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Book Review: Champion By Choice (Autobiography 2008)

3/31/2013

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Champion by Choice (2008)
by Richard "Lucky" Luckman
149 pp. (Autobiography)
(Available at Amazon.com)


Champion by Choice is the autobiography of Richard Luckman, who became a powerlifting phenom in the early 1970s while in prison for armed robbery.  The story is full of potential; my problem was that the powerlifting-focused book I wanted to read is very different from the general life history that Luckman wanted to tell.

The book starts briskly enough, with a short but frank history of Luckman's troubled young-adulthood, which landed him in jail.  And Luckman does a great job of explaining how, once incarcerated, he found focus and self-worth through a growing interest in powerlifting.  Luckman's straightforward, blunt descriptions of his competitions lack suspense, but that's OK: we still get a solid sense of the difficulties and rewards of being a world-class athlete while in prison.

But by the mid-1970s — or almost exactly 50% of the way through Champion by Choice — Luckman largely lost interest in competitive lifting.  And his autobiography loses focus as a result: the entire second half meanders through Luckman's romantic interests and work history through the decades after he left prison.  Some of this is amusing, but the constant string of "and then I went here, and then there, and then here . . ." becomes numbing.


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Movie Review: Knights of Iron (2012 Documentary)

3/23/2013

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Knights of Iron (2012)
Dir.: Eric Smidt
Featuring: the Woodward Academy Powerlifting Team
78 min. (Documentary)

(Available at Amazon.com)


Knights of Iron documents the powerlifting program at the Woodward Academy, a residential facility for delinquent boys.  Powerlifting, we are told, has given these troubled young men a concrete goal, and the focus and drive to excel.  And excel they do: at the start of the film, the Woodward team has already won the USA Powerlifting High School Nationals for five years running, and is going for its sixth title.

That being said, here are some of the moments we get to watch during Knights of Iron:

• An extended sequence of beginning drum students practicing on drum pads.
• Another extended sequence of the boys packing for Nationals, traveling to the airport, boarding the plane, getting off the plane, and traveling to their hotel.
• An especially excruciating (and long) segment of the boys sightseeing.

To be blunt, Knights of Iron is dull.

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