Dan John is a wonderful public speaker, a very knowledgeable strength coach and a warm, generous person. I can’t think of a better combination for a training seminar.

Although he loves to experiment and to learn himself, Dan John is in fact the opposite of faddy. He has this uncanny ability to pick out the eternal, simple truths from whatever system or method he is discussing.

I don’t think there’s much point my going into the details of what he talks about (but see end of this post anyway!). This sounds odd but it’s not really relevant. Saying Dan John covers ‘goal management’ and ‘phasic and tonic muscles’ in his lecture is like saying that Shakespeare covers ‘bereavement’ and ‘fencing’ in Hamlet. Technically this is true, but that doesn’t explain what the lecture is about or what you will get out of it.

It is worth saying however that, although much of Dan John’s experience is in coaching athletes, he does have a lot to say to people who are simply training for muscle building and/or fat loss and their long term physical health. His advice isn’t sports specific, it is general and applicable to a number of different scenarios (including one that seems to have been inspired by Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. I’m not asking any questions…).

So this DVD is for anyone who has been strength training for a while and who wants to carry on training for the rest of their life. In other words, for people who take their training seriously, even if it’s just a hobby. I think it is particularly useful for people who coach themselves as it will equip you with methods and concepts that can be drawn on throughout your training life.

Dan John makes me want to dedicate myself to training for life, or reinforces that desire. I am sure he could also instill that desire in some people, but this is not the DVD where he does that. I think you have to have the desire already, but even if it is dormant or intermittent, this DVD will bring it out and rejuvenate it.

The premise of this movie is ‘point camera at Dan John and let him talk for over two hours’. I could have listened to two hours more – heck, two days more. The good news for me, and all of you, is that there is more! This is only part one of a four part series filmed over two days. My cup is gonna runneth over, I can tell you.

This DVD is now on sale in the shop. Get it here. Sign up to my newsletter to hear about more new products as they come in stock.

Watch clips from the DVD:

• Dan on goal setting
• Dan on the role of the strength coach

What’s on the DVD:

Erm, having said there’s no point telling you exactly what’s on the DVD, here is a list of topics covered in case you really want to know.

• The role of the strength coach
• Levels of strength coaching
• How a home trainer becomes his own coach
• The influence of strength coaching on performance
• Strength and athletic performance
• How to narrow your training focus
• Systematic learning
• Setting a non-competitive training goal
• Phasic vs tonic muscles
• How to stay youthful while aging
• Movements not muscles
• Dan’s hip displacement continuum

More Dan John

• Dan John’s earlier DVD Everything’s Over My Head
• The wisdom of Dan John

For me this is like watching old Bones Brigade movies. You can giggle at the low budget, dated production values for about two seconds before the content takes over and you are mesmerised.

Carried Away is the first film on the DVD and it is mainly about walking with weights. It doesn’t get simpler and it doesn’t get harder than this. I just wrote a lengthy and detailed post about assistance exercises; I’m thinking about deleting it and writing “do everything in Carried Away”.

If you work out at home and you love the low tech, you will be particularly inspired by this short film. I was also gobsmacked by the mountains in the background (we don’t have anything like that in the UK).

The next film is From The Ground Up. Some people will recognise the title as also being that of Dan John’s free ebook on olympic weightlifting. Personally I think the third film follows on more naturally from Carried Away but there you go. From The Ground Up is a family affair in the backyard. Mom and Dad do Olympic lifting in the garden while teenage daughters look on indulgently.

Coach Dan John, back in the day

If you coach athletes (and that includes you – if you train yourself at home you are Head Coach of Team You) this film will be useful, giving very sensible drills, progressions and coaching cues. I don’t know enough about Olympic weightlifting to know whether it is ‘good’ but it all makes sense to me.

There are exercises in here that I have seen popping up in various other contexts, including Crossfit workouts, so I’m not the only one who thinks, “darn that looks useful”. If you’ve done little or no Olympic lifting before, this film will get you putting stuff over your head with confidence.

The third film is Everything’s Over My Head, which continues the milieu of the first movie – outdoor training at home, very low tech, but focussing on overhead, Olympic lifting-inspired training.

