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49 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
Big Book is Big Disappointment
By A. Admiraal
The conception of Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises is great: gather hundreds of exercises, group them by muscle group and add a good deal of background info and nutritional advice. There you go: the workout manual to make all others obsolete. But in spite of the lyrical reviews posted here, I found this book disappointing. In short: the collection of exercises is great, but the way they are staged is not optimal. A severe framework to formulate your own training plan is absent and the nutritional selective information is downright silly.
EXERCISES
What I liked regarding this book is the sheer number of exercises; they are the reason I proceed to use this book each now and then. Each exercise comes with at least one clear picture and has a lot of handy little performance tips scattered around. However, this being the main event of the book, there are a number of omissions that I would consider flaws.
First, there is no connection amidst the discussion of the anatomy in the beginning of each division and the exercises. It’s outstanding that you are shown the dissimilar muscles that make up the back, but in the 60 or so exercises that follow, there is no way of finding out which muscle or part thereof is aimed by which exercise. Also, if you give 15 variations of one peculiar exercise, it would have been logical to mark the variations in terms of level of difficulty. No such luck.
Basically, the book basi gives some reasonably elaborate info on an entire muscle group (albeit with a heap of less than outstanding illustrations), but then plainly dumps a long list of exercises on you. Though the number of exercises provided is much smaller, the book Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier is infinitely better. It tells you not just how to carry out an exercise but likewise how an person exercise targets each specific muscle. I sincerely hope Men’s Health takes numerous cues from Delavier for their next edition of the Big Book.
TRAINING PLANS
The ‘exercise plans’ in the Big Book are alright, but if you are looking for a good, consistent framework to get maximal results (as opposed to just “doing something in the gym”), I feel the The Body Sculpting Bible for Men is way better. It may not have the same number of exercises, nor nice color photos like the Big Book, but I feel the overall framework of training is much more solid and consistent than the more or less hap highrisk and mixing up approach in Men’s Healh Big Book.
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Now, if it were for the exercises and plans alone, I would still have given the book three stars, possibly even four; the sheer number of exercises makes it rather unique. Five stars would be out of the question, because the divergence in content quality is too far off from a heap of of the other books available. Still, I decisive to lower the rating by one more star, because of the nutritional subdivisions which are absurd at best.
First let me say that from a magazine (such as Men’s Health) I completely receive a somewhat eclectic approach. A new study comes out one month that says coffee is bad for you and the next month another says it’s good – all fine. A book, however, I suppose to be a bit more authoritative. This book is not.
The Big Book opts for the “high protein, medium fat, low carbs” approach. I think Susan Kleiner in her book Power Eating without doubt or question demonstrated why a high carb, medium protein approach is far superior for building muscle and losing fat. Other than the Big Book, Kleiner backs up her story with sound scientific references. Where the Big Book settles for “A study in Denmark found…”, Kleiner takes a genuinely scientific approach. Her determinations are very dissimilar but much more logical and actionable for anybody who may think beyond the simplistic adage “muscle is built by protein, so the more protein I eat the more muscle I get”.
Perhaps for people living in the US the nutritional counsel in Men’s Health Big Book makes a lot of sense. Unspoken assumptions in the book seem to be a consequence of it is orientation on the mainstream US audience. First and foremost, you are assumed to be too fat, or at least engaged in a struggle with overweight. You likewise in truth like to eat a lot of fat and most surely eat a large total of animals. Also, you are not more than willing or competent to change any of these habits.
Even within that context, the counsel that comes out is on occasion downright puzzling:
- Beans, peas and corn must be obviated as they integrate a lot of starch (p. 442)
- However, whole milk is fine (it’s not all that much extra fat anyway), source cream is closely pure fat but hey, serving size is in general small, so go ahead! Other “healthiest” or at least “guilt free” foods: butter, pork chops, full-fat cheese, chicken thighs, coconut (p. 444 – 447). This one I found a particularly amusive health advice: vinegar is good for you, so sprinkle some on your caramelized onions (!) or in your mayonnaise (!) before you disseminate it on your sandwich. Now, perchance I have been gone from the US for too long, but I don’t think that I ever saw any individual health conscious eat mayonnaise sandwiches. But according to the Big Book, it’s apparently great for your workout diet as long as you add a lot of vinegar to it and stay clear of beans and potatoes. Yeah, right!
