Rating: 
Summary: Great advice, poorly written
Review: The advice in the book is excellent, common sense, and geared towards people who want to get strong, but have average bodies and normal, busy lives. I find it hard to believe that anyone could truly follow the program and not get stronger. However, the book could be better if it were 100 pages shorter. There is simply too much material that's repeated again and again. Also, the numbered paragraph style is distracting, and detracts from the flow of the text. While the advice will work as well for women as it does for men, women may find it difficult to get past the heavy male orientation.
Rating: 
Summary: Very poor training advice
Review: After all the hype i have read about this book my expectations were, unfortunately, high. The numbered paragraph structure of the book makes it almost impossible to read and i had made little if any progress after using the program for 2 years. Most of the ideas in the book just didn't work.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile reading
Review: This is different training advice to the norm. No more and no less valuable than Arnolds. At the end of the day you are either born muscular or you arn't, the mode of your training has little or no effect on your progress. I have seen as many guys fail using Mcroberts advice as i have seen fail using Arnolds advice. As can be seen from the Hardgainer website most of the people showing their physiques are very unimpressive, certainly nothing more than you will find in a gym using exclusively Arnold style training.I think the important thing is never said - if you are born to be muscular then sure enough it will happen. For everyone who isn't, try Hardgainer training for a while, but don't expect to look like Arnold. Get used to that fact. You can increase your strength slightly but the talk of HG being some kind of foolproof way to success is just a marketing myth.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: The most difficult thing about this abbreviated training concept is to refrain from the same old bad habits. Anyone who has lifted for a few years has at some point succumbed to the "more is better" propaganda. It's all too easy to believe that absence of results, or progress that's too slow, is the result of too little time in the gym. Pretty soon, you're piling on more sets, more isolation exercises, more splits, and getting NOWHERE. If you've ever read the party line put out by Weider and others, and read the workout programs of Schwarznegger and others, it's tough not to believe that "more is better". If you plan on a drug free regimen, the conventional approach is plain nuts, and the High Intensity techniques that you'll read about in this book will change your program and your life, IF YOU CAN BRING YOURSELF TO LET GO OF YOUR PREJUDICES AND GIVE IT A CHANCE! This is a great read and I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: The Nuts and Bolts of Weight Training
Review: After utilizing Stuart McRoberts "Big Arms" routine from a long ways back (which changed the way I lift today), I was curious on what Beyond Brawn was all about. All of McRoberts books and articles emphasize what it takes (discipline) in order to make enormous gains. He teaches you to be patient (training over many years) in order to develop the best physique possible within the your genetic potential. I for one, am not a Hardgainer, but I do employ his techniques into my training and have gone from 5'8" 175lbs to 225lbs (over a 7 year period). My bodyfat has roughly stayed about the same (12% - 15%) and my strength blows away what I was at in my 175lbs days. Trust me, this is the book you need even if you're not a Hardgainer. Dedication and small jumps make major differences, good luck.
Rating:
Summary: If you're going to train with weights, read this book.
Review: This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to train with weights and do so as a life long fitness activity. It instructs everyday people (not super star athletes with joints of iron or drug assisted lifters) how to build strength, muscle size, and improve their overall health through weight training. No other book compares with this, and I have read many. There are only three books that I routinely recommend to people who want to train with weights: 'Beyond Brawn' and 'The Insider's Tell-All Handbook on Weight-TRaining Technique' both by Stuart McRobert and 'Stretching' by Anderson. These three books I feel are ESSENTIAL reading and reference material. You will not be dissappointed in their content or the effects of following the advice within them on your progress in weight training. 'Beyond Brawn' covers everything: creating lifting routines, managing your time for training, recovery, eating, injury prevention, and more! I STRONGLY recommend this book to anyone and EVERYONE interested in training with weights.
Rating:
Summary: All Meat; All Muscle
Review: Here is a good book. . "Beyond Brawn" is a book for those who work hard, for those who sweat buckets, and for whom every single fraction of an inch of muscle growth comes hard. "Beyond Brawn" is for those who will NOT give up, and who will accept nothing less than final victory. "Beyond Brawn" injects the much-needed and long absent "something missing" back into bodybuilding That something is nothing less than the original heart and soul of real, body building- for strength, for health, for aesthetic appearance, and most important of all-for longevity, whether in training or in its literal sense. "Beyond Brawn " is entertaining. It is a good read. Though written to inform, to motivate and to persuade the flavour is of author Stuart McRobert's personal vendetta towards honest and frill-free training and he is not above some shin kicking and bare-knuckling to get the Message across. McRobert-a well published author of many years in the major niche magazines is no friend of the "sell 'em another supplement" miracle vendors. And, his stark and realistic standards to which those who want to be strong and sweat blood to become so continue to spur "ordinary, just like you and me" weight trainers on farther than they ever thought possible. So what commends "Beyond Brawn" over and above the rest of the genre? There is a chapter on the philosophy of the "hard gainer"; and on expectations on just how big and strong a hard gainer-(someone not genetically gifted with big bones and easy muscle growth) can become. There are chapters on training cycles that actually work and deliver, and on how to equip a home gym. The book deals with exercise selection-the suggestions guaranteed to annoy some of the conventional wise men of exercise; and there is a particularly interesting chapter on correcting training injuries through trigger point therapy. The finest summary-the précis of the entire work is told in story form in chapter 3, in which McRobert in his clear style describes how a "wise and uncompromising mentor" would have guided a dedicated, devoted and thoroughly misinformed young man safely and most importantly successfully through years of training, years that in McRobert's words were largely wasted and actually damaging to the body. By following the mentor's lead, the young man might have achieved in a few quick and hard training years a body of impressive size, filled with power and ready and able to train for a lifetime, rather than having taken more than a decade to actually make mistake after mistake and paying the price in injury and pain. "Beyond Brawn" captures the moment; it expresses and guides the growing thousands of hard gainers who want the power, the muscle- but never knew just how straightforward it was to get it. Every gym has its hundreds who have real desire, true motivation- and have never achieved their goals-because they have bought into the over used, over sold and overly hyped systems and methods that work only for the genetically gifted or chemically enhanced. Most of are not in the "gifted gene" pool, and most hard gainers will not go the chemical route because it is neither natural nor "right." If you like hard work, "Beyond Brawn" is for you. If you have a deep desire to gain, this book is for you. If you wish to finally get where you physically thought was never going to happen, read, apply, persist and you will achieve. I did. -----
Rating:
Summary: I have found it nothing short of excellent.
