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The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU!
 
 
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The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU! [Paperback]

Adam Campbell MS CSCS (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (145 customer reviews)

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Book Description

December 22, 2009
The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises is the essential workout guide for anyone who wants a better body. As the most comprehensive collection of exercises ever created, this book is a body-shaping power tool for both beginners and longtime lifters alike. From start to finish, this 480-page muscle manual bulges with hundreds of useful tips, the latest findings in exercise science, and cutting-edge workouts from the world's top trainers.
 
Inside The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises you'll find 619 exercises expertly demonstrated with color photographs, with dozens of movements for every muscle in your body, including:

* More than 100 core exercises! You'll never run out of ways to sculpt your six-pack.
* 74 biceps, triceps, and forearm exercises: Build your arms faster than ever before.
* 64 chest exercises, and featuring dozens of variations of the pushup and bench press.
* 103 back exercises, so you can carve a v-shaped torso.
* 40 shoulder exercises, for a tank-top worthy torso.
* 99 quadriceps and calves exercises, to help you jump higher and run faster.
* 62 glutes and hamstrings exercises, for a more powerful, athletic body.

From cover to cover, you'll quickly see that there's a training plan for every fitness goal—whether you want to shrink your hip, find your abs, or shape your arms. Highlights include:

* The World's Greatest 4-Week Diet and Exercise Plan
Lose 10 pounds of pure fat in 30 days! This scientifically proven plan, based on research from the University of Connecticut, shows what's truly possible when you combine the right kind of diet with the right kind of exercise. You'll build muscle and lose fat faster than ever.
* 64 Ways to Add Inches to Your Arms
You'll learn how to mix-and-match the 12 best biceps exercises to create scores of sleeve-busting routines. The upshot: You'll never get stuck in a muscle-building rut again!
* The Get Back In Shape (Fast!) Guide
If you've never even picked up a weight, you'll want to try this plan from Joe Dowdell, C.S.C.S. Joe makes his living training celebrities, cover models, and professional athletes, such as NBA stars Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy. And the strategies he uses when designing workouts for his high-profile clientele are the same ones he employs to help you burn fat, build muscle, and get back in shape.
* The Ultimate Fat Loss Plan

You might call this the six-pack workout. That's because it's designed to help you finally finish off the flab that's hiding your abs. Created by Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S., a top fitness advisor to Men's Health, it's based entirely on the new science of fat loss. From the sets to the reps to the rest, every part of this workout is designed to optimize your body's ability to burn away belly-fat.

And:
* Boost Your Bench Press by 50 Pounds in 8 Weeks
World-class powerlifter Dave Tate shares the strategies that helped him lift a personal best of 610 pounds
* Triple Your Chinups in 6 Weeks
Use this simple routine that to master one of the world's greatest muscle-building exercises
* Add 4 to 10 inches to Your Vertical Leap
This high-flying plan from strength coach Kelly Baggett will have you jumping out of the gym in no time
* The Beach Ready Body Workout
Get-strong to get-big—this 8-week plan shows you how
* The Wedding Workout
Look great—just in time for the big day (and your honeymoon!)
* The Best Sports Workout
Train like an athlete, look like an athlete
* The Scrawny to Brawny Workout
Pack on muscle fast: your 4-week plan
* The Best Workouts for a Crowded Gym
Sculpt a lean, fit body—no waiting!
* The Best Bodyweight Workouts
Take your workout anywhere with these no-weight routines
* The 10 Best 15-Minute Workouts
Bust stress, blast fat, and build muscle in almost no time
* The 7-Minute Back-Saving Workout
End low-back pain for good!
 
Plus:
Every page of The Men’s Health Big Book of Exercises is filled with the fitness and nutrition tips and tricks you need to sculpt the body you want.
Throughout the book, you'll discover:
* The secret to burning 40 percent more fat.
* The 18 muscle mistakes you should never make
* The best stretch for every muscle
* The fastest cardio workout of all-time (just 4 minutes!)
* The best exercises you've never done
* The 8 healthiest foods you aren't eating
* The 4 surprising foods that build muscle
* The 25 super snacks that keep you lean
* The 5 biggest nutrition myths, busted
* The truth about saturated fat
* The perfect foods to fuel your workouts
* The complete guide to protein powders
* The 20 ways lifting weights helps you look great, stay healthy, and live longer

Frequently Bought Together

The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU! + The Men's Health Big Book of Food & Nutrition: Your completely delicious guide to eating well, looking great, and staying lean for life! + The Men's Health Big Book of 15-Minute Workouts: A Leaner, Stronger Body--in 15 Minutes a Day!
Price For All Three: $49.47

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ADAM CAMPBELL, is the fitness director for Men's Health and a National Magazine Award-winning writer. He holds a master's degree in exercise physiology and is a NSCA-certified strength and conditioning coach. Campbell has appeared on Good Morning America, The Early Show, and VH-1.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Rodale Books; 1 edition (December 22, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1605295507
  • ISBN-13: 978-1605295503
  • Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 8 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (145 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ADAM CAMPBELL, is the fitness director for Men's Health and a National Magazine Award-winning writer. He holds a master's degree in exercise physiology and is a NSCA-certified strength and conditioning coach. Campbell has appeared on Good Morning America, The Early Show, and VH-1.

