Effective Strength Training

I am a qualified personal trainer myself and had read many of Douglas Brooks' articles over the last few years. I have also previously purchased his book 'Your Personal Trainer' which is also excellent.

Douglas provides a very thorough analysis of many exercises, including the primary muscles used, the correct set up and alignment, performing the exercise, author comments, safety considerations and exercise variations.

Even seasoned exercisers will learn a great deal from this book; Douglas accurately and succinctly pinpoints exactly how an exercise should be performed.

The book also has analysis of exercises thought to be contra-indicated or at leasthave an element of greater risk.

There is also a section on how to produce effective program design.

For the casual gym user this book will not appeal, but for those people who seriously want to get the best out of their gym membership and for those involved in exercise training in a professional capacity (perhaps as fitness instructors or personal trainers) then this book is without doubt an essential purchase.


waste of money...   March 3, 2004
Mr A Muslu (United Kingdom)
6 out of 13 found this review helpful

when i placed my order for this i was confident that for a book to be priced that high, it must have some valuable and interesting information. how wrong can i be? it has so many useless and irritating pictures of the instructor standing or kneeling by his client with his hands placed on their elbows, shoulders or hips with a stupid look on his face to try and show that he is doing something useful, when he is just obstructing and confusing the exercise. i have been training for several years and i bought this book to try to further my knowledge about weight training but i found it too basic even for the novice.
this book is not for the weight training beginner or the hardcore bodybuilder.. dont bother with this if you are not an instructor. and even if you are an instructor, there a better books out there.


Good book, somewhat confusing subject matter.   January 16, 2004
Father Paddy O'Shenanigan-Ballacks (Canterbury, Kent United Kingdom)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

This book is a totally comprehensive and informative guide to strength training and the correct biomechanical form for strength training exercises. It is well written, well set out and contains cutting edge scientific evaluations of controversial exercises. However, the emphasis in the book is strongly on being a guide for personal trainers to base their programmes on. For this reason I was slightly mislead by the ambiguous amazon description of the book's content. I was just looking for an informative guide to strength training exercises and the importance of/plus how to acheive correct form in my training.What it turns out i'd purchased was a book featuring many sections on things like resistance training programme design,foundation for structural kinesiology and numerous details on the planes of sagital and frontal motion. All of these sections are essential for fitness professionals to construct and understand effective programmes but totally unnecessary for a normal strength trainer like myself to need to know. However this book did give me a great deal of excercises demonstrated with correct form along with very useful and essential knowledge on preventing injury, how to train effectively and how to chooses the correct exercises to suite your goals. For anyone with a bad back or postural problems the back exercises demonstrated with a fit ball are excellent! Douglas Brook's book is effectively a text book for personal trainers written by a leading I.W.A. endorsed personal trainer. It's definitely a totally excellent essential book for personal trainers and still has a lot to offer anyone wishing to increase their knowledge and ability in strength training. The book has been very useful and has indepth analysis of many of the things I bought it for;I'm just a bit gutted that I paid money for a book that is essentially not what I thought it would be.


The best strength training book I know   October 9, 2003
AURORA BASTOS
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

As a Personal Trainer, when prescribing an exercise, I have to measure its benefits and risks, and this book gives reliable, scientific information about the technique and the risks of many resistance training exercises.
In two words: Brilliant work.