will_sargent's review
2.0
GF got me this book several years back, partly as a joke. I used it for reference a couple of times at the gym, but gave up on it.
Let me explain why. This is a great book on the surface. Lots of pictures. Lots of interesting facts, and if you want an encyclopedic knowledge of what various exercises do to your body, it's incredibly useful.
However, from a user experience perspective, it's terrible. Here are the things that make it teeth-gratingly awful to use this book as an amateur:
1: the page numbers are wedged on the inner margin of the pages, near the spine.
2: the workout exercises do not have the page number to reference them.
3: the exercises are organized by the area of the body, and not alphabetically.
4. the exercises do not have callout flags on the outer margins of the pages.
5. the exercises have the page numbers in the index, but are NOT seperated from the rest of the book, so you're looking up about leg presses next to levator scapulae.
So, if you're doing any kind of workout, you have to know all the exercises cold or find out where they are (a task in itself), mark them with post its, then flip back to them as you're doing them. Finding each exercise is needlessly complicated and cumbersome.
However, makes a great coffee table book, and female friends like the pictures for some reason.
Let me explain why. This is a great book on the surface. Lots of pictures. Lots of interesting facts, and if you want an encyclopedic knowledge of what various exercises do to your body, it's incredibly useful.
However, from a user experience perspective, it's terrible. Here are the things that make it teeth-gratingly awful to use this book as an amateur:
1: the page numbers are wedged on the inner margin of the pages, near the spine.
2: the workout exercises do not have the page number to reference them.
3: the exercises are organized by the area of the body, and not alphabetically.
4. the exercises do not have callout flags on the outer margins of the pages.
5. the exercises have the page numbers in the index, but are NOT seperated from the rest of the book, so you're looking up about leg presses next to levator scapulae.
So, if you're doing any kind of workout, you have to know all the exercises cold or find out where they are (a task in itself), mark them with post its, then flip back to them as you're doing them. Finding each exercise is needlessly complicated and cumbersome.
However, makes a great coffee table book, and female friends like the pictures for some reason.
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