Some other concepts and notions that I liked:
- I like the emphasis on focus and mental concentration - that rings truth to me. I think it's one of the best characteristics of the book.
- Goal setting is one other part that I found extremely powerful.
- The training program is sound, in general and nutrition plan makes sense and is easy to follow.
- The program is laid out with great degree of detail, which should make it easy to digest for a beginner.
- I liked that the author's ego doesn't seem to be running the show (he also doesn't refer to himself as an expert or "Trainer of Champions" or "Coach Ilg" or anything like that). The material is served in a clear systematic way.
- The book covers pretty much all bases. Some of them may be arguable but I think for a beginner it can provide a pretty good structure and a lot of guidance.
At the same time I ran into some things I do not agree with:
- some concepts are served as facts whereas they often are opinions at best and unsubstantiated claims at worst.
- some notions are presented in an overly simplistic, sometimes somewhat dogmatic, way.
- the part explaining why three meals per day are inferior to 5-6 meals per day and especially why skipping breakfast is a mortal sin doesn't quite hold the water. There is sufficient evidence that skipped breakfast is not going to bring metabolism down to a screeching halt. The notion of breakfast being a critical meal of the day is a popular belief and in my opinion is nothing but.
- I believe that a program that consists of 18 intensive sets per workout three times a week with at least 4-5 sets going to failure in addition to intensive interval training another three times for a total of 6 times a week can be too much for an average trainee and cannot be maintained without burning out and overtaxing your body's recovery capabilities for longer than a few weeks. Same applies to Body-For-Life program as well, which I believe can be overly intensive and lead to overtraining for many people with average genetics (that's what happened to me).
- In a section for women (p.112) he states that "you won't get big on 15 reps, but you won't get anything else either", which I think is a statement that is not entirely correct and somewhat misleading. You absolutely CAN get big on 15 reps and even 20 (there's even a famous "20 squats" program on which people have been known to grow muscle like crazy), although only if the weight is heavy enough; i.e. intensity and amount of resistance are the key. So women don't get big doing 15 reps not because of some magic number of reps that somehow prevents them from growing muscle but because of low intensity and very light weights that are typically used by them, which simply does not provide enough stimulus for the muscle to grow.
Overall I'd give the book four stars. It is very similar to Body-For-Life (with only a few modifications) and overall is a sound program (although certainly not a miracle pill) based on traditional principles (nothing revolutionary about it) of strength training and cardiovascular fitness and I believe that it can certainly serve as a good headstart to a typical out-of-shape sedentary person with little knowledge of exercise science who decided to finally take control of his body.
P.S. Well, what do you know... Just when I was about to put away the book thinking that I pretty much got the gist of it I suddenly realized there were two more chapters - 14 and 15. After reading those my entire opinion about this book changed dramatically! Let me tell you, the part about Mastering Motivation (chapter 14) is nothing short of brilliant! Stages of motivation described in it didn't simply ring the truth to me - they were tolling a 500 lbs bell from the top tower of the cathedral! That chapter alone made me want to own this book! This chapter alone lifted this book into a completely different category - way above all other fitness books I ever read. A ubiquitous Body-For-Life doesn't even hold a candle to this one in terms of understanding mental and spiritual depth of transformation (physical or otherwise). This guy totally gets it! He is one of a very few who seem to be capable of looking past the weights, sets and reps! Wow! Thanks, Nicole, for recommending this book!
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