3) 5 reps only 4)Rest 3-5 minutes 5)Never lift to failure. He explains mechanics of 3 core exercises in meticulous details so just about everyone can do it right, but I think video version of this book will be great too since it's easier to demonstrate actual moves on film. My only complaint is that it didn't have anything about endurance but I guess that's because that's whole another topic. At any rate, it was definitely worth it.