The Book of Muscle: The World's Most Authoritative Men's Health Guide to Building Your Best Body – Perfect for Home Gyms, Personal Training & Fitness Enthusiasts

This review is probably showing under my wife's name. Not that a female can't do these things..just wanted to clear that part up. After numerous attempts to start up weight training (the last being an all time long, 8-week stint in the fall of 2008 which ended due to injury), I got this book purely on the rave reviews plus a sampling of an Ian King routine I had found in one of the Men's Health magazines. Going through this book, the physiology of muscle building, the detailed pictures of the exercises and then finally the workout routines....I was impressed through and through. I've gotten friends to get this book as well and they're loving it.What I liked about the Beginner program:1 - It stresses form, form, form over trying to do impressive looking weights. Bad form will get you injured.2 - It stresses tempo. You'll see a lot of people at the gym doing their reps as fast as they can. There are times where this is fine, but in general it's not. Too fastcan also lead to injury.3 - At the time, I didn't understand why the first few phases were all single leg, dumbbells, and none of the more common exercises like the bench press, the squat, etc. I came to realize it spends the time developing a solid foundation for your body to build upon once the big, compound exercises come. Without focusing on ironing out weak links or strength imbalances, getting into the compound exercises will likely lead to injury sooner or later.4 - Pictures and descriptions of the exercises. For the vast majority, it shows and explains the exercises in plenty of detail. There are a couple, where after I've tried it once, I was looking for more detail on, but a simple google search solved those problems.What I didn't like about the Beginner program:1 - the early phases took a long time if you did all the circuits it calls for. I was getting to 2 hrs for a workout. What I realized later was .. you do what you can do and they give you ranges to achieve. So, rather than follow it to the dot...adjust when necessary....yep ..only complaint I had.What this book is not:This book does not advertise itself to be anything more than a strength/muscle building book. In that aspect, it achieves its goal with flying colors. Note this book is not a book on nutrition nor is it a weight loss book. It touches on both topics a little bit, but just enough to point you in the right direction. In 5 months, I lost a net of 5 lbs. But my waist size got smaller (as the need for new jeans indicated) and overall slimmed down. Went from wearing XL shirts to M/L. During this last month, I started The Abs Diet ... just the nutrition/eating part... and stuck with The Book of Muscle for the workouts. I've lost 5lbs in this last month while continuing to gain strength. Next is to incorporate more cardio in the off days.Conclusions:I'm 32 years old...my longest weight training stint before was 8 weeks. I started into the compound moves too quickly before my body was ready and I ended up getting injured. During this beginner program, I've yet to get injured and the slower tempo helps you hear what your body is saying. In case anyone cared or was curious...here's kinda of my achievements...and we'll just go with the last 4 months since that's when the big compound exercises started. (these are weights for at least 6 reps)Bench press - started at 115 ... doing 170 nowMilitary press - started at 55 ...doing 115 nowSquat - started at 95 ...doing 205 nowDeadlift - started at 135 ...doing 230 now.Can't wait to see where I'm at after the intermediate program is done!