Body Electric: Workouts for Women

The cover of this book features a fit-looking, 40-something lady who looks like she takes fitness seriously and wants you to do the same. Start reading the book and you'll be amazed to find out she's actually in her 60's. Body Electric is a manual on how to beat the effects of father time with exercise. The sexagenarian I've alluded to is the long-standing host of the fitness show "Body Electric", Margaret Richard.

Here are my thoughts on her book.

Background

To begin, the book is formatted quite nicely and has a reader-friendliness to it that would appeal to even the most entry-level enthusiast.

She gives some tips to "fan the flames of motivation", including the suggestion of clear goals and a mission statement. The basic message is that you CAN do it - and it's never too late to start.

Richard gives the basics of exercise physiology including strength training, aerobic training, flexibility and posture.

She lays out some very good information about the benefits of exercise - particularly as it impacts menopause. Having been through this stage of life herself, Richard offers the facts and backs it up with her own experiences. She tells of her own weight gain and redistribution of fat despite her high level of activity and healthy diet. In this regard, she is advocating making the transition easier and not telling people you can train away all the menopausal effects.

There are excellent explanations on how building muscle leads to health benefits, specifically the benefits of building bone. There is an in-depth explanation on how to avert the effects of osteoporosis

The Exercises/Program

Basically, the program calls for high reps to "tone" muscles. Arrrggghhhh! (Sorry, I HATE that word - tone!). She recommends 3.5 minutes per exercise and includes exercises for all the major muscle groups. While it is difficult to prescribe sets and reps for the masses, I think this recommendation has two major flaws:

1. It is limiting. You are focusing solely on the endurance of the muscles and not deriving the full benefit of weight training.
2. There will be major discrepancies in level of difficulty. You can tweak this to an
3. extent by varying angles/changing weights, but the fact remains that some of these exercises will be much easier than others to complete.

In terms of the exercises themselves, squats would be an essential one to include - especially given that you are appealing to an older crowd. Also, there isn't a single exercise that specifically hits the lats.

The exercises themselves are for the most part sound, but the pictures (as high quality as they are) don't always show good form. It is evident that Margaret is accustomed to doing this for television as she is looking at the camera in many of the shots. Now, it may be obvious to the more seasoned exerciser that you aren't supposed to tilt your head in one direction, but the beginner may not know this.

The warm-up exercises appear to be a combination of held and continuous motion stretches. The recent literature tells us that static stretching before working out isn't of much benefit and may decrease performance.

Overall Impression

I think it's a great book in terms of the information and how it is presented. I think this book would be well suited to those new to exercise and looking for sound education on the basics.

While the exercise section leaves something to be desired, I think that a newbie would derive some meaningful benefit from doing them - however limiting it may be. I also think an accompanying DVD of the exercises would be vastly beneficial.