Weight Training for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginners
Review: This book explains the basics of weight training in enough depth to be useful, without assuming that everyone who starts lifting weights wants to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The book goes into good detail about an assortment of excercises for different parts of the body, as well as things to watch out for with each excersize, and has a good chapter on designing your own program. The pictures are of real people, not bulked up steroid cases, and the writing style is fun to read.

Rating:
Summary: Really good book
Review: This book gives the basics and also tells you how to start a sucessful weight training program. I found it really helpful.

Rating:
Summary: A great primer to weight-training for the beginner
Review: This book is exactly what it claims to be - a good introduction to basic weight-training technique. It gives solid info about a whole variety of weight machine exercises and free-weight exercises. It talks about a variety of supplements, exercise videos, how to choose a health club, how to buy your own equipment and a lot more. Really a good book to get a good handle on the whole area. I'm sure those experienced with weight-lifting might scoff at it for being too basic, or too conservative, but that's not whom this book is for anyway...

Rating:
Summary: Useful and Helpful for Beginners
Review: This book is great for what it tries to be: an instructive manual for beginning weightlifters. Its approach is very sensible, safe, and stresses proper technique. Even though I've been weightlifting for over 10 years, I found this book a good "back to the basics" refresher and have incorporated some of its alternative workout strategies. It also recommends specific programs for different types of athletes, i.e. runners, bikers, etc. The book also has sections on stretching and diet, although they are far less detailed.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, much better than the Encyclopedia
Review: This book takes you from no weights to full workouts. Wonderful for newbies and intermediate folk as well. Pictures, do's and don't's, tips, covers ALL aspects of the sport. This is the best book I've bought and I have quite a few. Love it!

Rating:
Summary: a good start!
Review: This book was really informitive, I learned some good things that helped me as a newly begun strength trainer. My only beef is that I would've like more examples of free-weight excersises (along with pictures). In fact I would recommend you buy this book rather than 'An Idiot's guide to weight training' (which I also bought). Not only does it cover the same things, but it does it better and covers MORE.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, excellent book
Review: This is a great book to get started weight training. It has lots of excercises, and tips on how to do them. It leads you through desiging a workout routine. My favorite part is a section at the end with suggested workouts for people who are really into different sports: in-line skating, etc.

Rating:
Summary: Buy it.
Review: This is a perfect, no-nonsense introduction for sensible people who want to start a practical program. All the annoying fads, pseudo-science, and general misinformation that clutter the health media is soundly rejected. Good for people who want just the facts.

Rating:
Summary: A lot of common sense for weight training dummies
Review: This is a very practical book for hopeless dummies, who are very hard to motivate or excel in fitness. The book is written in clear format, large section titles, a lot of tables, and bulleted summaries.

The book starts with familiarization with equipments and discussions of the place of choosing workout, trainers, and spotters. It is mainly geared for people who started late in life, with no prospect to become athletes, and no intent to venture into the science of fitness and health. Thus, all the "Do's" and "Do not's" are supported with very simple and superficial explanations.

Large portions of the book chapters discuss weight training by dumbbells, barbells, and machines for isolated muscles of the back, chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. All exercises are discussed in very simple and clear manner. At the end of the book, there are brief chapters on stretching, cardio, and planning workout routines.

You would sense the redundancy of repetition in explaining the benefit of exercise for every muscle. The authors repeat the expressions "real life", "injury prevention", and "babe/hunk factor" zillions of times. If excessive usage of slang and primitive explanation of issues does not bother you, then you might benefit from this simple approach to training.

The drawbacks of the book are as follows:

1) It spreads a lot of ignorance and hinders progress in strength training by it advocacy to isolated training, instead of compound exercises that accomplish a lot in short time, and with little confusion. The book starts with dumbbell rowing then pull over, while it should have started with basic overall lifting from the floor overhead.

2) The two authors treat the human body as if it were made of jelly and cartoon frame as demonstrated by the following.

[i] They emphasize not extending your back in many spots, during lifting. You will never strengthen your back without extending it.

[ii] They emphasize not raising your arms above your shoulder for fear of tearing the cuff rotators. If you do not exercise the cuff rotators, how are you going to strengthen them?

[iii] They emphasize not lowering a bar behind your shoulders. If you do not exercise the muscles that lower the bar behind the shoulders, how are you going to balance the shoulder muscles?

[iv] They stress on not locking the elbows and knees, for fear of bursitis. All weightlifters practice joint locking in order to practice maximal muscle contraction and strengthen the bones.

[v] They propagate the poor habit of using backrest for seated press on a bench. That deforms the chest and shoulders. Do seated press without back support. Sit upright and lift what you could in that proper posture.

[vi] They propagate the poor habit of not exercising a muscle more than once in 48 hours. Well, if you have a job that requires 8 hours daily labor, using all your muscles, how are you going to survive? If you follow their advice, you must need two centuries to accomplish what others accomplished in few years.

[viii] They recommend a bottle of water as a must during weight training. Yet, in an hour and half, you are not going to die from thirst neither your kidneys would suffer from failure if you do not drink water, unless you train in 100o F degree temperature.

[ix] They forbid bending the knee beyond 90 degrees and keeping the knee behind the toes. If you do not practice on squatting fully and lunging the knees on full flexion, you would restrict the range of motion of the knees for life.

All in all, this book will teach you weight training as if you were sitting in your mom's lap.


Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is easily one of the best weight lifting books available. While basically written for the novice, many veteran lifters will find valuable information they can use. The section on nutritional supplements is well written and shows that eating a healthy well balanced diet is really all one needs. Quite a bit of money is wasted on expensive powders and pills that contribute very little to an individual's progress. Also, the BodyBlade is mentioned as a supplemental strength training "device" and it actually works quite well. I had a chance to use one for a few weeks and it is excellent for increasing muscular endurance and strength. This book is highly recommended.