Guía de 111 ejercicios de musculación que pueden hacerse sin máquinas de gimnasio, haciendo un poco el McGyver con las cosas de casa. El autor, por supuesto, es entrenador de Navy Seals y ha probado su entrenamiento en combate ("No soy entrenador de estrellas de Hollywood, cuyo sueldo depende de su físico. Soy entrenador de soldados de élite, cuya VIDA depende de su físico [entra himno americano. Aplauso lento de uno del público que se levanta, siendo seguido poco a poco por el resto del auditorio hasta la gran ovación final. Fundido a negro]).
Tiene también una introducción en plan "Tú puedes, chaval" que está entretenida. Hablándonos de alimentación:

Whether you are trying to gain muscle, loose fat, improve athletic ability, simply stay
healthy, or all of the above, you only adjust your calorie intake according to your goals. The rest stays the same: Consistently perform short, intense, strength training sessions, and eat a balanced diet. No matter your goal, you should consistently strength train, try to get 7 – 8 hours of sleep a night, and you should eat frequent meals, maintaining an even flow of energy, leaving that afternoon slump at the door. Your eating habits won’t be driven by hunger, and your cravings will be controlled. You’re not a caveman anymore. You do not need to stuff your face, thus storing a bunch of fat for warmth, because there’s a good possibility you won’t find another Wooly Mammoth for a few days.

o de autoestima:
I saw it in Combat Control and Pararescue trainees all the time. The classes would start with what seemed to be boys and by the end there was something different about them.
They were muscular, lean, balanced, all around athletes, but there was more. They carried themselves differently. They knew themselves better. They dealt with the enemy within on a daily basis and they were winning because they were still there. Day in and day out, for months they were tried and tested, but they never quit. Those young men valued their per formance more than they valued their comfort, and they knew when to ignore the mind’s reasoning. They had became their own masters. It showed in everything they did. As it will with you.

Luego, los ejercicios están muy bien. Los divide en cuatro grupos: Push, Pull, Legs y Core. Y da unos cuantos planes de entrenamiento que los combinan.

Me ha gustado el libro (no sé si lo suficiente porque estoy empezando el entrenamiento de 10 semanas) y dan ganas de ponerse a sufrir. ( )

Buy it! ( )

I had considered myself in good shape. However, after reading "You Are Your Own Gym" by Mark Lauren, I had to reassess my situation. With the encouragement of Mark from his book, and using the app, I have started the 10 week basic course. After 2 weeks, I am noticing a difference in my strength and endurance.

I have given the book 4 stars because it did what it was supposed to do - encouraged me to up my fitness level. I can ask no more of it than that. ( )

I read the text, it explained things fairly straight-forward. I'm not sure the author's preference for body-weight exercises was fully explained, but it didn't reek of pseudo-science or anecdata as a lot of this kind of book do.

The book itself is much more of a reference work, since the real value is in the index of exercises and the program that builds individual exercises into sets and builds weeks of this into a long-term plan. ( )

A few caveats before I say anything about this book: I am not a fitness guy. I'm not in great shape and I don't exercise daily. But I have gone through a number of periods where I've managed to go from rather poor shape to pretty decent shape through a bit of hard work (okay, sometimes a lot more than a "bit"). I've tried a good number of approaches and found some I like and a lot that I don't like.

Having said all that, my one long time consistent preference has been for simplicity and lack of overhead (whether gym membership costs, equipment or whatever). Given that, I've always had a strong preference for bodyweight exercises and have occasionally sought out any decent books on the matter. Up until recently, the best I had seen were usually of the boot-camp workout variety, though I had seen a few decent looking, older books on calisthenics (it seems like such a dated term lately).

So, when I passed by this on the new arrivals shelf at the library, I grabbed it, flipped through it a bit and was immediately interested. Within a couple days, I went and got my own copy. The main reason for this is that it covers a lot of bodyweight exercises I had never seen before. It even gave me a few new ideas and variations for some I already knew fairly well.

The unfortunate side is this: as with nearly every other exercise book I've ever picked up (at least in the last couple of decades), the writing and style of presentation are terribly. It's clearly designed to sell to a specific audience. And unfortunately, I can't say it's an audience I'd ever want to claim to be part of.

But still, if you like bodyweight exercises -- and you really should, if you have any interest in staying or getting in shape -- you should pick this up and see if it teaches you anything new. ( )