A few days ago, I did a review of Greg Everett’s new book on Olympic Weightlifting; as I stated, he has also done a DVD which I ordered shortly after getting the book.

Before reviewing the DVD, I want to send out major props for the customer service at Cathletics. They accidentally sent me another copy of the book instead of the DVD; when I contacted them they not only got the DVD out within a day but sent me a prepaid mailing envelope to send the book back to them. Great service is always nice to see.

In any case, the seminar basically consists of Greg taking his example model through the different topics that are covered in such detail in the book. Squat position, the hook grip, basic positions and then the various learning progressions for both the snatch, clean, jerk and then clean and jerk (how to sequence the two together) are presented.

About the only place that might really confuse watchers is that Greg sort of glosses over the issue of starting position, he mentions an advanced vs. basic starting position (both of which are detailed more in the book) but doesn’t really demonstrate the differences in the two or go into much detail in that section of the DVD.

Most of the drills are shown with a dowel rod with a few being shown with a light bar or bar with training plates (to show pulling position off the floor). The model shows excellent technique on all the drills.

Tangentially, this isn’t always the case, I have seen commercial DVD’s where the technique being shown was either incorrect or different from what is actually being described by the narrator which is simply confusing to the watcher. I can think of one DVD I’ve seen where literally one set of any of the exercises across the entire DVD is shown with decent form. No, I won’t tell you which one.

The explanations are clear and easy to understand and between a properly selected camera angle (front and slightly off to the side) and Greg having his model show the movements from both the front and side in most cases, it’s very easy to tell what’s going on and being done.

Greg gets into enough detail describing the various drills and movements without being excessive or inundating the watcher (or folks in the seminar) with excessive or needless information. This is the hallmark of a good coach.

The video is high quality with a couple of odd jumps and overlaps and the audio is clear and easy to hear (also not always the case in commercial products). The DVD has a basic menu that let you choose individual scenes, nice for when you need to go back and review one specific drill or cue.

Overall, the combination of Greg’s book and DVD would be an excellent investment/introduction to the sport of Olympic lifting. While nothing can really take the place of hands-on coaching, this would be a very good start.

The detailed descriptions and pictures in the book, combined with being able to see what’s actually being done at full speed (and of course most DVD players can slow down the video if you need to see things in slower motion) are about as close as most will get to understanding the lifts without coaching.

The Seminar DVD is available for $29.95 from The Performance Menu.

I must be out of the loop as I had never even heard of Greg Everett until he emailed me and said he wanted to send me a copy of his new book. Which he then did. And for which I thank him. I love books and I love good books and his is a good book.

Olympic Weightlifting is not a sport that has nearly as much written about it as say, powerlifting or bodybuilding, at least not in the U.S. Outside of the Russian Translations (which are often very difficult to parse) from Sportivny Press, the two primary books out there are Arthur Dreschler’s Encyclopedia of Weighlifting and Tommy Kono’s Weightlifting Olympic Style.

I suppose I should also mention El-Hewie’s Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength training. While thorough, I found it nearly unreadable and I can’t say it did much to further my understanding of OL’ing beyond developing a great appreciation for the importance of hair style in lifting (you’d have to have read the second edition to know what I’m talking about).

Certainly other books exist but most are more aimed at using the Olympic lifts for sports performance or what have you than in looking at Olympic weightlifting from a competition standpoint.

Of the two books above, Dreschler’s encyclopedia is truly that. Even for non-Olympic lifters, it has information that is valuable for all forms of strength training. At something like 400+ pages, it is truly an encyclopedia. And while it examines every topic known to god and man about Olympic lifting, it suffers greatly from a lack of pictures demonstrating what is being discussed.

The complexities of OL’ing don’t really lend themselves to dense text descriptions but that’s most of what Dreschler has. I’d note that Dreschler did release a companion DVD to the book to examine some of the topics discussed.

In contrast, Kono’s book is far simpler to read and understand; while less comprehensive, I found that it made some concepts of OL’ing easier to understand than Dreschler’s book by using easier and simpler descriptions and cues.

While it’s nice to read about the details and that the average lifter may dip approximately 6% of his height during the jerk or have an average back angle of 37 degrees during the second pull of the snatch (or what have you), it’s equally possible to get so hung up on minor details that the big picture is ignored. Kono’s book is more big picture.

Which brings me to Greg’s new book.

I’d place Greg’s book somewhere between those two extremes. While certainly not as comprehensive as Dreschler’s (I’m not sure any book ever could be), it covers the sport of Olympic weightlifting in good detail.

Warming up, the lifts themselves, equipment considerations, learning the lifts, fault correction, assistance exercises, basic training programming, nutrition, competition, stretching and recovery are all addressed in a professionally published well written book. Let me take a quick look at each section.

The book takes a fairly standard approach to teaching the lifts moving from the top down. Various position and basic concept drills with PVC pipes are introduced to get the lifter used to basic parts of the movement before moving to a bar and more integrated exercises.

