Olympic Weightlifting

Over past years in weightlifting, many people have taught me many things about the sport. they have taught me freely and with no motive other than the pleasure they derived out of seeing someone else succeed in the sport they love so much. With the same motive, I have volunteered countless hours to help others master the sport.

The greatest contributors to my success have been my training partners, fellow athletes who have graciously shared all they know, not self-sacrificially, but the very personal pleasure of watching still another person triumph over our indefatigable adversary, the barbell. To Danny, Joe ted, Alex, Dave, Mark, Stan, Carl, John, Denis, Ben, Bud, Mike, Jerry, Victor, Charlie and so many others who have helped so much over the years I want to say once more that I can’t thank you enough. And I thanks the athletes that O coach today for helping to make my current training sessions the pleasure that they remain.

During my career, for better or for worse, I have been my own coach most of the time. But there were two people who coached me for a time and taught me much for which I will be eternally grateful. The first of these is Morris Weissbrot. He started the Lost battalion hall weightlifting club more than 30 years ago. If Morris had not done that, I, and so many others, would have never had the chance to experience the wonderful sport of weightlifting in the way we id. Morris was a great facilitator of LBH, and he continues to be great promoter or weightlifting wherever he travels. He provided an atmosphere where everyone could progress and improve, where seriousness was fun and where one felt that the continued existence of weightlifting was as certain as Morris’s devotion to it. I owe Morris a great debt of gratitude, as do many others, for the god work that he has done for weightlifting for so many years.

My other coach was Dave Sheppard. Dave is not only one of the greatest lifters ever to represent the united states in international competition, he also has one of the sport’s great analytical minds. He has devoted more than a half a century to weightlifting and his enthusiasm  is as great today as it ever was. He is an unsung hero who pioneered many of the techniques and training methods of his day, methods that become the underpinnings of many of today’s approaches to training. I don’t think that there are many of us who have known Dave who haven’t felt that we could always little more when he was in the gym - certainly I always did. Dave has taught me much and encouraged me much over these many years - these are gifts I can never repay.

There us also a dept of gratitude that, I, along with virtually every other weightlifter in the US, and much of the world, his magazine, strength & Health informed the world about the benefits of weightlifting and the achievements of its great athletes. I learned much from reading that magazine over the years. perhaps more importantly, with its inspirational biographies and exciting accounts of great weightlifting competitions, Strength & Health fueled my desire to become a weightlifting champion and lifelong contributor to the sport. We who grew up from the 1930s to the 1980s are all, as Bob were probably introduced the sport by someone who was touched by him.

I want to thank Tommy Kono, Dr John Garhamer, Rudy Sablo, Jack Hughes, Lynne Stiesell-Ross, Nicholas Curry, Dan Nugent, Dan Peck, Ben Green and Bud Charniga for their comments on parts or all of the third draft of this book. Any errors that may remain in it exist despite, not because of, their assistance. They are my sole responsibility.

I want to thank James Curry Sr., for taking most of the exercise photos and some of the chapter introduction photos for this book. During his career, Jim has taken some of the best photos ever made of weightlifters. I want to thank Nicholas Curry for providing most of the line art for this book - he is a young man of many talents.

I also want to thank my former secretary, Janette Moore, whose patience in making corrections to the second draft of this book made the difficult process of bringing it to its final form mush easier. i also want to than Susan Heath and her assistant, Kelly Jewett, who edited this volume with such skill and respect for the author’s style and message.

Finally, I want to thank you my wife, JoAnne. She has been a constant source of encouragement in my training and my efforts to improve the sport of weightlifting. Her unflagging support throughout the preparation of this book made the entire process a great deal easier than It would have otherwise been. I can never thank her enough. I can only marvel the how great her patience and understanding are.