Sets stop well short of the point of fatigue.You don’t do several in quick succession, as you would in a normal workout.

You do one at a time and rest at least 15 to 30 minutes between sets.

The sets are spread out across your day.

The total training volume is very high, often on the order of 5 to 20 sets per day, every day.Usually, you’re working with a resistance that’s light enough for you to do as many as 50 repetitions (although in this training you’ll stop short of that, because the point is not to train to the point of failure). For example, you might do a grease-the-groove program focused on pull-ups. Grease the Groove (GtG) training follows five principles: It’s particularly useful for athletes in sports that have weight classes, such as boxing and wrestling - an issue to which I’ll return toward the end of this article. This approach has also begun to catch on somewhat with bodybuilders and athletes as a way of building strength endurance with minimal fatigue and weight gain. As you’ll see in a bit, the evidence does seem to support this.

They work by producing maximal neurological adaptations to the movement you’re doing. Pavel believes that these techniques optimally “grease” (metaphorically speaking) the neurological “groove” of a given exercise. It’s also widely used by individual members of all branches of the armed forces, as it happens to be an ideal method of training for many military physical fitness tests. In fact, this style of training has since been adopted by many Western military and law enforcement organizations, including the United States Marine Corps, Navy SEALs, and Secret Service. Grease the Groove is based on techniques he developed during the Cold War. Pavel is most well known for introducing kettlebell training to the West, but before that he built his career by training the Spetsnaz to not only be stronger, but also exert that strength for longer (an idea known as strength endurance). The phrase “Grease the Groove” was first coined by strength coach and former Soviet Spetsnaz (Special Forces) instructor Pavel Tsatsouline in his 1999 book Power to the People! : Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American. The Origins of Grease the Groove Training This style of training is popular with some of the world’s most elite trainers and military special operators. Often you train more than 10 times a day. You lift light weights, you always stop before you get tired, and you train multiple times a day. This style of training breaks all of these rules. The Grease the Groove program is completely different. To get in shape, you have to push yourself. Most of all, the thousands of workout plans share a common goal of making you tired. Sometimes you’ll train that muscle group three times a week, but nobody ever asks you to train that group more than once in a single day. Second, these plans generally have you train a given movement or muscle group once or twice a week. In a typical weightlifting plan, it’s rare that you will ever work with a weight that you can lift more than 20 times. There are thousands of weight training programs, but almost all of them rely on the same shared techniques.įirst, they almost all focus on lifting heavy weights. This training program is very different than what you’re used to.

Power to the people strength