Tangentially, I’d note that two of the drills (the scarecrow and tall snatch/clean) I hadn’t seen before; I used them with one of my (few) trainees and they did more to get her going under the bar than anything else I’ve come across. Had I paid for the book, that alone would have made it worth the price.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the book here (compared to say Dreschler’s) is that each exercise is accompanied by a sequence of photos showing what the lifter is actually doing from start to finish.

This goes towards making the text descriptions much much clearer. And while I expect most would argue that video is still better, I’d note that full speed video of OL’ing can be just as tough to understand as nothing at all: it all happens too fast to really see what’s happening.

Proper positioning of the lifter (e.g. feet, etc.) are covered in good detail along with guidelines for how to make adjustments for individual athletes and body lengths. As noted, the lifts are progressed from the top down eventually moving to the full lift from the floor. The drills progress logically from one to the next.

The same goes for the section on assistance exercises, each one is covered as needed along with pictures to demonstrate what’s being done and most of the ‘standard’ assistance movements are covered in detail. Various core and supplemental stuff is also addressed.

I’d note that, from time to time, Greg (can I call you Greg) seems to get a bit carried away with using technical terms where they probably aren’t necessary. Reading three paragraphs about how the elbows are supposed to move around the bar during the catch for the clean is likely to confuse as much as it clears things up.

The section on fault correction addresses some of the more common faults inherent to the lifts in general and each lift in specific along with common causes and corrections for each.

Perhaps surprisingly, the training section may be the weakest part of the book. Some basic concepts are covered in terms of training ideas along with some templates for beginner, intermediate, mass gain and advanced athletes but beyond that, much of the theory of Olympic lifting training (which, as Dreschler proved can take quite some time to cover in detail) is left out.

Sequencing of the lifts within training workout or the week or even exercise selection isn’t really discussed at all except by the sample workouts. Again, this topic could be a book in its own entirety.

The nutrition section covers the basics and while I certainly don’t agree with everything that Greg says (e.g. Gary Taube’s contention that insulin is what makes us fat), that’s neither here nor there.

Stretching and myofascial release along with basic recovery considerations finish out the book. Again, pictures accompany everything.

Overall, I was extremely impressed and pleased by this book. It’s well written although, as noted above, Everett gets a little bit too over the top with technical details from time to time.

The book presents a logical method of learning the lifts (inasmuch as they can be learned from a book without hands-on coaching) and the information is solid and thorough.

Anybody looking for an excellent examination of competitive Olympic lifting would do worse than to have this on their shelf.

Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes and Coaches can be ordered from performancemenu.com for $34.95.

I’d note that there is also a DVD seminar held by Greg available from the same site. I ordered it yesterday and will try to review it after I’ve gotten it.  Read my review of Greg Everett’s Olympic Lifting DVD Seminar.

I suspect that having the DVD to demonstrate the drills and learning progression along with the book would be the best combination for someone trying to learn the lift on their own. While that will never take the place of hands-on coaching, it’s a step in the right direction.

If you’re not familiar with the sport of Olympic lifting, the name will probably mean nothing to you but Tommy Kono was one of the great American Olympic lifters back in the day, coming from rather meager beginners to be a world beater. He’s continued to be an excellent ambassador for the sport and continues to help to promote and teach it.

For those looking for an excellent introduction to the sport, I highly recommend his book Weightlifting Olympic Style. While not as insanely comprehensive as Arthur Dreschler’s Encyclopedia of Weightlifting, I found that Kono’s book actually had some technical gems that were explained better than in Dreschler’s book.

Now, there’s another site on the web called Iron Maven, among other things they are known for doing a lot of slow motion video analysis of Olympic lifting, they have videos on youtube and are an excellent resource for analyzing movements that, due to their high speed, are often tough to see at full speed.

In their own words, inspired by and named after Tommy Kono, they have recently released a two disk set of top American lifters (one DVD shows female lifters, the other male) containing video of the top 3 medallists from the National championships held in Ohio this year.

Stealing part of the description from the IronMaven site, they write

“Within each DVD, you can search through each weight class for a specific lifter. Watch each lift with two views and at half-speed; see the subtleties in technique that contribute to a successful or unsuccessful lift. Many lifts also have bar trajectories and/or the full-speed video clip to help the viewer appreciate the power, speed and technique required of this sport. The bonus clips feature Casey Burgener’s 180 kg Snatch, Chad Vaughn’s 190 kg American Record Clean & Jerk, Kendrick Farris’ 199 kg American Record Clean & Jerk, and Natalie Woolfolk’s 215 kg American Record total from the 2007 World Team Qualifier, and more.”

For anybody who is simply interested in Olympic lifting, or who wants to see different techniques and bar trajectories analyzed at different speeds, I suspect that this will be an incredible resource (I ordered my copy as soon as I became aware of it and will do a full review when it arrives).

Most of the videos of OL’ing I’ve seen not only focus on the men but on the top competitors in the world. While motivating and often illuminating, watching the best do their thing often isn’t as illustrative as it might be. Often they have technical idiosyncracies that, while fascinating, aren’t something the beginner should emulate. And, as noted above, watching the lifts are full speeds makes it very difficult to see what’s actually going on.

The price is $39.99 for the two disk set (the individual DVD’s containing the male or female lifters can be ordered for $19.99 apiece).