None
3 stars
I had to go through this book twice and more rereads will be needed. I went in expecting a Enter The Kettlebell type book. Which in hindsight wasn't an appropriate approach. First off, Dan isn't Pavel. Second, I realized after starting that this isn't aimed at the guy lifting kettlebells in his living room. It is aimed at someone who coaches others. So don't read this book expecting Dan's version of ETK.
There isn't really a "DO THIS" program in here like I was expecting. It is much more of a "these are some principles you should use to program things for yourself. But some of the programming logic doesn't make sense to me still. For instance in one section it says "Push, Pull, and Squat reps must be the exact same every week". Then proceeds to give an example with the push pull and squat all with different numbers …
I had to go through this book twice and more rereads will be needed. I went in expecting a Enter The Kettlebell type book. Which in hindsight wasn't an appropriate approach. First off, Dan isn't Pavel. Second, I realized after starting that this isn't aimed at the guy lifting kettlebells in his living room. It is aimed at someone who coaches others. So don't read this book expecting Dan's version of ETK.
There isn't really a "DO THIS" program in here like I was expecting. It is much more of a "these are some principles you should use to program things for yourself. But some of the programming logic doesn't make sense to me still. For instance in one section it says "Push, Pull, and Squat reps must be the exact same every week". Then proceeds to give an example with the push pull and squat all with different numbers of reps. So I kinda get that he is saying "should be kinda the same", but it is confusing wording and it leaves me not sure what I should be taking at face value and what I shouldn't be. The Classical Conditioning template is probably the closest thing to a "do this" style program. There are also a couple variations on the original PM from ETK.
But at that point it shifts authors abruptly and reads kind very oddly. Suddenly Dan is referring to himself in the third person (he isn't, I just missed the author change). Kind of like the book was done, but there was a word quota so the publisher copy pasted a blog post in to fill the gap. But that seems to be pretty standard practice for some of the later DragonDoor works, so I don't fault the author.
All in all I left the book knowing a few principles about program design, but am still struggling to bridge the gap of putting these principles into an actual program that isn't just someone else's slightly tweaked. I suspect it is something that you figure out the more you do it. I wish that there was some additional dumbing down for people like me.
In conclusion, it is an enjoyable read with good information. Unfortunately it was tainted by my own expectations of what I wanted from this book. Dan is as always an enjoyable author to read, but the book does get pretty choppy but I'm fairly sure it is an editor issue rather than an author issue.