Customer Reviews

Strength Training Anatomy-3rd Edition

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With over 450,000 copies sold, this book is arguably the best book of its kind. What's it useful for? Mainly to help the reader (from the weekend athlete to the athletic trainer to the professional bodybuilder) figure out what exercises work what muscles.

It's neatly divided up into sections (arms, shoulders, chest, back, etc.), so all you really have to do is flip to one of these sections and it will have detailed pictures of various exercises and exactly which muscles are involved.

A great reference to keep have around, I give it five stars easy. Readers who lift weights regularly might also be interested Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff to avoid shoulder problems a lot of lifters eventually get.

I bought the 2nd edition of this book well over a year ago when I was on a working out kick. Unfortunately life got in the way and I stopped going to the gym for several months, and even when I started back I only dabbled with cardio workouts. About 4 months ago I started back on weights and dug out this book. Prior to that I hadn't opened it. The book as it turns out had serious printing issues, making much of it unusable. It was long past the time frame in which I could have returned it to Amazon so I contacted the publisher, Human Kinetics, instead. Their customer service was excellent! They were aware of a small number of mis-prints that fit my description and were more than happy to replace it. The CS person asked if it would be ok if the replacement was delayed a few weeks until the 3rd edition was available which greatly pleased me. I received the new book about a week ago and it was in perfect condition. Many thanks to the HK folks for their fine customer service!

For those that don't already know what's in this book let me explain in detail. Everyone has seen the anatomy posters on the gym walls. The individual caricatures on the posters display a cut-away model of the human body sans skin. It highlights a muscle or group of muscles and then shows you an exercise that you can use to work that specific muscle. There usually isn't much more detail than that. Text is minimal. This book is at it basics a book version of those posters. However this book goes much, much further. The caricatures for individual muscles and muscle groups in this book usually have multiple exercise options. Text in this book explains in detail how to properly perform the exercise. It also provides useful tips on how to slightly alter the exercise to accommodate common injuries (ie, turn your wrists this way to not engage a torn wrist flexor). There are several pages of guides and background information on how to avoid certain injuries such as not fully extending your arms when doing curls to avoid tendinitis down the road. As another example the book goes into detail on how and why crunches should ALWAYS be performed with an inward curving spine (ie, fetal curve). This is to minimize the usage of the Psoas Major & Minor hip flexors and avoid the back injury they can cause. There are several excellent section of pure information in this book. The caricatures in this book are truly excellent. The artist did a fantastic job positioning and drawing the body to emphasize exactly what the reader needs to see and understand. The 3rd Edition also adds text on proper stretching among other things.

I highly recommend this book to every single person lifting weights at all levels. I've shown the book to friends, coworkers and people at the gym. I've even sung its praises to complete strangers in checkout lines and restaurants. I can't say enough good things about it. The only negative thing I can think of (more of a wishful thinking thing) is that it's only available in paperback. I wish it was also available as a hardback. Taking this to the gym with you will wear it out eventually. Of course for its low price replacing it is inexpensive. It's an excellent resource.

Great book, very detailed. If you are looking to find new exercises to freshen up a stale workout, this is the book. It shows the exact muscle groups impacted by an exercise so you can focus on shaping and increasing that muscle group.

So much has been said about the strengths of this fantastic book so I will point out what it doesn't contain or could do better. First, this is not a book that you can use to directly create a workout plan. For each body part featured, there are descriptions of the muscle in the group and how they work together, the major variations between body types and how that affects one's ability to do certain exercises, and brief coverage on injury prevention and recovery. There are several exercises described and illustrated for each muscle group.

The reader does not come away with a plan to do certain exercises in a certain order, on certain days or in combination with certain other body parts. Thus a novice will not be told (for example) to start his chest workout with dumbbell presses and then move to barbell and machines as the chest muscles are exhausted. Nor will you be instructed to exercise triceps after chest so that the triceps muscles are not depleted prior to doing chest. Finally, this is not a book that discusses diet, sleep, nutrition or supplements, all of which are critical factors to achieving your strength training goals.

