Book Recommendation: Jonny Bowden's Shape Up!

"Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God." - Romans 12:2

I'm a big fan of Jonny Bowden. He is on the cutting edge of nutrition and isn't afraid to go against the nutritional dogma that many have been led to believe.

I also like that much of what he discusses about food and nutrition can be found in the bible. Although Jonny Bowden doesn't necessarily make references to God or the bible in his books and articles (although he mentions God and spirituality), the foods he recommends are based on the perfect creation that only God is capable of and knew about long before science or others discovered their benefits.

I first heard of Jonny Bowden from a recommendation by famous Olympic strength coach Charles Poliquin who recommended the book "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth." I ordered that book along with "The 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy."

After reading the first several chapters of The 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy, I was hooked on Jonny's writing style, and I quickly began ordering nearly all of the books that he's ever written!

One book that I recently finished reading is "Jonny Bowden's Shape Up: The 8-Week Program to Transform Your Body, Your Health, and Your Life." This is a book that I ordered several copies of for various family members and friends - it's that good! Now, let me tell you that the book was poorly edited. But if you can overlook that, you will find that this is one of the best books available to help you understand that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet and that what works for one person may not work for another.

Jonny Bowden's Shape Up isn't a diet plan. It's not a training plan. It's a YOU plan. It shows you how to take control of your own health and how to make the right choices when it comes to food, training and so much more.

This is truly a "life skills" book and not just a nutrition book (although you'll learn some really good stuff). For the first time, someone has explained the problem with diets and how we are all individuals and need to adjust things to fit our lifestyle, metabolism, genetics, etc.

If you are taking steps to improve your health and your life, then I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Jonny Bowden's Shape Up! It will change your life in many ways while improving your health, fitness and nutritional habits.

I also recommend getting a copy of "Jonny Bowden's Shape Up Workbook" - it's a good companion manual to go with the book with plenty of useful information to help jump start your life on the right path to health and fitness.

Train the Whole Body As One Piece!

"They aren't connected to the head. But the whole body grows from the head. The muscles and tendons hold the body together. And God causes it to grow." - Colossians 2:19

I'm posting the information below from one of Alwyn Cosgrove's recent blogs.

In some of my previous blogs, I talked about focusing on movement patterns and compound, multi-joint exercises to achieve a variety of fitness and fat loss goals. The information below reinforces what I said before. The study below proves that isolation exercises are not as beneficial compared to compound, multi-joint exercises.

All the talk about bodypart training versus full-body routines, isolation exercise versus compound exercise, etc. is based upon a fundamentally flawed concept: That hypertrophy is somehow completely regionally specific.

Here’s a study that examines this in a bit more detail:

Rogers et al.

The Effect of Supplemental Isolated Weight-Training Exercises on Upper-Arm Size and Upper-Body Strength

Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.NSCA Conference Abstract (2000)

The researchers compared the effects of a weight training program on 5RM strength and arm circumference and divided the subjects into two groups.

Group One performed four compound upper body exercises.

Group Two used the same program but included bicep curls and triceps extensions.

The results showed that both groups significantly increased strength and arm size. However, the addition of direct arm training to group two produced no additional effect on strength or arm circumference after 10 weeks of training.

The additional localized training did not result in anything that the bigger compound exercises didn’t provide.

Let me present a hypothetical example:

Twin brothers eating the same diet and working at the same job. Three times a week for the next 52 weeks: Both brothers undertake a progressive resistance training program – each adding weight, sets or reps in a logical manner over the whole year.

One difference: The first brother does deadlifts only. The second brother does arm curls only.

After a year, who do you think will be bigger overall? Including bigger arms? Obviously, it will be the first brother who put more overall stress and load through his system. Even though he didn’t bend his elbow at all.

Charles Poliquin is fond of quoting that in order to gain an inch on your arm, you’d have to gain 15lbs of muscle mass. If that’s true, it will happen a lot sooner with an exercise like the deadlift than it will with the dumbbell curl.

Bottom line is that muscle growth is a systemic issue not a localized one. If I put a stress on the forearm only it would grow, of course, but there would be a limit to that as the systemic load is small. But if you performed deadlifts, the systemic load would be so big that everything would grow.

And when we think about anabolics or anything that can enhance muscle growth, they are injected or consumed into the system. You don’t inject steroids in equal amounts into every muscle group. You don’t rub Surge or another post-workout recovery drink on your arms. Increased protein synthesis is a systemic phenomenon.

Therefore why not develop training strategies that target the entire system at once if fat loss or hypertrophy is what we want?