Rating: 
Summary: Great for Both Men and Women, ESP. the Average Gym Member
Review: Tremendous stuff... explains how to get stronger without bulking up, while keeping your flexibility and agility. Helps you build a well-balanced, functional body - not one with only "beach muscles". Tsatsouline lays down a number of principles (he's big on safety - no idea what that other reviewer was getting at) and prescribes a brief workout plan. The exercises hit all muscle groups, but primarily focus on strengthening your back, abs, legs, and glutes. You can easily apply the principles to other exercises if you choose. Been following this for four months, and have seen steady strength gains as well as a great change in my muscle tone. Didn't think it would work, but thankful it did. Be prepared to appear slightly out of place in the gym when you do the Dead Lift and Side Press - but do them, they rock! Follow the advice for flat soled shoes, too. Explains how to add mass if you want to. The book could have used better organization and editing, and the advanced lifter probably has heard this stuff, but it's great. Also, the author answers questions on a message board on the publisher's website!
Rating: 
Summary: Shockingly dangerous advice
Review: As a fintess professional I found this book to contain some of the most dangerous advice from one of the most revered fitness pros in America, after consulting with many doctors and university lecturers they too were worried that some of the exercises could cause serious injurys unless one had a professional spotter or the author on hand to assit you and point out mistakes and as not many people including myself could afford that i found it worrying that these exercises are put foreward as a replacement to sound physiological practice and logic. None of the books concepts are base in fact or research yet they are touted as far superior to any others
Rating: 
Summary: A Few Decent Tips, but Not Worth the...
Review: After years of seeing the incredible strength of your average Russian athlete, I was pretty excited at this book's possibilities. The book boiled down to this: train heavy and deadlift and bench press almost exclusively.I found the book to be lacking the a few key areas. 1) Periodization: This section was very vague. He didn't do a great job of explaing the idea in full. He didn't offer a lot of long term hints. When you break it down, your making very little gains over the long term. 2) Routines: This is a major gripe of mine about weightlifting and strength training books in general. Seems these guys talk a lot about the big picture of what they're trying to sell you, but few offer ideas about how to develop an effective strength routine that works for you. Pavel's got a cute, bouncy writing style, and a few good points, but a book this thin, with as little as it has to genuinely offer should be a heck of a lot cheaper. I will give Pavel his due and say that "Beyond Stretching", while not woth... (maybe I'm just frugal), has a lot to offer. Want to get a great book on strength training? Get the underground masterpiece/manifesto by Brooks Kubik: "DINOSAUR TRAINING".
Rating:
Summary: The Absolute Best Strength Training Book.
Review: Thanks to Pavel Tsatsouline, I now know how to train correctly. Pavel has been the only Strength Training author to "clearly" articulate and describe the hows and whys of proper strength training. I always knew I had a lot of potential for strength, however, I couldn't find the key to on lock it. Pavel's Power to The People is the key. I highly recommend buying Pavel's book so that you can clear up all the mysteries of strength training and unlock your potential. If I had a dollar for every person I've heard say: "if I only had used Pavel's principles when I was younger" - I would be very rich.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Money
Review: I enjoy collecting books on fitness and weight training. However limited the content may be, I'll keep the book if it has one good idea. I sent this one back. You will too,unless you feel deadlifts and one arm presses constitutes an entire workout. That is basically all that is talked about in the whole book. The book should have taken 2 pages not 80.
Rating:
Summary: ....
Review: Thanks to the intense competition between the U.S. and the former-Soviet Union in the Olympic games during the cold war, Russian weightlifters were regarded as possibly the finest in the world. However, this book doesn't provide the training methods that even approximate the workouts that these athletes used to build up their olympic lifts to some of the best in the world. Instead its a very simple routine that isn't well grounded in science or theory and just seems to have come from the author's experience in his own basement gym. The author also borrows liberally from the training advice common to two-bit karate books from the 70's in his weightlifting methodology, which tends to cast doubt on his authority as a weightlifting expert. As a martial artist with 20 years experience and a weightlifter with 14 years experience, I found the author's quite limited......
Rating:
Summary: Save your money
Review: With 11 years of weight training for football and lacrosse I've come across and tried numerous different programs. I also review about three different books/programs a year. Each program's success was a direct result of the individual effort put into it. Pavel's book was an effort to finish reading. The principles are simple, you can find them in almost any collegiate and high-school football weight program. The book is dedicated to quirky and far from common examples of sometimes circus feats of strength. Pavel could have compressed this book into a flyer and also eliminated the final half-dozen or so pages of ads for his other books and products. I have no doubt that these techniques work for Pavel or others. Just don't buy this book and expect the secrets of strength to open up. For the cost of the book, many will be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Strength Training Wisdom a'la Russia
Review: Over the years I have read many books about training, some good and some not so good. Few of them has anything really new to add. To exaggerate a bit you can say if you have read one you have read them all. Not so with Pavels book. It is packed with new ideas. I can honestly say this book is the best I have read about strength training. You have to read it several times though. Not because the book is difficult to read, on the contrary it is really fun and easy to read, but rather because Pavel presents so many new ideas and concepts that it takes time to digest them all. Still he makes training simple and free from contradictions and, it is worth repeating, the book is fun to read.
Rating:
Summary: You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Review: I have been a training athlete for over 30 years in a lot of sports. Did everything in High School, played NCAA basketball in college, kick boxed as a pro for 2 years, made it to the NFL in 1982 as a free agent, Powerlifted through my 20's, do Olympic lifting now at 42. I have also been coaching swimming and strength training athletes for 20 years. I give this all this background so the next sentence will register the most. I have never read a book more useful than Power to the People. I have been using many of Tsatsouline's theories for the past 3-4 months and have seen my strength explode like I was in my 20's again with 1/2 the training time. Many Thanks, Carter Stamm
Rating: 
Summary: The two types of people this book will help:
Review: I recommend this book to two types of trainees:1/ the novice, and 2/ the guy who's been through it all. Pavel cuts through all the complications to fully explain the essentials. The novice won't be overwhelmed and disheartened, as he may be by so many of the overly-complex systems out now. He'll have a clear plan to simply work hard at...The old- timer may be surprised to find that his stagnating progress may be due to doing too much...Pavel has a good knowlege of all the strength and mass building system/philosophies, (many of which conflict with each other), and has figured out what really made them all work, (which involves no conflict at all). The one book to get. Work simple, work hard, work smart..5/12/04;Over the more recent publishing history of Pavel, I've come to see his writing as leaving strategic gaps, so that he can make more income later with the left-out info. This doesn't take away from the validity of his methods, but makes him less than an honest educator.
| 
