It�s called How to Create a Great Body, and it comes in the form of a comprehensive ebook. Packed with guides and training programs, How to Create a Great Body will provide you with everything you need, whether male or female, to safely and effectively develop and maintain a great-looking, physically fit, and functionally strong body. It contains everything necessary to completely transform your body and improve all key aspects of physical fitness, from your muscular, cardiorespiratory, and functional fitness to your flexibility and body composition. The ebook comes in all three popular file formats, so you can read it on multiple devices, as well as print a copy. The training programs have been optimized for smartphones, so you can take them to the gym! I�ve also provided alternatives for cable and machine exercises, so you can complete the weight training programs at home if you have basic equipment (see the table below for home training requirements).
Contents in detail
With over 87,000 words, How to Create a Great Body is packed with information and advice. The ebook is divided into eight parts. Parts 1, 2, and 7 (Weight Training Guide, Nutrition Guide, and Weight Loss Guide) are almost identical to the ones on this website. The only major difference is that the Weight Training Guide includes the basics of the science of static stretching and presents illustrations and instructions on how to properly perform 14 key static stretches. Five of the weight training programs in Part 3 are also almost identical to the ones on this website. The only difference is that the ones in the ebook include alternative exercises for training at home. Everything else is exclusive to the ebook.
Part 1: Weight Training Guide
Part 1 introduces you to weight training and its benefits, goes over the details of muscle science, and reveals the fundamentals and methods of weight training. It also offers guidance on how to get started with weight training, find a gym or set up a home gym, warm up, cool down, track your progress, keep motivated, and ultimately succeed.
Part 2: Nutrition Guide
The Nutrition Guide covers all of the important elements of good nutrition, dietary management, and strategic eating. After beginning with a detailed look at all macronutrients and micronutrients, it explores calorie requirements, bulking and cutting, diet tracking, supplementation, and nutrient timing. As a small bonus, the guide ends with advice on how to save money on healthy foods.
Part 3: Weight Training Programs
In Part 3, you will find all of the weight training programs � eight for men and eight for women. The men�s programs are designed for maximum muscle and strength, whereas the women�s programs are designed for maximum curves and functional strength. The eight programs include:
- a beginner program
- five increasingly difficult programs that cater for different levels of experience
- a �plateau buster� program designed to ensure that you never stop making progress
- a minimalistic program for busy individuals.
Completion of the beginner and five increasingly difficult programs will take one year and twelve weeks if you take a week�s break between each one. However, I balanced the programs meticulously so that you can repeat each one (except the beginner program) as many times as you want to with little risk of developing muscular strength imbalances. As such, the programs can keep you training and making progress for multiple years. With the aim of keeping you engaged, challenging you, and promoting continual progress, I designed the programs to incorporate a wide range of training splits (for example, upper�lower, push�pull, and push�pull�legs) and utilize a variety of intensity training techniques (for example, superset training, rest�pause training, and dropset training).
The plateau buster program is there for you when making progress starts to become more difficult. It is based on the pre-exhaustion protocol, which involves partially exhausting prime mover muscles with isolation exercises before moving on to the major compound exercises. Pre-exhaustion makes prime movers work much harder during the compound exercises, thus amplifying the stimulus for development and increasing your chances of pushing through plateaus. Meticulously balanced, you can repeat the plateau buster as many times as you want to. Since it is designed to produce the same results as the five increasingly difficult programs, you can also use it as the sixth program in the sequence.
If you�re a very busy individual with little time to spare for training, the minimalistic program is designed for you. The workouts of the program include the bare minimum of exercises and sets necessary to provide you with an effective full-body workout as quickly as possible. The exercises are arranged into supersets, which means that you can fly through them very rapidly. As with the other programs, the minimalistic program has been meticulously balanced so that you can repeat it over and over again for as long as you please.
You can complete the weight training programs at any gym. However, I have provided alternatives for cable and machine exercises, so you can also perform the programs at home if you have the following basic equipment.
Part 4: Bodyweight, Power, and Plyometric Workouts
Part 4 explains the fundamentals of power, plyometric, and bodyweight training, and presents power, plyometric, and equipment-free bodyweight workouts. It also gives you the tools necessary to design your own equipment-free bodyweight workouts, which you can use if you go on vacation or can�t make it to the gym and lack home equipment!
Part 5: Target Muscle Guide
After briefly introducing you to joint articulations and the three planes of motion, the first half of the Target Muscle Guide reveals all of the main muscles that are activated by different types of exercise (for example, horizontal pulling exercises, glute/hamstring-dominant compound exercises, vertical pushing exercises, and quadriceps-dominant compound exercises). If you can read and understand this section, you will know exactly what you�re doing the next time you walk into the gym.
The second half of the Target Muscle Guide presents all of the most effective compound and isolation exercises that target each major muscle and muscle head! Use it as a reference whenever you want to focus on developing a muscle of interest.
Part 6: Cardio Guide
The Cardio Guide begins by covering the basics of exercise physiology, the fundamentals of cardiovascular training, and the advantages, disadvantages, and applications of three types of cardio:
- Steady-state training (SST)
- Interval training
- Functional circuit training (FCT)
It then presents three cardio training programs, including one SST program with three workouts, one interval training program with three workouts (two of which are high intensity or HIIT workouts), and one FCT program with two workouts. The workouts are progressable and can of course be repeated as many times as you want to. The workouts of the three different types of cardio are also interchangeable, which means that on one day you can do SST, on another day you can do HIIT, and on yet another day you can do FCT. One of the HIIT workouts follows the original Tabata protocol, which is extremely intense and intended only for experienced individuals. The Cardio Guide concludes with instructions on how to design your own FCT workouts!
Part 7: Weight Loss Guide
The Weight Loss Guide is short but very useful for anyone whose primary goal is to lose weight. It presents three steps to successful weight loss, along with a wide range of tips and tricks that can make losing weight, and keeping it off, much easier.
Glossary
How to Create a Great Body ends with a sizeable glossary that includes many important key terms, concepts, and principles related to muscle science, weight training, cardio, fitness, and nutrition. You can use it as a reference or a revision tool.
