Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?: Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise

Whether you exercise to stay healthy or are a serious athlete in training, this book is a must-have reference book. It's the best book I've ever seen in answering the "practical" fitness questions you've ever wondered about in deciding how to exercise. If you're going to be spending hundreds or even thousands of hours in training, this book will help make sure you're not wasting it. It's organized in a practical way, and you can easily jump from question to question without needing to read each page that came before it. This makes it a good reference to come back to as you continue to change y

Whether you're new to the world of health and fitness or a veteran, you know how hard it is to sort the true, workable principles from the junk and "broscience" ("Bro, doing dumbbell presses on the exercise ball builds an awesome chest!").Popular workout magazines are FULL of false, misleading advice, and their primary mission is to SELL PRODUCTS for the supplement companies that own them (yup)--not teach you sound, scientific principles of getting bigger, leaner, and stronger. The Internet forums are even worse, and very often, trainers don't have a clue what they're doing or talking about.Wi

As a beginning exerciser, this book had most of the issues discussed in researching fitness from various sources. Id read or learn information somewhere and instead of facts, which are actually pretty hard to find in fitness reading, id find a lot of conflicting bits and pieces. Id have a question, and find lots of products but not much about how my body works or why id have a particular experience. This book is like a literature review of scientific studies done on all those little and not so little questions and debates about fitness and exercise. The author gives this bit, then that bit, fr

The exercise world, like the vitamin-supplement world, is filled with superstition, contradictory claims, flim-flam and confident assertions by men and woman who have no scientific training or learning whatsoever. They're people who have spent a lot time in the gym and little time in a library. So when I hired a personal fitness trainer last year, I wanted to see if the program laid out for me was more than just a random series of exercises or the latest workout fad.Hutchinson's book provides clear and concise summaries of research into exercise physiology. He covers a lot of ground from footw

I read a lot on the topic of health and fitness and this, to me, was just another book. Many books and magazines cover the same ground. If you really want to know weather to do weight or cardio first, I can tell you what the book says and save you some money. If your primary goal is cardio fitness do cardio first. If you want to increase your muscle size/strenght as a a primary fitness goal, do weghts first Ho hum....

This book contains lots of great nuggets of advice for improving your health and fitness routines. Each chapter focuses on a different topic, for example the relationship between physical health and mental performance, but the contents of each chapter are organized as a series of questions and answers. This makes the book great for just picking up and flipping to a random page, or looking up a specific topic or question, but it can also be read cover-to-cover if you wish.I really liked this format and learned a lot from the book, but I hope a 2nd edition or sequel comes out with updated inform

I gave this book five stars because I think it should be the first fitness and weight training book a person should buy before they purchase any other fitness book or join a gym. This book helps clear up or debunk so many "theories" about how to get a great body and how to exercise by boiling down all the research and studies from a multitude of sources so you can avoid wasting your time doing the stuff that simply doesn't pay off. The author's writing is clear and easy to understand and has a great review section at the end of each chapter. One thing he doesn't give is a lot of routines or di

I bought this because anything by Alex Hutchinson (book or magazine article) is excellent—informative, well researched, and worthwhile, if you’re an athlete addicted to soaking up readable sport science. I’m just getting started on this volume, and it is meeting all my expectations. My only criticism is that it has a terrible title that does not successfully convey the book's purpose at all. Since this book was released in 2011, it’s probably due for a revised edition. I hope Hutchinson finds a new publisher who can do a better job with the title (and the cover design).