Starting Strength is what it says it is. It’s not exciting reading. This is not a book you will read for fun, it will sit on your shelf but…I guarantee you you will be glad its there. Someone may remember me carping recently about problem solving….well, this is it.

This book only covers five lifts; Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, Press and Power Clean, and how to put together programs. The big deal here is that it really-really *Covers* them. This book is all about how to get people (including you) to do it right and how to figure out what “right” is. The ways they do this are with “Keys” like; looking for wrinkle patterns on the backs of shirts, ways to use tape and ways to clue people in to where they really are in space and what they are really doing.

This is not a glamorous or revolutionary book by appearance or the way it reads, but what?s revolutionary to me is that there is like 50 years of coaching experience in here IN DETAIL. After reading most fitness books, I feel smart and a bit smug (it is that bad sometimes;-) after reading this one, I felt dumb as a post…like “Why didn’t I know that…?” or “Why hadn’t I thought of that, it seems pretty obvious to do this”.

The “Touch the elbows” palm teaching trick in the power clean is one of those really cool little aids the book is full of ? ?How to make it get done right?, or ?ways to make it hard to do it wrong?.

It also has these little pictures on the edge of each page that act as a “flip-book” so you can see in motion exactly what they are talking about. Like little vid-clips to go with the text.

The Programming Chapter is good also, gives you an intelligent model for workouts, a plaform/rack arrangement I’ve seen a lot of times (because it works well) and some charts that illustrate economically and pretty accurately a mental model to think things through with.

This book has not an ounce of “schtick” in it. No “attitude”, just info that will sneak right into whatever you are doing without you even realizing it. This is a “look stuff up” kind of book. They say it?s for “coaching beginners” but frankly there was a lot in here I didn’t know and am glad someone wrote it down. The devil is always in the details and it?s good to know what “the details” are….I thought I knew but….

– Bryce Lane
The Power, Endurance and Flexibility Page