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Hardcore
Bodybuilding - A Scientific Approach reviewed by |
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I picked up Fred Hatfield's (aka Dr. Squat) latest book, Hardcore Bodybuilding - A Scientific Approach last week. The book is maddening. There are some great ideas in there but the whole book is a jumbled mess with ideas mentioned and not followed through, cases of "see part x about this" and then nothing in part x, and inflexibility in his approach. It was a very frustrating read. The most useful part of the book was where he writes about periodization and how different bodyparts have different recovery rates. That last point is very interesting. For instance, larger muscles have longer recovery times than smaller muscles. If you work back and biceps together, your back will take longer to recover than your biceps. This means that you'll either overtrain your back or undertrain your biceps if you work them together. This rang a bell with me because my back development sure outpaces my arm development. Combine that with "microcycles" of hard-hard-easy workouts (for instance) and your workout is almost never the same day to day. He also has an intense phase but it is just so wacky that I'm not considering it (5 reps, 8 reps another exercise, 5 reps, 8 reps, 5 reps, 40 reps another exercixe, 5 reps, etc. all with no rest between exercises). There are contradictions galore in the book such as his advice to keep your workouts under an hour but then he recommends doing 10 sets of 10 for some exercises on easy days with 2-3 minutes rest between sets. In a 60 minute workout, that's half your workout right there! Hatfield doesn't much care for aerobics, either, as he grudgingly devotes 1/2 page to it for those of you who "insist" on doing aerobics ("Aerobics class -- please!"). And his daily timetable for activities (exercise, meals, sleep, etc.). Ever heard of morning workouts that weren't part of a double-split, Fred? How about those of us with jobs and who don't want to work out at noon? Heck, half of the timetables aren't even labelled as to purpose so you don't know what the heck he's aiming at.
In short, the book is very frustrating. You get the feeling that Hatfield has some good ideas but he's so unfocused and inflexible that it's hard to get much useful out of the book. However, the idea of variable recovery appeals so much to me that I'm giving it a try, so the book wasn't a total waste. It was mostly a waste, though.
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