Muscle Revolution

Who is this guy and what is this product?

 

Quote:

Chad Waterbury is one of the world’s leading experts on developing muscle for the goal of enhancing performance. His novel training methods are used by athletes, bodybuilders, figure models, and fitness enthusiasts of all ages and from all walks of life. He has an M.S. in Physiology from the University of Arizona, and he specializes in the neurophysiology of human movement and performance. He currently trains, consults and lectures around the country, and also contributes to numerous newsstand and online publications

What does this product claim?

 

Quote:

* The Total Strength Program—Waterbury’s most advanced and ingenious 12-week program for building more strength and muscle mass than you ever thought possible. * How to train for every goal—more muscle, more strength, better sports performance, less body fat—or a combination of goals. * How to use food and supplements to gain, lose, or maintain weight while improving body composition. * Waterbury’s most popular programs—from Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy to Quattro Dynamo—and a guide to using all of them in a year-long program.

Where can I get it and how much does it cost?
$39.95

Review:
Binding\Design\Paper Quality
This is a very proper looking softbound. High quality semi-glossed paper and crystal clear pictures. It’s very professional and is obvious that care was taken to produce a high quality product.

Layout\Format
Sound editing. Easy to read with no distinguishing formatting flaws or praises. Everything is “as it should be”.

Content Usability
It is NOT a stand-alone product. One of the biggest things that annoys me about fitness products is 60 pages of how to do an exercise. This one doesn’t have any exercise descriptions for the normal workouts at all (Total Strength Program does have pictures and descriptions). Even as someone that has been pretty enthusiastic about training and having done Waterbury routines before I didn’t know all the exercises were.

I tend to run under the philosophy of “You don’t need to know the answers if you know where to find them”. The answers “can” be found on T-Nation, but you should never have to go searching. If the entire move set was at a central location then it wouldn’t be too bad…but it’s not…so that sucks. If you were somewhere that you didn’t have internet connectivity (let’s say “the gym”) then you’re pretty well fucked.

Does it do what it says\Review
This is probably one of the better products that no one will ever use and most people have no reason to buy. Chad obviously put a lot of work into this manual and some of areas that I enjoyed were barely mentioned by…anyone, as far as I can tell.

It’s a pretty darn complete product as far as this sort of product goes. To start with Chad goes into his philosophy about training and sets the tone for the rest of the book. As far as getting success in a given program it has to do what you want it to do (a program to match your goals). Chad spends a large portion of the book giving windows that your workout needs to fall in if you want to get the appropriate response. There’s a brief section on nutrition and interestingly enough a section on energy system training.

The party is rounded off with most of Chad’s programs modified to a 3x per week setting and 3 complete programs for the Squat\Deadlift\Bench Press.

Novice:
You’re not going to like it. You’re not going to use the parameter windows (¾ of the book). You’re about the workouts, admit it! You CAN’T use (some of) the workouts in the book without going to T-Nation, in which case you’re already looking at the workouts…for free. So why spend $40 on a book to look at programs that you need to the free version anyway? Anyone?

Enthusiastic Amateur:
You might like it. Personally I think the parameter windows are interesting. There’s a great deal of potentially profound concepts presented. On the same hand most “sections” could be (and are) books of their own. If you pay attention you can get enough out of each concept to apply it well enough to get by, but you’re probably not going to really “get it”. It would be better to think of the book as a springboard to other areas OR as a quick reference.

Final Thoughts:
There are three potential reasons to buy this book. The Cliff note version of programming theory, the T-Nation workouts, and the TSP workouts. There’s no convincing reason to buy it for the T-Nation stuff. The TSP things are a big of a “bonus” for me. Can you find a power lifting program on your own? Is their a convincing reason to use these vs. something from Westside or Powerlifting USA? That’s not to say that the section is poor, it’s not reason enough to buy the book. If you’re not specifically interested in the theory portion then the entire book gets a pass. In my mind this would be a great gift to buy someone that likes fitness books. Spending $40 isn’t horrendous, it’s probably more than most will justify on themselves.