Customer Reviews

The Gold's Gym Training Encyclopedia

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
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An extremely well illustrated book with comprehensive descriptive text. The information contained is of benefit to serious bodybuilders who are looking for diversity and the proven routines of some the world's best known champions. The amateur will find the opening chapters contain easy to understand information regarding exercise, physiology, nutrition and guidelines for safe and rewarding exercise routines. For the money this book can't be touched

For those who want to learn an extensive set of exercises for each muscle group, this is the book. It illustrates every exercise it refers to and indicates the muscles affected. Moreover, the descriptions and illustrations are almost always on the same page for easy reference. Very useful for learning your set of routines and as a reminder before a training session.

I have owned this book ever since it was first published. Periodically I give it to people asking for guidance on weight training. It is nicely comprehensive on the various exercises, giving the proper form and names of equipment, movements and such. The photos are 80's vintage and dated but the info is not. Training with free weights has not changed. The exercises that worked twenty years ago work just as well today.

This book has a nice collection of exercises, with photographs and detailed description on the proper execution techniques for each one of them. The detailed description on each exercise include: The muscles emphasized by the exercise, its starting position, movement performance, exercise variations and training tips.

One valuable aspect of this training book is that at the end of each chapter you will find a lot of routines from Professional bodybuilders and champs. Each muscle is treated with great detail in its own individual book chapter.

Since the Table of Contents is not included in the book information presented above by the seller, I am including how the book is organized, so everybody can visualize what topics are covered:

- Basic information.

- Biceps training.

- Chest training.

- Shoulder training.

- Back training.

- Thigh and hip training.

- Triceps training.

- Abdominal training.

- Calf, forearm, and neck training.

- Advanced training techniques.

- Glossary.

In summary, very useful manual, with lots of exercises and routines, and plenty of information on training techniques and principles as they apply to bodybuilding.

This book has good detailed descriptions on every exercises and also has info on reps, restance training and how to recover from a workout. The exercise routines are a little out-dated.

if you are into bodybuilding this is a great buy - lots of info for all - buy will not be disappointed

Another reviewer said "The exercises that worked twenty years ago work just as well today." After reading this book I completely agree. It approaches training from the world of body-building. The upside of this is that you get a clear idea of how to work on specific areas of your body, rather than just general fitness.

Pros:

Excellent value.

Includes training routines for each muscle group. (beginner, advanced, and several examples of advanced routines).

Many pointers on how to get the most out of each exercise, as well as typical mistakes that beginners make.

Explanations of advanced training techniques (Training to Failure, Compound Sets, Preexhaustion, Peak Contraction, Contiguous Tension, Negative Reps,and so on).

A fairly light book considering the size.

Cons:

Could use an update (that is if modern publishers could manage not to screw up the original content)

The Gold's Gym Encyclopedia Of Training is a collection of exercises and routines designed for the serious bodybuilder. Most of the exercise descriptions are matched with demonstrative photos to help the reader "see" how to perform the exercise correctly. There are times that the form depicted in the photos does not match what the text says but overall they do a good job of describing many of the basic weight training exercises.

There are a few forgivable physiological errors in here as well; given that this book was written in the mid-80s, we did not know as much then as we do now about muscle physiology and it comes through a few times in here. For one thing, the authors assert that intramuscular hypertrophic compartmentalization is a reality (basically they say that you can build up different parts of the same muscle by incorporating different movements). We now know this is false -- differences in muscle hypertrophy amongst various cross-sections is due to the influence and hypertrophy of surrounding muscle structures, not of different parts within the muscle itself. They also assert that training to failure is the most optimal way to train and that all the pros do so. That is again wrong; failure is not a requirement for progress and many of the pros trained close to failure but not always to it.

All in all, this is a nice reference guide for anyone looking to add some more exercises to their personal weight-training repertoire. If you are looking for some different exercises to change up your routine with, this book is worth a shot.

Good Book! On time, great shape the book was in. As far as the book, I am a fitness and PT trainer and it still helped me and I felt like I learned even more. Never too old to learn or refresh your memory and this is what this bookdone for me. I do recommend it. I helped with with my male clients bulking up and muscle gain in ways I never thought of.

I liked reading this book but I don't know exactly how scientific some of the terms are; like when he calls people who jerk the weights around for high reps "pumpers." I usually refer to them as time wasters because they are injuries waiting to happen. The book does present you with modern training methods, but if I have to recommend one book.....Steve Reeves' new book "Building the Classic Physique" is still the best.