Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

From reading the synopsis of this book I expected to be exposed to the latest science on physiology of muscle and strength. Instead this book appears to be an infomercial for a product called X3. It details the inventors' stories and their "quest" for a new way of building muscle mass, and the use of their product. There is the usual chapter on nutrition that is ubiquitous in all books on weight lifting. Then there are the personal success stories complete with grainy black and white photos supposedly documenting changes in physique and muscle mass. Its difficult to tell from the poor photographs what changes there actually were compared to just changes in lighting and shading in the photos. The "brilliant" discovery is that lifting weights has limited effect because the joint angles and muscle length change during a lift. This means that certain portions of a lift will require less force than other portions. Therefore the amount of weight lifted can only be as great as the weakest part of the lift, which of course means that for most of the lift the muscles are not working at maximum. As an example, when bench pressing the hardest part of the lift is starting at chest level. As the weight rises the lift gets easier as the joints straighten and less force is needed to continue moving the weight upward. This not a new idea, and is exactly why nautilus machines were invented half a century ago, to overcome this phenomenon of force variation during the lift. The old Soloflex machines by nature of using elastic bands also achieved an unintentional low tech variation on this theme, with the start of the lift being easier and the force needed increasing as the bands were stretched. (This was actually a criticism of the Soloflex at the time.) Neither Nautilus or Soloflex proved to be massive improvements in building muscle or strength. The X3 product being promoted in this book appears to be an elastic resistance band coupled with a bar which again creates a variable resistance during lifts. Its difficult to tell, but it appears the authors are biomechanical engineers. There are some citations to scientific papers, but certainly there is no exhaustive discussion of new scientific discoveries that might lead one to conclude that weight lifting doesn't work or that there is a "better way." I would not call this a science--heavy book. The forward is written by an MMA fighter. The authors' credentials only highlight being associated with celebrity Tony Robbins. However there is no endorsement by credentialed exercise physiologists that would carry any weight as far as validity. At any rate, the X3 resistance band may be a great product. What I was hoping for, however, was an introduction to new science on muscle hypertrophy and strength gain that was outside what we have all read and been led to believe. That was the promise of the book, a promise it failed to deliver on.