When it comes to that Anatoly guy I‘m pretty sure that he is really incredibly strong for his size and mass and much of what you see there is real. Yes, it could very well be that he is faking stuff from time to time to get more views especially the reactions of “huge“ people and perhaps sometimes using fake weights (but I would tend to think that isn’t what is happening most of the time). I saw the guy train outside of his channel uncut with really “huge“ and world class people that use enhancers on top of that and I don’t think anything was faked in there. In most cases (no matter the exercise) he could keep up with those “monsters“ easily and in certain exercises even outperform them quite a bit. I also know that he uses a method for training that is pretty different than what most people recommend and I think in essence at least partly it might come closer to some of the principles “the Soviets“ used.
There might be something a little shady going on, but overall the guy is within the normal, strong standards for someone who weighs around 80 kilos (I'd even say he's a bit below elite level). He just respects the basic principles of training and enjoys the journey. It's normal for most people to be able to deadlift three times their body weight in about three years, although each year you continue training you'll gain less strength than at the beginning. I weigh about 65 kilos, after losing a few extra kilos of fat that don't really count, and I deadlift over 200 kilos. I didn't do anything magical other than respect my sleep, eating, and training regimen.
Also, repetition as often as possible in perfect form seems to be a key component of what he is suggesting as well as the rests in between the sets and the total rest on day 7.
And apparently in order for that to work effectively you should give the brain during and after the workout set the right signals via the body in order for “neurons“ to connect into new channels more or less permanently and he seems to suggest that you explicitly can’t do that in any good/efficient way when you feel tired, fatigued, pumped, have muscle pains or feel stressed or out of breath in any strong way during or after the workout.
In any training program, there's a nearly universal triad you can play with: intensity, volume, and frequency. You can always increase two, but you must decrease one. (Substances can violate this to some extent, but not entirely).
"In the Russian method," as applied to this type of training or to elite lifters, the priority is to decrease intensity and gradually increase volume and frequency (they still work at high intensities of between 80% and 85% of their one-repetition maximum most of the time, but moving away from 100%, and only have a small workload above 90% during specific periods of the program).
It makes sense and it works because by using lighter loads and moving away from muscle failure, you maintain optimal technique while increasing the repeatability of the movement. The more you repeat a movement, the better you become at it on a neurological level. As you move away from failure with an optimal load, you can do more sets, less muscle damage, and less overload on your nervous system, allowing you to repeat the movement more times per week and becoming more efficient. The idea is to prevent the nervous system from "forgetting" the movement and losing neural coordination.
Maintaining proper technique throughout the body also makes sense because your weakest area is what breaks you down and limits you. Poor technique or having a "loose" muscle group will only prevent you from progressing further, even if it makes it easier to increase weights and volume, because the leverage and strength in that area won't be sufficient for the task, and you'll have to regress significantly.
It's actually bodybuilders that develop functional strength overall since they aim to develop muscular size in all areas of the body. So if by functional strength you mean something that has the most carryover to performing daily activities, training more like a bodybuilder rather than a strength athlete would be better if you ask me. Or maybe combining pure strength training and hypertrophy training.
But overall, my take on training is that there are not many shortcuts or secrets, it takes consistency and putting in the time, finding out what works for you via trial end error. Some things will work for a period of time, and then they will stop working and you have to adjust. There is a lot of content out there that gets marketed as if they've discovered something new and that works across the board, but it's mostly just a sales pitch.
The most impactful training is that which achieves the greatest transfer to the activity or sport you practice; that is, it should be specific and mimic the same movements as closely as possible, or target the same muscle groups. Strength is the quality that allows all others to be expressed or improved, therefore it's a good idea to do periods of strength training, which is also the only type of training that prevents bone and muscle degradation. You can do other types of training, but at some point you will lose effectiveness because your biological structures will degrade with age.
Regarding the second point, that's absolutely true. There are many methods, and if they make sense, they usually give similar results. But it's always appreciated to find one that better suits the time and other daily activities of each individual; most people aren't elite athletes.
Given that we live in an age where many things/truths are being called into question, it is worth asking ourselves about this topic, and as said, you found an interresting one here ! I have always heard that to build muscles one have to push them to their limits in order to, if I understand correctly and in summary, create micro-tears that will result in increased muscle size and mass (however, I don't have the details of how this works, but I suppose it can be found somewhere).
Muscle growth and strength depend primarily on the mechanical tension (which is exactly what it sounds like: applying a sufficient load to generate tension in the muscles) to which a muscle is subjected, and secondarily on the fatigue and time under tension resulting from applying that mechanical tension correctly.
In other words, it's pointless to reverse the order and seek fatigue or increase training time without applying mechanical tension correctly. Fast-twitch muscle fibers are the ones that primarily generate strength through improved recruitment due to the creation of more efficient neural networks, but they are also the ones that produce the most muscle volume because, unlike slow-twitch fibers, they tend to hypertrophy much more. While the other fibers may grow a little, their improvements are mainly at a physiological-chemical level since they are typically used in endurance activities.
Why am I saying all this? Because the body knows which fibers to use according to the speed of execution. To apply the greatest mechanical tension to fast-twitch muscle fibers, you must always perform the movements at the highest possible speed (while respecting proper technique, of course). Otherwise, you will primarily recruit slow-twitch fibers with a low capacity to produce force and muscle hypertrophy. You will end up fatigued at some point and will have barely worked the fast-twitch fibers, since although the mechanical tension is high, it only acts on the slow-twitch fibers.
With higher intensities, mechanical tension is usually at its maximum from the first repetition (1-5 repetitions), and with repetitions of 6-12-30, it tends to take longer to appear and usually arrives in the last 5 repetitions of a set (even so, moving away from muscle failure by 1-3 repetitions, as we saw in the "Russian method," makes sense and is still efficient). Whatever the repetition range between 5-30, if the principle of maximum speed is respected, the hypertrophy gained is the same (at the muscle fiber level; with higher repetitions, greater hypertrophy is also achieved at the level of cell cytoplasm; strength is also a continuum, but at higher intensity ranges, there will be a greater improvement in neuronal connections, so it is not as replicable in terms of results with different training as hypertrophy; even so, you will gain strength anyway with different training).
What many don’t realize is that functional strength is very different from raw strength or muscle size. World-class bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman or Dorian Yates are incredibly strong in lifting heavy weights, but that doesn’t automatically translate to explosive, coordinated, sport-specific movement under dynamic conditions — which is what functional strength really is.
True, but once strength athletes reach peak efficiency and begin to plateau in their progression, they often resort to training cycles focused more on muscle mass gain. Both strength and hypertrophy mutually benefit from each other's improvement, and this is even more noticeable at advanced levels.
If substances are not used, most people will see more benefits than limitations from "bodybuilding" training. It's even better if combined with other training methods. Functional or strength training might offer some greater benefits, but if you can't do that, this is much better than nothing, and there are more benefits than potential problems. You also won't grow disproportionately, nor will there be as much risk of injury to tendons and similar structures due to the aforementioned absence of substances in normal individuals. Furthermore, without substances, no body will be able to withstand training volume levels as high as those of bodybuilders.
FWIW.
I see many complaints of shoulder pain/injuries. If it's not due to bad posture or joint limitations, I think that in many cases, specific shoulder training would help. This is often seen in exercises like bench press or variations, and it's because the stimulus in that exercise is insufficient for this muscle group, and the pectorals develop more and more, exaggerating the muscle imbalance and thus the problems.
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