A book on the crossroads of bodybuilding, power-lifting, and fat loss, by an accomplished lifter, coach and writer with over forty years of experience in the game.Mixed feelings about this book. Short form: I highly recommend it to a range of audiences, despite my reservations. I enjoyed reading it, and will re-read it several times, looking for the bits I can make use of.
Marty coached or met everyone who was anyone in the world of Power lifting in the 80s and 90s, and he fills the book with anecdotes that give a real feel for the characters that made a half-underground sport what it was. He also uses these anecdotes to great effect when discussing training styles and nutritional strategies, building his recommendations for various phases of body recomposition around the greats he trained with or coached. His writing is engaging, and his genuine love of the sport shines through. The tales of strength he shares are inspiring, and he has a knack for presenting even the roughest of his subjects with their humanity intact.
The training and diet information are comprehensive. Marty is a big believer in old school training splits and volume, and he has plenty of experience to back up his position. It's an approach to training that will feel pretty revolutionary to a machine trainer or someone caught up in the absurd, unproductive isolation training so many unqualified trainers end up foisting on their clients.
On the downside, this is mostly a book for beginners and intermediate trainees. I didn't see his weight training recommendations as all that relevant to my own current needs; my program is already spartan by Marty's standards, and I expect a fair number of more experienced lifters will feel the same way. His cardio and diet recommendations were similarly solid, but not likely to change the way I train or eat (not because they're bad; just because it's another case of "I already do that"). Marty also doesn't make much of a training distinction between Body Building, Power Lifting, Strong Man Competition, Olympic Lifting, Martial Arts, or other strength sports. To a more advanced lifter who knows where he wants to fit in the strength game, that cuts into the book's utility.
The place where the book falls down most is in its silence on the subject of steroids. It's a tough subject to honestly discuss. Talking about it opens you up to attack from the For The Children crowd and scares the heck out of a certain percentage of law abiding citizens (i.e. the vast majority of the market). Athletes don't want their reputations tarnished by the public admission that they were using, and supplement manufacturers (a prime job for ex-champions) hate admitting that their spokes-user did not gain twenty inch biceps at three percent body-fat solely through the use of their products.
So, Marty doesn't talk about steroids and training at all. This isn't just a problem because we miss out on part of the story of power lifting and bodybuilding in the day. Ultimately, the training you believe in and recommend is built around what you've seen work. The training that works for a twenty year old serious steroid user is not necessarily relevant to any natural trainee, let alone the thirty-and-over crowd Marty seems to be speaking to. I can see how much experience he's bringing to the recommendations in this book, and I absolutely respect his impeccable strength-cred. But I'm left wondering: Are these volume recommendations really the best choices for a non-user?
In the end, I'd say that this book is still of great value and well worth purchasing, despite its flaws. If you're interested in a slice of Iron History, or a beginner looking for a guide to body transformation, go get it.
On another note, I must disagree with the first reviewer on the steroid situation. Steroids are mentioned, but not gone into great detail. This is not a book on how to cycle your anabolic drugs, but rather how to workout, no matter your experience level or goals for yourself. Steroids have been around in power sports since the late '50's and in most sports for 30 years now. Only now are they coming into the news because of teen athletes trying them, which is never a good thing. However, you can still get the benefits from these workouts and the ancillary information without the benefits of performance enhancing drugs. Will you be able to bench press 600 or deadlift 800 without the drugs? Probably not. Will you be able to squeeze every bit of the talent God gave you and be the best physical specimen you can be by following this book? Definitely so!This books is a fun read at times with the exception of a few of the chapters which relate stories about steroid-bloated bullies intimidating those who they perceive to be inferior.
I found very little useful training info here that I haven't read about before, but some of the author's anecdotes are amusing if not downright creepy at times. Basically unless you weigh 300# plus and use 'roids you are not worthy to enter a gym or use the same equipment as the "elite" lifters. In fact, if you dare to attempt to join the gym you might get run out the door by some bloated bully on a 'roid rage.
Most of the lifters protrayed in the book are (I should say "were" as most of them are long gone) PEDs users so there is very little, if any, useful information for the average, natural lifter you know, the type of "scrawny pencil neck geeks" that the author and his fat-*ss lifting buddies would enjoy intimidating and throwing out of the gym in the snow as if the reader should somehow respect and admire these idiotic actions.
I got a real chuckle seeing the photo of Jim Williams and Hugh Cassidy with their huge guts hanging over their lifting belts how many of these guys are around today and living a quality life? I hardly find them heroic or to be admired just because they had the gift to get fat.
