Stronger
The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking, richly informative exploration of the central role of muscle in human life and health, Stronger sounds an urgent call for each of us to recognize muscle as “the vital, inextricable and effective partner of the soul.”
“Even if you’ve never picked up a weight—Stronger is for you.” —Arnold Schwarzenegger
Stronger tells a story of breathtaking scope, from the battlefields of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad, where muscles enter the scene of world literature; to the all-but-forgotten Victorian-era gyms on both sides of the Atlantic, where women build strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights; to a retirement home in Boston, where a young doctor makes the astonishing discovery that frail ninety-year-olds can experience the same relative gains of strength and muscle as thirty-year-olds if they lift weights.
These surprising tales play out against a background of clashing worldviews, an age-old competition between athletic trainers and medical doctors to define our understanding and experience of muscle. In this conflict, muscle got typecast: Simplistic binaries of brain versus brawn created a persistent prejudice against muscle, and against weight training, the type of exercise that best builds muscular strength and power.
Stronger shows muscle and weight training in a whole new light. With warmth and humor, Michael Joseph Gross blends history and firsthand reporting in an inspiring narrative packed with practical information based on rigorous scientific studies from around the world. The research proves that weight training can help prevent or treat many chronic diseases and disabilities throughout the lifespan, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and depression. Stronger reveals how all of us, from elite powerlifters to people who have never played sports at all, can learn to lift weights in ways that yield life's ultimate prize: the ability to act upon the world in the ways that we wish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Gross (Starstruck) presents a vigorous examination of the history and science of strength training. Charting the evolution of muscle-building exercise, Gross discusses how such ancient physicians as Galen and Seneca warned that working out too much risked under-developing the mind through neglect, how Victorian strongwomen were celebrated for their beauty despite prevailing beliefs that women should be "fragile and submissive," and how Soviet researchers revolutionized powerlifting by developing "periodization" (a training method that organizes workouts into cycles of increasing intensity) in the 1950s. Gross also profiles powerlifter Charles Stocking, detailing how fellow lifters taught him proper form to minimize his risk of injury, how a painful mistake shortly before a competition led him to adopt periodization, and how continued training keeps him feeling healthy into his 40s. "Even into oldest age... every person has some power to change how time changes the body," Gross contends, describing how geriatrician Maria Fiatarone Singh's research provided high-intensity strength training to the elderly residents of a Boston rehabilitation center and found that the training was safe and effective at building muscle even for nonagenarians. Buoyed by enlightening history and a cerebral bent (Gross emphasizes throughout that muscle's capacity to "modulate our power to act upon the world" enables "independence, autonomy, and agency"), this delivers. Photos.
