Beyond Brawn: The Insider's Encyclopedia on How to Build Muscle & Might

I like Stuart McRobert in general. His books are well-organized, to the point and contain accurate information without hype. He is also realistic about what can be achieved and not achieved based on your genetics. At the same time, he is enthusiastic and very motivational. With respect to scope, this book is geared toward how to train, training cycles and related issues and building a good foundation. Although it is well-written, it doesn't have many diagrams and doesn't include detail on exercises. For this, I recommend Build Muscle Lose Fat Look Great: Everything You Need to Know to Transform Your Body and Starting Strength. These are REALLY... the only two books you need. My background is that I have a graduate education in biochemistry, psychology and physiology. I was a Physiology Teaching Fellow, researcher and a personal trainer at one time. Currently, I am reviewing some of the new books out there and this author is particularly impressive. If you are going to get one of the Stuart McRobert books, I would get Build Muscle Lose Fat.... However, they are complementary and in my opinion, you would be cheating yourself not to get both. Build Muscle Lose Fat focuses more on proper technique, general training guidelines, etc. One interesting inclusion in this book is a calculation scheme for ideal symmetry. This is great for setting realistic goals and I also like that this author is drug free and favors a natural approach. As a biochemist, I think his nutrition guidelines are very good, but I think he is overly cautious. For example, he doesn't recommend protein powders, but doesn't give a compelling argument why they are not a good idea. While it's true most people could get by with milk, I think protein powders and other supplements can be useful to hard-gainers or people that don't eat right. If you are a hard gainer, then this book is for you and so is Starting Strength and Build Muscle Lose Fat Look Great: Everything You Need to Know to Transform Your Body.. especially the latter two! From Scrawny to Brawny is also very good, but a distant second as a one point reference. However, it's worth getting for the training tips and tricks for people with long limbs, that are prone to injury in the shoulders, knees, etc.

It was back in the 80's when I first read Stuart McRoberts excellent articles in Perry Rader's Iron Man magazine. Here was a voice in the wilderness warning that overtraining is counter-productive and that much of the advice dispensed by illegal drug using professional bodybuilders in the glitzy magazines is useless, and in fact harmful, for the average, natural trainee. As a neophyte who had made good initial progress on a basic sensible routine but after a year or so became "stagnant", I tried many of the routines in Muscle and Fitness and other sensational magazines of the day. In them, articles ghost-written for the big name bodybuilders, would detail Herculean, if laborious 6 days per week, 2 to 3 hour bodybuidling sessions with 6 sets of 12 reps for each angle of each individual muscle. Obsessed with becoming the next Arnold, Platz, Haney and Oliva my wife, kids and social activities were often put on hold as I just had to get my workout in. All this compulsive behavior for a somewhat muscular, but not much above average physique. I was soon attempting Arnold's 6 day per week twice daily "body building" workout - and that is when it all came crashing down. I got very ill and lost much of my previous gains. I had no idea why - after all if Platz could do it why couldn't I? Here was McRobert, and a few others, writing that a few sets of the multi-joint exercises done, at most, twice weekly would actually promote muscle growth! You see, I was quite naieve in that I didn't even know that steroids existed or that guys like Arnold were actually "cheating" and then telling me how I too, could develop a phsyique just like his! Only one little problem - they never said in those articles which and how much steroids to take. It's really no wonder that my nervous system could not withstand the routines used by the professionals and using illegal steroids, when I finally learned about them, was definitely out of the question for me. Even still after reading McRobert's articles and corresponding with him, I refused to believe that I could build the type of body I wanted with abbreviated training. I was walking around in a severe state of overtraining for many years - and this led to some serious health repercussions that I won't go into here. Suffice to say I essentially burned out my nervous system from working out too frequently and too heavily with not enough recuperation. Thanks to McRobert I wound up cutting way back on the amount of sets, reps, and poundages in my workouts I built up to 238 pounds bodyweight and got to lifting some respectable poundages (for a natural trainee) in the big lifts - but had I accepted and put into effect fully McRobert's theory of abbreviated training I would have probably gone much further and not suffered health problems. Alas, it is so often the case that when we are young we have the strength but don't have the knowledge and when we are older we have the knowledge but no longer have the strength.

