The American Physical Therapy Association Book of Body Maintenance and Repair
by Steve Vickery
Edition: Paperback
Reliable academic information, few flawed presentations, January 30, 2005
This book would have easily won rive stars nao autnors strived to respect the intelligence of its readers. Although the book mainly emphasizes body maintenance and repair, it presents extensive tips and exercises to do more than its title indicates. The major flaw with the book presentation is its authors' short-winded' style of sloppiness and poor research. The Table of Contents demonstrates the clear goals of the book in systematic and scientific manner.
Chapter One, "The Back", also stresses that clear goal, by making the spine the center of attention of any physical rehabilitation and maintenance. Troubles start from Chapter 2 on, as follows. 1- In the first nine chapters, there is sloppy redundancy of "copy and paste" of paragraphs. You will read the same paragraphs on "rheumatoid arthritis", "arthritis", "spasm", "muscle tightness", "trigger points", "osteoarthritisTT, "rest", and so on, so many times as if you are reading the same chapter nine times in the same book. Even many of these chapters end with the same paragraph, with the word "mechanics". 2- Although the book graphics are scientific and serve the purpose of si mplification and clarification, some of the drawings are poorly labeled and poorly representative.
The drawings of the hip anatomy in chapter 7, for example, do not show the hip abductors. Most of the drawings of posture and gait do not demonstrate the real dynamics of human body of scapular, spinal, or pelvic contours during motion. They are drawn by artists inexperienced in human anatomy. 3- Although most of chapters 10 to 17 are informative and concise, some of them are unnecessarily abbreviated.
Chapter 13, "Body Weight", for example, is merely two pages. Chapter 12, "Body mechanics", is a clear proof on how academic writers misunderstand physical performance. The authors attempt to explain the proper way of lifting in a flawed manner that might skip the attention of nonlifters. For example, they advise bending the knees and elbows while lifting from the floor. They explain that that would prevent elbow overextension and back stress. The drawing in that chapter shows a man squatting on his toes with elevated heels. They also advise advancing one foot ahead of the other during squatting. The described process of lifting is flawed because of the following: 0) You should not bend your knees while lifting unless you have trained them to do so. Untrained knees could easily buckle during lifting and cause accidents. (ii) Lifting with straight elbows does not over-extend them because the gravity pulls downwards with the shoulders positioned over the elbows. overextension only happens when the shoulders and elbows are on the same horizontal level, like in lying-down chest flyer. (iii) Advancing one foot ahead creates asymmetric spinal stress. Lifting on evenly positioned feet guarantees symmetric spinal loading. (iv) The most important tips in the technique of proper lifting are the chest thrusting and spinal arching. These could obviate knee bending as in the "stiff-legged deadlift". 4- The exercises in Chapters 18 and 19, show the depth of academic understanding of human anatomy. The exercises are plenty and diverse and presented with scientific drawings that emphasize the main purpose of each exercise. The main flaw however, is the poor practical knowledge of the authors about real exercise. This is clear in the so many drawings that show people sitting and lifting weights. Shoulder shrugs, Biceps curls, jaw opening, neck exercises, and many others are performed while seated. Too many sitting exercises should have been done while standing in order to enhance overall physical balance and fitness. Lifting weights while seated is dangerous unless the person is highly trained to maintain lower back lordosis during loading.
The Russian Kettlebell Challenge
Edition: Paperback
Deceitful and flawed analysis, dangerous practice , September 8, 2004
(1) Contents: The book contains 143 pages of text, out of them are 16 blank, 36 pages of advertisement, the font is large, and there is a lot of white spaces. There is no index. All references are personal verbal quotations from professors, scientists, and doctors without exact date or location of publication, such as Professors Medvedyev, Anatoly Laputin, Yuri Verkhoshansky,Arkady Vorobyev, Matveyev, and Desbonnet. There are 15 references written in Russian that are hard to trace and only one unknown English reference by Supertraining.
(2) The book starts by "Vodka at night, pickle juice in the morning, throwing some Kettlebells around between this hangover and the next one", page 3. I do not think that the author is aware of the danger of inebriation and risky vigorous activity. The author tries forcefully to revive an obsolete sport by citing a 1913 Russian magazine.
(3) The author cites the names of the legendary weightlifters such as Vlasov
, Alexeyev
, Leonid Zhabotinskiy, page 17, and states that Zhabotinskiy started lifting with Kettlebells without citing a reference or proving that they trained or competed in that Kettlebells sport. The author then advises weightlifters to use Kettlebells to enhance shoulder flexibility by overhead squat. What he does not know is that weightlifters have all tools for flexibility, strength, coordination, and endurance and would not listen to an outsider with unsubstantiated ideas.
(4) On page 31, the author states: "How Kettlebells melt fat and build a powerful heart without the dishonor of dieting and aerobics". He explains that the fat loss power of Kettlebells is explained by the extremely high metabolic costs of throwing a weight around combined with the fat burning effect of the growth hormone stimulated by such exercise. He quotes Charles Poliquin for explaining that the more lactic acid produced during weightlifting, the more the growth hormone is produced. The produced growth hormone, he claims, melts fat. That false claim that weight lifting causes weight loss, without dieting or aerobics, shows how the author is overreaching. Lactic acid causes fatigue and must be metabolized by the liver in order for muscles to function efficiently. Because lactic acid is produced maximally during anaerobic activity, it hinders fat loss, which requires aerobic activities such as running. Weightlifters do not lose weight by lifting but by dieting and aerobics. With Vodka, the liver is impaired. If Kettlebells throwing is added, then more lactic acid would worsens the liver impairment. Thus, strength training and hangover do not go hand in hand as the author claims. Although, growth hormone mobilizes fat, it does so in bursts during maximal stress. Fat mobilization is optimum when blood glucose is low during extended aerobic work beyond 15 minutes of sustained activity. continued....
(5) The author makes another false claim that heavy impact causes joints to be relatively free from osteoarthritis in old age and attributes that to Drs. Verkhoshansky and Sniff, without stating the nature of the source.
(6) The author makes another false promise that kettlebell training can lead to huge muscles if the trainee wishes, page 23. He makes an erroneous analysis on page 64 by first defining the force as F=ma then confuses that with the potential energy of dropping a 72 pounder from seven feet. Force and energy are two different things. On page 121, the author confuses ' intensity' for 'volume'. He cites the sport expert Voropayev for using the number of repetitions of a 32 kg Kettlebell of 50 as an index of intensity and extrapolates that to mean that 40 repetitions corresponds to 80% intensity, page 122. Intensity should refer to the weight and not the repetition. With fifty repetition and light weight, the Kettlebell could not induce the high tension of low repetitions and heavy weight. The author recognizes this fact in his book, Power to The People", pages 16 and 18. Thus, while the author promises his readers to use the Kettlebell in order to avoid Olympic Weightlifting which is elitist, he claims, page 16, and promises to achieve the same results with Kettlebells, he contradicts himself on the high repetition, low intensity principle that fatigues the muscles and precipitates trauma
(7) Kettlebell drills are dangerous and even fatal as the author warns on page 49. Because of the eccentricity of the Kettlebell, it sits on the back of the hand on overhead lifts. The lifter in the photos on pages 14, 35, and 58 show serious scoliosis (lateral spinal curvature), which is very dangerous during lifting (causes spinal hernia and paralysis). The too many repetitions traumatize the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and spines.
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