So let's discuss the insane Korean high school program. If you're interested in watching this in video form it is available here:

CONTENTS

1. Japanese Training Camp in Shinsung University, Korea
2. The insanity of the program
3. The program and other sources

Japanese Training Camp in Shinsung University, Korea

So this was spurred on after seeing some footage of 3 high school Japanese athletes going to a training camp at Shinsung university. They were training 2-4 times a day with insane volume and it wasn't like they were going light. Just to highlight this,

They were training 2-4 times a day

Session 1 - 0700

• 20 mins stretching
• 5 sets of 20 weighted sit-up
• 5 sets of 20 weighted back ext
• core circuit of planks, crunches etc for another 10+ mins

Session 2 - 1000

• 5 x 400m Run
• 10 sets of 4 Push Press
• 8 sets of 2 Push Jerk
• 12 sets of 2 Front Squat

Session 3 - 1500

• 30 minutes of ab circuit (crunch, flutter kicks, side crunch, hip thrust
• 12 x 6 Hang Snatch High Pull
• 10 x 10 Hang Power Snatch
• 12 x 2 Clean Deadlift
• 10 x 10 Power Clean (they didn't end up doing this, for some reason they thought it was too much...)

Session 4 - 2000

• 30-60 minutes of ball sports more as fun than anything else

Absolute insanity, if you want to watch some of these training sessions they are available at WeLiftWeights on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@WeLiftWeights

The Insanity Of The Program

So this sent me down the rabbit hole of finding out more about the Korean weightlifting program, of course I'd seen Lee Sang do insane training on his own YouTube but assumed he was an outlier but it turns out he was just training the same way he probably had since school.

So there's a few thing to highlight:

• Abs, back and stretching is done basically every morning
• They seem to put a lot of emphasis on a strong core and being mobile which makes sense
• Loads of conditioning
• 400m runs 6 days a week - so probably boughts of 3-4 minute efforts
• Circuit training which is likely more sprint based
• They also seem to favour high work capacity which makes sense as it will allow them to do more snatch and clean + jerk in peaking cycles
• Loads of upper body training
• 4-5 times a week, honestly I don't know why 3 wouldn't be sufficient but without knowing how much they do in each of those sessions it is hard to comment
• 12 sets is the norm!?
• In the we lift weights series we did see that they start counting their sets pretty light so this is less ridiculous than it seems but still highlights their bias toward work capacity
• Lower speicificity
• They seem to be big fans of pulls, thrusters, hang lifts and powers in this phase
• High variety can provide more enjoyment and elicit different adaptation
• Or keep the absolute load lower while still challenging the athlete

Sources:

WeLiftWeights - For the great video series - https://www.youtube.com/@WeLiftWeights

Lee Sang's YouTube - He has so much footage on here it is ridiculous - https://www.youtube.com/@lee_sang____

The program PDF - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7Ntsju575JVeWdBZTVaUkY5S3c?resourcekey=0-INai3_470qY0BSVD-OB2sA