Journal de Jacques

Anatomy Without a Scalpel by Lon Kilgore (Amazon with kickback, without kickback) can’t escape the simple fact that anatomy is, in no small part, mind-numbing. It does give a good try.

Kilgore is probably known to many readers as the coauthor, with iconic strength coach Mark Rippetoe, of the second edition of Starting Strength. Like Rippetoe, Kilgore is a fan of training with weights, barbells in particular.

Anatomy Without a Scalpel is aimed at folks such as me — coaches and strength nerds. By addressing itself to a particular audience, this book can cut down on a lot of anatomy (eg internal organs) that are largely irrelevant to strength sports.

Given the constraints that learning anatomy entails (there are lots of things to memorise), Kilgore does an admirable job of spicing the text up with chatty asides on a range of topics. His diagrams and photographs are relatively simple to comprehend.

My main complaint would be production quality. Not every photo is reproduced well. The text itself needs some gentle ministrations from a professional editor as there are minor spelling and grammatical errors throughout.

However as an addition to the library of a coach or advanced trainee wanting to bone up (ha) on skeletal and muscular anatomy, you could do worse.

The title alone will have driven off everyone from my non-weights circle of friends.

Optimizing Strength Training (Amazon with kickback, Amazon without kickback) is a book by William J. Kraemer and Steven J. Fleck. Quite aside from the American fondness for initialling their names in print, it’s worth mentioning Kraemer in particular. He’s probably best known as the co-author, with Vladimir Zatsiorsky, of Science and Practice of Strength Training, 2nd Ed (unreviewed).

Science and Practice is one of my favourite books on the topic of weight training. Reading it pulled a lot of half-remembered snippets of broscience into much clearer relief and it’s made me a better lifter and coach.

So when I saw that Kraemer was the co-author of Optimizing Strength Training, I decided that for the price it would be worth a purchase. I was right.
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I bought a bunch of weightlifting-related books recently, some from IronMind and some from Amazon.com. Today I’ll briefly review three of them.

Olympic-Style Weightlifting for the Beginner and Intermediate Lifter by Jim Schmitz.

This is not really a book, per se. It looks awfully like course notes — right down to the terse language and printing approach (printed and bound by a photocopying machine — apparently from a copy of a copy of a copy).

I don’t recommend this book as a purchase for lay readers. Some coaches might find it useful as a source of programs, but I think the programs given in Everett’s book are easier to study and apply. Overall: not recommended.

The Development of the Clean and Jerk by Dave Webster.

This book was published in 1965. It’s a fun read because of Webster’s chatty style and FONDNESS FOR CAPITALISATION to emphasise his points.

For coaches it provides some useful diagrams that could be recreated for coaching the clean.

Readers should bear in mind that this book was written before weightlifting rules were amended to allow the bar to touch the thighs or hips during the second pull.

Recommended for serious buffs and advanced coaches; otherwise you can give this one a miss.

The Sport of Olympic-Style Weightlifting: Training for the Connoisseur by Carl Miller.

Of the three reviewed here, this is my favourite. It’s not suitable for beginning lifters as it has almost no introductory material. Where it really shines is as a resource for coaches. The discussion of the effect of anthropometry on technique is missing from every other Oly book I’ve so far read and it is, by itself, worth the price of admission.

Recommended for coaches.