Michael Burnam-Fink's Reviews > The Poliquin Principles: Successful Methods for Strength and Mass Development

The thing about getting BUFF and SWOLE is that there is a lot of bad advice out there, particularly from people trying to sell you something. Charles Poliquin was one of the first scientific weight lifting coaches, and someone who worked with a number of notable athletes and bodybuilders.

On the plus side, the principles are pretty clear. Big multi-muscle movements, like the traditional squat, deadlift, and benchpress, are the foundations of strength, along with chinups and crunches on a prop which lets you start below horizontal. The core of strength development is time under muscular tension, which builds both muscle and nerve strength. But to get there, a program should mix high-weight low-rep sets and lower-weight high-rep sets. You should know what weight you can do a given movement at for 3, 8, and 15 reps, and do that. Varying grip and tempo is also key.

And the plus side is that while world-class performance requires a lot of dedication, most people can get very good results for reasonable time commitments, like about an hour in the gym three times a week, if they are focusing on good form and some systemic work.

Unfortunately, there is a lot that is a disorganized. Jargon, like eccentric and concentric movements, is not explained before being used in key tempo notation (varying speed of motion is another component of building strength). The chatty writing style and praise for/jabs at other figures in the bodybuilding makes for a better read, but "studies say" without footnotes or endnotes is disappointing. And my ebook copy is notably awful, just a blurry black and white scan of the print version which I was only able to read on my tablet.