This book is not a lone voice in the wilderness of body-building, nor is its advice "new." It is one author's practical guide to the principles of effective body building for people without genetic advantages. Numerous experts and professional trainers in the field who have been buried under the avalanche of muscle magazine hype, supplements, and steroid abuse -- the best-kept non-secret of the bodybuilding world -- share this philosophy. These people are finding a voice on web sites..., but this is one of a precious few books that puts a great deal of that knowledge at your fingertips for easy reference.If you are someone who doesn't want to do illegal drugs, your genetics DO matter. So does your capacity to recover between intense workouts. Most people can't go to the gym 4-6 days a week and expect muscle-building results that will continue to pile on over months or years. I'm living testament to that, having done typical training methods for three years and getting nowhere after my initial beginner's gains. Tweaking my workouts and nutrition in various ways had little effect if any at all. Then I followed the principles laid out in this book and (so far) have gained 7 pounds in seven weeks that wasn't fat. Sound like a gimmick? It isn't. The gimmicks are in the hyped-up marketing campaigns of the bodybuilding industry. BEYOND BRAWN is about safety, sanity, hard work, getting the most out of the hand you've been dealt, and the fine art of knowing when you are doing too much and thus hindering your progress.I will agree with the previous reviewers that there is a lot of repetition. It's a small inconvenience to pay for all the valuable information you get, but probably a necessary thing to a reader who has done high-volume training for years and may be tempted to hold on to counter-productive elements of their ingrained training style.Another earlier review made the bizarre claim that you will get fat using this approach. You do not get fat from adopting an abbreviated, high-intensity weight-training program - you get fat from EATING TOO MUCH. Nutrition and aerobics are covered in the book and specific strategies are discussed for figuring out what your optimal caloric intake should be for adding muscle. If you get fat, you weren't following the directions.Since everyone's body is different, the author presents a loose enough framework for the reader to figure out what works best for him or her, but if you fail the basics (proper training, nutrition and rest) then you won't see gains and you run a higher risk of injuring yourself.If you are serious about training, get this book.

Unfortunately, the most popular books available on weightlifting are the ones with the LEAST usable advice and content, for example Arnold's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. While this is an interesting document of Arnold's history and personal weightlifting methods, his long-winded routines and high-volume approach will overtrain almost anybody without his predetermined genetic gifts. The result is and unfortunately will be people who pour excessive time into the gym, doing their body damage but never giving it the proper care for significant growth. Beyond Brawn is not the only book that speaks to ALL weightlifters, but it is probably the best. It gives any man or woman interested in weightlifting all the ammunition they need to create their own training program, and self-adapt it for years to come. It's not a gimmick. It doesn't pretend to be easy. But it's the most honest book on the subject you will find.

Here is a good book. . "Beyond Brawn" is a book for those who work hard, for those who sweat buckets, and for whom every single fraction of an inch of muscle growth comes hard. "Beyond Brawn" is for those who will NOT give up, and who will accept nothing less than final victory. "Beyond Brawn" injects the much-needed and long absent "something missing" back into bodybuilding That something is nothing less than the original heart and soul of real, body building- for strength, for health, for aesthetic appearance, and most important of all-for longevity, whether in training or in its literal sense."Beyond Brawn " is entertaining. It is a good read. Though written to inform, to motivate and to persuade the flavour is of author Stuart McRobert's personal vendetta towards honest and frill-free training and he is not above some shin kicking and bare-knuckling to get the Message across. McRobert-a well published author of many years in the major niche magazines is no friend of the "sell `em another supplement" miracle vendors. And, his stark and realistic standards to which those who want to be strong and sweat blood to become so continue to spur "ordinary, just like you and me" weight trainers on farther than they ever thought possible.So what commends "Beyond Brawn" over and above the rest of the genre?There is a chapter on the philosophy of the "hard gainer"; and on expectations on just how big and strong a hard gainer-(someone notgenetically gifted with big bones and easy muscle growth) can become. There are chapters on training cycles that actually work and deliver, and on how to equip a home gym. The book deals with exercise selection-the suggestions guaranteed to annoy some of the conventional wise men of exercise; and there is a particularly interesting chapter on correcting training injuries through trigger point therapy.The finest summary-the précis of the entire work is told in story form in chapter 3, in which McRobert in his clear style describes how a "wise and uncompromising mentor" would have guided a dedicated, devoted and thoroughly misinformed young man safely and most importantly successfully through years of training, years that in McRobert's words were largely wasted and actually damaging to the body. By following the mentor's lead, the young man might have achieved in a few quick and hard training years a body of impressive size, filled with power and ready and able to train for a lifetime, rather than having taken more than a decade to actually make mistake after mistake and paying the price in injury and pain."Beyond Brawn" captures the moment; it expresses and guides the growing thousands of hard gainers who want the power, the muscle- but never knew just how straightforward it was to get it. Every gym has its hundreds who have real desire, true motivation- and have never achieved their goals-because they have bought into the over used, over sold and overly hyped systems and met