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).

Alan Aragon may be one of the least well known yet smartest guys in the industry, mainly because he sucks royally at marketing himself.

And while he and I certainly disagree on certain things (which is fine), in general we agree about more than we don’t agree about and out disagreements are usually minor in the first place.

More importantly, unlike so many in the field, he doesn’t have his head up his ass, making up random shit to sound cutting edge that has no basis in science or reality. This is probably why he and I get along, we can throw study references at each other until the cows come home and just have a grand old time.

Alan’s second book (trust me, none of you ever saw his first one), despite the silly name Girth Control and possibly one of the single worst chapters I’ve ever read (Chapter 2, a truly turgid look at research methods that even I, as a total nerd about this stuff, nearly didn’t get through) is an excellent resource for methods of changing body composition.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to Alan’s new project. Now, readers of my newsletter and of this blog know that I do regular research reviews, looking at (usually) new studies that pertain to some aspect of nutrition, fat loss, muscle gain, performance, etc. I did them in almost every issue of the newsletter until recently when I moved them to the blog.

Well, Alan has recently launched a monthly research review where he looks at a whole host of new studies in the same vein. As well, he’ll typically dig up an old gem of research in addition to adding some type of his own feature content.

For example, the June issue started with a feature article on the issue of eggs and heart disease.

Then he took a detailed look at the following papers:

Moderate protein intake improves total and regional body composition and insulin sensitivity in overweight adults.

Effects of dietary protein content on IGF-I, testosterone, and body composition during eight days severe energy deficit and arduous physical activity.

Effect of Preexercise Meals With Different Glycemic Indices and Loads on Metabolic Responses and Endurance Running.

High rates of muscle glycogen resynthesis after exhaustive exercise when carbohydrate is co-ingested with caffeine.

Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.

Before finishing with interviews with natural bodybuilder Layne Norton and uber-hot figure chick Pauline Nordin.

Alan analyzes each article in terms of its strengths, weaknesses and relevance to folks trying to change body composition and only charges $10 per month (each issue is available as a PDF download you receive an email when it’s available). Of course, I’ve got and read them all and can only say good things about them.

If you want to get a taste of the review, Alan has a sample issue for download here.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Eric Cressy, he sort of started as a “rehab/shoulder” guru but has established himself as an overall performance enhancement coach. His articles on shoulder health and posture on T-nation.com are excellent and I’d highly recommend them to anyone with shoulder issues or who is having the types of postural issues endemic to modern society.

You can find links to all of Eric’s articles here. I strongly suggest reading the Neanderthal No More series.

He’s done previous products including Magnificent Mobility (essentially a “catalog” of various warm-up rehabby types of movements, I think it lacked in not showing trainees how to put things together in a coherent routine) along with his Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual e-book. He also did an enormous six hour (more?) presentation with Mike Robertson called Building the Efficient Athlete. You can read more about those here.

But enough introduction, on to the book.

Overall appearance: The book is professionally produced and well laid out, this makes sense given that it’s published through a major print house. It has sort of that “Men’s Health” Fitness book type of feel to it, there’s not much more to say about this. It’s a professional quality book.

The pictures in the book are ok, perhaps a little grainy and gray considering but they show what they are meant to show and that’s all that really matters. The overall structure of the book in terms of logic and flow is good.

The content: The book, as the title suggests is about developing maximum strength and scant little else. Hypertrophy is touched on (mainly as a secondary effect of proper maximal strength training) but the focus is on maximum strength. Power production is only touched on inasmuch as maximum strength provides the “base” for power production. But that’s about it.

Now, as Eric comes from a primarily powerlifting background (Eric has a monster deadlift), I think he tends to be a little bit maximum strength-centric, at least in his writings. This certainly showed up in his Ultimate Off-season Training Manual.

And while a current trend in sports performance has been to focus (excessively IMO) on maximal strength, it’s also arguably true that the average trainee (who is usually doing a lot of bodybuilding driven training) has not done much truly maximum strength training work and can certainly benefit from it. Wow, nice run-on sentence from me.

After discussing some basic physiology about strength production and such, Eric gets into the nuts and bolts of his program. Laid out across 16 weeks, the program starts with a series of maximum tests (primarily strength tests with one power test) before launching into the actual program.

It’s divided into four by four week blocks with each having a slightly different focus in terms of approaching maximum strength. A base period is followed by cluster training, followed by a build period into the final peaking phase built around heavy low rep work. This culminates in a retesting day to see how much things have improved.

Each phase is based around a basic four day upper/lower split and the workouts are laid out extremely logically. Generally there is one primary exercise per workout (trained the heaviest) followed by a bit of assistance/supplemental work and some rehab/prehab types of movements. I’ve certainly seen less intelligently set out workouts. Each month varies the workload each week by varying the reps and sets to some degree to change the overall workload.

