Get an inside look at the human form in action with more than 400 full-color illustrations. This detailed artwork showcases the muscles used during each exercise and delineates how these muscles interact with surrounding joints and skeletal structures. Like having an X-ray for each exercise, the information gives you a multifaceted view of strength training not seen in any other resource.

This updated bestseller also contains detailed anatomical analysis of training injuries and preventive measures to help you exercise safely. Chapters are devoted to each major muscle group, with 115 total exercises for arms, shoulders, chest, back, legs, buttocks, and abdomen.

The former editor in chief of PowerMag in France, author and illustrator Frederic Delavier is a journalist for Le Monde du Muscle and a contributor to Men's Health Germany and several other strength publications.

The book is broken down into seven major muscle groups: arms, shoulders, chest, back, legs, buttocks, and abdomen. Within each muscle group are multiple exercises, each comprised of detailed anotomical illustrations, instructions on performing the exercises, and key information such as variations (for specific focus on particular muscles) and warnings (to aviod injury).

Using this book, one could easily select a variety of exercises to build a total body workout program. The selection of exercises also allows for some routine variation to keep one's workout from getting stale.

The illustrations are of an exellent quality, as are the materials. The pages are of heavyweight paper, with a semi-glossy finish.

Although I rated this title highly, I did so with the understanding that it suits a very specific purpose, and is not a general purpose introduction or guide to weight training. This is an ANATOMY REFERENCE, specific to selected weight training exercises. It does not contain any other information concerning weight training, diet, exercise, etc. In fact, there is not even a brief introduction by the author, simply the reference material itself. But, in terms of its intended purpose, it is an excellent reference. If you already have some sort of "Bodybuilding Encyclopedia", you probably already posess much of the information contained in this title. Having no interest in the history, self-promotion, and general testosterone driven attitudes of many of those types of titles (as well as the phonebook sized package), I much prefer this concise book as an exercise reference.


Indispensable!   December 12, 2002
 89 out of 316 found this review helpful

I buy lots of fitness and strength training books, and this one is by far the best I've purchased. The book may look small, but it provides an extensive listing of exercises and includes tips about variations that will change how you work each muscle. This is important for a couple of reasons.

To maximize your gains in the gym, you have to constantly change your program so that your body doesn't hit a plateau. Regularly incorporating new exercises will also keep you from becoming bored with your workout. This book will show you how using a rope attachment with the pulley works a different part of the triceps as opposed to doing bench dips or doing a kickback. Also, the illustrations show you the auxiliary muscles that are recruited during compound movements like presses and deadlifts.

At first I was worried that the book might be too much for me to absorb, but it's not because the author does not get overly-technical with the explanations. The text is concise, yet thorough, and the pictures are highly detailed.

This is a wonderful reference book, and I highly recommend it.


Major Disappointment   September 4, 2003
 47 out of 114 found this review helpful

Great illustrations, but the book is full of innaccuracies, perpetuating many of the myths of strength training.

For example,there is an exercise showing how to work the "inner pecs" - something which is anatomically impossible, since you cannot contract only part of a muscle fiber.

Also, he writes how different hand rotations affect different heads of the triceps during various pushdowns - also anatomically impossible, since the triceps attaches to the ulna not to the radius and is thus unaffected by arm pronation/supination (rotation of the forearm).

These are only two of many inaccuracies!!

Nice drawings, not much else!


Not very useful   January 28, 2003
 36 out of 102 found this review helpful

Propably the first thing you notice when you open the book is quality. The paper is thick and glossy and the quality of printing is good. The pictures are beautiful, and it's easy to find exercises for a certain muscle group.

Then the bad news: While the pictures look great, on many occasions they are too detailed, to the point of being unclear. Every exercise is given a full page (two pages on some occasions). But the majority of a page is filled with large drawing of the exercise, with the stressed muscle groups shown. The performance of a given exercise is given far less detail, on some occasions only a few lines of text. I think it would be far more benefical to give more detailed explanation of correct performance and/or common mistakes, and print the picture a bit smaller.

The exercises in the book are divided on seven sections, based on which muscle group they mainly stress. This is OK, but the division of muscle groups is a bit odd. There is a separate section covering exercises for buttocs, but at the same time all other muscle groups in the leg are combined as "legs". It would be more reasonable to combine buttocs with quads, or thights, and give calves a separate section.

There are about 110 different exercises, and variations on some exercises. The selection of exercises is a bit odd in my opinion. For example, there is a page on seated calf raise (on a machine), and the author advises that as a variation you can do the exercise without a machine, using a barbell across your legs. Then, on the next page that very same exercise is presented as a separate exercise! And there are some basic exercises missing, like toe presses on leg press machine, for example.

Perhaps the main problem of the book is that it doesn't expalain the muslce mechanics at all. It would be great if the kinesiology of given muscle group would be explained at the beginning of each chapter, but there is no explanations at all about what a given muscle does, and how it affects the whole body. For example, the book says that seated calf raise targets the soleus, but there is no explanation what this means in practice. And there is no explanation which exercise I sould use if I wanted to emphasize the outer calf, for example.

As a conclusion, I would say that in certain circumstances this book can be a valuable asset, but you can't use it by itself. You need to have some books on kinesiology, and some books which describe the correct performance of each exercise in detail.