hey, mates
im going to post a review of coach sommers book "building the gymnastic body". the review will be from my point of view, which is a male person, mid-twenties, rather light-weight, played around with the info of coach sommers articles (integrated front lever progressions on pullup bar into my routine to great effect), dabbled a bit in a lot of things, and, most of all: a geek of many interests.
coach christopher sommer - building the gymnastic body
softcover bound, 196 pages
content:
the book sets out to teach the reader about what is considered basic strength in gymnastics terms, as well as show how to reach this level.
the book is written in a very clean way, its easy to understand and there is no missionary self-praise and you-can-do-it marketing blabber (which i found to be incredibly enerving in e.g. pavels books). while its most likely audience is not very versed in gymnastics methods and terms, the reader isnt patronized - the book is refreshingly down-to-earth in tone, and a good mix of professional description and stories/anecdotes from the authors experience.
the structure is logical and easy to follow: an introduction, three chapters of priming information, one chapter of key static positions, five chapters of exercises which are divided by body part and function (upper body pressing, upper body pulling, etcetera...), a chapter on program design and a set of appendices, which are mainly real-life stories to illustrate what kind of goals can be reached with the strength training of coach sommers book. a short keyword index and a note of special thanks rounds the book off. at no point is the reader lost and i didnt experience a moment of lecture where i felt like i lacked knowledge to understand the point.
which leads me to the meat and bones part of the book: decribing exercises from a gymnastics schedule that enable the reader to pull off the apparently superhuman feats illustrated by some boys of coach sommers gymnastics team or follow up with advanced exercises that will be covered in a later book.
exercise selection is very diverse, ranging across several apparatusses, and always in progression form plus difficulty rating. this means that there are easy entry versions, several in-between versions that become gradually harder, up to the real thing. from my experience with the concept of progressions, there are heavy advantages as one stays in basically the same pattern than the final full-difficulty exercise will use. proprioception, stability and deep understanding of the exercise will be developed alongside the necessary strength. average joes as well as not-so-average joes will find challenging and engaging exercises to keep them entertained for years.
points of critique:
-exercises and holds could be cross-referenced - looking up a certain hold and being referenced to a set of exercises whose practise furthers attainment of the hold would be absolutely great.
-the section on program design could use a little more precise wording and the occasional detail in description. for example, pavels PTTP program is mentioned - but described in a way that i would have had difficulty understanding it had i not read pavels book.
layout/design:
while the content of the book is absolutely great and fresh, the same can not be said about its layout. (this is where a bit of the "many interests" comes in)
while it is very clean and uncluttered, and absolutely not in the way of the information it wants to convey, it pales in comparison to the pretty cover and looks a bit like a direct printout of a microsoft word document. the typesetting is a bit chaotic (in badly-set palatino, from my guess, in a wild variety of sizes, weights and decorations and copperplate gothic bold - the typeface of the title isnt seen anywhere inside the book), picture placement, dimension and format is inconsistent and pages often break at bad places to leave a subheader and the first text paragraph at the bottom of one page and start the next page with a row of photos - in some cases, this makes browsing for a specific exercise description very hard. this is furthered by the fact that the good structure of the text is not embedded in the page layout: the header reads "building the gymnastic body" and lists a page number, while the footer lists the homepage address, which comes across a little redundant.
points of critique:
-simplify the use of type: the slim sans-serif of the book title is not found anywhere inside the book, the text is set in palatino (a serifed neohumanist typeface) and some slogans as well as header and footer are set in copperplate gothic bold (a heavy stub-serifed typeface with classical sans-serif shapes). palatino is used in several heights, regular weight and bold, underlined AND inline capitals for chapter starts.
boiling this down to a smaller palette, getting rid of bold type (most text typefaces will look much better without it, especially typefaces meant to replicate early designs, like the neohumanist palatino) and the other gimmicks will improve the look a lot.
-the page layout could use a little tweaking: right now, it results in very long lines: from my quick survey, they average slightly above 75 characters per line - 66 characters per line is considered a good standard for legibility. image formats, sizes and placement rules should be unified for a more consistent look throughout the book.
-show chapter and subhead name on each page to make quick browsing for a specific exercise easier.
-take care of where pages break!
i want to say that this last rambling on design doesnt mean i want to deride the book - it just hurts me badly to see a great and superbly useful book, one that should see circulation beyond a niche interest group, leave so much potential untapped. maybe there was no time to refine the looks, or simply no attention was paid to design in the process of making this book, but looking good will increase legibility and usefulness of the book (see the mass of post-it-indices in the thread on spiral-binding the book - these shouldnt be needed) AND will make it look better on the shelf, not only to those trained in or interested in the art of good layout. thats why i pointed those issues out - because they arent typical focal points of critique and because a few simple things can be done to drastically improve the overall look & feel.
the book is absolutely worth picking up, i really want to point that out. its worth each single dollar, and from the outside, it also looks worth each single dollar.
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