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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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