Throughout the films, Dan John’s delivery – mostly in voiceover, sometimes to camera – is perfect: funny, clear, authoritative, warm-hearted. Anyone who has read his articles or his book will know what to expect. Simple, sensible, inspirational advice. Stuff that you know isn’t going to go out of fashion.

Carried Away might well be genius. It’s so simple, you almost wonder why Dan John even made a DVD of it, because most people wouldn’t even recognise it as ‘training’. But once you see people actually doing it, it makes sense and that is possibly the genius part.

Recently a lot of people have been catching onto this idea. Olympic lifting and sprints? Dan John has been talking about it for years – go straight to the source.

More Dan John

I am happy to say that I now have the Everything’s Over My Head DVD for sale in my shop. Get your copy here.

Unfortunately I don’t have a clip from Everything’s Over my Head to show you but if you are unfamiliar with Dan John’s teaching style or you just want to watch something cool, take a look at this clip of Dan teaching the turkish get up from one of the new DVDs (which I will be getting in stock soon!).

Review of A Philosophy of Strength Training DVD from Dan John

My post on The wisdom of Dan John

What’s on the DVD

Here’s an overview of what you’ll learn from Everything’s Over My Head DVD:

Olympic lifts, kettlebells, gymnastic rings….these are a few of our favourite things….

Ever wished that there was a single instruction manual containing all of this cool stuff? Well, now there is!

Andrew Stemler, creator of the popular i-Course – a full day of learning all the key Crossfit skills – has produced a manual to go along with it. You can support Gubernatrix.co.uk by getting your copy here.

This means, oh joy, that all you people who would love to go to the i-Course but can’t get to one can now do your own version at home. And you people who are lucky enough to have attended the i-Course now have a handy reference guide for all those skills that you only just managed to take in on the day.

What’s in the manual?

The 85-page Elite Fitness Manual is packed full of goodies including:

• Olympic lifts and all their progressions
• Kettlebell exercises
• Gymnastic ring training
• Bodyweight exercises
• Abdominal training
• Muscle-up

It covers practically every key exercise and lift in the functional fitness arsenal. All except the bench press. But you know how to bench, right?

Who is the manual for?

The manual is designed to be suitable both for beginners and intermediate trainees. There is plenty of progression in all the key exercises so if you are a beginner you start with the first progression and if you are an intermediate, jump in where you feel comfortable.

You don’t need any experience in the exercises themselves but a general familiarity with free weights and bodyweight exercises is helpful. If you’ve only ever worked out on machines, you’ll be in for a shock!

Many of the skills described in the manual are so complex and tricky to master that you will be kept busy for weeks, months, years. Stemler comments that “you never master the squat: its always work in progress: there is always something you can improve”, and I can personally attest to this as my squat has been a work in progress for about five years!

That’s why a manual like this is so useful and such good value for money. It will last many years, possibly a lifetime. As it is an ebook it is a good deal cheaper than the traditionally published equivalent would be.

Presentation

One aspect that has always impressed me about Stemler’s publications is the look and feel. Compared to many self-published ebooks in this genre, the presentation is slick, entertaining and easy to read. The photo sequences are very helpful. I always find it frustrating when a book presents only one photograph of a particular move; what you really want to know is what it looks like to get from A to B.

The Elite Fitness Manual breaks key moves down photographically, which is really helpful. Nevertheless Stemler acknowledges that this lends a certain falsity to what are fluid and dynamic movements.

The overall thrust of the manual is not: here’s an ideal way to do this difficult move that only super-flexible 12-year-olds can pull off, but more: here are some safe progressions that you can practise on your own.  Eventually you will be able to put them all together.

So the Elite Fitness Manual is your passport to a broad range of athletic, functional skills and can be yours for only £12.99. Worth every penny, I’d say.

Go shop!

