Men’s Health The Book of MuscleThe World’s Most
November 3, 2009 by Jim Made
Filed under Bodybuilding
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Exercise ain’t simple. The body is a complicated machine, with 650 muscles and 250 million individual muscle fibers. Some would say taming those fibers and building strong, healthy muscles is not an act of labor. Some would say it’s an art. Here’s a book worthy of that art. The Men’s Health Book of Muscle is the huge, lavishly illustrated, full-color coffee table book that only Men’s Health could produce-one that doubles as the ultimate guide to building a better body. The goal of The Book of Muscle is simple: make a gorgeous, artistic guide to the body that also helps guys build fantastic physiques by showing in detail how muscles work and how that knowledge can be place to use. Inside, you’ll find lush anatomical illustrations and photographs of a quality that no other book on fitness can match. You’ll also find complex biological information, boiled down to language any guy can know, and three 6-month workout programs, one each for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lifters. It’s huge muscles, huge benefit, and gorgeous all at the same time. It’s the book you’ve always wanted from the guys at Men’s Health, the fitness experts you trust. more info
I just like it!!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
In this book I found brilliant description of exercises,so now before I go to the Gym I red and try exercise and in Gym I have awesome workout..
This book I would recommend everyone especially to the beginners.
Transformational
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Following the workouts and nutrition advice in this book have been the only way I have ever gained weight in an exercise program. The focus on building the connective tissues, tendons and joints while not overtraining is emphasized in this book with tremendous results. My ancient weightlifting injuries have been rehabilitated through these programs, and the results are noticeable from one week to the next, especially when the programs shift gears. Even better, my progress does not atrophy if I take a week or two break since Ian King’s programs build a solid foundation that literally builds onto your body. This is my second time through the program (after taking a break with no access to a gym) and I have already gained 6 lbs of muscle in my first 6 weeks. I have never been so humbled by a workout program! If you follow the program to the letter, expect a deep burn in your muscles and you will be so sore the next day you will feel as though you worked out twice.
Fantastic stuff i bet you didnt know
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This book is fantastic for beginners mainly but is directed to everyone, is very scientific but on the same way shows lots of excellent exercises and variations that one can perform. I reckon is a fantastic source of knowledge but that the workouts are a small hard to follow so I’d say get info from here and integrate it to your routine.
Nice and Educational
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Book includes a lot of information about muscle, and a lot of technical language which is excellent because when I read it with my younger brother it pushes him to use a dictionary. Exercises are well clarified and excellent time is made to ensuring no injuries occur.
Fantastic book, but you MUST follow it
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve read many work out books over the years but none has really made me say WOW. This one is far and away the best book I’ve come across. They give you 1.5 years of ever increasing work outs to get your body into top shape. As you progress, you will see just how well thought out their programs are.
Pluses:
– The plans are well thought out and you can readily see how each builds upon the prior routines.
– You do a new routine every few weeks so you will never get bored. This is also one of the best ways to “confuse” your muscles and keep growing.
– The descriptions of the exercises are well done and rarely will you be scratching your head trying to know.
– They do a section on stretching which is so vital. Rarely do books cover this as some consider it unmanly.
Minuses:
– They seem to reckon that many of their readers are trying to bulk up because they’re too thin. Have you met the average American? Need discussions around losing stout.
– Each routine lists the particular exercises you should perform but doesn’t list the page number! You’ll constantly be flipping to the back of the book to look up the page number. I’ve noticed that every muscle book does this…is this some sort of test?
Overall though, this is a fantastic book. If you’re SERIOUS about working out, this is a fantastic book. If you can’t make the commitment though, it will be a waste of your money.
The Ultimate Guide to Resistance Training
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The ultimate guide to resistance training…Ian King and Lou Schuler are the best in their fields. I have used King’s training methods from this book since it was first published in 2003. I gained 15 lbs of muscle without chemicals and increased my strength in the 3 huge lifts and average of 15%, all after the age of 35 and after training for 20 years.
brilliant training guide for a normal guy who’s been training for 20 years
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this book after learning about Ian King from a reference in Tom Venuto’s BFFM ebook. All I was looking for was a new way to split up my workouts.
