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The
Best Abdominal Exercises You've
Never Heard Of
By Nick Nilsson - Review
Review by Rahul Alvares
One thing about Nick
Nilsson's books is that you know they come with a guarantee card!
No matter how advanced a trainee or how much of a 'know it all'
you consider yourself, I'll bet a white elephant when backing
my opinion that Nick knows something more - which fortunately
he is willing to share.
In the case of "The
Best Ab Exercises," it is not only a lot more, it is downright
shocking. Till about a month ago, Nick had been very quiet for
a while; I received no mails from him from over two months and
I deduced from this lack of correspondence that he had altogether
disappeared from the face of the earth. Then suddenly one day
I get a mail from him and he say's 'I've got an ab book done,
I'd like to know what you think.'
If you've read Nick's
first book "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of"
then you've probably realized that Nick holds some expertise in
ab training. "The Best Exercises" hold some fantastic
ab exercises, and I sort of expected his new ab book to be pretty
good.
The book is not good.
It's fantastic! There are fifty five exercises in there [editors
note: the latest update brings this to 77 exercises] (for
the upper abs, the intercostals and obliques, the lower abs and
exercises that work everything at once!) and each and every one
of them is brand new. As a matter of fact, I'll bet that white
elephant again that you haven't ever found a single one of them
elsewhere. You know why? Because they've been created completely
new. They've been made from scratch.
Most of the exercises
are contorted poses and I've been wondering where the inspiration
or the ideas for the structure of the exercises came from. I've
come up with two hypotheses.
I believe Nick might
have spent those quiet months locked away in a torture chamber.
His crime was definitely hideous for he was tortured by his captors;
I have visions of lavish quantities of sulphuric acid being poured
onto his bare chest and abdomen while his arms and legs were tied
in odd positions and at very peculiar angles to his body.
As he twisted and writhed
in pain he might have learnt new methods for contracting and stressing
the abdominal area. He escaped a little over a month ago and,
after suffering sleepless nights and nightmares bolting upright
in the middle of the night clutching his abdomen while cold beads
of sweat rolled down his forehead, he decided to compile this
book to get the incubus out of his system. Plausible?
My second guess is
that Nick is just plain crazy. He spends his entire life in the
gym in an 'Einstein like daze' three fingers cupping his chin
while the index finger taps his cheek slowly as he wonders 'What
new whacko piece of freaky movement can I create that I will call
an exercise?
Yes, the exercises
are definitely freaky. In fact Nick himself warns the reader at
the beginning that people might laugh at the trainee when he/she
tries out these new exercises. Nick is definitely right on this
one. I guarantee you people will be cracking up and clutching
their sides as you go through the Best Abs routines. Talk about
giving your buddies an ab workout as well!
"The Best Ab Exercises"
includes video demonstrations for twenty four exercises [editors
note: now 37] . I was laughing watching some of them.
When you see Nick perform a 'Wall Walker Sissy Squat' or a 'Swiss
Ball Rollup' you just wanna say 'Hell Nick just stop with the
crazy poses!'
But the Ab exercises
are only funny to look at. They are cruel when executed. I tried
a few of my exercises and felt pain in muscles I never knew I
had! 'Deadly' and 'lethal' are the words that best describe the
ab exercises. "The Best Ab Exercises" is a name too
tame for this book. I'd have titled it "The Ab Revolution."
What I also like about
Nick's book is that it is very practical. You can tell he's worked
on each on every exercise because he's included notes on common
errors, tips and tricks, and photographs of himself performing
the exercises in addition to detailed descriptions for every one
of them.
Almost every one of
the exercises includes a few variations considering individual
needs and equipments constraints. Add the variations to the exercises
and the total number of exercises in this book doubles!
The book includes about
ten sample routines (Waist minimizer, core strength workouts,
no equipment workouts, six-pack workouts, ab definition workouts,
explosive core strength workouts, combat sports workouts, lower
ab workouts, swissball workouts and serratus builders) which are
also very good.
Drawbacks...some of
the exercises require positioning of cables in the gym at odd
angles; take for example the Nilsson crunches and the See-Saw
crunches. Both these exercises require one cable pulled from the
down end of a cross over machine and the other from the top end
on the opposite side of the same machine. Positioning of the cables
so that they provide optimum tension and free movement might be
a little tricky.
Hell, in my gym the
pin holder of the machine slides to the outside of the plates
even if I try a simple cross over while working my chest. I bet
that's two exercises I won't manage to perform in my gym!
My gym ain't got a
Swiss ball either. So there go another couple of exercises involving
the Swiss ball straight out the window.
But really I'm just
complaining. These are really the drawbacks of my gym not the
ab book!
"The Best Ab Exercises"
meanwhile goes into my collection of classics. It is definitely
a collector's item. It is an absolute "must have".
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