More from gubernatrix

• Review: the Crossfit London i-Course
• The A-Z of training books
• Review: the complete guide to training with free weights
• Kettlebell training guide
• Muscle-up and ring training guide

Training books A-Z

Tudor O. Bompa & Mike Carrera – Periodization Training for Sports (2005)

Tudor O. Bompa – Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training (1999)

Tudor O. Bompa, Lorenzo J. Cornacchia, and Mauro G.Di Pasquale  – Serious Strength Training (2002)

Mike Boyle – Functional Training for Sports: Superior Conditioning for Today’s Athlete (2003)

Donald A. Chu – Jumping into Plyometrics: 100 Exercises for Power and Strength (1998)

Donald A. Chu – Explosive Power and Strength: Complex Training for Maximum Results (1996)

Gray Cook – Athletic Body in Balance (2003)

Alwyn Cosgrove & Lou Schuler – The New Rules of Lifting (2008) – read my review

Alwyn Cosgrove, Lou Schuler & Cassandra Forsythe – The New Rules of Lifting for Women (2008)

Frederic Delavier  – Strength Training Anatomy, 2nd edition (2006) – read my review

Frederic Delavier  – Women’s Strength Training Anatomy (2002)

Arthur Drescheler – The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance (1998)

Ross Enamait – Infinite Intensity – read my review

Ross Enamait – Never Gymless

Mohamed F. El-Hewie – Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training (2006)

Greg Everett – Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches

Steven Fleck & William Kraemer – Designing Resistance Training Programmes (1998)

Steven Fleck, William Kraemer & and J. Steven – Periodization Breakthrough!: The Ultimate Training System (1996)

Dan John – Never Let Go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living and Learning (2009)

Steve Justa – Rock, Iron, Steel: The Book of Strength (1998)

Brooks Kubik – Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development (1996)

Graeme Marsh – The Complete Guide to Training with Free Weights (2008) – read my review

Stuart McRobert – Build Muscle, Lose Fat, Look Great: Everything You Need to Know to Transform Your Body (2006)

Stuart McRobert – Insider’s Tell-All Handbook on Weight-training Technique (1999)

Mark Rippetoe – Starting Strength: Second Edition (2007) – read my review

Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore – Practical Programming for Strength Training (2006)

Mark Rippetoe – Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training (2007)

Mel C. Siff  – Facts and Fallacies of Fitness

Mel C. Siff – Supertraining (2003)

Christopher Sommer – Building the Gymnastic Body (2008)

Bill Starr – The Strongest Shall Survive: Strength Training for Football (1976)

Jim Stoppani – Encyclopedia of Muscle and Strength (2006)

Randall J. Strossen – Super Squats: How to Gain 30 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks (1989)

Christian Thibaudeau – Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods (2007)

Pavel Tsatsouline – Power to the People: Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American (2000)

Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky – Science and Practice of Strength Training, Second Edition (2006)

The perceived correlation between size and strength is very strong in the popular imagination, despite there being evidence around us that strength is not solely a consequence of size. I am willing to bet that most people can think of someone they know who is surprisingly strong despite not being big and beefy.

Often my interlocutor, especially if she is female, will go on to remark that she has “no strength” or very little strength – as if strength is something you are either born with or you’re not. But it actually has more to do with practise: if you lift heavy weights on a regular basis you will get stronger regardless of size.

Track and field athletes for example train with weights even though they don’t always want to get bigger or heavier. What they want is to increase their strength-to-bodyweight ratio and become more powerful. John Shepherd, in an article in Peak Performance, points out:

“The British triple jumper Jonathan Edwards regularly used high-weight, low-repetition weight workouts. The world record holder and Olympic champion was literally as light as a feather (he weighed in at his peak at 65kg), yet was incredibly powerful.”

But people still assume that if you lift weights you will necessarily get bigger, leading to those familiar misconceptions about strength training and getting bulky. So what is strength?

Definition of strength

A definition I like is: strength is the ability to exert force. Specifically it is muscles that are exerting force in order to contract. They may be contracting in order to pick up a pen or to pick up a heavy barbell. Clearly they will need to exert more force to pick up the barbell than to pick up the pen!

There are two key factors that determine how much force a muscle can exert: muscle size and neurological efficiency, or how well the nervous system can coordinate muscle contractions.

Everybody knows that muscle size is a factor in strength, but they don’t realise that the behaviour of the body’s central nervous system is just as important, if not more important, in how strong you are.