Background
1. I have been working out for more than 20 years and have read and tried many programs including high volume and low volume workouts.
2. I’ve followed a 3-6x week lifting regimen. Since turning 40, I settled into 4 days lifting and 3 cardio. My results have always been mediocre. I was following the BodyRX program. After an initial 10 lb weight loss, I really never lost another pound and ;earned I was eating far too much (thanks BFFM).
3. Mostly I focused on huge muscle exercises using machines: Leg Press, Chest Press, Pulldowns, Rows and then supplemented with extensions, curls etc. I have not deadlifted or squatted for over 15 years because it made my back sore and didn’t allow me to “focus” on the muscles being worked.
Results:
I started with the Intermediate program because the advanced program had so many weird exercises and rep schemes I hadn’t done before. I am now in the 10th week of the program. I workout MWF. I do 30-40 minutes of bike riding 6 days a week because I want to lose 25 lbs. It’s my warmup and lifting days and my cardio on off days. I do yoga at home on cardio days for my stretching- otherwise my lifting workouts would be too long.
1. I stopped using wrist straps when I started BOM. For the past 20 years I used them for all of my back exercises because my grip always gave out before my lats did. My forearms are stronger and more muscular than ever. I figured by this time I would always have a weak grip and small forearms. That appears to be untrue. My back seems to not have suffered at all although sometimes my grip gives out at the end of a set.
2. My calves have muscle in places they hadn’t before even though I train them less than I did before. I know it is because of squatting because I felt a pain in the same area that muscle subsequently developed.
3. My abs, which I thought were strong, were not. They are getting stronger. I work them 3x weekly vs. my ancient 1x weekly.
4. My lower back has not been sore from squatting or deadlifting. In fact, I’ve grown to like these two exercises because they make me feel like I’ve really worked out instead of my ancient “going through the motions” workouts.
Am I stronger? Yes.
Am I leaner- surprisingly yes. I credit this to BFFM food tracking, eating less calories and doing more cardio.
Am I more muscular? Certainly in my glutes, quads, calves and forearms. I am hoping to see similar gains in my chest, backs and arms in the coming stages.
This program changes every 3 weeks. By the time I am familiar with the exercise and start to add serious weight, it’s time to start a new stage.
This has kept me mentally invigorated and seems to be working.
Go figure- a book from Men’s Health and a 3x weekly workout has re-charged this 41 year ancient guy who just wanted to lose 20 lbs, have larger biceps and learn a new split.
I also bought “Get Buffed” from Ian King. That’s the predecessor to this book. I tried making a 4 day workout plot from it, but got overwhelmed with the new info and chose to try BOM first. I am glad I did.
Book Review-
The detailed exercise instructions and pictures help a lot, especially for some of the odd exercises like King Deadlifts and 1 leg squats. Also Deadlift and Squats were well detailed. I needed this because I had never done them correctly before.
The exercise physiology and the conclusions drawn from limited studies (very Men’s Health like) didn’t add much value for me.
I wish the workouts referenced the page the exercises were on. I have to flip through pages a lot when making my new routine.
I also wish there were templates available for the workout tracker. I make my own in Numbers (or excel). But it would be simpler if they were downloadable.
I highly recommend reading this book and trying the workouts if you are not getting the results you want.
Kindle terrible, paper excellent
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I will gladly change this rating from a 1 star to a 5 star if Amazon can tell me how to do one simple task: There are workouts in the back of the book. I want to print a page so that I can take that page to the gym with me to workout.
With a paper version of the book I can copy a page (or three since the workouts are in A, B, C sets for a week) and take it to the gym with me. I can take notes one it and keep track.
With the Kindle I can’t even really read those workouts – not even when zooming in on the image. And even if I could I don’t reckon the Kindle would be practical for viewing the workout and trying to take notes on it in the gym.
The book is really in three sections (as I recall… I don’t have it in front of me right now) a) excellent info about how the body works, b) brilliant descriptions of all the exercises, and c) Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Exercise Programs.
C is a section you will use 3 days a week for years.
B is a section you will refer to occasionally to make sure you have the form right and don’t hurt yourself.
A is a section you might go back and read every five years.
