Customer Reviews

The American Physical Therapy Association Book of Body Maintenance and Repair

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

...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.

As a practicing physical therapist I approved of most of the information and exercises, however there were some exercises I would deem potentially harmful to some individuals. I would recommend checking with your physical therapist before beginning them - particularly if you have a low back problem.

This is an excellent supplemental book. It provides a wide range of information in a limited amount of text. The chapters are informative and detailed, yet interesting. This would be a great book to have for a reference or quick study. I also found the many drawings of different exercises most helpful.

I originally checked this book out from my local library. I have had low back trouble, been working with a physical therapist at a local health club, and wanted to know if there was more I could do on my own. This book allows you to look for a specific body area, read about it in an easy-to-read format that is non-technical, yet gives brief definitions and terminology that you might hear from your dr. It then lists recommended stretching and strengthening exercises. The back of the book contains simple drawings demonstrating the stretches or strengthening exercises. It targets back, hips, shoulders, etc. for whatever area you need help in.

My disappointment in this book has to do with its organization. I was looking for information on a shoulder injury and what to do for it. When looking through the chapter on the shoulder it did help that all the things that could go wrong with your shoulder were in bold print so you could skim to find the correct one, but then I wanted to know what to do to help my injury. Now I had to search the book again. If not right there, you'd think it'd be in the next section...but no, the next section was on "taking care of your shoulder" before anything goes wrong. But if you keep turning pages you do finally find a section titled "When Problems Occur"...however, now you search again for your specific problem only to find pretty general information for all shoulder injuries. I prefer the organization in The Sports Medicine Bible for a good overall reference book...and I like Allan Levy's Tennis Injury Handbook for more specific questions. Allan Levy also had a more general reference book called the Sports Injury Handbook, but, once again, the organization of the Sports Medicine Bible presents the information best (Symptoms, Causes, What you can do, What the doctor can do, etc.)

The book is full of exercises and other useful material.

I used the book to supplement what my PT suggested. I don't think I'd have had a chance to avoid some of the exercises in the book that can cause problems if I wasn't working with the PT.

The book was very useful to me in providing a variety to my exercises and helping me establish good posture.

Make sure you see a doctor and a PT at least once!

I love this book. The pictures are nice and clear on what you are suppose to do for each exercise. Everything is so easy to understand. I took the book with me to Physical Therapy one day and my Physical Therapist liked it so much he ordered one that same day!!!

I had a very frightening experience with a physical therapist and was unwilling to return for needed therapy following a broken wrist. I used this book to devise my own recovery program. I know that this is not the recommended way to recover, but, at the time, it was this or nothing. It worked for me. I stuck to the exercises and my hand and wrist are fine now.