Neurological efficiency

The central nervous system (CNS) coordinates muscle activity in the body. Each muscle has many neurons which are connected to the CNS and each neuron controls a group of muscle fibres. The neuron and its group of fibres is called a motor unit and there are many motor units in each muscle. When the muscle needs to contract, the CNS recruits however many motor units it thinks it needs in order to complete the task. So the role of the CNS in muscular activity is a crucial one – it is like a general controlling the troops.

Different muscles have different sized motor units depending on the job they need to do. A large muscle which is required to produce large amounts of force may have up to 1000 muscle fibres per motor unit, whereas a small muscle making fine movements, such as the muscles of the eye, may only have 10 fibres per motor unit.

Strength is a function of the number of motor units that the nervous system can recruit in order to lift a single weight. An untrained person may only be able to recruit a maximum of 70% of the available motor units in their muscles for one lift, whereas a trained and experienced lifter may be able to recruit 95% or above. The trained lifter is therefore more neurologically efficient than the untrained lifter. Most powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting training is designed to improve this neurological efficiency.

The more experienced the lifter and the better the CNS at recruiting motor units, the more the lifter will be affected by CNS fatigue. When a beginner is lifting close to their apparent maximum effort, the motor unit recruitment is still comparatively modest and the nervous system can recover quickly. In fact the beginner trainee is more likely to suffer from muscular fatigue due to the muscles not being adapted to training. However when an experienced lifter is training maximal or close to maximal weights, the motor unit recruitment is very high and it causes greater nervous system fatigue and comparatively little muscular fatigue. A maximal strength session for an experienced lifter is very tiring.

It is possible for people to get stronger – sometimes much stronger -simply by increasing the response of the nervous system to having to lift a weight. This explains why we hear about people demonstrating extraordinary strength in extreme life-or-death situations, such as a woman being able to lift a car off someone trapped beneath it.

According to Zatsiorsky and Kraemer, “when untrained subjects receive hypnotic suggestions of increased strength, they exhibit strength increases”, which seems to be due to the central nervous system (CNS) activating many more motor units than normal. Elite strength and power athletes train to be able to do this at will.

Muscle size

The amount of force a muscle can exert – how strong it is – is related to its cross-sectional area. Strength can be increased by increasing the size (or specifically the cross-sectional area) of the individual muscle fibres. This means that people with a large number of fibres have greater potential for strength than people with a small number of fibres – regardless of their bodyweight. Increasing the size of muscle fibres is achieved through a combination of training and nutrition.

This also means that any gains in muscle mass should result in increased strength, all other things being equal. So there is a relationship between bodyweight and strength but the biggest people are not necessarily the strongest in relation to their bodyweight.

Smaller people have shorter bones and therefore shorter muscles. This means that in two people with the same amount of muscle, the shorter-boned person will have muscles with a greater cross-sectional area. The shorter person therefore potentially has a better strength-to-bodyweight ratio.

However the person with longer bones has the potential to gain more muscle mass overall and therefore get stronger in the absolute sense.

Relative strength and absolute strength

This difference between relative strength and absolute strength is an important one, since many sports are judged on relative strength. Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, together with boxing, wrestling and other martial arts are all categorised in weight classes, so you are competing with other people of around the same bodyweight. Gymnastics is also a sport where strength is relative to bodyweight. In sports where the weight is not relative to bodyweight – throwing events or American football, for example – then absolute strength is important.

Notice also that in those sports mentioned where relative strength is important, athletes are often quite short – gymnasts, powerlifters, martial artists – whereas in sports where absolute strength is important, athletes tend to be tall – American football, shot-put and so on.

In sports where relative strength is the key comparator, smaller people will tend to come out stronger because strength can’t increase at the same rate as size. In Olympic weightlifting, the world record clean and jerk in the Men’s 56kg category is 3 times body weight (Halil Mutlu, 168kg) whereas in the super-heavyweight category (>105kg) it is 1.68 times body weight (Hossein Rezazadeh, 263kg). The lightest lifter is almost twice as strong as the heaviest lifter, relative to bodyweight.

Slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibres

Most people have heard that there are three types of muscle fibre: slow twitch and two types of fast twitch. Slow twitch fibres have a slower firing rate but are more resistant to fatigue and are best for lengthy aerobic exercise; fast twitch fibres have a relatively fast firing rate but are more easily fatigued and are better for explosive or anaerobic exercise. Fast twitch fibres have the potential to be bigger in size than slow twitch fibres.

