[.uk] Men's Health The Body You Want in the Time You Have: The ... (ISBN 1594862435)

Balanced isolation exercises, poor on research, very personal approach:
Starting with chapter 4 reduces my frustration with the author's inexperience and sloppy research. The chapter lists 48 exercises, each on two facing pages, with and without equipments. This is the brunt of the book which demonstrates good form, motion, and ideas of strengthening isolated muscle groups. It only has few bad ideas such as the side leg lunges with a barbell, front squat with crossed forearms, and lousy shoulder press form. The rest of the book is mere personal delusion, crammed with improvised and poorly researched information. Many chapters are there to fill the pages with repetitive and unsubstantiated information. Early in the book, the author claims to have the good news that "exercising once a week" is still okay. No research or expert confirmation is rendered to support such suspicious opinion. The anatomy information shows the author's reliance on common unscientific information as follows. (1) The rectus abdominis muscle is described as the flexor of the torso on the pelvis. The fact is that it only pulls the sternum to the pubis, i.e.; it flexes the spines and anchors the oblique and transversus muscles by tensing the linea alba in the middle of the abdomen. (2) The author could not spell the name of the Deltoid muscle. Instead, he describes the shoulder muscle as having three muscles. The rotator cuff muscles are totally dropped off the shoulder anatomy. (3) The Trapezium muscle is described to originate from the back of the skull. Then it is claimed it depresses the shoulder plates. It is also described as a triangular muscle while it is trapezoid, as its name suggests. The fact is that, besides the back of the skull, the Trapezium originates also from the spines of the neck and torso. Its fibers have three major directions from its origin to its insertion. (4) The chest muscles, pectoralis major and minor, are described as the pullers of the arms in lying down position. As if the two muscles have no function in stabilizing the chest cage during aggressive breating, or overall fitness. You could go on and on to find out that the author's sloppy research undermines his ability to offer a reliable source of information. One obnoxiously displayed table that spans two pages only lists the number of seconds of rests versus the number of repetitions per set. From chapter 5 to the end, the author entertains the same boring style of repeating exercises to fit different numbers of weekly sessions and duration of training. The positive contribution of the book, in terms of combining well balanced exercises in each session, shows the author's potential for developing better product has he improved his research and deepened his experience. The worst mistake on all training cycles is the start with squat exercise. That requires well warmed up spinal structures, robust cardiovascular system, and entire body conditioning. Squat should never start any work out unless it remains extremely light. The argument that "squat requires a lot of energy and should come early in a workout, before the exerciser fatigues" has been around for sometime. Yet, experience proved that fatigue level adapts to progressive incremental strengthening. So, what is wrong with devoting 300 pages of a book to describe a 10-minute exercise per week? 1- It is wrong on emphasizing that building muscles is the main foundation of strengthening. Muscles, bones, balance, and cardiopulmonary fitness could benefit more from brief and simple exercises such as running, push ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups. Those take less than 10-pages to describe. 2- It propagates fallacious information which people should avoid, especially when they have to spend their earnings to acquire. 3- It lacks any research other than narrow personal opinion with many short sighted approaches. 4- It could cause more harm than good when it fails to explain the risks of exercising inconsistently and arranging exercises in poor sequence. Mohamed F. El-Hewie Author of Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training

A BEGINERS BOOK:
DONT EXPECT TO LOOK LIKE THE GUY ON THE FRONT COVER ANY TIME SOON.IF YOU WANT THAT LEAN BODY LOOK GO FOR IT.YOU WILL GET IN SHAPE FOLLOWING THIS BOOK,THERE IS NEVER ANY MAGIC IN ANY ONE BOOK.

Great Book!!!:
I have about 18 years of lifting under my belt and I would say this is a great book gives you everything you need to workout in the time that you have, and it has the principles built in so you dont have to know how many sets and reps for certain results. You want to getting leaner it tells you, want to bulk a little it tells you that I think its very practical and clear. Highly reccomend this book. Many books give you wacky principles and try to sell you I think this book is right on the money.

Men's Health The Body You Want in the Time You Have::
everything i needed including encouragement to keep training, on reaching an explained plateua, simplifies the whole gym ordeal and lets you do it in your time

Handy to have!:
This book is well organized and offers an incredible amount of varied exercise routines and options that will fit into anyone's busy day. Exercise equipment: - Offers exercise equipment choices for home gym, commercial gym and people who have nothing to use. Exercise routines timeframes and schedules: - This book is chockfull of exercise programs from; 10 minute, 1 day per week workouts to 60 minute, 6 days per week workouts. Goals: - Offers well-timed programs for specific goals, i.e. lean body plan, instant muscle plan, power plan and complete body plan. What this book is not: - This book is not for those who want to focus primarily on hardcore body building. - This book is not for people who are looking for periodization training for a specific sport. To summarize, this book is packed with a multitude of well illustrated exercise programs. These programs offer good variations in both skill and intensity. The routines in this book mostly utilize compound exercises (squats, deadlfts, lunges and bench pressing), these exercises work multiple muscle groups, making for very efficient workouts. This book is perfect for people who want to simply focus on getting stronger in the amount of time that they have to do so. The goal of the author is to get people moving and he achieves that with great success.