Gym-Free and Ripped
By: Nathan Jendrick
Reviewed By: Michael Bedard, Personal Trainer, MBA
When you look at the picture on the cover of the book you may say to yourself this doesn’t look like a book for a 50+ male looking to get back into exercising and improving their fitness level. The picture is too intimidating. But looks can be deceiving. The picture is their for marketing purposes only, the contents inside are very practical and useful for the 50+ male who wants to start exercising without investing a lot of money in fancy equipment or expensive gyms.
Nathan Jendrick is a personal trainer who keeps things simple and to the point in this do-it-yourself handbook on how to exercise. For someone who has some experience and knowledge in nutrition and exercise they would probably catch themselves wanting Jendrick to go deeper and give more information but that is not the demographic he has targeted for his book. This book is meant for the novice exerciser, of any age, who realizes that he needs to eat better and exercise more but has neither the time, money or knowledge on how to start. Keeping in mind who he has written this book for, Jendrick has done a fine job resisting the urge to over complicate the science of nutrition and exercise and has given his target readers exactly what they need to get started on a healthier and physically fit lifestyle. In this case, less is more and it works.
Jendrick starts his book off on the importance of mentally preparing and adapting yourself to exercise on a regular basis. He clearly states that this is often more of a challenge and hurdle to overcome for the inexperienced exerciser than actual physical exercising. This is good advice because exercising on a regular basis is a mental exercise in disciplining yourself to overcome those days when you physically and mentally just don’t want to work out. He emphasizes that physically exercising and the positive emotional feeling you have after each work out is the fun part. Mentally disciplining yourself to work out is the hard part. This, in my opinion was the most important point he makes in the book.
The chapter dedicated to nutrition is well done. He covers all the essential points from establishing your baseline diet to demystifying current scientific understanding of proteins, fats and carbohydrates and the necessary role they play in a balanced diet. He covers the tricky and often confusing topic of Glycemic Index efficiently and emphasizes the importance of drinking lots of water and reading the labels of the food you buy. He also covers the topic of protein and nutritional supplementation which I felt was very important since his naive target audience is vulnerable to commercial advertisements promoting nutritional supplementation. These advertisement are targeted at the novice uneducated exercisers who don’t really understand, at this point in their fitness journey, that there is no easy road to becoming physically fit except through dedication to regular exercise.
The chapters on warm-up exercises, resistance exercises and stretching exercises are well done. They are simply described and illustrated so the reader can easily understand how to mechanically perform them correctly. This is very important for injury prevention.
His chapter on Cardio fitness, I felt was a big disappointment. It was just not comprehensive enough. For his target audience, this chapter is of great importance. The title of his book is Gym-Free and Ripped. An essential part of getting ripped is to lose body fat. The most efficient way to lose body fat is through increasing your caloric expenditure and cardio exercise is the best way to do that. As well, from a pure heath perspective it is important to have a strong heart. Most novice exercisers understand the importance of a strong heart but they do not have the know-how on to how achieve it. He makes no reference to how to measure your resting heart rate, calculating your maximum heart rate, the intensity or percentage of maximum heart rate you need to exercise at, the length of time to exercise at, how often you need to exercise or the type of exercises that can be engage in to improve cardio fitness. This is a glaring oversight.
The inadequacy of the cardio fitness chapter weakens what is otherwise a well done fitness book for beginners. The picture on the cover of a man’s 8- pack ab’s is a bit misleading in terms of setting expectations of what can be achieved by following the exercise programs laid out in the book. However, Jandrick makes it clear very early in his book that good nutrition and strong mental discipline is what is needed to improve anyone’s level of health and fitness especially for someone who is making a significant lifestyle change. This point, I believe, is the silver bullet of the book and why I would recommend it to men over 50 who want to start exercising but is not ready for or can’t afford a membership at a gym or a personal trainer.
If you’d like more info please contact Mike.