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Fitness Illustrated

Your Personalized Guide to Shaping Up, Staying Fit, and Eating Right
Fitness Illustrated: Your Personalized Guide to Shaping Up, Staying Fit, and Eating Right. Human Kinetics. Oct. 2010. c.328p. illus. ISBN 9780736081580. pap. $21.95. HEALTH
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If one were to judge by the title and cover art, Sharkey's (Fitness & Health) latest book might be one of those fitness tracts heavy on anatomical illustrations, of which Pat Manocchia's Anatomy of Exercise is a good example. Though it does include a few such illustrations, this is rather more a narrative-driven guide to the concepts behind aerobic and muscular fitness, nutrition and weight control, and vitality and longevity, teeming with large color photographs, case studies, exercise tips, health assessments, training programs, and annotated illustrations of everything from the ideal running shoe to the characteristics of slow-twitch vs. fast-twitch fibers. A four-page "Energy Expenditure Chart" estimating the number of calories burned per minute for every imaginable activity rounds out the work.
VERDICT Beginners of all ages and fitness levels are sure to appreciate this shallow-end-of-the-pool approach to improving one's health, whose gentle but comprehensive guidance and instruction will equip them to venture, at their own pace, into the deep end.
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