Mohamed F. El-Hewie

My destiny as the author of "Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training" was the mere coincidence of state affairs that impacted my generation after the Egyptian revolution of 1952. The culmination of thousands of years of wars, occupation, invasions, and turmoil was the rising of a social government that cared about the impoverished working people and attempted to reverse the oppressive capitalistic trends; by nationalizing major industries and redistributing wealth among the populace. In such socialistic system of government, a new sense of national identity ensued. Like any struggle for change of the status quo, the socialist Egyptian government must struggle against the international powers bent on monopolizing resources, currency, and occupation of geographic territories. From inside, the Egyptian government had to deal with its own corruption and unrealistic ambitions in climbing the ladder of prosperity and pride. The national and international struggles among the individuals, leaders, and states ended in many successes, tragedies, wars, and final shaky peace agreements. I was introduced to the national youth program in 1960. That aimed to prepare revolutionary youth to be leaders in sports, arts, science, and every modern field of knowledge. The state provided the uniform, meals, transportation, and pocket money for kids who were chosen for such program. In 1961, I participated in the cheer leader ceremony attended by president Gamaal Abdel Naser, in Alexandria, Egypt. I was eleven years then. In such structured training program of many months of planning and rehearsing of orchestrated thematic physical display of motion, colors, and sounds, my sense of the immense role physical fitness was deeply ingrained. First, I was able to gauge my ability to endure many hours of training along with other fellow kids. Second, I was able to get a sense of the possibility of gaining greater strength and skills by practicing and planning. In such young age, believing in the possibility of change was all I needed to reach the authorship status, forty years later. Gaining the sense that play was a serious business enforced my instinctual being. That set me in a different path of dreaming, hopefulness, and unrestrained ambition. Living for basic survival goals was overly shadowed by my drive for experimenting with the elements of every encounter, in sport, science, and religion. Restrained with a frame of mind that life was aimed at enriching the soul, preserving the physique, and expanding the mind, my experimentation remained on positive constructive path, free from any chemical addiction, and skeptical of superficially enticing vices. With the state support, teachers and trainers were paid to prepare elementary school pupils along many hours or rigid training during the after school hours, holidays, and weekends. The best trainers were sent to the then Eastern Bloc for advanced training is sport. By 1967, in junior high school, I was picked by the school coach to train on Olympic Weightlifting. That time, the coach was highly specialized, accomplished lifter, and the state compensation was enticing. Even though the 1967's war in the Middle East disrupted my early training between March and June, 1967, I was fortunate to find another coach in a health club in connection to my father's occupation in the Public Transportation Authority in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Then, the state support ended but my father's employment gave me free access to the company health club. There, my second coach who was sent to East Germany to study advanced Weightlifting had just returned to Egypt, fresh to start a weightlifting team. His name was Muhammed El-Kassabay. He will accompany me over 44 years, to the present day, through training, nurturing, and guidance. My journey in Weightlifting was the background upon which I settled my roots and grew along many directions in many fields of knowledge. The faculty of engineering of the University of Alexandria, Egypt was still reeling out of its royal aura. It was built by King Fouad in such Old Egyptian style reminiscent of the glorious past. Then, the study of engineering was truly fascinating attracting the most brilliant minds of those days. I studies Nuclear Engineering when Egypt had only a miniature nuclear reactor lent by the Soviet Union. With Weightlifting occupying my soul, Nuclear Engineering was another soul enriching passion for knowledge and satisfaction. The mystery of the subatomic universe never ceased to occupy my conscience. Early in my engineering years, I quickly realized that I must equip myself with medical knowledge in order to excel in Weightlifting. Soon after securing a bachelor degree in engineering in 1974, I tested for the medical school and was accepted as a medical student in 1975. Studying engineering and medicine was a true glory and occupation. In the old and historic medical school of Alexandria, where the cholera vibrio was discovered, my class of anatomy lasted four hours every day of the week. Few miles away, my weightlifting gym was located. A mile further, there was the engineering building where I completed my master and doctorate degrees. Across the street from the faculty of engineering was the national institute of public health where I had my first real job as a lecturer in industrial health and hygiene. From dissecting real human beings, most of whom were sealed by prison stamps and delivered to the medical school for study, to rushing to a class in mathematical logic and topology, to waiting for an overnight reservation for a batch computer job in the era of vacuum tubes and punched cards used for slotted data entry, to spending nights guessing why nuclear fusion has long eluded the human ingenuity, weightlifting was there for real life play and sweat. In the 1960's, everything sounded revolutionary. We just have the first black and white television which followed the Suez Canal crisis that aimed at nationalizing the canal in order to build the Aswan Dam. Electricity started flowing into villages and rural areas and people started to live longer and healthier lives. Weightlifting was changing from the split leg lunging style to the full squatting style. Then the awesome progress in double-session daily training followed, with focused axial lifting, split between strengthening and technical performance, all in the same training day. Engaging in heavy academic research antagonized my ambitions in Weightlifting. But the dismal future of Weightlifters in securing bright careers convinced me to curtail my passion for Weightlifting from undermining my professional preparation in advanced field of knowledge. Thus, while I pulled other fellows to reach the Olympic dream in 1984 and 1988, I capitalized on such experience in my future writing on weightlifting. Unfortunately, my fellows Olympic Champions abandoned lifting as soon as they were told to compete no more. In 2006, El-Kassbany was then 76, taken by watching my training in the Springfield gym, in New Jersey, after 36 years from the beginning of our journey in weightlifting. The last chapter in my weightlifting journey happen to be shared with Sjaak Smorenburg from the far country of The Netherlands. Smorenburg coauthored seven books with me on home-gym weightlifting. The irony of such state of affairs of constant search for learning was the distinguished roles of very specific mentors. My art teacher in the elementary school was the first star that led me to realize my great potential in guessing the space, colors, and shapes. His distinguished words that ingrained into my mind were that "artists see shades and colors in every glimpse of life where ordinary people overlook". The elementary school star eclipsed for three years before I was taken by the weightlifting stars. Those were two distinguished coaches who dedicated their lives for making me who I am. Books by the author: Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie The Weightlifting Attic by Mohamed F. El-Hewie and Sjaak Smorenburg Weightlifting routines and bar trajectories: a home-gym edition Kids' Weightlifting Weightlifting For Adolescents: A Home-Gym Edition Weightlifting For Young Children: Kids' Introduction To Weightlifting Axial Strength Training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie The Weightlifting Attic Illustrated by Mohamed F. El-Hewie and Sjaak Smorenburg Performance Analysis of Weightlifting and Strength training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie Scientific Publications by the author: "Illumination of a spherical fusion pellet displaced from the geometric foci of focused laser beams: vector-analysis method" JOSA A, Vol. 2 Issue 1 Page 51 (January 1985) El-Sayed A. El-Badawy, Mohamed F. El-Hewie "Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. I. Theory" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 2 Page 200 (February 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie, Richard J. Cook "Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. II. Application to ellipsoidal surfaces" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 7 Page 1105 (July 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie, Dan Fredal "Integral solution for diffraction problems involving conducting surfaces with complex geometries. III. Application to paraboloidal mirrors" JOSA A, Vol. 5 Issue 9 Page 1444 (September 1988) Mohamed F. El-Hewie "Polarization discrimination of complex surfaces by laser light: Theory" Authors: El-Hewie, Mohamed F.; Majumdar, Arun K, Journal of Optics Communications, Volume 85, Issue 5-6, p. 462-472. (October 1991)