A guide to weightlifting for people over the age of 30.

Bones of Iron is a collection of articles by Matt Foreman that appeared in the Performance Menu journal between 2008 and 2011 along with a few new pieces of material. Foreman's background in Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting and coaching multiple sports gives him unique perspective and insights into a wide array of elements not only of strength training and competition, but all athletic pursuits and life itself. The chapters are rife with as much humor as helpful training information, and Foreman covers topics ranging from practical guidelines for designing training programs to personal experiences with training and competition.

Masters athletes are those that continue to train and compete, typically at a high level, beyond the age of thirty-five and into middle and old age. As populations in the industrialized world get older and governments become increasingly keen to promote healthy aging and non-pharmacological interventions, the study of masters athletes enables us to better understand the benefits of, and motivations for, life-long involvement in physical activity. This is the first book to draw together current research on masters athletes. The Masters Athlete examines the evidence that cognitive skills, motor skills and physiological capabilities can be maintained at a high level with advancing age, and that age related decline is slowed in athletes that continue to train and compete in their later years. Including contributions from leading international experts in physiology, motor behaviour, psychology, gerontology and medicine, the book explores key issues such as: motivation for involvement in sport and physical activity across the lifespan evidence of lower incidence of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and diabetes the maintenance of performance with age. Challenging conventional views of old age, and with important implications for policy and future research, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners working in sport and exercise science, aging and public health, human development, and related disciplines.

This book consolidates Carl Miller's extensive knowledge gained while pursuing his life's work in Olympic-style weightlifting. There are scientific principles behind Olympic-style weightlifting, and Miller's 50 years of lifting, researching and coaching provide valuable insight into the process of Olympic lifting. Whether you are an advanced lifter or a novice, Miller equips you with the tools to become a champion, even if it's in your own mind. For those lifters with the desire to compete, Carl's book will inspire you to immerse your body and mind in the intricacies required to be a winner. Miller's success as a young weightlifter led him to a long and unique career coaching weightlifting, fitness and nutrition to elite athletes in the 1960s and 1970s, and later he spread his message about the benefits of weight training to a wider audience. As Coaching Coordinator for the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team, Miller put into practice many methods and techniques he gleaned from studying successful international lifting programs. The U.S. Olympic weightlifting team under head coach Tommy Kono won a record number of Olympic medals using assistant Olympic coach Carl Miller's coaching system. He gathered the best lifters in the country, had the best coaches in the sport, and introduced new lifting techniques to elevate the U.S. lifters to contenders. Carl Miller has dedicated himself to analyzing and tweaking the techniques of Olympic lifting. During the 1970s, in addition to his duties with the Olympic team, he was a National coach, World coach, elementary school teacher and vice principal. As a teacher and vice principal Miller developed physical conditioning programs for the kids in his school. During his 30 years, and still counting, as founder and co-owner of Carl & Sandra's Physical Conditioning Center, lifters seek out Carl, his son Shane and staff for Olympic-style training. Carl & Sandra's Conditioning Center stands apart from other gyms because Carl Miller's philosophy revolved around the benefits of weight training long before it became popular. He weaves the hundreds of tiny components of Olympic-style weightlifting into beneficial fitness programs for gym members with a wide variety of profiles, and at the same time, his Conditioning Center trains a team of nationally competitive masters Olympic weightlifters. The Sport of Olympic-Style Weightlifting provides the athlete with a comprehensive review of the critical elements that mold a champion. Winning isn't simply about lifting technique, eating the right food or visualizing lifts. You will discover the importance of body levers and the nuances of adjusting for your own unique body measurements, you will learn the finer points of planning the different phases of your training, you will be enthralled with the diverse programs available to incorporate in your routines, and you will grasp how your mind contributes to your accomplishments at critical points along your trajectory.

Regardless of whether anyone thinks the sport of weightlifting is a strength sport or speed sport, the snatch and clean and the jerk take a specific time in motion to complete and those times must be maintained from about 80% to 100% of effort. If these times are not maintained the lift will be missed. In my opinion this makes the sport of weightlifting a speed sport. The fact that the implement used increases in mass or resistance makes no matter, because those elements of velocity must stay intact. Slower overall times (from the platform to standing up) result in the lifter not being able to lift up to their full capabilities, if those times are not as fast as the lifter is able to achieve. If the sport of weightlifting is a speed sport then it should follow that the assistance lifts should also be trained as if they were also a speed sport. If the assistance lifts are viewed as slow lifts then slow is exactly how the lifter will be training and that will be reflected in the snatch and clean and the jerk. The slower grinding squats and pulls will effect the velocity of the 1st pull and standing up with the weight out of the clean primarily. It will also effect the depth of the dip in the jerk and the amount of velocity that can be produced in the drive. Regardless of how much anyone thinks slower decelerated squats with maximal weights help the lifter, this is a grave misunderstanding of the laws of physics. All slower squats must be interpolated back to what that squat would be equivalent to in terms of the snatch and clean times in motion which is 1 second. The major difference between a 1RM back squat of 150k @ 2 seconds and a 1 second squat is 50k of non-beneficial overloading with the 150k squat and the probability that the overall time in the clean will be slower and the drive in the dip will be less effective.

Becoming lean and fit is not a matter of training for a few weeks, like Rocky, to become a world champion. That only happens in Hollywood movies that portray professional athletes exercising for hours every day until they are exhausted. Real athletes never do that. They train only to the point that they can recover for the next day s training. Their progress comes in small increments, not heroic triumphs. Unfortunately, movies have persuaded people that they can become lean and fit virtually overnight. Even the weight loss and fitness industry bought into this distortion and began pushing people to become like Rocky. When that approach failed, because people were injuring themselves or burning out or jumping from one program to another, trainers began to entertain their clients instead of finding solutions to their problems. If you want to become truly lean and fit, you must work at it like an athlete, following a structured routine and that is easier and more pleasant than you may expect. The principles that work for athletes also work for ordinary people of all ages. Athletes, of course, have coaches. The Happy Body program, on the other hand, will teach you everything you need to know to be your own coach. This innovative program establishes, for the first time, exact scientific and testable methods and goals to engineer your own weight loss and fitness within precise time periods. That empowers you to self-correct your progress at every step. The Happy Body is a total health program, not just an exercise or diet plan. It will teach you to safely lose 1.0 to 2.5 pounds every week, and keep them off, without getting stuck at plateaus. You will have full control over the process, right down to the ounce. In addition to teaching you how to lose weight, the program will also help you to restore the flexibility and posture you had as a young child, and to be leaner, stronger, and faster than you have ever been. In essence, The Happy Body program will not only make you as youthful as you were at twenty, but twenty as you would have been if you had followed the program at that age.

"Since shortly after its original release in 2008, Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches has been the most popular book on the sport of weightlifting in the world and has become the standard text for learning and teaching the snatch and clean & jerk. The book presents a complete progression for athletes and coaches starting with foundational elements such as breath control and trunk stabilisation, squatting, balance and weight distribution, warming-up, and individual variation. It moves on to complete learning and teaching progressions for the snatch, clean and jerk; covering training program design extensively, including assessment for recruiting and new lifters, and 16 sample training programs; technical error correction, supplemental exercises, nutrition, bodyweight manipulation, and mobility. It includes a thorough section on competition to prepare both lifters and coaches."--Provided by publisher.