Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training [Hardcover]

Mohamed F. El-Hewie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2006

Like the first edition, this second edition is intended to serve as a compendium of those aspects of Weightlifting and Weight-Training essential to the development of physical strength. A prominent feature of this book is the in-depth coverage of scientific and medical aspects of a forgotten sport. In this second edition, all efforts were made to revise the first edition and correct the typographical errors in spelling and grammar. The book Index and Glossary have been restructured more efficiently. In this edition, chapters six and seven, of the first edition, are consolidated into one chapter, with complete restructuring of the anatomical figures. The following two new chapters are added: Chapter seven –“Warm-up and Stretching” eases the difficulty of planning training without weight, prior to venturing into vigorous lifting. Chapter twenty one –“Performance Analysis”- immensely enhances the visual understanding of the dynamics of Weightlifting and the functional anatomy of the human body. It contains 395 impressive photographs of international Olympic weightlifters, beginning by Vasily Alxeev and Pyrros Dimas, and ending by Reza Zadeh. With colossal collections of annotated photographic art work, the second edition becomes a must have reference on weightlifting, athletic performance, human strife for glory, health, and graceful existence. The second edition adheres to the basic premise of the first edition of emphasizing axial training with vehement zeal. This is supported extensively by the hundreds of colorful photographs, drawings, and personal narrations. The very unique aspect of the second edition is the extensive elaboration on performance analysis of contemporary weightlifters by an engineer, physician, weightlifter, and math teacher.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Free-style Weightlifting would be you best bid for long healthy strength. Think about it, it makes perfect sense --Kliplemet, T-nation Bodybuilding's Think-Tank 02/06/06

I am becoming intrigued with the idea of "total fitness" through your descriptions and life-benefits of your "core" exercises. --Paul Crabtree, February 01, 2006

I bought this book last year and it was one of the best Weight lifting books I have ever read. --Asif Rafeek, Dec-25-05

From the Publisher

The book is intended to serve as a compendium of the following subjects:

