How Did Ilya Ilyin Train Before the 2014 World Championships?

Ilya Ilyin trained the snatch and the clean & jerk in almost every session, mostly as singles climbing in waves, with a heavy front or back squat and pulls from the floor behind them. Monday, Wednesday and Friday carried the classic lifts, Tuesday was a different kind of day built on blocks and pulls, and Friday was the heavy day. Over the year the work moved from sets of five in January and February, to triples and doubles at a training camp in Poland in March, to waves of heavy singles in Kazakhstan from May to August. His best lifts on film are a 188 kg snatch and a 240 kg clean & jerk, both on 15 August 2014. That November he won the 105 kg class at the World Championships in Almaty with a 242 kg clean & jerk.

All of this comes from 84 of his own training clips filmed between December 2013 and August 2014, 69 of which have been written up lift by lift. It is a record of what was filmed, not a program from Ilyin or his coach, and nothing has been added to fill the gaps. The PDF at the top of this page has the charts and one template week from each stage of his year.

What did a week of Ilyin's training look like?

Most of his filmed sessions fall on three days: 54 of the 69 written up. Monday and Friday have 19 sessions each on film and Wednesday has 16. Tuesday has 12, Thursday 2 and Sunday 1. Saturday never appears.

Day	Sessions on film	Lifts that came up most	Single attempts missed
Monday	19	Snatch, clean & jerk, back squat	11.8% of 161
Tuesday	12	Block snatch, snatch deadlift, jerk	32.3% of 31
Wednesday	16	Snatch, front squat, clean + power jerk	11.2% of 107
Friday	19	Snatch, clean & jerk, front squat	18.6% of 199

Friday was the heavy day. The clips are titled "Big Friday" or "100%", and on those days he worked up in singles to the heaviest weights of the week. Friday has the most single attempts on film and the most misses. Tuesday looked different: snatches from blocks, jerks from the rack and snatch deadlifts. Few singles were counted on Tuesdays, so its high miss rate rests on only 31 attempts.

How did his training change through the year?

The footage follows him from an off-season in Los Angeles to Poland, Athens, Almaty and Astana. Each stage trained in a different way.

Period	Stage	What the training looked like	Best snatch	Best clean & jerk	Best squat
December 2013	Off-season, Los Angeles	Ten short clips, none written up yet
January to February	Base building	Sets of five on everything, climbing set to set	135	none on film	180
March	Training camp, Poland	Up to six sessions a week on film, with doubles; triples and doubles	160	205	240
April	Camp, Athens	Snatch waves to 165 and up, clean, front squat and jerk complexes	175	222	250
May	Almaty	Heavy Monday and Friday, jerks from the rack and pulls in between	177	225	250
June to July	Astana	Waves of singles three days a week, the most attempts of the year	182	237	270
August	Astana	Fewer sessions on film and the best lifts of the record	188	240	260

All loads are in kilos and count only lifts he made. The squat column is his heaviest front or back squat.

In January and February only one session a week is on film. Everything is done in fives and climbs set by set: snatches from 105 to 135, split jerks from 130 to 160, back squats to 180, plus a circuit of no-foot, no-contact snatches, back squats, push jerks and good mornings.

The Poland camp in March is the densest month on film. In the week of 10 March he is on film on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, with two sessions on each of the first three days. Most of the work sat between 60 and 80% of his best: snatch triples, clean & jerk doubles, power clean and push press complexes, and a squat in almost every session. A note from 17 March puts his bodyweight at 100 kg.

From April the snatch and the clean & jerk are trained more and more as singles. By June and July his Monday, Wednesday and Friday sessions are long climbs in the snatch and clean & jerk, and on 4 June and 30 June a third session of the same day is on film.

How often did Ilyin miss?

About one snatch single in four and one clean & jerk single in sixteen. Of the single attempts in the notes, he missed 66 of 281 snatches (23.5%), 11 of 171 clean & jerks (6.4%) and 1 of 50 squats (2%).

The misses track the load. May has the lowest miss rate on film at 4.9% of 61 attempts. June and July have the highest, 18.5% of 162 and 19.4% of 134, which is also when the attempt count was highest. In August it drops back to 11.8% of 68, the week of his best lifts.

What are Ilyin's waves?

Instead of one climb to a top weight, he climbed, dropped back and climbed again. On Monday 7 July his snatch went 150, 160, 165, 170, 175 and a 180 he missed twice. He dropped back and went 165, 170, 175 and missed 180 twice again. Then he made two more climbs of 170, 175 and 180. The squats followed the same shape: his front squats on 4 July went 230, 240, then back to 220, then 230, 240 and 250.

A week you can run: 7 to 11 July 2014

This is the best-filmed week of the summer, copied from the session notes. The percentages compare each load with his best on film (snatch 188, clean & jerk 240, front squat 270), so you can take them off your own best lifts. Most lifters will need fewer waves than he did.

Day	Lift	What he did	% of his best
Monday	Snatch	Four waves of singles: 150, 160, 165, 170, 175, 180 (missed twice); 165, 170, 175, 180 (missed twice); 170, 175, 180; 170, 175, 180	80-96%
Monday	Clean & jerk	Two waves: 195, 205, 215; 195, 210, 220	81-92%
Monday	Front squat	220, 240, 250, 260, 260, then 270 (missed once, then made)	81-100%
Tuesday	Snatch	5 sets of 2 at 150	80%
Tuesday	Clean + power jerk	5 singles at 180, then 180 for 2	75%
Tuesday	Snatch deadlift	4 sets of 3 at 180, then 200, 210 and 220 for 3	96-117%
Wednesday	Snatch	2 sets of 2 at 140, then waves: 150, 160, 170; 160, 165, 170; 150, 160, 165, 170, 175 (missed), 180 (missed twice)	74-90%
Wednesday	Clean & jerk	180, 190, 200; 190, 200	75-83%
Wednesday	Front squat	210, 220, then 4 sets of 2 at 230	78-85%
Friday	Snatch	160, 165; 160, 170, 175, 175 (missed), 180 (missed twice); 150, 160, 165, 170, 175, 180, 185 (missed 3 times)	80-96%
Friday	Clean & jerk	200, 210, 220, 230, 237	83-99%

The snatch deadlift percentages are against his best snatch, which is why they go past 100%.

The PDF has a week like this for every stage of the year, from the fives in February to the August week with the 188 snatch and the 240 clean & jerk.

How can a coach use this?

Each week in the PDF is written as a percentage of his best on film, so it reads like a template. You can take the shape (which days are heavy, how the waves climb, where the pulls and squats go) and scale the volume to your athlete. In Strength Academy you can build a week like this with every load as a percentage, and each athlete's kilos come from their own maxes.

If you want the whole year as a program you can run, the Ilyin Cycle in the Strength Academy marketplace is built from these sessions and comes in 6, 12 and 24 weeks.

What does the footage not show?

The clips are a selection, not a training diary. A day that is not on film is not a rest day, it simply was not filmed, and the three weeks between 21 April and 12 May have no footage at all. The ten December clips have not been written up. Much of the Athens footage shows his teammates rather than Ilyin. The loads were read off the screen, and 39 entries that could not be read clearly are left out of every figure here.

Sources

Ilyin's training clips on YouTube, December 2013 to August 2014. Every session in the PDF is dated.
IWF report on the 105 kg class at the 2014 World Championships in Almaty: iwf.sport