Customer Reviews

A Practical Approach To Strength Training

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To begin, Brzycki is not what I'd call "the strength and conditioning coach" at Princeton. His function at Princeton for many years has apparently been primarily in fitness administration and teaching some fitness classes, not the strength and conditioning of athletes. According to one interview, Brzycki hasn't trained athletes on a regular basis for quite some time. According to another interview, Brzycki did not apply his own "practical approach" to his own workouts until after well his days as a competitive powerlifter were over.

In other words, Brzycki is a fitness expert, not necessarily a strength expert. In the field of fitness he probably excels. Otherwise, in my opinion, he often tries to force-fit his fitness theories into strength training principles. Fitness goals and strength training goals are not necessarily the same. Brzycki has far less DIRECT experience training strength athletes than many other authors - Dreschler, Poloquin, Kono, Newton, Zatsiorski, for example. Brzycki shows extreme prejudice against Olympic-style weightlifting, for example, a strength and power sport he has never, to my knowledge, either competed in nor coached. Sour grapes, I suspect. Brzycki apparently reads a lot of scientific journals and must be a fast typist, for he publishes books and articles quite often. Apparently he hasn't read the decades of strength training information and scientific analysis gleaned from the detailed training logs of generations of Communist bloc athletes, which Brzycki dismisses in his first chapter as mere "anecdotal evidence."

That said, if your goal is general fitness with an eye towards increasing strength, then you could do a lot worse than this book. There are many approaches towards strength training that work (and some that don't.) Brzycki's approach will work.

IF UR INTERESTED IN KNOWING WHY I SHOULD THAT EXERCISE OR IN WHICH WAY -THAT UR TRAINER CANT REALLY ANSWER YOU SOMETIMES- THIS IS THE BOOK. THE ONLY BAD THING IS THAT THEORIES IN THIS BOOK CAN BE CONFUSING IN ORDER FOR U TO MAKE AN EXERCISE PLAN TO USE IN GYM OR UR DIET PLAN.

Brzycki starts up by saing more science in weigth training is needed. This book is full of theories with backed up with so calld science! I can use a few example. No 1- You can't increase your balance by doing balance exercises! All athletes and trainers that has some experience in training knows that thats not true. Only because science haven't been able to prove it, it dozen't mean it do not work. Steroides didn't work accordingly to science some years ago. But everyone else knew in the training world. No 2- You don't need to train stability exercises for stability muscles because those muscles get exercised in stabel machine exercises. Let a gymnast run and let a runner do balancing acts that a gymnast do. The gymnast will have no problem but the runner will not be able to dublicate the movement. Use your brain when you read this book because it has som good points but also some ... Brzycki has high understanding of training my hat of to him. But he misses some vital points. To use Mike Mentzers point a view and A. Jones as proven science to back up his claimes please. Maybe it's here in Sweden were science is science. But this is a good HIT book, just not a good training manual for athlets and trainers.
Buy a book by Paul Cheek or NSCA book Essential of strength training and conditioning. Why not buy all three books and get a broader perspectiv on weight training.

If you are new to the world of bodybuilding, get this book. It will give you the hard facts regarding strength training. It will also teach you how to build an effective routine, how often to train, how long to train and specifically how to train while your training. (how many reps, how many sets). The best part about what he is saying; it is all supported by documented studies.

Unfortunately, there is too much fluff and way to many references making it a difficult read. If it weren't for these shortcomings, I would give it 5 stars.

I started out with the "Body for Life" method without much knowledge of weight training a few years ago...and this book blasts a few "myths" from that program away. Most importantly, you don't have to kill yourself with multiple sets of the same exercise to get a good workout (BFL recommends SIX sets for each exercise!!). Instead, research has shown that one or two sets does just as much to fatigue the muscle and promote strength gains. I've definitely found this to be the case!

The major drawback of this book is the writing style. It's written for a target audience of strength trainers and conditioning coaches, so there are a lot of textual references. And, the material isn't new or anything. I bought the "complete idiot's guide" at the same time and found it to have the same information, minus the textual references, plus some other information that seemed particularly useful for people new to weight training, and it was more fun to read.