All muscles contain both fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibres and the overall mix between the two varies between people. Top sprinters have a greater proportion of fast twitch fibres in their muscles than most people whereas the best endurance runners have a greater proportion of slow twitch fibres than others.

What is less generally understood is that whatever the activity, the order of muscle fibre recruitment through the motor units is the same: the slowest motor units are recruited first. If greater force is required, more and faster motor units have to be recruited. The better you are at recruiting motor units the more force you can exert but full activation of motor units within a muscle is very difficult to achieve. The higher threshold motor units can only be stimulated with heavy resistance training, so if you never lift heavy weights, you don’t have much chance of being able to recruit those faster muscle fibres.

Women have fewer muscle fibres than men and the fibres are smaller in terms of cross-sectional area. Interestingly, most women (around 75% of untrained women) start off with larger slow twitch fibres than fast twitch fibres, even though it is the fast twitch fibres which have the greater potential for size and strength.

This means that untrained women have enormous potential for strength gains – greater than men, in many ways. However the fast twitch fibres and high threshold motor units that are the key to strength require heavy resistance in order to be stimulated. Exercising with light weights will not make the slightest difference to these elements and the unfortunate trainee will remain weak.

Moreover heavy resistance training is required to improve the strength of connective tissue (tendons, ligaments) and bones, which is useful for all sports including endurance events. Without heavy weight training, this improvement is foregone.

In fairness, it is not just women who are reluctant to train with heavy weights and thus miss out on all these important benefits. Many men who are interested in endurance sports or need to remain fairly light weight shy away from heavy weight training through a misconception that it will make them much bigger and heavier, but as the Jonathan Edwards example (above) shows this is not necessarily the case.

Concluding thoughts

Strength isn’t just about size, it is also to do with the ability of the nervous system to recruit enough motor units to complete the task without damaging the body. This will improve over time with training.

Most strength sports involve relative strength where the objective is not to increase bodyweight but to increase strength and/or power relative to bodyweight. Nobody should be afraid that if they lift weights they will gain significant amounts of muscle or body weight as this is merely a subset of the many types of weight training that exist.

Women have huge potential for strength gains because they start off at a disadvantage, with less muscle mass, smaller and fewer muscle fibres. But with heavy resistance training, strength can grow considerably without increases in size. Men are also missing out on strength benefits by avoiding heavy weights, since more weight on the bar does not necessarily result in significant gains in bodyweight.

Strength seems not to be so prized in modern times as it once was. But when the emphasis is so much on the appearance of strength for aesthetic reasons, what gets forgotten are the many health benefits of decent strength. It’s not just about looking good naked, it is about having healthy bones and tissues, efficient muscles, good posture and flexibility and reducing the effects of ageing (never mind those wrinkles, what if you fall over and break your leg?). In the UK the biggest cause of time off work is back pain – something that strength training can genuinely help with.

I believe that sooner or later people will realise that strength is vital even with all the conveniences of modern life and modern medicine and that by picking up heavy stuff every once in a while we’ll all be better off.

Key texts

Rippetoe & Kilgore, Practical Programming for Strength Training
Zatsiorsky & Kraemer, Science and Practice of Strength Training (2nd ed)

Related posts

• Strength standards for women
• Types of strength
• Types of weight training
• The toning problem: why women are missing out when it comes to weight training
• Why do most women avoid the free weights room?

Further reading

• Define strength by Chip Conrad on EliteFTS
• Strength from Brianmac
• Your body is a barbell by Alwyn Cosgrove

It is great to see a text book dedicated to free weight training that is designed to have broad appeal. Books like Starting Strength are invaluable and have grown a fantastic reputation on the internet, but I’ve never seen a copy in my local bookshop or library. So I was pleased to see that my local library was stocking this guide.

This book does appear to fill a gap in the market. There aren’t many books devoted to free weight training and those that are take a different approach. Most are limited in some way – either they focus on exercise technique and skate over other topics or they are devoted to a particular training goal such as muscle building and don’t have much to say about other types of training. This book, as you would expect from the title, covers all bases in reasonable detail.

