The Theory of the Sweet Science
The Theory of the Sweet Science
By Mel C Siff
Supertraining largely deals with metadata (a study or a close examination of the studies into sports science and strength training.) It's a rich source of raw information, in fact it's a forest of information and it's easy to get lost. It's left to the reader to 'mill' their own 'timber’ and build their virtual ‘house’ from this text.
On a personal level I feel much more informed for having read this book.
The text draws information from the following areas of sports specialisation:
The book is like a hectagon (100 sided object) and one of those sides serves as a dictionary and aptly gives definitions of what fitness is, the means or methods by which it is achieved and what systems the human body employs to function under a given set of circumstances.
Exercise and sporting achievement is largely an issue in problem solving and it’s been said that to overcome a problem you need to first define the problem. I think defining exactly what fitness is might be useful for many readers as ‘fitness’ is a very general term that gets bandied about by anyone and everyone and oftentimes this leads people up the garden path and to making erroneous assumptions. And assumptions are the mother of all screw-ups.
As stated:
Fitness comprises a series of interrelated structural and functional factors which conveniently may be referred to as the basic S-factors of fitness: Strength, Speed, Stamina (general systemic endurance or local muscular endurance), Suppleness (flexibility), Skill (neuromuscular efficiency), Structure (somatotype, size, shape) and spirit (psychological preparedness)
and
…all strength training depends on two dominant factors, namely structural conditioning and functional (central nervous and neuromuscular) conditioning
It further talks about and gives definitions for maximum strength, relative strength, speed strength, explosive strength, strength endurance and starting strength to name but a few.
The author also gives us a stark but helpful reminder that like everything else, sporting movement is governed by Newtons 3 laws of motion. And drawing from this fact, Siff goes about at irregular intervals shedding light and debunking outrageous and biased claims made by some members and bodies of the fitness industry.
Depending on the need, the book enters into discussions that range from in-depth to cursory of the various physical training systems or methods devised over the years, but a few are the following;
At times the author tends to use esoteric grammar and go off on esoteric musings which can make it tedious to read and at times downright boring. Luckily there is more than enough useful information within to make up for this short fall.
It doesn’t always tell you how to do xyz, instead it gives you pieces of the puzzle. It’s up to you to do the rest. Intuition would tell you that no one single book, website, person or entity contains the absolute truth of any matter, but the author has accomplished the goal of sufficiently adding to a large array of factual and useful information to the field of sports science.
The book is not so much meant to be read as it is consumed. Highlighting paragraphs, circling facts and writing notes on the margins is pretty much compulsory if you’re to gain anything from the book at all.
It seems to have gained a kind cult following on the Internet of recent times but it has to be pointed out that this text isn’t aimed at the casual sporting enthusiast; its audience is much narrower and falls between intermediate and professional sports people.
My recommendation is that if you are the latter then certainly the price may be justified. If you’re a novice or someone who looks for a high degree of practicality from the books you read; perhaps you’d be better off looking elsewhere.
Elite Fitness Systems Offer an excellent range of books that encompass strength training, nutrition, Russian/Eastern Bloc training methods aswell as a selection of E-books. They stock Supertraining. However, for people living in Australia the postage costs are way too much ($90) so I suggest that you head on over to Yahoo SuperTraining Group and order the book directly from the group director Just send them an e-mail explaining what you want and the director will send you a request for payment via PayPal.