I still occasionally use this book for reference, but only after I've looked in the "complete idiot's guide" first.

This book is really a terrific guide for anyone who lifts, unless you're a competitive powerlifter. Good common sense advice on high intensity training, nutrition and supplements. It debunks a lot of myths, like higher volume training is better, free weights are better than machines, supplements are good for you, super high protein diets are important if you want to gain muscle etc. I've lifted for 23 years, and I wish a book like this was around when I started. Since I've lifted in this manner, I progress faster, spend less time having to work out, don't overtrain, don't feel as beat up and don't look upon my weight lifting sessions as hard unpleasant work. They're plenty hard, but maintaining focus for 30 minutes is much easier than for 1 1/2 hours. I differ regarding several exercises he discusses. I think squats are fine if done properly and if you have the right body type. He show pull downs and presses behind the head which I think are quite bad for your rotator cuffs. He says leg presses and deadlifts are safer than squats, when both are at least as bad. They're all fine if done slowly with good form, and you increase the weight only a little bit from week to week. All in all a great book, which you should listen to. Don't listen to steroid abusing muscle mag readers who erroneously believe high intensity training is inferior. This is the way to go.

I bought this book a year ago and decided not to write anything untill I see results. After 12 months of following his training phylosophy and safety guidelines I have noticed great results. In fact I noticed the gains in the first weeks. I keep an accurate work card an pay heed to what it tells me ie increase load, level or back off. I'm very happy with my personal gains. I hate long unpaid manual labor style excercises and Brzycki's approach has none of this, it really has worked fast with minimal time spent in the weight room for me. The price of course is of maximizing efficiency is damned hard high intensity workouts, but hey thats life. The book has also helped me a lot in sorting out my endurance/cardio training from that of pure strenght. Best of all I can track and see results and have been doing for a year. This guy has done a lot of research and proves it. I love the authors treatment of the established weightroom predudices. He takes a be all you can be attitude and shows that you can get started right away and see the benefits.

Dave

I purchased this book with a lot of enthusiasm after I learned about HIT (high-intensity training). Honestly, I was dissapointed. The information is better than that found in 99% of strength/bodybuilding books, but that is not enough, especially since most mainstream books by bodybuilding champs and the people at Weider Inc. are directed to steroid pumped,... It advocates training two or three times a week, which is sound advice, and the volume of training is adequate, but there are too many isolation excercises instead of focusing on the big and productive excercises. Besides, too many pages are filled with excercise technique, and he gives a thousand variations of each excercise (nautilus machines, universal machines, free weights, etc.). Only one chapter is truly useful, the one on making your own excercise program, but still, I believe there are better ways of training. His book is titled "A PRACTICAL Approach...", but I think it is not too practical to fill it with citations instead of relying on a bit more common sense. If you want practical, commonsense, and PRODUCTIVE training, try McRobert's "Beyond Brawn".

It's not bad. Just be sure to do your own research and take the things he says about diet and about the "danger" of some exercises witha grain of salt.

Overall, you'd be hard pressed to do much better for the money, but you definitely can. Of course, reading this book is certainly preferable to reading some silly muscle comic book (that is, stuff like "Flex" or "Muscle and Fitness") sold from a news stand.

Unlike dozens of other books I've read on the subject of strength training, Brzycki supports his beliefs with plenty of documented scientific research (the reference/bibliography is 16 pages long!), whereas most other such books are purely anecdotal. Or based on the results of a select group of geneticly gifted (or genetic freaks?) body builders.

Brzycki provides a through explaination of why certain training techniquies work and other don't. He also give (well researched) recommendation so designing your own program, including such factors as number of sets, approapriate repititions based on the best time-under-load for a given muscle group, and appropriate recovery intervals.

Overall, this book dispells a lot of myths and clears up the confusion and mystery around strength training. By the time you're finished reading it you will find that working out and achieving results is not nearly as complex as muscle magazines and sponsored body builders would have you think.

By the way, I gained 6 pounds of muscle and increased my bench press by 20 pounds in one month following the recommendations of this book.