I should also mention that I’ve had some contact with the author Graeme Marsh in recent times and was probably predisposed to like the book, knowing something of his views and approach to strength training.

Graeme has more than met those expectations and I think he has done a great job with this book. It is never an easy undertaking to write a ‘complete guide’ to anything. I’m sure he spent a lot of time agonising over what should go in and what could be left out but I think he’s got the level of detail right.

Content

The book is split into three parts. Part one deals with issues around getting started, safety, use of equipment and so on. Marsh makes a persuasive argument for the use of free weights over machines. He also answers common questions and explains the basics of strength training – adaptation, types of strength, muscle fibres and so on.

If I were a complete beginner, I might be tempted to skip over this section as it wouldn’t mean much to me, but it is important to have the information there and readers can go back to it later once they are into the swing of training. This section is probably most useful for people who have already been training for a while, perhaps doing a programme that someone else has written for them, and now want to dig a little deeper into the concepts behind strength training and the different training methods available.

Exercise technique

Part two is a guide to performing the exercises themselves. Marsh has included a wide variety of exercises so the technique guides are necessarily brief but sufficiently clear to be followed safely. The colour photographs accompanying the exercises are clear and useful.

There were one or two surprises: a couple of exercises that I hadn’t come across before and others that I had almost forgotten about, so there is material here for the more experienced trainee as well as someone new to free weights.

This is probably an area where compromise has been made in terms of space. Some of the exercises are I think dealt with a little too briefly, especially major lifts such as the squat and deadlift. More information could have been provided on common errors and weaknesses. However there is certainly sufficient guidance to get people started.

What brought joy to my heart was the inclusion of the Olympic lifts. This section rightly focuses on exercises that will develop the necessary skill and flexibility for the Olympic lifts rather than the full versions of the lifts themselves – which would be a whole other book. Exercises include the hang versions of the clean and snatch and the front squat, overhead squat and the jerk. Following this, there is a short section on kettlebell movements – a bit limited but better to have it included than not.

Programme design

Finally there is a section on programme design. Surprisingly, it is almost as long as the exercise section. Often programme design is tacked on to the end of a book about training and dealt with in a perfunctory manner. Marsh has chosen to devote a lot of space to the topic and it pays off. For me, this was the most interesting part of the book. There’s plenty here that intermediate and even advanced trainees can benefit from. Particularly in an age where people are getting much of their programming knowledge from the internet – where myths and extravagant claims abound – having a clear and professional analysis of the various methods and protocols, together with explanations as to how and why they work is incredibly useful.

There is information about all types of training goals, including strength, muscle building, explosive power and fat loss.

Style

The overall style of the book is unthreatening and professional. There are no extravagant claims, such as ‘this exercise is the best ever’ or ‘this method will pack on muscle’. The models are all fairly normal looking people, albeit athletic types (they are generally trainers themselves).

Sometimes the prose is a tad dry and jargon is occasionally used unnecessarily. Most of the jargon is explained in the book’s glossary but it can make it harder for a non-experienced person to read and understand. Words such as ‘contraindicated’ and ‘pronated’ are not part of every day vocabulary. Perhaps they should be explained briefly the first time they are used in the text. Alternatively words that appear in the glossary could be emboldened.

I noticed quite a few proofing errors. This is not a disaster but does detract from the reading experience. I am pretty sure that in one case a table is incorrectly titled (8.17) and could therefore be misleading.

Audience

I was surprised that there wasn’t a ‘who this book is for’ paragraph. Perhaps a ‘complete guide’ is necessarily for everyone! Generally the book seems to be aimed at people who are new to training with free weights but sometimes it seems that a different audience is being targeted, for example fitness professionals or people who are fairly experienced and require a deeper knowledge of the topic.

I think this book is suitable for a number of audiences:

Beginners will find it a useful reference book, even if they don’t understand or need a lot of the information at first. It is the sort of book that will remain relevant for a long time. If you yourself are quite experienced but you have a friend or partner who isn’t, this would make a great gift.

