Anatomy of Strength Training: The Five Essential Exercises Paperback – December 1, 2010

This book gives an excellent breakdown of the major full-body compound exercises that you need to make your trip to the gym quick, easy, and efficient, and most importantly, EFFECTIVE. Too many people get caught up in the myths and misinformation, and take their lead from other un-informed people at the gym wasting time doing their arm-curls, tricep kickbacks, and spending hours on the eliptical day after day thinking they can skip legs strength training. Our gyms are full of people who got their routines from a body-building steroid pumping magazine who's main goal is to sell supplements, and sell more magazines with this month's "breakthrough new routine". Rubbish. This book gives you some easy to follow routines and explains why you are doing them. A great book for women and men, will likely change your reality of how you thought you were supposed to work out.

I enjoy the simplicity of the exercises in this book. The author understands how to best activate your muscles with these 5 exercises but that doesn't mean you are going to have an easy workout! I'm sore after each workout no matter how many times I do them, which is a sign of using all different muscle groups to me. The workouts in the back of the book provide a good structure and variations are provided for different levels. I find the sample exercise programs a little difficult to understand and use at the gym as a "workbook". I usually have to bring something with me that is smaller to remember the workouts/reps. Overall a great buy for me as a moderate level fitness person.

You can take this book as a novice or a seasoned weight lifter, trainer, and really customize your workout to understand which muscle groups work in conjunction with which ligaments etc. I really enjoying seeing the 5 exercises that I can do to really make improvements to my physique. I borrowed this book for the longest time from the library and then finally decided to buy it. You can't go wrong and it is a great reference book for anyone in the family, young or old.

Well designed, very colorful and detailed. The only con I have is it's user...(me)...like other workout equipment purchased...this book is now collecting a lot of dust. Not for the book, but, due to the user.

Great exercises with multiple variations (with and without weights, medicine ball, props etc.). The book also has programs designed for weekly routines but the way they are prescribed are very difficult to decipher. I don't get the tables and how they relate to exercise sequences and duration. I really wish that part was explained better. If anyone figured it out, please let me know. Nevertheless, I did the best that I can to figure it out and I am seeing a noticeable difference in muscle tone and feeling significantly stronger week by week with the help of an app to track progress. And kindle version would have been great.

Has many great exercises and helps the reader to know which muscles are being used. Superior illustrations to comparable books. Good resource to figure out which exercises might help strengthen and individual's particular weaknesses. Probably contains exercises that are compatible with crossfit. Also, many of them can be done at home.

Love this book! My husband actually bought it for himself but I have found it incredibly useful as well! It has detailed workout moves put to a schedule and there are many different schedules you can choose depending on your level of fitness or length of workout

People may not give this book the credit it deserves because on the shelf it looks like any number of generic workout '6 minute abs' books...lots of high rez photos and not a lot of text. However, this book is really clever in showing what types of exercises are important for overall health and strength (the 5 essentials) and shows some simple ways to program these as well. But I think the highlight is how it shows the many different ways you can do these exercises - with barbells, kettlebells, bodyweight, swiss balls, etc - allowing you to create different versions of the '5 essentials' based on what you've got to use and what feels 'fun' to you. A really good resource.