Customer Reviews

Total Body Plan: The Ultimate Guide to Building Muscle and Losing Fat

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

 

 

The Authors do an amazing job of explaining the routines and the science behind them.

This book is for everyone who is interested in seeing results from their workouts and breaking out of their counter productive exercise routines. In short this book is an exercise plateau buster.

Highlights:
- Covers the science and principles of effective training (Written in laymen's terms so that anyone can understand the benefit of correctly training the body's energy systems.)
- 6 week maximum muscle workout, including diet plan
- 6 week full-scale fat-loss phase, including diet plan
- Plus, chest and arm specialization

This book will more then get you started; it takes the guess workout out of creating a routine that works, plus provides a solid plan from workouts to diet and is also a very interesting read.

Having gotten so far with a self-created workout routine in which I exercise various parts of the body for an hour each day, 6 days per week, I suddenly seemed to come up against a brick wall and stopped improving. Part of the reason was down to my diet, something which is now rectified. Another problem was a lack of understanding on my part about what each exercise was doing. Consequently, I purchased a number of books with a view to studying the subject.

This particular product was a considerable disappointment. The biggest failure being the lack of an Index. After all, if I want to improve my Abs - then I want to go straight to the section on Abdominals. Which doesn't really exists here.

The book is laid out in such a way as to show the student how to follow a fitness regime requiring a fair amount of equipment found only in a well equipped gymnasium. I am quite certain that any person with access to both this book and such equipment who then follows the various training programmes - from cover to cover, will end up particularly fit and, all being well, in equally good health.

Each exercise is clearly shown with excellent photographs of the student in various poses showing each routine before, during and after. What is lacking, however, is a note explaining which muscles or body parts are being targeted by each exercise.

Overall, I do believe this book will prove to be useful for the rank beginner but of little use for those who are already exercising regularly.

NM

In 2010, as I was approaching my 48th birthday, I decided to change my life. I ordered P90X and started getting back in shape. I did the P90X routine and some very vigorous bike riding for almost a year and got in tremendous shape. I lost 36 pounds and built muscle I never had! In fact I feel and look better now than I did when I was 19! But after several months of P90X I needed a change in my routine. I started looking at fitness centers, thinking that I needed to join a club and get help from a personal trainer. But the gyms all cost too much money and whenever I looked in the mirror I realized what little I needed to get into the shape I was in. Then I found two books: the Men's Health Big Book of Exercises and the Total Body Plan. From these two books I learned the science behind working out. They also helped reinforce the idea that I don't need a fitness club membership to get or stay in shape. These two books have in them all the information you need to get into shape and to live a healthy life. What's not in these books is your dedication to reaching the goal of a sound body and healthy life. So, keep it simple stupid, dedicate yourself, and watch how quickly you change your body and your life! And get P90X! Together, they will provide the foundational information, motivation, and routine needed to be in shape and live a healthy life.

I'll soon turn 50 and am relatively new to workouts. I find this book helps me grasp some of the basics. It's a good book for someone who hasn't spent a lifetime at the gym and doesn't understand the terms, proper form or even have a basic program. I liked it.

The book has plenty of colored photographs printed in glossy and high quality paper that entails the start and the end of each weight training exercise. Each photo is described by labeled captions in three to five lines of text. That simple and lucid illustrative format facilitates using the book to execute exercises in practical gym environment. Though, the book lacks descriptive details on the execution steps between the start and end of each exercise yet it affords the reader lengthy assortments of resistance training options.

My first negative impressions arose from the poor form of the person photographed executing all the exercises in the book. The overhead squat that starts the warm up phase conveys the sense that the exerciser was poorly coached on performing the exercises. He has poorly aligned arms and loosely elevated shoulders. That sense of poor coaching dominates the posture of the same exerciser in the entire book.

Furthermore, the photographed exerciser in the book is a mature adult performing haphazard choices of exercises without clearly defined goal that could save time and reduce anxiety of exercising endlessly. I got a feeling that the book author has hired the photographed exercisers and got him to use all the machines in the gym then dumped the whole mess in a printed book with the least consideration to the reader's objective outcome.

The positive side of the book lies in the inclusion of the exercises that emphasize whole body work. Those entail jump squat, drop squat, dynamic push up, and extensive dumbbells exercises. That is besides relying extensively on quality color print that might alleviate the reader's frustration with the lack of purpose in performing endless labor in order to accomplish vague outcome.

Mohamed F. El-Hewie
Author of
Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training

Learn the principles of effective training, and then study the science behind them. By understanding your routines, you'll get more out of them.