Customer Reviews

The Strongest Shall Survive: Strength Training for Football

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Bill Starr's book on strength training for Football (which is really strength training for any sport), is an absolute classic of the field. If you wish to become strong, and you are limited to one book, this is the book to own. In it, Starr outlines a basic 5x5, 3 exercise strength training program. He covers athletic recovery, cycling, nutrition (there is excellent nutrition advice in there I've read nowhere else), training psychology, injury recovery, supplimentary training, anatomy, drugs, the role of the coach and fat loss. Starr was so far ahead of his time ... he wrote this in the 1970s (the haircuts in the photographs in the book are hilarious: think, Pete Rose hair), and it is still ahead of its time.

Many strength trainers will disagree with his use of the power clean as the primary pulling motion. I think Starr is onto something with this. While I have done deadlift only programs, deadlifts are pretty rough on the back and nerves, and as far as I can tell, compared to the clean or other olympic lifts, they do nothing for athletic ability. It may be that others will do better using deadlifts or some other form of non-explosive pull, but I'd have to guess that such people are not athletes. This book is for training athletes; not for training the pump and pose crowd.

I do not presently train in the 5x5 fashion, though it was the longest lived and most productive of any of my training programs, and I suspect I'll be back. I still refer to this book first whenever I encounter a training issue. Chances are, if you have an issue, Bill Starr has a solution for it, even if you're training much differently than what he recommends.

I am in search for an orginial version of Bill Starr's book, used in excellent condition.
Bubba