Perhaps the biggest concern I have with the program is that each month rotates in essentially new movements and the trainee are expected to jump straight into near maximum loads in the first week of performing that new movement. In my experience, anybody but the most advanced trainee needs at least one or more workout reintroducing a new exercise to regain their form and technique before moving into maximum loads. I’m not sure that average intermediate trainee will be able to do what Eric is suggesting without being coached hands on.

Adding to this, having watched altogether too many people in too many commercial gyms over the years, I expect the average trainee to let their form go to shit trying to put weight on the bar in this type of program. But this is really a concern with all un-coached programs, primarily due to the fact that people are impatient assholes and want strength gains to come faster than they actually do. Squats get higher, form gets sloppier, people do all sorts of amazing things to keep putting too much weight on the bar. Again, this is a problem with most training books and I don’t want it to sound like I’m singling out this one.

Regarding the exercises, each is demonstrated with at least two pictures showing the exercise along with a verbal description. This is always a tough one in books like this. Two pictures, even with a good verbal description, can’t really detail the nuances and cues for more complex movements such as deadlifts. On the other, trying to detail every movement, especially when so many are covered, would end up making the book 400 pages long.

Warm-ups, including dynamic mobility type of stuff and some basic foam rolling type stuff are covered as well. I’d honestly say that this is probably the weakest section of the book, no foam rolling movement is demonstrated with more than one picture (generally the starting position) and I’m not sure why they didn’t include a second picture to show what direction/etc the trainee is actually supposed to move in. The verbal descriptions are fairly clear but including a second photo would have been more consistent with the exercise demos and would have shown more of what the trainee is supposed to do.

Additionally, options for metabolic work (based on body type) are also given.

The book ends with some very basic nutritional information with nothing really new (and a few old myths simply repeated) but as I doubt anybody would be buying this book for nutritional information per se, this is fairly inconsequential. Basic nutrition, a few supplements, etc. are discussed in a fairly perfunctory way. Not great, not terrible.

Overall, I think this is a good book. It’s not a great book but it’s not a terrible book either.

A big question is who the book is actually aimed at or best suited for and, as mentioned above, I think it’s aimed at a rather specific bit of the training population.

Low repetition maximum effort work as described certainly isn’t a good choice for rank beginners (who need to be learning proper form and tend to benefit from lower loading until they have form down). Trainees with a good deal of maximum strength training probably won’t find much new here either.

However, for the intermediate trainee who has primarily done bodybuilding influenced workouts, and who needs a good introduction to maximal strength methods with good basic workouts laid out for them across a four month span, they could certainly do worse than to purchase this book.

And, at a mere $18.95, the price is certainly right.

If you want more information or want to purchase the book, you can do so directly from Eric by clicking here.

As mentioned in the article above, I don’t think that DC training is right for everyone, and not everyone does well on it. For those that do, they grow and grow well. Now, I’ve wished for a while that Dante would write a book on DC training as I think the ideas need to get wider exposure. Apparently he’s just not interested.

Thankfully, two of Dante’s ‘students’ (for lack of a better word), Jason Wojo and Franco Ditillo, put together a DVD to both explain and demonstrate the ideas that make up the DC approach.

Overall appearance: The DVD is professional in terms of packaging and appearance (e.g. the outside of the DVD). The audio is good (this isn’t the case for many products) and the video is nicely shot; it’s not professionally done, nor is it a guy with a handycam. Most of it is simply the guys talking at the camera but the training footage is well shot and it’s easy to see what’s going on.

The DVD itself: The DVD is divided into 4 segments which are Introduction, Workout 1, Workout 2, and Special features. I want to look at each in sequence.

Introduction: The first segment of the DVD is about 20 minutes long and consists of Jason Wojo explaining the guts of the DC system. Starting with who DC training is for (advanced guys who are able to push), it also covers who it isn’t for (beginners and wimps). There’s a refreshing element of honesty to this attitude, recognizing that the system that you personally think highly of just isn’t for everyone.

In a nutshell, DC is similar to high intensity training (HIT) in that it attempts to get maximal growth stimulation in the least volume required. In most cases this represents a single set but with a twist: after reaching failure once, two rest-pause sets are typically done with 10-15 breaths between ‘mini-sets’ so that a total of 11-15 reps per set is done.

For many exercises this is followed by an isometric hold and most movement are then followed by something DC calls loaded or extreme stretching. DC training rests on the concept of making progress at every workout (if possible). There is always an attempt to beat your previous best and make strength gains in a medium repetiton range. Coupled with sufficient food, that equals growth.

As well, for any given training cycle, multiple exercises are chosen and rotated each workout with the idea being that you will make better overall strength gains returning to the same exercise a bit less frequently.

In contrast to some HIT systems, DC calls for training each muscle group every 5th day so that growth is stimulated more often than with lower frequency training approaches. The basic approach is three days/week alternating between two different splits. Within that, as noted, exercises are rotated in and out within each workout.