Experienced trainees will find a lot that they didn’t know, especially if they have holes in their knowledge. For instance you may have a lot of practical experience with different types of exercises but relatively little knowledge about programme design. This book will help to plug those gaps.

Fitness professionals should find this book invaluable. I’m not a personal trainer or fitness instructor myself but judging by the level of general knowledge I encounter at gyms around the country, a book like this is desperately needed in the industry. Fitness professionals should understand the benefits of free weights and should be able to instruct in their technique and design programmes that incorporate them. It’s not necessary for every gym instructor to read Zatsiorsky and this level of secondary material will be sufficient for most cases.

On that point, a bibliography is included but it might have been useful to annotate it in order to point people in the direction of further information on particular topics.

Conclusion

This really is a good effort and I look forward to seeing it in my local bookshop (I checked the other day and it wasn’t there). It is the kind of book that needs to be included alongside those oversized strength training books with pictures of roided up bodybuilders on the cover, otherwise people will continue to misunderstand weight training and assume that it is not for them.

Click here to see The Complete Guide to Training with Free Weights on Amazon.

Strength training books: 6 of the best

Kettlebell training guide

Gymnastic ring training guide

Review: Crossfit London i-Course

Gubernatrix recommended strength training books

Dan John is one of the few strength pundits who is both teacher and pupil. He has a clear, engaging prose style and everything he writes is ‘big picture’. When you read a Dan John article, you understand what it’s all about and why do it in the first place.

I like Dan’s approach because he is first and foremost a sportsman (field events, Olympic lifting, highland games etc) and therefore more performance-oriented than size-oriented. He is also a straight talking kind of guy who has no desire to make things sound more complex or esoteric than they actually are, just to boost his own ego. As the man himself puts it:

“I feel good about things like helping people with a clear goal, strength training, winning things and defeating evil.”

So naturally when I wanted some help and inspiration for my latest programme, I looked up some of Dan John’s articles. I was not disappointed! Here are the ones that resonated the most with me:

The Philosophy of Physical Capital

This article is about finding the right training programme and adapting it for your own use. What is refreshing about John’s approach is that, rather than looking at training programmes from the outside, he shows that you first need to be honest about your own abilities and commitment (physical capital) and find a programme that fits those aspects.

He discusses his ‘highly scientific’ terms for the concept of the max lift: Sorta Max, Max, Max Max and Max Max Max. I have no hesitation in saying that his explanation will change the way you think about your “max” lift forever!

Nautilus, Crossfit and “Hihi”

This is one of the best of John’s teacher-as-pupil articles. He talks about his different training experiences over the years and what he has learnt from them. He admits that he gets ‘sucked in’ but says that he enjoys trying out new ideas or new pieces of equipment.

There is a tendency in the fitness world to elevate people who espouse a single idea constituting their life’s mission, and to be suspicious of those who have changed their minds or tried different systems. Politicians have the same problem: they can never change their minds for fear of being accused of flip-flopping or u-turning.

This, of course, is nonsense. As the body of knowledge ‘out there’ grows and changes, we ought to grow and change with it. And in case you were wondering, Dan John does eventually boil his years of learning into a useful concept that you can take away and apply to your own training.

Two tips on goal setting

If you’ve read the above articles, you will understand where Dan John is coming from in these two pithy tips about goal setting.

Goals v Behaviours by Dan John

Two goal setting tips by Dan John

Read more

• Dan John’s Q&A forum
• List of articles by Dan John
• From the Ground up – Dan John’s ebook on olympic weightlifting

Following on from Crossfit London’s excellent Ring Training guide, they have now published a Kettlebell Training guide, which I am stocking.

We’ve had some great feedback on the Ring Training guide, so I’m confident the Kettlebell Guide will be just as effective.

Kettlebell Training Guide content

So what’s in it? Mainly step-by-step instruction on all the major kettlebell exercises, including:

• Swing
• Clean
• Press – shoulder, waiter and bottom-up
• Snatch
• Turkish Get-up
• Windmill

In other words, everything you need to get started with your shiny new kettlebell. Short of actually going to a kettlebell seminar, this guide is probably your best bet to ensure that you are getting your technique right. Kettlebells are not the easiest things in the world to handle (that’s the whole point), so some clear instruction will take you a long way.

