Strength for Life by Shawn Phillips

The Details

• Title: Strength for Life - The Fitness Plan for the Best of Your Life
• Author: Shawn Phillips
• Price: $26.00
• Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2008

If you read exercise books, you've probably heard of Body for Life by Bill Phillips, one of the most popular 12-week strength training programs of the last decade. Now we have a new incarnation offered by his brother, Shawn Phillips. In Strength for Life, Shawn offers a new 12-week (and beyond) plan to "shape your body, sharpen your mind and energize your life." Shawn focuses on going beyond aesthetic goals, like weight loss, and honing in improving your quality of life.

How healthy are you? That's the first question Shawn asks, offering a glimpse into his philosophy: That there’s more to being healthy than just being free from disease. Shawn explains this in the first few chapters, making a case for why strength training is so important. He goes through the benefits, such as building strong bones and raising metabolism, explaining each with a depth and enthusiasm that will inspire even veteran exercisers. Where other books focus on losing weight, Shawn goes beyond aesthetics to deeper issues, suggesting that focusing on what you're doing and making the mind-body connection can lead to more effective and meaningful workouts. I liked that he also focused on healthy aging, stressing that exercise helps us avoid what we often think are the 'normal' parts of aging such as gaining weight and lacking energy. As Shawn says, he wants you to live “life at full strength” and the program is designed to do just that.

The Program

The program begins with a “full system reboot,” a 12-day program to get you ready for serious training. During this phase, you must:

• Eat a healthy diet of lean protein, fruits, veggies and whole grains while avoiding junk food
• Drink 8 or more glasses of water a day
• Get 7 to 8 hours of restful sleep each night
• Have a positive attitude
• Do the Base Camp Training Plan 3 days a week which includes 10 minutes of cardio followed by 3 sets of pushups, squats and crunches.

He stresses that you should follow these rules every day, otherwise you have to start all over, which may be tough for many readers.

After the base camp training program, your body is ready for the next 12-week phase, Transformation Training Camp.

The workouts in this phase are more challenging than base camp and include three strength sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with 20-minute high-intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio workouts and abs on Tuesdays and Fridays. The exercises, sets and reps will look familiar to anyone who's lifted weights before but, what Shawn excels at is finding a new twist on the same old thing.

In this case, it's his Focused Intensity Training System (FIT). Much like perceived exertion for cardio, FIT gives exercisers a level of intensity (from 1-5) to shoot for. For each exercise, you do 4 sets, starting at FIT Level 2 and ending at FIT Level 5, which is momentary muscle failure. Defining the intensity of each set is such a simple idea, I wish I'd thought of it. It gives exercisers, especially newbies, a better idea of when to add weight to exercises and when to back off.

The exercises include common upper and lower body moves like squats, lunges, bench presses, calf raises and triceps extensions.

Another stand-out of this book is that you don't just stop after the 12-week Transformation Camp. Shawn takes you beyond that, defining the Cornerstones of Fitness that allow you to continue building your own workout plan. With the Cornerstones of Fitness, strength, stamina and stretch, you determine a formula that guides you in setting up your future workouts.

It's a bit complicated to follow at first, involving a Formula (don't worry, you won't really have to do any math) of 4:2:1. You choose one primary Cornerstone for each season (4), while the other Cornerstones (2 and 1), are secondary. You spend the most time on your primary Cornerstone, half that time on your second Cornerstone, then half of that on the last Cornerstone. He explains how to structure your seasons (each is about 12 weeks long) and provides general guidelines for setting up an annual plan.

The remainder of the book includes a variety of helpful tools including a healthy food list, a nutrition tracker and pictures and descriptions of all the exercises included in the workouts.

The programs Shawn offers in this book aren't magical. The exercises are no different than what anyone would do in a typical weight training program and the schedule you follow looks much like any traditional weight training schedule. What makes this book worth reading, however, is Shawn's attention to the one thing most exercisers neglect in their race for getting the perfect body: The mind. He pays special attention to:

• Getting ready for your workouts. Most of us jump into a program without taking the time to prepare our minds and bodies. His Base Camp Program gives you time to get into the best condition you can, rather than starting off stressed and tired, as many of us do.
• Getting your mind in the right place so that you strive for health and strength.
• Setting meaningful goals so you aren't slogging through boring workouts, but actually working for something.
• Focusing on what you're doing to get the most out of each workout.
• Changing your perspective on eating so that you're no longer at the mercy of cravings, but strengthening your awareness of food as a source of life fuel.

Shawn's expertise and enthusiasm comes through in every chapter, offering insight that will be especially meaningful for people who struggle to exercise consistently. Following the workout plan and nutritional guidance will definitely lead to changes in your body, but the biggest changes will happen in your mind.