FJ's Verdict:

Product Name: Hardcore Circuit Training For Men
Publisher: Price World Publishing
MSRP: $17.95
Availability: High (Online & Most Major Book Stores)

Today I’ll be reviewing something a little different, something I have first hand experience with… a fitness book. Puts me in unique situation because I know the amount of work that goes into MAKING a fitness book… from the descriptive yet motivating language tone to taking a million pictures and finding the best angle and/or shot. It’s a shit load of work, specially when you take on such a monumental task all by yourself all the while having a ridiculously high expectations of yourself. But that’s just me.

Anyways, the nice dudes at Price Publishing sent me a copy of their latest release. It’s a soft cover book and comes in at 189 pages. Fortunately (or unfortunately) most of those pages aren’t exactly “reading material” because they focus on the workouts and so they comprise of pictures etc. More on that in a minute. Let’s hear the official pitch from Price Publishing…

Product Claims:

Hardcore Circuit Training for Men is truly the first of its kind. It is the only book in the world that focuses exclusively on circuit training for men. The book provides links to dozens of illustrative Web sites, including YouTube, for examples and elaboration of its techniques and methods to give the reader every advantage necessary to maximize his fitness potential. Its workouts are diverse, creative, and proven. In fact, one proven workout is the exact circuit used by the cast of 300 as it prepared for filming.

This book is a no-nonsense approach to high intensity fitness training. The exercises and circuits provided will give the reader the motivation needed to get super fit, and the expertise required to dramatically improve his muscular strength and aerobic fitness. In a park, a hotel room, a gym, or even the living room there is a circuit here to suit every man’s needs.

First Impressions:

Let’s start off with that cover. The whole highlighting a ripped physique that is surrounded by darkness is over-done as far as fitness books go, but it’s over-done for a reason. It fucking works. At least they made it striking to look at while being relatively elegant. This type of design work can usually come off very tacky if done wrong… but fortunately it hasn’t. For those that judge the book by it’s cover, well the cover looks pretty solid as far as I’m concerned.

After doing a quick flip-through the book, it seems that there are only 10 real reading pages… everything else is just pictures with mini explanations. I have mixed feelings about this, on one hand the pictures are big, clear and well edited. But then on the other hand, it seems that the book is lacking some “meat” if you know what I mean.

Let’s switch gears and talk about the authors for a bit, Jim McHale and Chohwora Udu. What makes them worthy of writing a book? Well as far as I can tell, their authority seems pretty solid. I’m gona use two blocks of quotes from the back of the book…

Jim McHale is an endurance athlete and ex-amateur boxer with more than ten years experience designing gym circuits. He has experience competing in Ironman Triathlon and other long-distance events including the 190 kilometer Libyan Challenge Desert Race. Jim has been associated with the fitness industry for more than 15 years.

Chohwora Udu has more than thirty years experience in boxing as both a professional fighter and as a coach. He has trained both professional and amateur boxers and he holds YMCA qualifications in gym instruction and circuit training. As a fitness instructor, Chohwora specializes in the areas of muscular endurance, strength, and flexibility.

Real World Results:

Sometimes when I do a review, I prefer to start off with positives… well today is NOT that day. This book has some major stumbles which could have EASILY been avoided… but it’s mainly the editorial team at fault, not the authors. In fact, I wish Price Publishing contacted me sooner, as I would have laid down the smackage and offered advice to steer this product in the right direction. I hate it when things don’t live up to their full potential.

If they should make a second edition, here’s a few things they should change… and this is not just MY opinion, this is advice that I’m reverse-engineering from the boat loads of emails I’ve received from customers for my own book. Price should be paying me for this shit… it’s almost like consulting. Still, I’m a giver, so here we go:

