Thanks Joel and Damien, I appreciate that someone finally commented on the book.
I like this book. Were there any other unsubstantiated theories aside from the golgi tendon one?
I am sure there are many if you would look into it, I remember several instances that don't quite come to mind right now. But if you want I will look it up again and post examples. But aside from things that are not scientifically proven but stated as fact, there are many things that I just strongly disagree about. For example the 3 year rule that an athlete should not train with barbells until he has at least done 3 years of training without it. No reason at all for that and the authors did not care to make a sound argument for it. Or the idea that a novice in the weightroom needs a "complicated" training program with varying volume and intensity. Those who did some form of linear novice progression know that it works better and produces superior results for the first months of training. I also feel very strongly against the idea that exercises in the weight room are supposed to replicate the mechanics of the competition exercise as closely as possible with disregard to the unique nature of an exercise and the specific implications. The example with the squat and varying torso angles is just ridiculous and I would go as far and say that it shows a complete lack of understanding for the exercise. I also have to scratch my head in disbelieve about the authors criticizing swimming coaches for not making their athletes train swimming movements under load in the weight room with specific machines built for this purpose.
But even aside my personal disagreements, most of the content is just stating what coaches did in the past. Not why it supposedly worked, not why it SHOULD work, nor any other actual argumentation or discussion, just plain observation. Let's just say that this does not really encourage people to look for superior solutions.
As with most books by Ph.d's this book is meant for coaches who already know how to write workout programs. I teach a strength training class at my college out of this book, and it is great.... kind of a by teacher for teacher type of thing. The training theory section and organization of training are really great also, and I did learn a few things even after beign in the field for quite a while.
There are some things I liked about those sections as well and I also did learn from it. I don't say it is bad in every regard. I just think that it lacks either argumentation or sound research to back up the theoretical ideas. Again, most is just observations. Damien's somewhat sarcastic point of Zatsiorsky looking at olympic lifters and basing a lot on that is not completely untrue either. A lot of the quoted research is actually from the 70s and with regards to weightlifting. And again, it is only observational most of the time.
As for practice... there are a couple little addendums for example, the part about semi-squats vs full squats which good examples of how you might want to use the material. I liked their example of what happens with too many depth landings as well. Anyways, for the price, I thought it was a good book.
Well, it's very inexpensive and as I said, not everything about it is bad. Some interesting anecdotal observations but I still think it lacks in several regards.
