For those of us who are more often lifting groceries or pots and pans than bodybuilding trophies, kettlebells provide a way of training functional strength. This book does (as per the title) offer both sides of things—the body sculpting, and thebody maintenance free from pain and injury.

Kleidman first explains the basics of kettlebell training, and how to get the most from one’s workouts, before discussing what kinds of exercises are best for which benefits, and finally moving on to provide full exercise programs.

The exercise programs themselves are fairly comprehensive without being unduly detailed, and give a week-by-week plan for getting your body to where you want it to be.

The style is fairly personal and relaxed, while keeping things quite clear—the photographs are also clear, though if there’s a weakness here, it’s that we don’t get to see which muscles are being worked in the same as we do when there’s an illustration with a different-colored part to show that.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for an introductory course for kettlebell training that’ll take you from beginner through to the “I now know what I’m doing and can take it from here, thanks” stage.

Click here to check out Body Sculpting With Kettlebells For Women, and get sculpting!

The idea that you’ll get a re-sculpted body at 12 minutes per week is a bold claim, isn’t it? Medical Doctor Doug McGuff and bodybuilder John Little team up to lay out their case. So, how does it stand up to scrutiny?

First, is it “backed by rigorous research” as claimed? Yes… with caveats.

The book uses a large body of scientific literature as its foundation, and that weight of evidence does support this general approach:

• Endurance cardio isn’t very good at burning fat
• Muscle, even just having it without using it much, burns fat to maintain it
• To that end, muscle can be viewed as a fat-burning asset
• Muscle can be grown quickly with short bursts of intense exercise once per week

Why once per week? The most relevant muscle fibers take about that long to recover, so doing it more often will undercut gains.

So, what are the caveats?

The authors argue for slow reps of maximally heavy resistance work sufficient to cause failure in about 90 seconds. However, most of the studies cited for the benefits of “brief intense exercise” are for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT involves “sprints” of exercise. It doesn’t have to be literally running, but for example maxing out on an exercise bike for 30 seconds, slowing for 60, maxing out for 30, etc. Or in the case of resistance work, explosive (fast!) concentric movements and slow eccentric movements, to work fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers, respectively.

What does this mean for the usefulness of the book?

• Will it sculpt your body as described in the blurb? Yes, this will indeed grow your muscles with a minimal expenditure of time
• Will it improve your body’s fat-burning metabolism? Yes, this will indeed turn your body into a fat-burning machine
• Will it improve your “complete fitness”? No, if you want to be an all-rounder athlete, you will still need HIIT, as otherwise anything taxing your under-worked fast-twitch muscle fibers will exhaust you quickly.

Bottom line: read this book if you want to build muscle efficiently, and make your body more efficient at burning fat. Best supplemented with at least some cardio, though!

Click here to check out Body by Science, and get re-sculpting yours!

Yes, yes, we know, unplug once in a while. But what else do this highly-qualified pair of neuroscientists have to offer?

Rather than being a book for the sake of being a book, with lots of fluff and the usual advice about single-tasking, the authors start with a reframe:

Neurologically speaking, the hit of dopamine we get when looking for information is the exact same as the hit of dopamine that we, a couple of hundred thousand years ago, got when looking for nuts and berries.

• When we don’t find them, we become stressed, and search more.
• When we do find them, we are encouraged and search more nearby, and to the other side of nearby, and near around, to find more.

But in the case of information (be it useful information or celebrity gossip or anything in between), the Internet means that’s always available now.

So, we jitter around like squirrels, hopping from one to the next to the next.

A strength of this book is where it goes from there. Specifically, what evidence-based practices will actually keep our squirrel-brain focused… and which are wishful thinking for anyone who lives in this century.

Bringing original research from their own labs, as well as studies taken from elsewhere, the authors present a science-based toolkit of genuinely useful resources for actual focus.

Bottom line: if you think you could really optimize your life if you could just get on track and stay on track, this is the book for you.

Click here to check out The Distracted Mind, and get yours to focus!