o Resistance training that is essential to the development of physical strength. o Pros and cons of the sports of Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, general weight training, and Weightlifting. o Education of all folks who are interested in advancing their physical strength, with special emphasis on children, women, and elderly people. The book presents diverse exercise plans, with exercise description, plan of managing daily, monthly, and annual load volume and intensity. o Elaborate personal tales of successful athletes who climbed to the top with persistent training, planning, and experimentation. Those are documented with photographs, tables, charts, and figures. o Scientific arguments on the benefits of structured exercise program for individual and public health advancement. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 575 pages
• Publisher: Shaymaa Publishing Corporation; 2 edition (May 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097195819X
• ISBN-13: 978-0971958197
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 8.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My destiny as the author of "Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training" was the mere coincidence of state affairs that impacted my generation after the Egyptian revolution of 1952. The culmination of thousands of years of wars, occupation, invasions, and turmoil was the rising of a social government that cared about the impoverished working people and attempted to reverse the oppressive capitalistic trends; by nationalizing major industries and redistributing wealth among the populace.
In such socialistic system of government, a new sense of national identity ensued. Like any struggle for change of the status quo, the socialist Egyptian government must struggle against the international powers bent on monopolizing resources, currency, and occupation of geographic territories. From inside, the Egyptian government had to deal with its own corruption and unrealistic ambitions in climbing the ladder of prosperity and pride. The national and international struggles among the individuals, leaders, and states ended in many successes, tragedies, wars, and final shaky peace agreements.
I was introduced to the national youth program in 1960. That aimed to prepare revolutionary youth to be leaders in sports, arts, science, and every modern field of knowledge. The state provided the uniform, meals, transportation, and pocket money for kids who were chosen for such program. In 1961, I participated in the cheer leader ceremony attended by president Gamaal Abdel Naser, in Alexandria, Egypt. I was eleven years then. In such structured training program of many months of planning and rehearsing of orchestrated thematic physical display of motion, colors, and sounds, my sense of the immense role physical fitness was deeply ingrained. First, I was able to gauge my ability to endure many hours of training along with other fellow kids. Second, I was able to get a sense of the possibility of gaining greater strength and skills by practicing and planning. In such young age, believing in the possibility of change was all I needed to reach the authorship status, forty years later.
Gaining the sense that play was a serious business enforced my instinctual being. That set me in a different path of dreaming, hopefulness, and unrestrained ambition. Living for basic survival goals was overly shadowed by my drive for experimenting with the elements of every encounter, in sport, science, and religion. Restrained with a frame of mind that life was aimed at enriching the soul, preserving the physique, and expanding the mind, my experimentation remained on positive constructive path, free from any chemical addiction, and skeptical of superficially enticing vices.
With the state support, teachers and trainers were paid to prepare elementary school pupils along many hours or rigid training during the after school hours, holidays, and weekends. The best trainers were sent to the then Eastern Bloc for advanced training is sport. By 1967, in junior high school, I was picked by the school coach to train on Olympic Weightlifting. That time, the coach was highly specialized, accomplished lifter, and the state compensation was enticing. Even though the 1967's war in the Middle East disrupted my early training between March and June, 1967, I was fortunate to find another coach in a health club in connection to my father's occupation in the Public Transportation Authority in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Then, the state support ended but my father's employment gave me free access to the company health club. There, my second coach who was sent to East Germany to study advanced Weightlifting had just returned to Egypt, fresh to start a weightlifting team. His name was Muhammed El-Kassabay. He will accompany me over 44 years, to the present day, through training, nurturing, and guidance.
My journey in Weightlifting was the background upon which I settled my roots and grew along many directions in many fields of knowledge. The faculty of engineering of the University of Alexandria, Egypt was still reeling out of its royal aura. It was built by King Fouad in such Old Egyptian style reminiscent of the glorious past. Then, the study of engineering was truly fascinating attracting the most brilliant minds of those days. I studies Nuclear Engineering when Egypt had only a miniature nuclear reactor lent by the Soviet Union. With Weightlifting occupying my soul, Nuclear Engineering was another soul enriching passion for knowledge and satisfaction. The mystery of the subatomic universe never ceased to occupy my conscience. Early in my engineering years, I quickly realized that I must equip myself with medical knowledge in order to excel in Weightlifting. Soon after securing a bachelor degree in engineering in 1974, I tested for the medical school and was accepted as a medical student in 1975.
Studying engineering and medicine was a true glory and occupation. In the old and historic medical school of Alexandria, where the cholera vibrio was discovered, my class of anatomy lasted four hours every day of the week. Few miles away, my weightlifting gym was located. A mile further, there was the engineering building where I completed my master and doctorate degrees. Across the street from the faculty of engineering was the national institute of public health where I had my first real job as a lecturer in industrial health and hygiene. From dissecting real human beings, most of whom were sealed by prison stamps and delivered to the medical school for study, to rushing to a class in mathematical logic and topology, to waiting for an overnight reservation for a batch computer job in the era of vacuum tubes and punched cards used for slotted data entry, to spending nights guessing why nuclear fusion has long eluded the human ingenuity, weightlifting was there for real life play and sweat.
In the 1960's, everything sounded revolutionary. We just have the first black and white television which followed the Suez Canal crisis that aimed at nationalizing the canal in order to build the Aswan Dam. Electricity started flowing into villages and rural areas and people started to live longer and healthier lives. Weightlifting was changing from the split leg lunging style to the full squatting style. Then the awesome progress in double-session daily training followed, with focused axial lifting, split between strengthening and technical performance, all in the same training day.
Engaging in heavy academic research antagonized my ambitions in Weightlifting. But the dismal future of Weightlifters in securing bright careers convinced me to curtail my passion for Weightlifting from undermining my professional preparation in advanced field of knowledge. Thus, while I pulled other fellows to reach the Olympic dream in 1984 and 1988, I capitalized on such experience in my future writing on weightlifting. Unfortunately, my fellows Olympic Champions abandoned lifting as soon as they were told to compete no more. In 2006, El-Kassbany was then 76, taken by watching my training in the Springfield gym, in New Jersey, after 36 years from the beginning of our journey in weightlifting.
The last chapter in my weightlifting journey happen to be shared with Sjaak Smorenburg from the far country of The Netherlands. Smorenburg coauthored seven books with me on home-gym weightlifting. The irony of such state of affairs of constant search for learning was the distinguished roles of very specific mentors. My art teacher in the elementary school was the first star that led me to realize my great potential in guessing the space, colors, and shapes. His distinguished words that ingrained into my mind were that "artists see shades and colors in every glimpse of life where ordinary people overlook". The elementary school star eclipsed for three years before I was taken by the weightlifting stars. Those were two distinguished coaches who dedicated their lives for making me who I am.