As well, DC training follows an approach of ‘blasts’ and ‘cruises’ (essentially varying intensity) lasting roughly 4-6 weeks and 2 weeks respectively. So you cruise (training relatively less intensely) for 2 weeks and then blast (going for major gains) for 4-6 weeks. This is basically identical to how I recommend folks cycle my generic approach to hypertrophy training, 2 weeks of relatively easier work followed by 4-6 weeks pushing things hard before backing off and then building back up again.

Overall, I found the part of the DVD to be an excellent introduction to the concepts of the DC system. Frankly, it’s not a complex system but training doesn’t have to be complicated to be hellishly effective.

I would say that I think the introduction went a little bit wrong when Jason tried to get into some of the deep scientific reasons that loaded stretching might work (personally I think they are just a heavy loaded eccentric). Going from talking about progressive overload and beating your logbook to a discussion of hyperplasia and PGF2a seemed a bit out of place to me. Then again, in one of the bonus sections he mentions having a degree in immunology. So he’s just another labcoat; a big labcoat mind you, but a labcoat nonetheless.

As well, the camera guy thought it would be cute to move from a straight ahead shot to this sort of 45 degree angle shot (thank you MTV) so part of the time Jason is sort of looking off to the side of the screen and not talking directly to you. This is a pretty minor quibble on my part.

Workout 1: The first workout demonstrated consisted of chest, delts, triceps, back width and back thickness. Frankly, I usually find watching training videos boring as dirt and this wasn’t much different, it took me several viewings to get through it. Basically, we got to watch the guys explain and then warmup prior to doing a rest pause set for incline bench, DB shoulder presses, reverse grip bench presses and a sort of modified rack chinning movement (DB held in the lap), static holds were done after several movements although neither lifter got even close to 30 seconds on any of them.

For reasons that went unexplained, rack pulls for back thickness were done for 2 straight sets (note: the reason is that rest pausing deads is a good way to kill yourself when your form breaks down). Both Jason and Franco are big strong boys and they moved some serious weight (IMO, Jason had the better form on everything).

Possibly the most interesting bit of watching the workout was seeing the loaded/extreme stretches themselves. Those never lent themselves to verbal descriptions and seeing what is actually being done for them will be informative for anybody interested in the system. Since the lifters did slightly different stretches (sometimes), it also gives viewers some options for their own training should they pursue the methodology.

Each set is accompanied by loud heavy metal and the guys joke with one another between sets. The segment ends with each lifter explaining how they personally log their workouts. I found it kind of useless but, then again, when 99% of gym goers don’t record a thing, seeing that a couple of big boys record their workouts to keep track of their progress is a good thing.

Workout 2: Workout 2 consisted of biceps, forearms, calves, hamstrings and finally, quads. Biceps were hit with incline DB curls, forearms (really brachialis) with a cross body curl that they called pinwheel curls. This was followed by a loaded/extreme stretch. Calves were a single LONG set consisting of calf raises with an incorporated extreme stretch, it hurt to watch. Hamstrings were leg curls, for some reason the hamstring stretch was not shown but only described via text. Finally quads were hit by leg press, two straight sets (no reason was given for not using rest-pause). Frankly, I was a bit disappointed here, DC’s guys tend to talk about 20 rep ‘widomaker’ squats as if they are the key to the system, I was hoping to see a good set of 20 reppers done on the DVD.

As with Workout 1, some good poundages were moved and the guys goofed off between sets. It was funny seeing the look on a couple of the other gym-goer’s face as Jason and Franco loaded up the leg press with just about every plate in the gym.

Special features: The DVD had a number of special features which I’ll describe briefly.

DC nutrition: A basic look at DC nutrition concepts including protein, carbs, fat, intake, how much to eat, etc.

Alternative exercises: Shows a bunch of alternative training movements (with an overemphasis on arm training in my opinion) some of which you’ve probably seen and some of which you haven’t. I’m still disappointed that the DVD showed no squatting.

Wojo’s Wisdom: One of the dudes on the DVD shares some of his experiences with training over the years, he makes some good points regarding getting injured, not being ego driven and taking rest if your body is telling you to and other things most gym rats simply don’t do (but should).

Interview: A very informal interview with Franco and Jason, I had trouble staying focused and paying attention to this.

Big Larry: I zoned out completely on this, it was something with 4 DC guys eating at Texas Roadhouse talking about something or another but I had completely lost interest by that point in the DVD. If I missed THE SECRET to DC training by skipping this, please let me know exactly what time point on the DVD it occurs and I’ll go back and watch it.

And that’s that. Overall, I think this is a good DVD and anybody interested in an excellent introduction to the DC system (and seeing how actual workouts play out) would be advised to purchase it. I usually find training videos to be painfully generic (watching a big dude blast his guns is boring as hell) but this one is actually pretty informative for folks who have heard about DC training and want to learn more.

Learn more about the DC Training DVD

I’d also note that Trueprotein is one of the few places that I trust to provide quality supplements and I personally get all of my protein powder from them. If you choose to order, you can get a 5% discount by using the coupon code “Lyle”.