Review: Beyond Brawn It is difficult to know what to say that has not already been said about this classic text, but the point has to be rammed home - Add a copy of this to your order of The Insiders Tell All Handbook on Weight Training Technique, and you will have all the instruction you will ever need for weight training success. Once again Stuart McRobert has left no stone unturned, he has produced a book that is considered by many to be the "bodybuilders bible", and rightly so. Beyond Brawn is a beefy text and once again, I feel it is unnecessary to single out specific benefits & features of the publication. I have found it nothing short of excellent. Having said that, I would like to point out that Stuart McRobert will not only educate you on how to train productively & eat healthy with this book, he will also point the way on how to gain understanding and treat nagging injuries that you may have suffered with for years. It would be an injustice to imply this is merely a bodybuilding book, Stuart's experience and knowledge far exceeds 'sets & reps' and it is easy for the reader to feel just how much the author reaches out to help to you. A very sincere and informative book, written by a very sincere and experienced weight trainer.
Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: This book about weight training and bodybuilding is one of the best I have ever read. The best thing is that there are no photo's and endless literature references !. The information is very practical but sometimes to much. You can't espect to cover the book in one day. You have to read it over and over again to comprehend the full meaning of the text. But I certainly think that it is worth it. Even if you are a experienced lifter or bodybuilder it is certainly worthwhile to buy it since it contains so much useful and true information especially about the basic lifts the squat, deadlift and bench press.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on weight training I have read.
Review: To successfully build the body you want you need a lot of information. When I began weight training two years ago the only information I had was the excercise chart which came with some dumbells I bought. If I had continued to use that information I might have improved my muscle tone but would have grown very little. It didn't take me long to realise that the chart contained very little of the information I needed. Over the past two years I have read a number of books about weight training. These books contained large numbers of big pictures demonstrating excercises and showing the alleged results of the application of the books information. Dispite this multitude of pictures the excercises were not explained in sufficient detail and the other information tended to be rather brief. None of the books were really worth the money I spent on them. After the disappointment of the books I turned to the various magazines on weight training. Although the magazines gave a lot of useful information, there were so many different oppinions on the important issues and so many different routines being displayed, I became rather confused. Another disadvantage of the magazines were that they were all produced by companies selling supplements and full of adverts. This encouraged me to try various supplements like creatine, glutamine and a number of fat burners, none of which gave good results. I received 'Beyond Brawn' as a birthday present earlier this year. Just by it's size and almost complete lack of photos I could tell that it was different to the other books I had read. For no more money than one of the books I had previously bought, I had a book five times as thick and far more densely packed with information. This book is unusual in the fact it is written for the genetically typical -or even disadvantaged- trainee (i.e. most people) and not the genetically blessed trainee who can gain muscle with comparatively little effort. An awful lot of weight training books are written by people who are naturally huge and totally out of touch with the methods needed to help 'Joe Average' to gain muscle. The book Beyond Brawn is in touch with those methods. Stuart McRobert's book is also for the drug free trainee, not someone pumped up with all sorts of illegal steriods. A lot of books and magazines are aimed ( some even admit it) at trainees who have 'chemical assistance' and so can gain on programs that would overtrain the drug free. This book is also free from all those routines which the professional bodybuilders use to shape what the already have in abundance rather than to build what the normal trainee has yet to gain. Just because you use a professionals routine you cannot hope to get as big as the professional, that takes muscle building routines like those that Stuart McRobert teaches you to create and tailor to your own needs in this book. I have now read most of Beyond brawn more than once and I have to say that this book contains the best advice I have ever read on the subject of weight training. It cafefully explains the best methods to use and why the other methods from other books are not going to work for the average trainee. This book covers just about everything you need to know about weight training including diet, how to design your traing programs and how to get the best results from your training. The only thing it doesn't exhaustively deal with is correct excercise technique (dealt with in the companion book 'The insiders tell-all handbook on excercise technique'). This book also acknowledges your individuality, unlike most books in the field, and teaches you how to train yourself. The bottom line is if you want to put on muscle, get a copy of this book and you'll make a lot more progress. If you do buy this book, I would recommend you also buy the equally brilliant companion book 'The insiders tell all handbook on weight-training technique', to teach you how to perform the right exercises, safely and effectively.
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