Customer Reviews

Fitness For Dummies

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

These authors love to shop as much as they love to exercise.

As a fitness neophyte, I turned once again to the Dummies series for its comprehensive, unbiased coverage of broad topics. What disappointed me about this selection is its enthusiasm for expensive gadgetry, club memberships, and professional consultation.

Admittedly, a healthy lifestyle isn't without a price tag, but this is ridiculous. In almost every chapter of this book (including a couple devoted entirely to the subject), you can expect to find one or more words of advice encouraging the reader to go shell out some more dough for one thing or another - a heart monitor, a personal trainer, a water pack, a dietician, a special mat for stretching exercises, etc. If you bought every item they recommended throughout the course of this book, you'd spend a full year's salary and fill a bedroom with all your new junk!

While they do advise against some of the more foolish purchases, such as those fat-zapping electrodes sold on infomercials, they spend little time extolling the virtues of those invaluable exercises you can do for free - stair walking, push ups, pull ups, etc. The chapter on exercising at home is a veritable catalog of the fanciest equipment money can buy, rather than suggestions of exercises you can do on a bare floor with your own body weight.

The authors also go a little skimpy on such topics as nutrition and weight training, but make darn sure to point you in the direction of other related titles in the "for Dummies" series.

If you generally like the Dummies books, do a little more shopping before you put your faith in this one.

When I bought this book I thought it would cover all the basics (= for dummies) and allow me to start working on my own at home.

To my disappointment this book contains very little needed info to do that.

Example - there are three pages about stretching, giving rules such as "Stretch all your muscles, not just those you've used in your workout", with the chapter describing the muscles coming up 45 pages later. I'd expect :

1. The chapter about muscles to be close to or preceding the section about stretching. The design keeps the relevant info too far apart.

2. A list of stretching excercises to be given with pictures. No excercises are given at all (though there are plenty of space given to useless pictures, e.g. of a computerized bike panel), denying me the info I need.

The section recommends buying a video that shows how to stretch. For the price of a video and a video cassete (about $300 in Israel) I could get personal training.

The "Nutrition Basics" chapter is another disappointment - five and a half pages are spent on vitamins providing less information than given in leaflets given for free in pharmacies, the section about titled "Watch Your Calories" gives trivial advice, and no table of caloric values of different kinds of foods is included, etc.

I find this book very disappointing, will not buy any other "for dummies" books, and will sell this book at a second hand books store - at least I'll get some of my money back and not waste any shelve space on this useless book.

If only all Dummies books were as good as this one. Extremely well-written with the most clear language one could ever hope for. Full of anecdotes, definitions, and plenty of myth busters. The personalization from the authors gets tiring ("Suzanne thinks that...", "Liz's grandmother once..."), but it is tolerable. Many, many aspects of fitness are covered in remarkable thoroughness. General weight lifting (both at home and the gym), supplements, gym etiquette, trainer tips, aerobic machines and classes, and fitness video buying are all covered with impressive detail. (If buying this book used, be sure to get the 2nd edition as it covers many topics that didn't exist with the first edition: Pilates, Physio balls, elliptical trainers, Bikram Yoga, and more.)

I've read several beginner fitness books and I feel this is the most complete and best organized of them all. This has gotten me motivated and started on the right fitness program for me (I've since confirmed with a personal trainer). Honest and accurate fitness information is laid out in an easily understood way (without any questionable product endorsements). No "summary" style book is going to have everything, but they have enough information that you feel like everything else is fine tuning.

To address the concerns of another reviewer, the 2nd edition of this book does discuss common fitness injuries.

Wow! A fitness book that doesn't claim to make things easy, or to get you in shape in just "five minutes a day!" Liz and Suzanne know their stuff, and they're willing to be blunt about what you need to do to get (or stay) in shape. Basic enough for beginners (including some nifty illustrations), and after years of reading fitness magazines cover-to-cover, I still learned something!
Leave the dummies to their exercise gadget infomercials... buy this book!

If you've been rather inactive in the recent past, this book will help you to get moving. It not only helped me to plan a well-rounded fitness program, but it really helped me to get motivated. The writing is clear and simple, and the authors do a good job at cutting through the jargon fog and giving you the essentials. and, of course, there's that "For Dummies" humor throughout. Best of all, it's cheaper than a personal trainer. In fact, if you need a personal trainer, this book has great advice on chooding a trainer that's right for you!

As a middle-aged fellow trying to get back into shape, "Fitness for Dummies" provided a wealth of information missing in other books. How to pick a gym, what to pack in a gym bag, what exercises to do and why, how to act in the weight room - all the important stuff is in there to get you to take that big step and begin getting fit. I liked it enough I have purchased copies for two of my relatives!

A pure fitness novice may find this book useful as it truly lives up to its name of Fitness for Dummies. If you paid any attention during your high school or college PE courses or were active in any sport, you likely already know 60-90 percent of the information in this book. As a matter of fairness, I listened to the audio version, which appears to have left out several chapters that looked more interesting. Nevertheless, this book is only for the pure fitness novice, or perhaps, older Americans who would like to begin a fitness program after decades of inactivity. It also has a slight female slant--though not enough to deter males from reading it. I do believe the information to be accurate and helpful to the ultimate beginner.

This book purports to be little more than a refresher course or an updating of information for those of us that have not been to gyms in a very long time. It lives up to this premise very well, with language that is neither pedantic nor peppy (we've all heard "come on, you can do it!" a few too many times).
The strongsuit of Ms. Schlosberg's and Ms. Neporent's treatise is that it answers most of the questions beginners would either not know to ask or are embarrassed to ask... it takes a while in a gym space to be able to just turn to someone to ask how the treadmill starts up. These women endeavored to clear up these novice-level mysteries while succeeding in not coming off as condescending.
If, however, you would like a more definitive explanation of things (this book glosses over a large amount-- acting more as a relatively thorough overview than a true guide) you might ought to check elsewhere before committing here.
I found Fitness for Dummies to be very helpful as I am nearing thirty and getting back into gyms that have contraptions I could not have begun to understand before reading this book.
Good luck out there!

I need an intro book on fitness that covers all the basis well, and in the bookstore it quickly came down to the Dummies book vs. the Idiots.

Similar quality contents on both sides, and the Dummies has a cleaner layout. But I ultimately chose the Idiots for the following reasons:

* The Idiots has a whole chapter on Martial Arts, where Dummies has no coverage at all. It also goes over jazz and a few other dance forms. This is very important to me as I consider the usual machine-based workout too soulless.

* I did not notice this myself, but the editorial pointed out a very important area - how to prevent injuries. The topic is not addressed in the Dummies as far as I can tell from the online TOC.