On the kindle A is simple to read. B is more challenging, and C is nearly impossible.
Amazon – Please find a way to let me print a page from the workouts section of this book (c).
First half excellent, second half wanting
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I recently bought this text and now am in the process of returning it. Whether or not this is an appropriate book for you will depend on how much you like dictated to you, and how much you like to know the “why” behind what you’re doing. I’ll summarize my review with a few bullet items:
- It’s a large, slightly heavy, hardbound book with lots of gorgeous images of male fitness models and shiny pages with very large font. In a nutshell, it’s graphic design falls into the coffee table category. I found it a bit annoying because I’m a guy and while I reckon it’s fantastic to have male role-models in fitness, a few pictures here in there is sufficient. This book pummels you with random artistic images that sometimes take up an entire page (or two!). This is just filler and makes the book larger than it need be. It’s overall design doesn’t lend itself to the “dig in and get it dirty” sort of book that you’d feel comfortable making notes in, for instance.
- The book’s first half goes into the basic physiology of muscle building and nutrition. I felt this was pretty descent.
- The next section goes into various body parts and lists, for each body part, related exercises. This is annoying because, for instance, certain exercises are not in what common knowledge would dictate as the right section (eg. barbell press being place in with the exercises that primarily target the shoulder instead of those that target the chest).
- The last section is where the book really fell down for me, the section where they introduce the routines. There are two problems I have here:
A) The authors clearly wrote the book with the thought that the reader would be content to just blindly follow their routines without any understanding of why those routines are structured as they are. If you want to deviate from the routines at all, for medical reasons or for different training goals/background, etc. this book will give you ZERO info on how to build your own routine from the bottom up. I greatly prefer to know why I’m doing the things in a routine, rather than just blindly follow some guy’s advice. There is literally ZERO explanation for how to build a routine, what considerations go into exercise selection, etc. etc. You’re just expected to turn off your mind and do it. That may be fine for many, but if you like to know why you’re doing things, you’ll likely be very dissatisfied as I was.
B) Even if you’re willing to take things without any understanding as to why you’re doing them, you’ll likely find the routines way too complicated. There are routines that require 16 (!!) different exercises. This is stupid.
I reckon this book is, in small, fantastic looking and impressive at first sight, but when you dig deeper, only surface deep.
I’m now reading Stuart McRobert’s “Build Muscle Lose Stout Look Fantastic” in parallel with Tom Venuto’s ebook “Feed the Muscle Burn the Stout” (T. Venuto recently published a similar book that’s available on amazon). I haven’t gotten far enough to review them yet, but already I’m much more satisfied in that each give you reasons for things….you don’t have to just be a robot to be satisfied with it. To each his/her own.
Terrible Kindle DX experience
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I bought this book because it was featured as being formatted for the Kindle DX. That was a terrible mistake on someone’s part. The book is not really usable as a reference, which it’s obviously supposed to be. Some of the issues:
1. In the print version, there are large pictures of the human body with small numbers pointing out various muscles. The text then names the muscles, with the numbers corresponding to the numbers in the picture. In the Kindle version, you can barely make out the spots on the pictures where the numbers should be, and the text does not show the numbers. So you can’t learn the names of the muscles, which makes understanding the text a lot harder.
2. The table of contents is of limited use for getting around in the book. Since much of the point of this book is to learn the many exercises presented, you need to be able to get to them quickly, again and again (again, this is a reference book). The table of contents doesn’t help.
3. The index also is of no help–it shows the various exercises, but the entries are not links. Instead they give pae numbers, which apply only to the print version.
4. Search is of no help to find an exercise (or most of them, anyway), since there will be many entries for, say chin ups, and the Kindle’s ability to view search results and navigate among them is awkward and slow. With the print version, I imagine you can 1) look up an exercise and 2) get to the right page in under 20 seconds. It can a minute or two to find an exercise in the Kindle version.
5. Several times the text will refer to an image, but the image isn’t anywhere nearby. You hit the Next button and still don’t see the image. Frustrating.
6. Bookmarks are of small help. This may be a general Kindle issue, but it’s still frustrating here, with this reference book. I tried making bookmarks to help me get to specific exercises, but you can’t name the bookmarks. Ridiculous. Also, you can’t change the order that the bookmarks appear in the list.