This book is an outstanding linkage between human anatomy and exercise physiology. It describes what mechanical difference and muscular impact of doing different exercises (say, squats vs. leg presses) so that the reader can understand how a given exercise works the muscles. It is up to the reader to infer based on this understanding how an exercise routine should be constructed or how to overcome or compensate for limitations in the reader's existing training regiment or personal physical characteristics.

As for what could be better, with each exercise, there is a color legend to explain which muscle groups are engaged. This should be abandoned for until you memorize the 20 or so colors (assuming you can distinguish between them) you have to keep paging back to the legend to just ignore them. It would be far better to simply list the muscle groups as text. I would also like to see larger versions of the small diagrams that show the corresponding muscle groups shaded in red and orange. However, these are small gripes and the ineffectiveness of some of these graphics are overcome when by the detailed text and large labeled muscle charts.

Frederic Delavier's stunning Strength Training Anatomy (Sports Anatomy Series) is an essential resource for any strength training enthusiast. While others have tried to mimic Delavier's incredible illustrations of muscle performance during strength training, no one comes close to capturing Delavier's level of detail and style. The pretenders either deliver sterile computer models or come off as second rate approximations of Delavier's unparalleled artwork.

One look and you'll be sold. The cover touts selling over a million copies of Strength Training Anatomy and its been the best selling strength training title at Amazon year-in and year-out.

This newly released 3rd Edition packs even more information on strength training, sport injury and prevention, and now adds material on stretching/flexibility for the first time. At 192 pages, this edition is 50% longer than the original 2001 publication. It now contains over 600 full-color illustrations.

Believe the hype - this is a FANTASTIC resource! Highly recommended!

I had been working out to build muscle and referencing several years already, so the knowledge of how to workout was already familiar to me. I just felt I needed something I could actually put on my bookshelf that wasn't like a 300 pg book on fitness and nutrition.

This book is perfect for that! I can very easily grab the book and flip toward the pages I want. The diagrams in here are also amazingly drawn and very easy to understand. They highlight the obvious muscles you would use in an exercise and mentions any supporting muscles that are also used. There are a few exercises I do that aren't in here, though. I would be curious to see a diagram for those. However, you can feel certain that there is a workout [or two ;)] for virtually every muscle in the body.

I also really like the fact that there are pages in here to help prevent bodily injury due to poor form, posture, bodily morphology, etc. The author even says to proceed with caution on certain exercises depending on whether you are tall, short, broad shouldered, or if you have long or short arms! All these are just some of the more common injuries that happen in strength training and should not be your sole source of information. This book is not to replace a doctor.

So if you are someone who prefers to workout alone... or if you truly want to create a FULL BODY program and not the typical chest-bicep-tricep-ab workout... I highly recommend this book!

The illustrations in this book are phenomonal. The visualizations make it extremely clear what the targeted and supporting muscles are for each exercise.

The book also has tips on performing the exercises correctly by informing you of common mistakes. This, coupled with the injury articles that explain the causes/effects and prevention of injuries has helped me clean up my form for many exercises.

As a sufferer from rotator cuff impingement syndrome, I'm very thankful for this book as it has provided excellent illustrations and information that has allowed me to understand my shoulder much better. Well worth the 10 bucks.

Simply a MUST OWN. If you are looking for a simple, yet thorough review of the human musculature, this is it. The exercise examples are not groundbreaking, just nice and simple relations to exercises and muscles used. I love it.

GREAT book! Shows everything to need to know to isolate/train different muscle groups...OR if you are a student ~~ medical or otherwise, that needs to memorize the muscular system THIS is the book for you ! I had the Anatomy Coloring book and it doesn't hold a candle to this ! LOVE IT!

This book was recommended to me by my weight training instructor. She has a masters in kinesiology, and she used to be the US Women's National Volleyball Team, so I really trust her opinion. This book has great breakdowns of muscle groups and exercises for building them. The pictures really help emphasize which muscle groups are worked by which exercises. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in strength training.