Frederic DelavierStrength Training Anatomy

This is a fantastic book that I was first introduced to years ago when my brother bought me a copy—and I recently purchased another one to keep in my home gym. The illustrations are incredibly detailed and give you a clear understanding of how each exercise impacts your body. It’s like having an X-ray view of your workout. The added stretches and training tips in this edition are a great bonus. Highly recommended for anyone serious about their physical training or wanting to deepen their understanding of exercise anatomy.

I owned the first edition of Strength Training Anatomy (blue cover) for nearly 15 years and I've been recommending this book to my clients for that long as well. I decided to pick up the new 3rd edition (red cover) to update my library and also to write this review.This book's concept and contents have been imitated many times, but Delavier's is the original and the best.In a nutshell, Strength Training Anatomy is a book of expertly drawn illustrations of the human body (over 600) performing weight training exercises. The primary muscles being worked are colored in red and clearly labeled. The bones, muscle fibers and muscular attachments are also beautifully illustrated.The book is divided into seven sections: Arms, Shoulders, Chest, Back, Legs, Buttocks and Abdomen. No space is wasted with introductions - the book jumps right into arms in the opening pages. A page is devoted to each exercise, and a small amount of text accompanies each illustration, explaining proper form and giving additional tips or precautions. Sidebars show exercise variations, start and finish positions and additional details (such as deep muscle anatomy with the exact muscle tendon insertions on the bone).The length is 192 pages, so it's not overwhelming - it's very digestible, yet it's also very thorough in terms of the number of exercises covered. All the major and important barbell and dumbbell exercises are included. In addition, you'll learn a variety of cable exercises and a handful of common and useful machine exercises.I don't think there's any reader from any demographic or experience level that won't benefit from owning this book. It will be appreciated by all ages and by men and women, especially since both male and female models are used in the illustrations. For beginners, this could be a training instruction "bible" for learning how to do the exercises properly and understanding exactly what muscles are working.Some people might suggest this book is only suited for the beginner, but I think advanced trainees and even fitness professionals will find this book valuable as a reference guide and may even want to keep it on their shelf within arms reach.This material is not just for bodybuilders, but as a bodybuilder myself, I think there is another potential benefit of this book that I haven't seen anyone else mention. Bodybuilders need to develop the ability to visualize muscle actions and learn how to enhance their mind to muscle connection. Studying the drawings and looking at the muscles engaged, the direction of the fibers and where they insert and attach could be a great tool to help with these mental skills.As for the 3rd edition, there is new material in this update, including much more content (it's longer, with more exercises). There are also new sections on stretching and avoiding common injuries.The publisher, Human Kinetics consistently puts out some great titles, and this is among the best of them. The book quality is excellent, including the cover, binding, paper, and again, the illustrations on every page are fantastic. The author is clearly a skilled artist who also has a medical-level understanding of the human body.Potential readers should know before buying, that this book does not contain workout programs - it focuses solely on individual exercise instruction and exercise anatomy. That doesn't detract from the value in my opinion, it actually helps keeps this volume concise and focused on one thing: strength training exercises and anatomy.On that note, again, this is not a text-heavy book and while you do get an explanation and illustration of each exercise, you don't getin-depth written details on biomechanics and muscle actions. You're mainly getting exercise instruction and muscle anatomy lessons.Also, this IS an anatomy book, so if looking at body parts and human anatomy bothers you, then you might want to take a pass. (All body parts are depicted, in places).In summary, this book deserves its 5-star ratings, and its sales and longevity in the fitness book market are not surprising.

This is one of my favorite books ever, coming from someone who does endless research on specific body parts and muscles that are trained with different exercises and variations. This is such an amazing job on describing and visually showing each exercise as well as warnings for possible injuries, and ways to stretch.

I have been struggling with learning my anatomy for the Mblex exam and this just put the icing on the cake.Since I’m into fitness and staying healthy I enjoy working out different body parts.This is the book to go to it has a picture and description for every muscle I suggest purchasing this before you buy any other anatomy book I’ve made about 10 purchases and none of them helped .But this this book is Gold 🙏🏾

This is a great book if you're looking to brush up on your anatomy and learn what exercises work which muscle groups. The book features an image of the body for each exercise showing which muscle groups are worked. The descriptions are fairly short yet effective, there are images showing the movement, and comments on how different grips affect how the muscles are worked. There are also sections on stretching, injury prevention, and how a person's morphology affects how they lift weights. Overall the information is very good.There are a couple areas where the book falls a little short, which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. First, there are several exercises in the book which are very similar that work the same muscle groups that don't explain any difference between the exercise. It's good to know what muscle groups the exercises work but it would be better to know why I would choose one exercise over the other. The second thing was that the book seemed to try to appeal to too large of an audience (on one page mentioning something relating to osteoporosis, on the next something that only a serious bodybuilder would care about) and perhaps falling a little short in addressing each audience fully. Lastly, the abdominal section is filled with variations of crunches and leg raises, and while these do work the abdominal muscles they seem like an under-representation of the many varieties of exercises which can be done to work the abdominals.The book is a worthwhile purchase and other than the flaws mentioned above is a very solid book which provides a great amount of information about anatomy as it applies to strength training.