Fitness Through Aerobics

If you had to own just one book on fitness, this would be an excellent choice. It covers the waterfront -- basic fitness concepts; clothing and equipment selection; flexibility exercises for warm-up and cool-down; resistance exercises for improved muscle tone; step aerobics and aerobic dance; exercise variants using weights, bands, stability balls; nutrition and weight control; injury prevention; even how to select an exercise facility and instructor. The content is based on the latest research in the field, and supplemented by helpful worksheets for key elements of a fitness program, such as determining your target heart rate and monitoring your fitness and cardiorespiratory performance status. There are excellent photos illustrating the exercises to do and, perhaps more important, the exercises to avoid. Before I got this book I was trying to cobble together my own fitness program from various web sites, and wondering why I was hurting most of the time. This book helped me enormously in putting together a more sensible fitness and weight-loss program that I have been able to sustain without injury.

I'm only reviewing the 4th Edition here -- and only a very small part, which is all I was able to glance at at the time...some photos of common exercises which the book advised against! Not just stuff like the sit-up which we now know to be bad for the back, but also side stretches, leg lifts, tilting/rolling the head backwards! Duck walks, the bridge...so many things which had been used during the tae kwon do training of my youth are listed as being dangerous here! You really must see the photos to know what I'm talking about...hopefully this Sixth Edition also has them -- it'll surprise even gym rats!