90 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Think twice before buying this book., October 4, 2002
This review is from: The American Physical Therapy Association Book of Body Maintenance and Repair (Paperback)
Sorry to be a negative voice, but I was disappointed with this book. There are scores of exercises and stretches given, but there's not enough focus on which exercises work for which problems. There's a "try everything" mentality here, with the assumption that one has multiple hours per day to maintain one's body. The book explains how the body works but is weak at tying that information to good advice on what to do to prevent and repair. It's almost as if the book were written by an overly cautious attorney who's afraid to give any advice on the chance that it might not work for someone. It's the old "vague is better because it's safer" approach. Recommendations are so generic as to be commonsense. While there's plenty of impressive and arcane anatomical verbiage, the drawings accompanying the text don't label the parts referred to in the text, making understanding difficult. All the stretches and exercises are lumped together at the end of the book, one after another, with little explanation. The drawings are amateurish, with some of the line drawn models looking more like monkeys than humans. Part of what made this book seem so unimpressive was that I ordered it along with another book that was incredibly good: Allan Levy's Sports Injury Handbook. The contrast in quality between the two books was startling. See my review there.
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81 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reliable academic information, few flawed presentations, January 30, 2005
This review is from: The American Physical Therapy Association Book of Body Maintenance and Repair (Paperback)
This book would have easily won five stars had its authors strived to respect the intelligence of its readers. Although the book mainly emphasizes body maintenance and repair, it presents extensive tips and exercises to do more than its title indicates. The major flaw with the book presentation is its authors' short-winded style of sloppiness and poor research.
The Table of Contents demonstrates the clear goals of the book in systematic and scientific manner. Chapter One, "The Back", also stresses that clear goal, by making the spine the center of attention of any physical rehabilitation and maintenance. Troubles start from Chapter 2 on, as follows.
1- In the first nine chapters, there is sloppy redundancy of "copy and paste" of paragraphs. You will read the same paragraphs on "rheumatoid arthritis", "arthritis", "spasm", "muscle tightness", "trigger points", "osteoarthritis", "rest", and so on, so many times as if you are reading the same chapter nine times in the same book. Even many of these chapters end with the same paragraph, with the word "mechanics".
2- Although the book graphics are scientific and serve the purpose of simplification and clarification, some of the drawings are poorly labeled and poorly representative. The drawings of the hip anatomy in chapter 7, for example, do not show the hip abductors. Most of the drawings of posture and gait do not demonstrate the real dynamics of human body of scapular, spinal, or pelvic contours during motion. They are drawn by artists inexperienced in human anatomy.
3- Although most of chapters 10 to 17 are informative and concise, some of them are unnecessarily abbreviated. Chapter 13, "Body Weight", for example, is merely two pages. Chapter 12, "Body mechanics", is a clear proof on how academic writers misunderstand physical performance. The authors attempt to explain the proper way of lifting in a flawed manner that might skip the attention of non-lifters. For example, they advise bending the knees and elbows while lifting from the floor. They explain that that would prevent elbow overextension and back stress. The drawing in that chapter shows a man squatting on his toes with elevated heels. They also advise advancing one foot ahead of the other during squatting. The described process of lifting is flawed because of the following:
(i) You should not bend your knees while lifting unless you have trained them to do so. Untrained knees could easily buckle during lifting and cause accidents.
(ii) Lifting with straight elbows does not over-extend them because the gravity pulls downwards with the shoulders positioned over the elbows. Overextension only happens when the shoulders and elbows are on the same horizontal level, like in lying-down chest flyes.
(iii) Advancing one foot ahead creates asymmetric spinal stress. Lifting on evenly positioned feet guarantees symmetric spinal loading.
(iv) The most important tips in the technique of proper lifting are the chest thrusting and spinal arching. These could obviate knee bending as in the "stiff-legged deadlift".
4- The exercises in Chapters 18 and 19, show the depth of academic understanding of human anatomy. The exercises are plenty and diverse and presented with scientific drawings that emphasize the main purpose of each exercise. The main flaw however, is the poor practical knowledge of the authors about real exercise. This is clear in the so many drawings that show people sitting and lifting weights. Shoulder shrugs, Biceps curls, jaw opening, neck exercises, and many others are performed while seated. Too many sitting exercises should have been done while standing in order to enhance overall physical balance and fitness. Lifting weights while seated is dangerous unless the person is highly trained to maintain lower back lordosis during loading.
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When all else Fails..., July 18, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The American Physical Therapy Association Book of Body Maintenance and Repair (Paperback)
...read a book. Especially this book. Anyone who has suffered an injury, the insult of surgery, the subsequent humiliation of physical therapy, should read this book. Despite the naive illustrations, the authors provide a treasure trove of information on how to perform rehabilitation exercises and stretches.
I feel lucky to have discovered this book. A little over a year ago I had knee surgery. Unfortunately, as the right knee continued to improve, I developed pain in the left hip. My physical therapist told me to gut it out and take aspirin.
A year and two months after my surgery (and seven months out of phys therapy) I could not lift my left leg above four inches without debilitating pain. While in the library, I discovered this book and decided to give the stretches a try.
Well, now I have full range-of-motion and just marginal discomfort. I have been performing the stretches and exercises faithfully for six weeks. It works.
I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in how the body works, whether you're a weekend warrior or a sedentary type.
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