Note from Peary Rader:
Much has been written about those amazing Egyptians ever since they took the weightlifting world by storm many years ago. We have heard many varied stories about how they trained. It was generally believed that they kept their secrets of success well hidden from their competitors in other parts of the world. Here for perhaps the first time in any magazine is presented a firsthand description of the so-called training secrets of these men by our great English author, Charles A. Smith who has had an opportunity to train with the Egyptians in their own gyms.
The story I have to tell is not one of extreme length, and its manner of beginning may appear somewhat different than the usual beginning of a weight training yarn. But I feel I owe my American friends -- and since I have visited America I have made many friends -- an explanation.
When I first promised Peary an article about the lifting in Egypt, I felt sure some people would want to know how I obtained the information, and how I happened to be present at their training periods.
Here is the story.
Throughout the war I have indeed been fortunate. Fate has smiled on me in action and has given me the chance of visiting America and Egypt. A chance I thought in the distant days of peace would never come my way. In 1940 I volunteered for the Navy and shortly afterwards on completion of my boot training was drafted to a cruiser.
We were sent to the Mediterranean and during the spot of trouble at Crete, the ship was attacked by German torpedo bombers. They aimed good and two torpedoes hit us. those who survived had a hurried return to to the port of Alexandria. I found out that I would be in town for a good time, so I began to search around for a suitable weightlifting club and I soon found accommodations at the Milon Sports Club. This was a wrestling club for Greek residents and possessed around 190 pounds of weights and it was obvious that the club did not actually cater to the Iron Slinger.
One evening the secretary invited me to attend the preliminary bouts of the Egyptian Greco Roman wrestling championships. I accepted and on the evening of the event I found the place crowded with spectators and in the ringside seats, very much a guest of honor and the cynosure [center of attraction or attention] of all eyes, I noticed a broad-chested, big-necked fellow whose face was very familiar despite the fact that he wore a fez and was the color of mahogany. The club Secretary has placed us together and we soon got talking. It appeared that he was interested in lifting.
For certain reasons I told him that I had not done any lifting but was simply and solely a wrestler. Then I asked him how much he could lift, and he replied rather casually, "I can clean & jerk around 340 but my best lift is 352.5."
Barely concealing the interest I felt, I asked him his name which he replied was Wasif Ibrahim. Then I knew him, the great light-heavyweight lifter whose face was familiar to me through the pages of Mark Berry's fine little book "Physical Training Notes" and and now unhappily, no longer published.
El-Sayad Nosseir
After the bouts had finished, Wasif bade me goodbye and invited me along to his club which he said was the TramWay Sports Club and situated at Shatbi, a residential district a short distance from the center of town. He gave me directions to reach the place and added, "You will meet my training partner, Shams. He is only a lightweight but has snatched 250 pounds."
Here let me leave the story for an explanation. The reason I told him I was not interested in weightlifting was because I wanted to see exactly how these men trained. There are extremely few reliable lifting publications in circulation today. One of the few is The Iron Man, and the other was Mark Berry's book [Physical Training Simplified]. Some of the others have courses to sell and because of this mislead the "seekers after truth." You will doubtless all recall the tall stories that went the rounds after the Olympics in Berlin about the way the Egyptians trained in secret, deliberately led people up the garden path, etc., etc.
No less an authority than Joseph Curtis Hise, my good friend and mentor, was deceived by these stories, I think, and attributed all the explanations the Egyptians gave about their training to what he called "Levantine Cunning." But he was wrong. They do indeed train as they say. The magazines selling courses with their Million and One Movements could hardly afford to let the truth be known, and the only magazine that gave a reliable report was Physical Training Notes. [an eleven-issue run].
I took the opportunity to see just what they did do when training.
They didn't attempt to deceive me, and even if they had so desired, no object would have been achieved, because I was there as a guest of the club and supposedly not interested in lifting but only in wrestling. Now, all the foregoing words may appear to be a longwinded preamble to the few lines I have to write about the Egyptian methods but I think it necessary to go into full details. I am not concerned with hearsay stories, because as they are told, the tendency is to add a little each time. The individual thus gets false information which is absolutely useless to him and may result in a great deal of harm to his lifting career.
Back to Egypt again and here we are at the Tramway Sports Club. The training shed is very large and is set in the midst of gardens. In the corner by the entrance is the boxing ring. In the center of the shed is the wrestling mat, and at the farther end of the building stands the lifting platform.
Outside at the Tramway Sports Club
I mingle with the crowd of spectators at the boxing ring who are watching a couple of boys sparring. There was a large group of lifters at the platform but I remained unnoticed.
