Coffee Table Book of: Powerlifting (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Powerlifting is a large format book of powerlifting, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the squat rack and the bench, the deadlift bar and its plates, belts, wraps and chalk, gyms in huts, cellars, sheds, mills and old halls empty from first light to late at night, the kit being made and cared for, the old ways of the iron game, and a few lifters seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a leather belt with a lever buckle, flat deadlift slippers, knee wraps rolled and seen close, long knee high socks and a singlet, a flat bench, a squat rack in the snow and on a rooftop, a hex bar on a hilltop, spring clips, a heavy chain, thin steel plates on a plate tree and against a wall, a bar seen from above with the smooth rings in its knurling, a push sled, a block of chalk and the three lamps of the referees.

The making follows square steel tube punched for a rack and its uprights painted, a cowhide cut and a belt stitched, a bench pad covered in vinyl and a steel plate turned on a lathe, with oil for the bar and a bucket and cloth for the benches. The past runs from wooden squat stands, a leather topped bench and log posts in a pine wood to a homemade barbell of pipe and concrete, a fat handled iron bar, old iron plates in the snow, an old platform scale and a jug of milk on a step.

Short notes run through the book, on the three lifts and their rules, the bar, plates, rack and kit and how they are made, and the history of the sport: a powerlifting belt is the same width all round, and at a meet may be no wider than 10 centimetres, plates are kept on pegs off the floor, so they stay flat and the floor stays clear, steel plates are thin, so more weight fits on the sleeves of the bar than with iron or rubber plates, and three referees judge each lift: a white light for good, a red light for a fault.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.