Here is what Andrew has to say about kettlebell training in his guide:

“A kettlebell, in spite of the hype, is neither a gym in the palm of your hand, an item that flenses fat from your body, nor builds indestructible bullet-proof abs: that’s done by hard work, skill, determination and diet.

However, if it can be swung and lifted with correct form, it confers on the user a variety of strength, power and CV-based improvements that, some insist, outstrip conventional training methods.”

I like Andrew’s honesty here; he’s not a kettlebell evangelist but recognises the contribution of kettlebells to the strength and conditioning arsenal.

I feel the same way: there are some kettlebell exercises that I love, like the swing and the Turkish get-up, and they are just not the same with a dumbbell. But like any training method, you get out of it what you put in. So, get stuck in and let me know what you think!

The muscle-up is one of the most challenging tests of strength for the amateur trainee. If you’ve mastered dips and pull-ups and you are looking for your next challenge, add the muscle-up to your arsenal.

If you want to learn this difficult move you will need some excellent guidance and Crossfit London’s Ring Training guide by Andrew Stemler is just what you need. I have been using this myself and it is brilliant – lots of drills, great pictures, easy to use. The introductory sections include items freely available elsewhere but the real meat of the guide is all the muscle-up stuff, which isn’t available anywhere else.

The guide also covers more basic ring training so even if you are not ready for the muscle-up yet, you will benefit from the instruction. The guide’s content includes:

• Full body ring training guide, including how to perform squats, dips, chest flys etc on the rings
• A-Z of pull-up training
• Muscle-up progressions and drills
• Muscle-up instruction

So if you want to take full advantage of your rings and get a muscle-up this year, considering investing the price of a pint in a decent guide to help you on your way.

Why lift weights?

Women are often not encouraged to lift weights, or at least to lift heavy. But you are missing out on many benefits if you don’t train with weights:

1. Developing muscle is a very effective way to drop body fat as muscle burns many more calories than fat.
2. As we get older, we lose muscle and our body fat percentage thereby increases; weight training will help to reverse this process
3. Strengthening your muscles and joints will help prevent injury and back pain, both now and later in life.
4. Weight training improves bone density, mitigating the risk of osteoporosis and weak bones which women are particularly prone to.
5. Being stronger is useful in everyday life and brings increased confidence in your own physical abilities.

Myth of bulking up

Many women are afraid that weight training will bulk them up and make them look masculine. But this is a myth! Women can get a lot stronger without bulking up because they don’t have the same hormones as men. Female bodybuilders who actually want to bulk up have to resort to drugs in order to achieve the effect as it doesn’t happen naturally. If you watch what you eat and train with weights, you are more likely to drop a couple of dress sizes than get any bigger.

Size zero culture

Women are often put off weight training because it isn’t a mainstream activity for women. For many, the aspiration is to look thin and waif-like rather than healthy and lean, and images in the media and fashion encourage this. But the answer is simple: it’s your body and your health we’re dealing with. Women should train to suit their bodies and lifestyles, not to suit a particular media image which is unattainable and undesirable for the vast majority of people.

The tyranny of the scales

It is common for people to judge their health according to how much they weigh on the scales, using indicators such as BMI (Body Mass Index). But BMI does not distinguish between muscle and fat. This leads to the bizarre situation where athletes who have a lot of muscle and little body fat are classed as obese because they weigh more than the average! A better measurement to use is body fat percentage.

The most effective way to reduce your body fat percentage is to build some muscle. Combined with the right diet, you can reduce your body fat percentage and thus improve your health, even if you get heavier overall. You will also look leaner and have better definition.

Leading the way

Lastly – but importantly – it is difficult to be a trailblazer. Many women don’t know any other females who train seriously with weights and it can be a daunting prospect to be the first woman in your gym to pick up a heavy barbell.

That’s where this article series comes in. This series gives you all the guidance you need to start weight training, whatever kind of gym you are in. So take the plunge: you have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain!

Next article: Types of weight training

Related posts

• Why do most women still avoid the free weights room?
• Why women should train with weights
• How I got started with free weights

External links

• Fun with women! by Christian Thibaudeau