Customer Reviews

Essential Chest and Shoulders: An Intense 6-Week Program (Men's Health Peak Conditioning Guides)

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

 

 

I have read a few body-building books and think this one, along with the other books in the same series (arms, legs, abs, etc), are the best to date.

One reason for this is the insistence upon good form. Like a lot of people, I have in the past gotten carried away with adding more weight and not paying attention to form. This is still a temptation but the message on good form presented in this book is finally starting to stick. I especially was impressed by his argument for paying attention to the negative part of the exercise.

Another STRONG point of the book is that it provides you with lots of routines. After finishing the books 6 week course,
you are supplied with an additional 4 or 5 good routines for future use. As the author states, it is important to change routines often, so that your muscles do not get too used to a given exercise (and you dont get bored). However,
I am very lazy about putting together routines and tend to stick to one. Thanks to this book this is no longer a problem, because it does it for me; I now have complete sets of routines that I can follow and am beginning to see important gains as a result.

The book also does a good job of covering the basics of good nutrition, rest and, for all of you gym rats who would ignore it,
aerobics (ever see those pudgy cro-magnon loking guys in the gym who claim their bloated tummies are muscle)!!!! He doesn't cover supplements though and that is understandable given the controversy and hype surrounding so many of them.

This is the 2nd book on weight lifting I've read. The first one being "Muscle Logic" which was both difficult to grasp as a beginner, and also a very unrealistic program to actually accomplish (read it and you'll see why you couldn't do this unless you owned your own gym).

But essential chest and shoulders is not like that at all. It is written for guys like me who knew virtually nothing regarind weight training. It gives excellent introductory material regarding the muscle groups and strategies and general fitness information.

The program that it gives is a 3-day a week program, 2 focusing on chest and shoulders, and the 3rd day on other muscle groups. The program is easy to follow, starts simple and gets more in depth as the time goes. But not overwhelming for beginners.

The program does focus on chest and shoulders, so if you were interested in lower-body, abs, or arms, you may want to look at another book (which the men's health publisher makes virtually identical books for both arms and abs).

Most of the exercises are performed with dumbells. And the book is designed for someone who is just getting started, and can be performed solo if you don't have a partner (its a lot easier to escape dumbell bech presses at an early level than a bar if you don't have a spotter, but its good to have a spotter).

The plan is again, fairly simple and designed for beginners. Experienced weightlifters will not gain anything from this book. If you're looking for a starting point, this is for you.

This book is simply a program to improve strength in your shoulders and chest. I have followed it for the prescribed 6 weeks with very good results. I can see better defenition in my chest and shoulders and I've increased the amount of weight i can lift considerable. However, this is mainly because i had not lifted in a year. It is very basic and anyone who follows a workout plan already would have most of the excercises given in this book. I would reccomend buying it only if you are a true beginner.

i started the program from this book not even 7 days before and i can feel the stress on my muscles which is an indication of success. I learned some very useful concepts about weight training for beginners e.g. Dumbell presses instead of bench press and more, which is really true and fantastic. This book mainly focuses on chest and shoulders but emphasizes on legs and abs also. The designed program is very friendly yet intense. There is no exercise for biceps in this book. I recommend anyone to buy this book along with Kurt's "Essential Arms" and "The complete book of abs". I cant wait to see the results and to give 5 stars to this book. Last words: DEDICATION & DETERMINATION will help you make any weight training book useful otherwise FORGET ABOUT IT.

I have never before posted a review or returned an item to amazon, however I am doing both with this book.

It really is only for beginners: and in fact in that regard could be regarded as quite a good book (although I think the mix of exercises in weeks 5 and 6 of the program could cause injury to someone who hasn't been lifting for,say, 3 months at least.)

The author DOES show how to do exercises with perfect form. I had assumed from the fact that it was one whole book just focusing on chest/shoulders that there would be a number of different programs given: this assumption being given weight by one of the other reviews here which states that there are 'lots of different programs' included: but these are of a different type: for strenght training etc. None of them were prgrams that I would follow: I think Nate Green's book does a better job by giving one four different programs to follow.

One of the issues I have with some of these books (this applies to Built for Show by Nate Green as well) is that they can look good on the page but be difficult to apply in real life. For example in Nate's book you alternate between a wide-grip seated row and a dumbbell press in the Fall program, but in a busy commercial gym the minute you get off one machine to head to the free weights section that machine (often at the other end of the gym) will be taken by someone else, making it difficult to stick to the rest times specificed by the author: I wish alternatives were given based on this possibility (for example why not does a bent over row followed by pdumbbell press etc). In fairness though, I was quite dubious about Nate's program until I did it in the gym this week and I was impressed.

The book delivers what it promises: An Intense Six-week program to completely train your Chest, Shoulders and as a bonus the Back. Yes the book title doesn't mention the Back at all, but the programs include exercises for the "latissimus dorsi" or just "lats" as they are usually call in gym jargon. This alone makes this a complete upper body exercise program, since the "latissimus dorsi" is what gives the upper body its V-shape, and is the largest upper-body muscle, so large that the core training program hits it from three different ways.

But this book is more than just an upper-body workout, it is a small, handy and complete reference with useful information that includes: essential physiology, aerobics, flexibility stretches, and essential principles and techniques.

If you are interested in similarly practical and complete exercises programs for the rest of your body, you may also want to consider "Essential ABS", "Essential Arms", and "The complete Butt and Legs" by the same authors.

I have found this book to be very informative. It shows you the right way to do your weight training. It also has a lot of useful programmes that you can do, I am already seeing the results of following the intructions given in this book.

A friend of mine had this book, I liked it so I had to buy it... it is very informative, a must have for your fitness library.

I thought the material in the book was outdated and sent it back. I was refunded quickly without any hassles.

the context is obsolete.The photo is rather unclear. There is nothing new or revolutional about this book especially about chest and shoulder training.My advice is simple .It's not worth the money.