Books by the author:

Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie
The Weightlifting Attic by Mohamed F. El-Hewie and Sjaak Smorenburg
Weightlifting routines and bar trajectories: a home-gym edition
Kids' Weightlifting
Weightlifting For Adolescents: A Home-Gym Edition
Weightlifting For Young Children: Kids' Introduction To Weightlifting
Axial Strength Training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie
The Weightlifting Attic Illustrated by Mohamed F. El-Hewie and Sjaak Smorenburg
Performance Analysis of Weightlifting and Strength training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie

Scientific Publications by the author:

"Illumination of a spherical fusion pellet displaced from the geometric foci of focused laser beams: vector-analysis method" JOSA A, Vol. 2 Issue 1 Page 51 (January 1985) El-Sayed A. El-Badawy, Mohamed F. El-Hewie
"Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. I. Theory" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 2 Page 200 (February 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie, Richard J. Cook
"Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. II. Application to ellipsoidal surfaces" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 7 Page 1105 (July 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie, Dan Fredal
"Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. III. Application to paraboloidal mirrors" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 9 Page 1444 (September 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie
"Polarization discrimination of complex surfaces by laser light: Theory" Authors: El-Hewie, Mohamed F.; Majumdar, Arun K, Journal of Optics Communications, Volume 85, Issue 5-6, p. 462-472. (October 1991)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No less then 5 stars, warmly recommended, October 15, 2004

By 

Slavisa Nesic (Serbia and Montenegro) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training (Paperback)

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!

Additional note: I recommend you to buy this book and the book The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance -- by Arthur J. Drechsler. The Drechsler`s book is almost with no pictures inside, but the two books complements each other beautifully.

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the money, dense with information, February 18, 2005

By 

Larry Wagner "Athlete, Analyst, Coach, Dad" (Northridge, California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training (Paperback)

I am a former collegiate oarsman, who lifted weights to augment strength in college. I also coached rowing for a short time, and track and field.

I wanted to review the book after finding Mr. El-Hewie has 57 book reviews on Amazon.com, many less than flattering. But he writes them honestly. So I wanted to see how good his book is. Its a bit difficult, but very good. Packed with information. I've looked at many other books at the library, but bought few. At the moment, I have Getting Stronger, and now this book.

To begin, the book is 9 x 12 and an inch thick. Mr. El-Hewie uses margins of about 3/4 of an inch. His 519 pages could easily have been spread out to a "more readable" 1000 pages. He is very much for powerlifting and traditional weight lifting, but still gives very good coverage to bodybuilding. His technical writing is thorough. He gives anatomical and descriptions of how things work that you expect of other books, but seldom find.

He covers Technique, Posture (over and over, since you can hurt yourself, as some us well know), Fallacies, Weightliftng, Powerlifting, Importance of Muscle Balance, Bodybuilding, Weight Training, individual chapters to the Snatch, and Clean & Jerk. Also Endurance vs Strength, Axial Training (multi-joint exercises, his preference),Training Choices, Managing Load Volume and Intensity, Health and Fitness, Exercise & Preventable Disease, Diet and Nutrition, Exercise and Injuries, Exercise and Science, a good FAQs, and Training for Women. He has tables. He show both good technique and bad technique, and the what and why of them. He summarizes each chapter.

The book is not perfect. But this is a book in English by an Egyptian. There are occasional grammatical errors, and rare difficult sentences. But hey, how many of us would try to make a 500 page book in a foreign language ? Mr. El-Hewie claims to be a doctor and engineer. From what I read in the book, he must be.

I've gone over the book in pieces, some sections completely, others just a skim, and not every page yet, but I've only had it a few days. It seems to be beyond thorough. Tough to get through some sections, but the value in some sections will make you want to make sure you don't miss anything in the entire book. He does not cover every exercise variation, as you might find in Bill Pearl's Getting Stronger, which I also have, and like. But Bill Pearl leaves out much of the nitty gritty hard to write technique for individual exercises. For what he provides, El-Hewie, gives you everything you could want to know about the exercises he includes.

The book is a gift.

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weightlifting and Strength Training, August 28, 2004

By 

Mike - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training (Paperback)

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.