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Comment by thesz | Hacker News Reader

Weightlifting and weight training was invented long before forklifts. Even levers were not properly understood back then.

My favorite historic example of typical modern hypertrophy-specific training is the training of Milo of Croton [1]. By legend, his father gifted him with the calf and asked daily "what is your calf, how does it do? bring it here to look at him" which Milo did. As calf's weight grew, so did Milo's strength.

This is application of external resistance (calf) and progressive overload (growing calf) principles at work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_of_Croton

Milo lived before Archimedes.

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Dad needs to respect that we need rest days.

Bulgarian Method does not have rest days: https://www.mashelite.com/the-bulgarian-method-is-worth-a-lo...

Alexander Zass (Iron Samson) also trained each day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zass

"He was taken as a prisoner of war four times, but managed to escape each time. As a prisoner, he pushed and pulled his cell bars as part of strength training, which was cited as an example of the effectiveness of isometrics. At least one of his escapes involved him 'breaking chains and bending bars'."

Rest days are overrated. ;)

They are until you get injured, burned out or both and stop training all together.

If you do a single set of half of exercises you need to train each day of the week, rotating these halves, you get 3 and a half sets of each exercise per week.

Training volume of Bulgarian Method is not much bigger than that of regular training splits like Sheiko or something like that, if bigger at all. What is more frequent is the stimulation of muscles and nervous system paths and BM adapts to that - one does high percentage of one's current max, essentially, one is training with what is available to one's body at the time.

Also, ultra long distance runners regenerate cartilages: https://ryortho.com/2015/12/what-ultra-long-distance-runners...

Our bodies are amazing.

I looked up the weight of cows from that era. Only about 400 lbs. Seems doable.

> what is your calf, how does it do?

... it's a calf, dad, just like yesterday

Milo might have had slaves, the forklifts of his time....

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