 

Customer Reviews

145 Reviews
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (145 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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80 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Big Book is Big Disappointment, February 26, 2011
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This review is from: The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU! (Paperback)
The concept of Men's Health Big Book of Exercises is great: collect hundreds of exercises, group them by muscle group and add some background information and nutritional advice. There you go: the workout manual to make all others obsolete. But despite the lyrical reviews posted here, I found this book disappointing. In short: the collection of exercises is great, but the way they are presented is not optimal. A serious framework to construct your own training plan is absent and the nutritional information is downright silly.

EXERCISES

What I liked about this book is the sheer number of exercises; they are the reason I continue to use this book every now and then. Each exercise comes with at least one clear picture and has some handy little performance tips scattered around. However, this being the main event of the book, there are a number of omissions that I would consider flaws.

First, there is no connection between the discussion of the anatomy in the beginning of each section and the exercises. It's great that you are shown the different muscles that make up the back, but in the 60 or so exercises that follow, there is no way of finding out which muscle or part thereof is targeted by which exercise. Also, if you give 15 variations of one particular exercise, it would have been logical to mark the variations in terms of level of difficulty. No such luck.

Basically, the book first gives some fairly detailed information on an entire muscle group (albeit with some less than great illustrations), but then simply dumps a long list of exercises on you. Though the number of exercises provided is much smaller, the book Strength Training Anatomy by Frederic Delavier is infinitely better. It tells you not just how to perform an exercise but also how an individual exercise targets each specific muscle. I sincerely hope Men's Health takes some cues from Delavier for their next edition of the Big Book.

TRAINING PLANS

The 'exercise plans' in the Big Book are alright, but if you are looking for a good, consistent framework to get maximal results (as opposed to just "doing something in the gym"), I feel the The Body Sculpting Bible for Men is way better. It may not have the same number of exercises, nor nice color photos like the Big Book, but I feel the overall framework of training is much more solid and consistent than the somewhat hap hazardous and confusing approach in Men's Healh Big Book.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION

Now, if it were for the exercises and plans alone, I would still have given the book three stars, maybe even four; the sheer number of exercises makes it quite unique. Five stars would be out of the question, because the difference in content quality is too far off from some of the other books available. Still, I decided to lower the rating by one more star, because of the nutritional sections which are silly at best.

First let me say that from a magazine (such as Men's Health) I fully accept a somewhat eclectic approach. A new study comes out one month that says coffee is bad for you and the next month another says it's good - all fine. A book, however, I expect to be a bit more authoritative. This book is not.

The Big Book opts for the "high protein, medium fat, low carbs" approach. I think Susan Kleiner in her book Power Eating clearly demonstrated why a high carb, medium protein approach is far superior for building muscle and losing fat. Other than the Big Book, Kleiner backs up her story with sound scientific references. Where the Big Book settles for "A study in Denmark found...", Kleiner takes a truly scientific approach. Her conclusions are very different but much more logical and actionable for anyone who can think beyond the simplistic adage "muscle is built by protein, so the more protein I eat the more muscle I get".

Perhaps for people living in the US the nutritional advice in Men's Health Big Book makes some sense. Unspoken assumptions in the book seem to be a consequence of its orientation on the mainstream US audience. First and foremost, you are assumed to be too fat, or at least struggling with overweight. You also really like to eat a lot of fat and most certainly eat lots of animals. Also, you are not willing or able to change any of these habits.

Even within that context, the advice that comes out is sometimes downright puzzling:

- Beans, peas and corn should be avoided as they contain a lot of starch (p. 442)
- However, whole milk is fine (it's not all that much extra fat anyway), source cream is almost pure fat but hey, serving size is generally small, so go ahead! Other "healthiest" or at least "guilt free" foods: butter, pork chops, full-fat cheese, chicken thighs, coconut (p. 444 - 447). This one I found a particularly funny health advice: vinegar is good for you, so sprinkle some on your caramelized onions (!) or in your mayonnaise (!) before you spread it on your sandwich. Now, maybe I have been gone from the US for too long, but I don't think that I ever saw anyone health conscious eat mayonnaise sandwiches. But according to the Big Book, it's apparently great for your workout diet as long as you add some vinegar to it and stay clear of beans and potatoes. Yeah, right!

