IOL Strength and Conditioning

In a conversation of books covering barbell training techniques, Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore’s book, Starting Strength, will instantly surge to the top as the most important book a trainer should own. Period, no close second.

If you need another opinion, there are plenty in this section of the forum where we review the book and discuss their instructions and illustrations of the basic exercises. You’ll find everything’s covered; in fact, we’d arranged for the guys to come on the forum to address questions at the end of our book review month, but when the time came… well, there just weren’t any questions left unanswered.

Still, some people are visual or audio learners, and perhaps even Lon’s terrific illustrations aren’t enough for these types. A mere $24.95 and plenty of practice will buy these folks a perfect squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press and power clean; no joking here—Mark Rippetoe’s filmed Starting Strength barbell exercise technique seminar leaves no confusion. Each of the five exercises gets its 25-35 minutes, including discussion and instruction, followed by a long section in which Mark troubleshoots individual problems.

As an example of what’s on the video, let’s take a look at his squat points.

• First he addresses stance, preferring the heels at shoulder width, toes out about 30%.
• On the way down—no bar in position at this point—shove the knees out with the elbows, insuring the knees point out at the same angles as the toes.
• Using hip drive, shove the hips up from below; don’t pull up with the chest.
• Head down eyes toward the floor produces more hip drive; head up stifles that. Looking down will make you use your hips.
• Elbows up keeps everything tight under the bar.
• Thumbs on top keeps the wrists straight, and the weight off a torqued wrist.
• Stay tight. Don’t get your depth by relaxing your lumbar spine.
• Maintain your back angle throughout.

Now consider he follows those initial instructions by walking a variety of people through the movement several times, both without, and later, with weight. After that, he repeats the process covering the overhead press, deadlift, bench press and power clean. This $24.95 dvd, clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, is seriously priceless!

This is a nice production using a variety of camera angles. The background music is subdued and not distracting; the sound quality is good, the vocal audio is clear and no troublespots were seen.

I especially appreciated the choice of participants. There are about a dozen models demonstrating a big variety of body types. This is important in an exercise technique video, because perfect form is going to look different from body type to body type. A short-torsoed, long-femur squat is simply going to be different than the reverse, and potential problems can be reviewed when using a variety of athletes. This is something missing from videos using a solo model, and you’ll find it quite useful for understanding good form.

My review should be clear enough: Big thumbs up on this one!