Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training

Rating:
Summary: Highest recommendation for this impressive work !
Review: As a 56 year old neophyte powerlifter I am no expert but I agree with the two previous 5 star reviews of this very impressive book and if I could only have one instruction book for the hows and whys of lifting weights this is the one I would choose. I give it 5 stars and my highest recommendation with no reservations.

Rating:
Summary: Weightlifting and Strength Training
Review: Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training, by Mohamed F. El-Hewie, is a book which encompasses both the very general and the very specific. It covers a wide range of subjects relevant to health, fitness, nutrition, strength training, and Olympic-style weightlifting and often does so in explicit detail with exhaustive illustration. Despite the broad scope, the basic theme of the book is simple to understand: the author believes that a balanced program of basic, compound exercises emphasizing the functional aspects of the bodies largest muscle groups are key to maximizing strength and fitness. Examples of these exercises include the Olympic lifts: the snatch and the clean and jerk, and assistance/power lifts like the squat, deadlift, bench and military presses, and the jump good morning. He believes that other exercises and training modalities, such as bodybuilding-type training and moves can, and should, be added to the basics where needed to enhance performance and achieve goals. The author includes extensive information on structuring strength training and fitness routines starting with the basic principles and terminology applicable to everyone, and ending with a detailed example of a cycling plan for competitive Olympic-style weightlifters. The example of the Olympic-lifting cycle alone takes up 22 pages and includes day by day, rep by rep scheduling for the Olympic lifts and all their assistance exercises. We're talking detailed. Other highlights that struck me include:
1. 40 well-illustrated pages on learning and teaching the snatch and the clean and jerk.
2. Detailed chapters on powerlifting, bodybuilding, and weight training, including technical instructions on the involved exercises and competitive lifts. Also the pro's and cons of each training style.
3. Discussion on bringing women into productive training and eliminating fallacies about strength training women.
4. Discussion on making decisions on balancing strength and endurance to meet your goals.
5. Discussions of everything from injury treatment and prevention, to training psychology, to plyometrics, to aerobic exercise, to the riboflavin content of many common foods, to the proper form for lifting a bag of groceries, and much, much, MUCH more.
I very much liked this book and expect to benefit from it in my own endeavors as a competitive weightlifter. While not everything in this book is new or groundbreaking, it is a solid manual and exhaustive reference book. The author's philosophy of taking the best lessons learned from hundreds of years of strength training and weightlifting competition and incorporating them into a program that maximizes health, performance, and function seems basically sound. While I would question some of his claims, more often than not they agreed with my own experience and common sense. These are the pros of this book. The cons include frequent editing and translation errors which are sometimes distracting. Also, many portions of the book are written from the author's own experience and his extrapolations from the experience of others. This may be discomfiting for some people who prefer to put their faith in formal, documented research. Also, though the book is basically well-organized and easy to understand, the sheer volume of information might be daunting to some people.

Rating:
Summary: No less then 5 stars, warmly recommended
Review: Previously I read the books "Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding" by G. Thorne and P. Embleton, "The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding" by A. Schwarzenegger, "The Complete Book of Abs" by K. Brungardt, "The Complete Book of Shoulders and Arms" by the same author, "Lee Honey's Ultimate Bodybuilding" and other. These books were good and very helpful as introductory to bodybuilding for myself, but all these books are not comparable to Mr. El-Hewie's master peace "Essentials of Weightlifting & Strength Training".

Mr. El-Hewie explains the art of weightlifting. In the book you will exactly find everything about weightlifting you wanted to know. The books I read and mentioned above are not even close to his project. What he did is a very complete and thorough representation of techniques, principles, with very clear and numerous pictures exactly where you need them, comparison and explanation of various weightlifting flavors like bodybuilding, Olympic style weightlifting, power lifting. You can learn every weightlifting style from his book, if you wish. You will find all the best exercises and the best of the proven techniques for all of these disciplines. The accent of the book is however on freestyle weightlifting.

From the book you will learn how bodybuilding differs from normal weightlifting and what mistakes you have done if you were bodybuilder. You will understand that bodybuilding is just a shorter version of normal weightlifting, and that shortage could be easily overcome with much more powerful exercises and attitude than you possibly had before! I tried the exercises myself and I can assure you that after years spent in bodybuilding, with Mr. El-Hewie's exercises I feel as reborn and would never return to poor bodybuilding style of exercising. One very important note: by changing your bodybuilding style to weightlifting you will avoid the injuries and inevitable deformations that you will have with your bodybuilding style (whatever it is). Also the feeling of whole body strength is so refreshing and powerful that I can't stop myself from practicing even at nights after this book!

One of the book editors was 100% right that Mr. El-Hewie's book is the lifetime project. It is so crowded with information, attitude, techniques, comparisons, and all vital info on the subject that you would find probably everything you need about healthy weightlifting training. This is not money-luring book like most of others I found, this is honest approach to personal practical knowledge of an highly educated and very skillful author.

This is the first edition of the book. Bad things about it is that the language is not polished because the author is not from English spoken area; the book binding is poor and the index should be more thorough, the glossary also. The book has long lines of dense text so it is a little harder to read if you are used to reading more luxury books. You will have to adopt yourself to the author?s language.

But, these bad things are nothing when compared with what you got with the book! Personally after some 10 pages or so I adopted myself to the author's language style perfectly. Even the author's language and style gives you a very warm feeling of having a contact with a specific person with distinguished personality, and giving you an impression as if you have a personal trainer next to you. About the dense text: if the author followed usual big letter size and wide empty page margins, you would face not a 540 pages book, but maybe 2,500 pages and proportionally expensive one. So there is a good point in keeping the size down, right?

All in all, if you ever intended to make your life healthy and use weights to improve it, this book cannot be overlooked. And if you like and practice weightlifting or bodybuilding like myself you would enjoy every single page of it. All possible recommendations, with 5 stars, I do not believe other titles come close to this master peace!