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	APEX Muscle Building By Brian Johnston - Review

Review by Rahul Alvares

Apex was an unexpected read. Written by Brian Johnston this book has been written in a very uncommon style.

The book is basically divided into three parts dealing with psychology, training and nutrition.

Johnston has devoted a hearty section to psychology which alone takes up about 45 pages of this 140 page book. Motivation, anger, anxiety, stress, concentration, relaxation, imagery, confidence, client preference etc are the topics that Johnston has included in this section. I have noticed that many authors do devote a lot to psychology and goal setting but Johnston takes this subject to the extreme.

I don't dig a lot into psychology especially if it is in much detail. For me this section contained a little too much to digest and I pretty much skimmed over most of the topics lightly touching them only. I skipped a lot of the notes in this topic.

Also Johnston is one of the few fitness writers who have an exceptional control over the English language - the drawback to this is that the book has therefore a very dense feel to it. Complex sentences feature frequently in his writing making it a sometimes taxing effort while reading.

In the training section Johnston has again taken a different route altogether. Only a few topics are picked up but they are explained in much detail. Adaptation to exercise, strength versus hypertrophy, neural adaptation and why strength and muscle growth don't always correlate, muscle shocking, pre and post exercise training, massage etc. are the topics covered in the training section. Two topics dominate in this section - Chaos training and Blitz training. Blitz training as I have understood is essentially a few weeks of intense exercise and dieting for hitting a 'peak' condition prior to contesting/photo shoots.

Very little is actually given about programs and exercises. The training routine is divided between maintaining muscle with minimum exercise during off season and intense blitz training for the best appearance at competition time.

Johnston certainly knows his stuff and this becomes all the more obvious in his last section on nutrition. A seasoned fitness expert Johnston gives in detail the effects and required quantities of all the macro and micro nutrients, vitamins, minerals, hormones and supplements. Creatine, caffeine, ribose, sodium bicarbonate, antioxidants, cortisol, MSM, Ciwujua, glutamine, you name it; it's all explained in detail in the nutrition section. As expected the diet is cycled correspondingly with the blitz training and off season maintenance programs.

One of the topics I read with interest was about carbohydrate cycling prior to competition. Bodybuilders usually deplete their glycogen supply a few days before the competition and super compensate with carbohydrates just before the competition day to get that pumped effect which comes from the water holding tendency of carbohydrates.

The entire cycling of carbohydrates - depleting, and super compensation- has been explained in a most informative way.
The book, like I said, is written in a strange and very tangential sort of way. Who would benefit the most from this book I can't be sure. The book doesn't exactly target the hardcore bodybuilder and neither is it the best book for the general fitness trainee. It is more like an account of one man's training techniques and experience.

Apex is a detailed account of selective topics only; topics the author decided to include maybe because those are the ones he felt total mastery over; or maybe because those are the ones he thought to be the most important. Also Apex is written in a style that suggests Johnston is actually talking to a fitness trainer more than to a trainee.

Johnston's immense knowledge and grasp of the bodybuilding subject remains his biggest plus point. Though not complete in an 'encyclopedia' sort of a way Apex makes relatively interesting and informative reading all the same.

Click here to learn more about
"APEX Muscle Building"

Rating

Rating Scale		Very poor/avoidable
		O.K. read
		Good
		Excellent /must have
		Classic

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