A lifter has just completed a snatch. He is slim and looks fairly tall. But his back appears to be the ultimate in development of all the world's backs. This man, I subsequently learn, was Shams.
From the boxing ring, I watched the lifters at the platform and they were evidently waiting for someone. This turned out to be Wasif Ibrahim. He began his training by doing a number of rapid presses with a light barbell which weighed 100 pounds. As soon as he finished he put it down and while waiting for the others to finish their pressing he continually walked up and down, swinging his arms around and lifting his legs in an exaggerated goose step, then bending down and touching his toes. Just as he had finished the movements I walked up to the lifting platform. None of the lifters stopped their training and Wasif, greeting me in English at once commenced to do some more light presses.
By this time the weight on the bar was mounting and only two of the lifters, the strongest there, Wasif and a big heavyweight were using three presses. The rest had dropped to two repetitions.
The method of training is therefore, that each lifter performs three repetitions on a lift and adds five pounds and continues until he has to use two repetitions and when the weight will not allow two reps he drops to one, and so on until his limit is reached. The same procedure is followed with the snatch and the same with the clean. As the weight is held at the shoulders after the last clean, it is jerked.
Wasif Ibrahim maintains that "One should clean a weight cleanly and jerk anything one can clean." The exception to this is Shams who could clean terrific poundages for his weight, but could not always jerk the poundage he cleaned.
In the press they all used a grip of shoulder width, not the exaggerated grip used by Ron Walker and some others. In the snatch a wide grip was used.
Some used the get set style while others dived for the bar. The weight was pulled straight up the body and not one lifter gave the slightest suspicion of swinging the bar out and away from the body.
The split was very fast and the head was thrust forward and not on any occasion did I see a lifter look up at the weight. The recovery was a fierce thrust away with the front foot and the rear one was then brought up alongside.
As is the habit of the Russian lifters, the Egyptians performed each lift with a strict regard for the style and rules.
When all had finished pressing, snatching and cleaning, the bar was loaded up to its maximum, around 404 pounds, and each lifter gripping the bar as if he was about to clean it, stood upright and walked around the platform shrugging the shoulders now and again and only putting the weight down when the grip was in danger of giving out.
As each lifter finished his training, he went away to the bathroom and had a wash down in cold water. They seemed to enjoy this and no one missed his cold shower.
It was Wasif's habit to go out and eat afterwards. We would go to a native cafe where we had a soup called Bissella, and lots of meat stuck on skewers and broiled over a charcoal fire. This dish was called Khoofta and was eaten with salad. To this day I do not know what kind of meat it was -- it tasted good so I did not inquire. Wasif drank innumerable cups of tea and was a fairly heavy smoker, characteristics he shared with Ron Walker.
Right up to the day I left Alexandria, and last saw Wasif Ibrahim, he did know I was interested in weightlifting and so was not concerned about my obtaining information he did not wish to impart -- that is even if he wanted to keep such information secret. But no sensible lifter, no real lifting enthusiast acts in such a secretive manner, as regards his training, and the Egyptians are no exceptions. They were most apparently eager to help me and tried to persuade me to take up weightlifting after seeing me clean & jerk. They thought me untrained and predicted a big future for one, who as they thought, could clean & jerk 232 pounds the first time he had ever lifted a weight. If course they did not know that I had had had four years experience in body building.
The stories of the secretive and misleading statements the Egyptians made or were supposed to have made, were spread by irresponsible persons who, because of their own interest, could not afford to be honest. I should be more than pleased to hear from any lifter who tries the methods outlined in this article. I am certain that nothing but benefit and success will ensue.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
First edition 1984, Fourth edition 2005. 240 pages . . .
I found this research paper interesting:
"Dignified Doping: truly unthinkable?
An existentialist critique of 'talentocracy' in sports"
In 1945 only doing the three classic lifts and heavy supports was the go-to methods of the top lifting nation. Subsequently re-discovered 30 or 40 years later and touted as a secret training method.
ReplyDeleteIt's a helluva deal, all this "old" equals "better" once it's rediscovered and subsequently renamed. On a side note, perhaps before it all became so popular and worthy of the money-making game it was something of a whole other animal. Hey, tell me to Shut Up, I found a pristine pre-roll under my seat on the train tonight. The slightest intake and I found myself believing this whole weight-game was once again a cult thing reserved for only the weird, the shy, the ones who really didn't fit many other places. Ah, sweet dreams . . . my body of 16 years and my mind with its current lifting experience. Oh yeah.
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