Other than that there is some very basic information about nutrition and the author's grandmothers home cooking (who cares?), and some outlines of workout routines by Paul Anderson, Bednarski, Coan and others, using the basic compound exercises and the author's ego-filled rant about how he coached powerlifters like Ed Coan. Yeah, right, like this guy "coached" Ed Coan give me a break. "Okay Ed, go out and lift the weight off the rack and then squat down and back up!" Hilarious! Oh, and also the author likes to brag about his "superior" lifestyle and how he prefers to walk outdoors rather than in a stuffy gym oh really? Very enlightening....(not!). He also gives really "valuable" tips about how to walk!
The author mixes in just about every pop culture topic possible: pop psychology, martial arts, stupid "hip" proverbs and quotes and all kinds of new-age crap with lots of pretentious name-dropping.
The sub-title reads "From Fat and Flaccid to Lean and Powerful" but there are very few examples of lifters in this book that are NOT fat and flaccid. However the author assures the reader that by "Using the primoridal laws of fitness..." we will "trigger inevitable lasting and dramatic physical change." "Primordial?" give us a break! Looking at the photos of the author belies this statement. Is that what one should expect by following his advice? Disappointing, at best.
At any rate the author sheds no new or break-through information on losing fat and one must wade thru lots of ego-filled verbiage and sophmoric anecdotes to glean the little useful information contained in the book.
Gosh I guess 2 stars is rather generous now that I recall so many unpleasant qualities of this book. Nevertheless it is amusing and one could use it as a learning experience as in "Yuck who cares if they squat 800# almost any fat guy on PEDS can do it nowadays."
Those who enjoy this type of book would do far better with Pavel Tsatsouline's "Beyond Bodybuilding" which contains real world, useful training routines and information for all types of trainees.Sometimes otherwise successful endeavours are torpedoed by one fatal flaw.
Take this book. It is at once a personal memoir by a highly regarded trainer, a profile of some of the greatest powerlifters and bodybuilders of the past five decades, a dietary guide, and a training manual. The core concept that the men profiled are "purposeful primitives", i.e., men who have achieved spectacular size and strength because they have discovered and followed "primordial laws of fitness" is instinctively attractive and inspiring. The prose is taut, clear, and engaging. There are even quite a few photos to keep things visually engaging.
So what is the fatal flaw? The inclusion of a fawning piece on Dorian Yates. The most important muscle-building "primordial law" Yates followed in his bodybuilding career was *to regularly jam a hypodermic needle filled with lab-created, muscle-boosting hormones into his butt, and squeeze*. Needless to say, there is absolutely nothing "primordial" about that. I'm *not* saying Yates didn't work hard in the gym. It is just that without the 'roids, he would not have looked anything like he ended up looking, nor would he have ever been able to achieve the feats Gallagher slavers over. Gallagher knows this perfectly well, but never admits it, which is about as weird as including him in the first place. It is also debatable to what extent workout advice gleaned from the regimen of a gonzo juicer is helpful to normal, natural lifters.
When I pick up a book called "The Purposeful Primitive", I want to read about purposeful primitives not *pretend* purposeful primitives like Yates, who was so dependent on synthetic chemicals for his gains, that he's probably inflicted permanent liver, kidney, and testicular damage on himself. Besides, on principle, I don't see why guys like that should be heralded in the same book as clean guys like Paul Anderson, or held up as models for aspiring young lifters fighting the temptation to start injecting.
Just my two cents.For years, many of us have struggled in the gym following the conventional or faddish advice about weight training -without demonstrable results. A lot of us know the Top 20 isolation exercises, but we don't know how they come together as a whole. Or, we look at the bodies in the local 24hour fitness, and we wonder how so much effort can produce such disastrous -read, unaesthetic! results. Oh, and that's just the trainers themselves who were looking at! All of their faddish "core" exercises producing "noise, but signifying nothing"!
The first part of Marty's groundbreaking provides us inspiration, not only to work out more, but to excel in our workouts, to achieve "hypertrophy." As we read about the real "giants" of weightlifting's past, we learn that "an hour at the gym" was not their goal, but a completely focused attitude on stretching their limits.
Marty keeps things simple for us. He wants us to go back to the basics. For me, this meant on concentrating on three exercises almost exclusively deadlift, squat, bench press and in doing so concentrating on the correct form. This attention to detail, I believe, has brought on a physical transformation of my body. It also saves a lot of time at the local 24 hour. Since no one else is spending time at the squat racks, I can get my workout done in 30 minutes!
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