• The Font: I’m not sure what font they used, but its thin and long, like a starving Ethiopian kid. Last time I checked, this was NOT the optimal format that helps you read smoothly. IMO there are only 4 fonts that should be used for a product because of their ease of readability: Arial, Verdana, Times & Calibri. Some overly-geeky and number crunching marketers will debate me on that last one but they can’t argue about the first three.
• The Content: Wait, I should have said the lack of. It doesn’t matter if this book is labelled as “hardcore”… there is nothing in here that describes the benefits of circuit training over, say a muscle-split routine, or a bodybuilding routine or a purely cardio routine. I can also go as far as to say that if a circuit training newbie picks up this book… they still won’t know what circuit training actually means. A little history lesson, a list of benefits, maybe some intriguing facts about this type of training would have been a smart idea.
• Resource Links: Most of the complex exercises have a YouTube link printed near them so you can go see what it looks like in motion and have a better understanding. It’s a good, but WEAK attempt. Not only are YouTube links complicated to type in, most of the videos mentioned in the book don’t even belong to the publishing company. What happens when the original content owner takes the video down? BAM… that resource is instantly obsolete. Not to mention that hand-typing in “www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T3FH3VNILo” isn’t exactly a pleasant experience. Pretty fucking annoying actually. What they SHOULD have done is set up their own website for the book (just like Tim Ferris did for his 4 Hour Work Week book) and then made their own videos and self hosted them with a PROPER link-structure. Not only does this give them more control over their content and reliability, the whole presentation doesn’t seem so half-assed.
• Un-useable Training Log: I don’t care what workout you do, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you’re not tracking that shit, you’re aiming blind. Results will be non existent after a short while. So I was glad to see a training log sheet mentioned in the table of contents. When I turned to the page however… I almost threw up. This has to be one of the most critical marketing mistakes ever made. They provided a training log, then slapped a stupid watermark over it telling you to go to a website where you can download an “unlimited” number of logs… thus rendering the actual log sheet in the book you paid for, completely useless. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.

  

  But it gets better, the link where  you can get your “unlimited” copies does-not-work as of right now [Update: I was notified by Price Publishing that the links have now been fixed and the logs are now available for download. That was a quick response on their part, good stuff]. So if you want to track your stuff, you’re on your own, the book you paid $$ for won’t help in this area.

• When my customers shoot an email asking me for just the log sheet pages in .pdf format so they can print the shit outa it, do you know what I do? I give them what they want. I even send them extra pre-made workouts they can print out as a bonus should they need it.A log sheet in a fitness book is crucial, why they would cripple such an important feature is beyond my ever-intelligent comprehension.

So Does It Get Anything Right?

Fortunately, yes. The circuit workouts themselves are actually pretty decent and would be quite challenging for most people to perform. I also like the massive variety that has been presented. It doesn’t matter if you have equipment or not, you WILL find something to suit your needs. Every “workout” has been presented in a simple NO-BS manner with big ass pictures that clearly illustrate the technique.

List of Circuits:

• WarmUps
• Cool Downs
• Body Weight
• The Bench Workout
• Kettlebell Workout
• Plate Workout
• Barbell Workout
• Swiss Ball Workout
• Hill Workout
• Multi-Machine
• The 4 Miler
• Swim Circuit
• The “300″ Workout

That’s not to say that this book is revolutionary, because it’s not. It’s more of a tried and true approach, and the “hardcore” audience that are already pretty adept in or out of the gym don’t have anything to get super excited about. Still, there are people who will benefit greatly from this book, and that is the average Joe.

I know a TONNE of people that haven’t seen half the exercises in this book, and they would be well off with this information… unfortunately they aren’t part of the “hardcore” crowd.

Conclusion:

I like circuit training because it offers some kick ass benefits. I also like the routines in the book… the authors seem to know how to design a proper circuit, but it’s just sad that the lackluster presentation over-shadows it. If I zoom out a little bit, it seems to me that the content in this product is being presented under the wrong type of medium. It would be MUCH easier if this was an eBook, because the amount of web links provided inside is crazy, but it wouldn’t be such a hassle if it was all hyper-linked for your convenience.

Or how about a DVD product? Just as how turning the ever-popular P90X product into a book seems absurd, Hardcore Circuit Training would fair much, much better as a video product, seeing the amount of times they linked to 3rd party authors from YouTube.

Still, Price Publishing is in the business of pumping out books and they seem fairly new so they’ll learn. If they want this to be a kick ass circuit training book, it needs to be polished. Don’t get me wrong, there is true and valuable content in there, but as of right now it feels like a diamond in the rough, not quite ready for store shelves… unless buying raw materials is your thing.

You can check it out on Amazon here: Hardcore Circuit Training for Men

- FitJerk

Show Me You’re Alive: How often do you throw circuit training into  your routine?