I could probably go on, but I’m sure you get the thought. Amazon needs to work a lot harder to customize the layout of the Kindle versions of its books. At minimum they should provide indexes with working links and bookmarks you can name and reorder. The images should also be reworked.
I returned this book and will buy the print version.
Very excellent book; could be a small more user friendly
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
First of all, this is a very excellent and authoritative book on the subject of weight lifting and physical fitness. The concepts behind the workouts are thoroughly clarified and they make sure you know why they’re telling you to do “this” or “that” a certain way. I would recommend this book to anyone genuinely serious about getting in shape.
That having been said, I reckon this book could have made some improvements to make it a small more user friendly. For example, the workout section lists all the exercises you need to do but without any corresponding page number so you can easily reference them. This problem is further compounded in that the exercise section is segmented into the OIA (origin, insertion, and action) of the muscle. So, for example, if the workout section calls for an exercise on the abs, instead of flipping to the ab section to review it I have to go to “muscles that act on the spine”. For a simple chest press I have to go to “muscles that act on the shoulder”.
Furthermore, if you try to get clever and lookup the exercises in advance and write their corresponding page numbers next to the exercises in the workout section the book thwarts you yet again by placing the page numbers on the inside of the book, closest the spine, and leaving a meaningless red square where the page numbers ought to be.
Why, Ian, why??
Okay, don’t worry, the rant is over.
Other than that annoying, kernel-stuck-in-your-tooth, thing this book is an brilliant read.
Nearly Perfect
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This book is nearly perfect. There is a ton of information here, but you don’t have to read it all. If you want, you can go straight to the workouts and start banging away. Its nice to have a lot more information available because to really make a goal, you’ll need to know how to eat right and they do a fantastic job covering this topic in the book.
The book is full of fantastic photos so you can see how each exercise is done. Its a gorgeous book, but not one you’ll want to place in your gym bag. Its more of a reference book for your home library and you’ll want to make some sort of work out sheet to take with you to the gym for the first couple of times till you remember the workouts.
The only improvements I can reckon of is that they should reference the page number of each exercise in the workout lists in the back. It would make learning a new workout simpler.
Really a Complete book
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I like this book because it doens’t only introduce the basic concept and science about muscle, it also includes 3 programs (beginner, intermediate, advanced) targetting for different stage in boby building. I really look forward to have an iPhone app for the program so that I don’t need to bring my notepad in the gym…
Makes things too complicated
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I bought this book back in 2005 and made progress, but lets be serious…I was an untrained n00b, anything would have given me progress. The book takes the matter seriously, but truth is, it over-complicates training; but who could blame them, no way you can keep selling monthly issues of a magazine unless you follow as a philosophy to over-complicate training regimen and dress up the same lame exercises into different variations.
In reality, all you really NEED is the main exercises, the compound ones, like squat, deadlift, press, bench press, clean, and anything else that help those exercises like rows, pull-ups, dips, etc.
And I have NOT found a book to teach you this fundamental exercises and to guide you towards doing some real work, better than ‘Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore’.
Get it and learn the fundamentals, after that you can do whatever you want, but at least get your foundation in order.
Best Weightlifting Book I’ve Found
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I recently finished the intermediate program from this book and am very pleased with the twenty pounds of lean muscle it helped me pack on. I’ve been lifting seriously for fifteen years but spent most of those years struggling to place on just a pound or two. With The Book of Muscle, I was able to work out half as much for ten times the results.
Unlike most of the lifting books that I’ve looked at, The Book of Muscle really presents information and a workout plot that works for more than just those who are learning weightlifting for the first time and will see huge improvements from any program. Those who are already very familiar with High Intensity Training (Killing yourself and then resting completely the next day or two) might not find much new here, but it still lays out the science of all the lifts, stretching, nutrition, and resting in a well-written and fascinating style. Unlike many books, The Book of Muscle lays out the workouts in tables that can be photocopied and taken to the gym, or you can easily transfer the info to a spreadsheet, which is what I do.
I’m looking forward to using the advanced routine to pack on another twenty pounds.