Core Performance - The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life Description:

Core Performance : The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life review:
5 stars (Core Benefits !) - what a difference this book has made in my basic body alignment. I am really taking the time to follow the simple plans of building my core and people see the results. And i am pleased with the results.
4 stars (Excellent workout, but understand the limitations) - As background, I'm a late thirties guy who has generally been active in fitness and recreational sports, but I've been out of competitive athletics since college. As such, I started with a good-but-not-great level of fitness.



My reasons for starting included boredom with my routine of weightlifting and kickboxing on alternate days, as well as some reading about the merits of core conditioning as a training approach. I enjoyed this program from the beginning. I could detect improvements in flexibility and abdominal strength within a few workouts. Also, the variety was intellectually stimulating. I used the program for about 9 weeks, took a break from it, and returned. Now I am not quite as strict in sticking to the schedules lined out in the book, but rather work them in with other workouts as time and interest allow.



Strengths:

1) The workouts are rigorous and concise. They seldom exceed 45 minutes if you stick to the rules about the amount of rest between sets, but you feel like you have had a good workout.

2) The program works. It helped with overall fitness and sport-specific fitness in soccer and karate. I literally have felt better and fitter than I have in years.

3) The complaint about the science of the book is being answered as research catches up with this training approach. Dynamic stretching, "core" exercises and interval training are showing up in research studies and in professional training rooms. I don't think a reader needs to feel that this is an "out there" approach to fitness.



Weakness:

1) The typos should be embarrassing. Most of the time you can figure out what the author meant, but the website is full of people writing in and asking for clarification.

2) The illustrations leave some doubt as to how the exercises should be performed. I recommend getting the free 1-week trial from the website and checking out the videos of the movements for all of the exercises.

3) The diet recommendations are not too easy to follow if you have a family. It ended up being too much of a hassle to be eating completely at odds with mine, so I generally didn't follow this part.

4) You must be OK with the idea that you are doing exercises that nobody else in the gym is doing. Sometimes folks will ask about it, which can be fun or not, depending on your mood.

5) The circuit exercises are difficult to perform in a crowded gym. They require rotating rapidly between two or more pieces of equipment, and its hard to do this without inconveniencing someone.

6) Finally, a word about the pay website - it sure looks like a beta version to me. I'd recommend waiting for version 2.0 before considering joining.



So if you are reasonably fit and looking for a challenge, and you don't mind some minor irritations, I think it is a great program.


5 stars (Great Program) - I really had a great season this year and I know that my training was helped greatly by many of the ideas in this book. The book is well illustrated - very good photos and explantions. I built my program mainly from this book and another called 'The Athlete's Ball'. Both offer solid core training which is something I think my previous training was really too light on. Thank you Mark for a great book!