If you insist of eating a lot of fat, I can imagine the advice in this book to then at least cut back on carbs makes some sense. But it's obvious that this is no optimal diet advice for anyone serious about exercising. Again, Susan's Kleiner approach (high carb, medium protein and low fat) is far more sensible and much better researched. Sure, if you live in an area where KFC is considered lunch and a white sub sandwich is considered your healthy option, any truly sensible exercise diet may be out of reach. But of course, your results will never be the same as when you opt for a truly effective exercise diet.

In summary:
- Great book if you are a strength trainer and are simply looking to find some more exercise variations. The selection of exercises is unparalleled. Major flaw: the book doesn't tell you why and when you should choose one exercise over another, or which muscles each exercise targets specifically. For more detailed information on anatomy, how to exactly perform exercises and how these exercises relate to your muscles and objectives, a much better option is the classic but recently updated Strength Training Anatomy-3rd Edition (Sports Anatomy)
- If you need some guidance in setting up an exercise plan, opt for The Body Sculpting Bible for Men, Revised Edition: The Way to Physical Perfection instead. While Men's Health Big Book contains lot and lots of information, it gives you little guidance to make sense of it all. The little snippets of information basically have the same value as reading a couple of magazines. If you thought this book tied all the somewhat useful snippets of information from Men's Health archives together in a more consistent framework, you're out of luck.
- If you struggle with overweight and you are absolutely sure you cannot stray too far from the mainstream American diet or let go of eating lots of animals and fatty foods daily, then the nutritional advice in this book may be the best you can achieve. But if you are serious about your body and health and are willing to change to an optimal, goal-oriented diet (i.e. eat like an athlete), make sure to ignore all nutritional sections in this book completely. They are confusing at best, and if you follow a mainstream European or Asian diet, they will actually lead you in the WRONG direction. Instead, order a copy of the very dry, scarcely illustrated but content wise very solid Power Eating, Third Edition by Susan Kleiner.
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24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Big Book Equals Complete Book, January 18, 2011
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU! (Paperback)
If I had to pick one word to describe this book, it wouldn't be "big", it would be "complete". It's not just a big book of exercises- its that plus a whole lot of other info as well. Here's some of what I liked the best about it...

-it devotes a chapter to answering questions we all have about lifting, questions such as "how fast should I lift?" or "how many repetitions should I do?"

-the exercises are organized by body part, so you get a bunch of ex's for the chest in Chapter 4, a bunch of exercises for the back in Chapter 5, and so on. Easy to navigate around in this book.

-included is a section on warm-up exercies- which a lot of people forget about doing. Here you'll find a lot of stretches.

-there's a workout plan towards the end of the book for just about every need you might have. For example, you'll find a workout plan for the crowded gym, for fat loss- even for vertical jumping. Neat!

The book ends with a section on cardio, and a section on nutrition. As you can see, while it is a "big" book of exercises (and kinda heavy too), its also a very "complete' book as well. Those who are interested in getting big arms might also be interested in Smokin' Hot Guns!!: How an Average Guy Can Get Big, Muscular Arms In One Workout A Week.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Totally unsuited for the Kindle, November 27, 2011
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I rate this book 1 star, not because of the book itself (I share the enthusiasm of most reviewers for its educational value and detailed workouts) but because its Kindle formatting makes it all but useless. The note "Optimized for larger screens (...) but can still be viewed on other devices" on the book description screen is misleading: if you own a regular Kindle, you will find that the text accompanying the photographs is tiny, coloured grey, often blurry and, since images in Kindle cannot be enlarged, the text becomes from hard to impossible to read. This is true in the Exercises (chapters 4-11) and in the Best Workouts (chapter 13) which lie at the core of the book. This cannot be spotted from reading the sample, which is text only.

In addition, the exercises in the Workouts are referenced by page number - but the Kindle version does not carry any page numbers, so you are forced to use the Find function in order to find the photograph of a particular exercise, a pretty cumbersome task. With this mind, page numbers have been thoughtfully removed from the Index. Why not remove the Index altogether?

An obvious feature of a training e-book would be a link from the list of exercises in the workouts, to the photograph depicting and describing the exercise. This is used only sparingly - for example, in The Best Workouts for a Crowded Gym - and otherwise absent from the whole book. In those few cases, you are sent to a photo with a text in size 1 font and grey colour anyway.

I am not an expert on gym books, but I can say that this may be one of the best ones I have seen on this: it's complete, smart and motivational, so I can really recommend it. But, if you own a regular Kindle (can't speak for the DX version for which it is supposed to be optimized) make sure you spring for the paper copy + shipping. The Kindle purchase is a big disappointment and a waste of your money.
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