Explosive Lifting for Sports Enhanced Edition

OVERVIEW This book is written for athletes and coaches who want to incorporate weightlifting exercises such as the snatch, clean and jerk into their strength and power training programs. The primary aim is “to teach safely and methodically the proper sequences for performing explosive lifts” (p.xii). The author, Harvey Newton, is a former U.S. Olympic team weightlifting coach and was the first U.S. member of the International Weightlifting Federation’s Scientific and Research Committee. The book is accompanied by a DVD, which has step-by-step instructions on 30 exercises. There is also a DVD-ROM with 24 video clips enhanced using Dartfish software. The DVD certainly helps the book meet its aim in terms of safe and methodical teaching, in so much as book can do that. This book review is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to highlight some key and interesting points with regard to coaching. ANECDOTES AND HEURISTICS It is the author’s accompanying insight and analysis – that can only come from understanding both the art and science of coaching weightlifting - that makes this book particularly interesting. The numerous anecdotes, especially from the author’s work with USA Cycling, make important points about principles of training and weightlifting technique. For example: Unfortunately, one coach advised junior cyclists to perform squats with their feet staggered fore and aft about the same distance apart as bicycle pedals. Although this appeared to be quite sport specific, a squat cannot be performed safely in this position. Further, with the already better-than-average leg strength most cyclists possess, the weights used were relatively heavy. Squatting in such an awkward position was asking for trouble. This is an example of taking sport-specific training too far. (p. xi) There are also anecdotes about how, before the 1992 Olympic Games, Lance Armstrong was advised by sports scientists at the US Olympic Committee to avoid plyometric training; how a top female cyclist required simple jump training on stairs to improve her group sprinting performance after short-term squatting in the off-season led to minimal benefit; and why a champion pistol shooter, Ruby Fox, felt that weightlifting was beneficial for her shooting due to “the total focus of having to execute the lift with split-second timing” (p. 24). There is a chapter on combining weightlifting and plyometrics, which includes discussion of the frequently mentioned recommendation of individuals being able to squat 1.5 times