If you insist of eating a lot of fat, I may imagine the counsel in this book to then at least cut back on carbs makes a great deal of sense. But it’s evident that this is no optimal diet counsel for any individual severe in regards to exercising. Again, Susan’s Kleiner approach (high carb, medium protein and low fat) is far more sensible and much better researched. Sure, if you live in an area where KFC is considered lunch and a white sub sandwich is considered your healthful option, any veritably sensible exercise diet may be out of reach. But of course, your results will never be the same as when you opt for a genuinely effective exercise diet.
In summary:
- Great book if you are a strength trainer and are merely looking to find a lot of more exercise variations. The selection of exercises is unparalleled. Major flaw: the book doesn’t tell you why and when you ought to choose one exercise over another, or which muscles each exercise targets specifically. For more elaborated data on anatomy, how to incisively carry out exercises and how these exercises relate to your muscles and objectives, a much better option is the classic but not long ago altered Strength Training Anatomy-3rd Edition (Sports Anatomy)
- If you need a lot of guidance in setting up an exercise plan, opt for The Body Sculpting Bible for Men, Revised Edition: The Way to Physical Perfection instead. While Men’s Health Big Book holds lot and lots of information, it gives you little guidance to make sense of it all. The little snippings of info fundamentally have the same value as reading a couple of magazines. If you thought this book tied all the somewhat utile snips of selective information from Men’s Health archives together in a more consistent framework, you’re out of luck.
- If you struggle with overweight and you are perfectly sure you cannot stray too far from the mainstream American diet or let go of eating a large total of animals and fatty foods daily, then the nutritional counsel in this book may be the best you may achieve. But if you are severe regarding your body and health and are more than willing to modify to an optimal, goal-oriented diet (i.e. eat like an athlete), make sure to ignore all nutritional subdivisions in this book completely. They are mixing up at best, and if you follow a mainstream European or Asian diet, they will actually lead you in the WRONG direction. Instead, order a copy of the very dry, hardly illustrated but content wise very solid Power Eating, Third Edition by Susan Kleiner.
21 of 23 persons found the following review helpful.
Big Book Equals Complete Book
By Tom “gym rat”
If I had to pick one word to describe this book, it wouldn’t be “big”, it would be “complete”. It’s not just a huge book of exercises- it is that plus a whole lot of other info as well. Here’s numerous of what I liked the best when it comes to it…
-it devotes a chapter to answering questions we all have with regards to lifting, questions such as “how fast ought to I lift?” or “how some repetitions ought to I do?”
-the exercises are coordinated by body part, so you get a bunch of ex’s for the chest in Chapter 4, a bunch of exercises for the back in Chapter 5, and so on. Easy to navigate around in this book.
-included is a division on warm-up exercies- which a lot of people forget when it comes to doing. Here you’ll find a lot of stretches.
-there’s a workout plan towards the end of the book for just with regards to each need you might have. For example, you’ll find a workout plan for the crowded gym, for fat loss- even for vertical jumping. Neat!
The book ends with a division on cardio, and a section on nutrition. As you may see, while it is a “big” book of exercises (and kinda heavy too), it is also a very “complete’ book as well. Those who are mesmerized in getting huge arms might also be mesmerized in Smokin’ Hot Guns!!: How an Average Guy Can Get Big, Muscular Arms In One Workout A Week.
46 of 61 humans found the following review helpful.
Lot’s of good info
By DF
There are an unbelievable number of exercises in the book. The quality of the photography is outstanding and represents how to do the dissimilar exercises. The exercises are staged with multiple variations and easy suggestions such as altering the type of grip to vary the exercises. The only thing I would have bettered on would have been to add a brief comprehensible statement of what effect on the muscles being exercised the variations provide. However, that is only a minor flaw in my sentiment taking into account the vast amount of utile info the book provides. The book is an magnificent buy.
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