Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week [Hardcover]

For many years, I have been looking for an exercise system to which I would stick and which would be useful. Al Sears's PACE seemed very promising, but after a while my heart began to revolt seriously, so I thought I'd better quit it.

This book makes an appealing claim that exercise doesn't have to be unpleasant and taxing in order to be effective. Unfortunately, Mr. Morehouse spends way too much space on busting exercise myths and telling what a great guy he is and how much he has helped people. You need a lot of patience to finally get to the part of the book that contains information.

What mostly rubbed me the wrong way, though, was the author's definition of fitness. According to Mr. Morehouse, you are fit enough if you are able to walk 3 miles. If you can't walk 3 miles, you need to do something about it. I'm not joking - that's what this book actually says. I think you will understand that I found such a "fitness" goal difficult to relate to.

Mr. Morehouse's exercise system contains exercises you probably know already. They are combined in a new way that is supposed to be the best. Maybe it is, but it didn't seem nothing special to me. Actually, the reason why it wasn't appealing was because it wasn't much different from what I had already done a lot.

In addition to that exercise system, Mr. Morehouse introduces a very interesting method for losing weight. I used it to lose about 10% of my weight without much trouble. Only then did I realise that I looked just as fat as before. Mr. Morehouse does recognise in principle that weight loss and fat loss are two different things, but he seems to assume that weight loss is automatically accompanied by fat loss, which didn't seem to be happening to me.

A few minor flaws:
1. According to Mr. Morehouse, many people can get rid of their potbellies in seconds by just straining their stomach muscles. Well, I know very well that my potbelly is mostly untrained muscle, not fat, but I can't just walk around for hours every day keeping my muscles strained. That's absurd.
2. Mr. Morehouse suggests that you use exercise opportunities that every-day life offers, for instance, by walking up the stairs rather than take the elevator. I agree completely with that. Unfortunately, Mr. Morehouse takes it too far by suggesting that you get a car that doesn't have power steering, because it allows you to exercise your arm muscles whenever you turn the steering wheel. Such advice is highly irresponsible. In traffic, people's lives might depend on your ability to perform a maneuver very quickly. That's no time to be exercising.
3. I just hate it when the table of contents in hidden between the preface and the first chapter.

My general advice on fitness or fat loss books is this: before you read them, read "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It tells you the number one reason why most diet and exercise fails. Amazingly, most so-called experts seem to have never heard about it. (Mr. Morehouse is excused, though, because this book is really old.)

My dad lent me this book in 1992 when i was 16 years old and bemoaning my lack of physical fitness. Whilst never fat i was the the archetypal nerdy weakling, couldn't manage one push-up and on school sports day the only kids i could outrun were the ones who were clinically obese. At the time i understood nothing about fitness, physiology or nutrition and generally felt so bad after performing exercise that i tried to avoid it whenever possible.

For someone who knew nothing at the time the book was very informative about the workings of the body (in some of its information it is now a bit dated) and made the very profound and obvious point, which had previously never really occured to me, that one minute of exercise a day is better than 24 hours of being sat on your arse. The book laid out a simple fitness regime whereby a simple 10 mins routine (1 min of stetching, 4 mins of strength work and 5 mins of aerobic work) is done 3 times a week. It also emphasised that an individual should start off doing what they are capable of and then move on from there gradually. I followed the plan closely and after 6 months had gone from being unable to do one push up to doing twenty (not amazing i know, but a huge improvement) and was able to finish 28th out of 120 in a 4 mile inter-form school cross-country race (again not amazing, but great for a person who a year earlier wouldn't have finished the race).

From that point on i had the fitness bug and have exercised in one form or another almost every day, a lot of it pretty intensly. I can now bench press my own bodyweight and have a 75 minute half-marathon to my name. Thus the programme outlined in this book now seems pretty tame by comparison. However, the point is that i wouldn't have achieved any of this had this book not started me on the path to getting fit by showing how easy it can be to make improvements if you don't try to do too much too soon and stick to a simple schedule for a sustained period of time.

Highly recommended for the novice.

I bought this book back in the 80s. I was over 17 stone and very unfit. I was living in Hong Kong at the time. I moved to the New Territories, to a house at the top of a hill and I had to walk up every night because the buses didn't go up there. On the first night it took me half an hour to get to the top and I thought my lungs were going to burst. I decided to get fit and bought this book.

The exercises are easy to do and they help you to build strength and endurance. You are required to do ten minutes a day, three days a week. After ten minutes, you are tired and sweaty. There is no wasted time. Actually, it is more likely to be twelve or thirteen minutes, taking into account moving from one exercise to another. The whole regime takes 24 weeks, three lots of eight weeks. The first eight weeks gets you fit enough to take on the second eight weeks, which builds you up for the third eight weeks. After that, it's all about maintaining fitness and weight.

Over the 24 weeks, I lost one pound a week in weight, which is what the book recommends. Any more than that makes it more likely that you will put it all back on again at some time. I got down to fifteen and a half stone and after a while I was running up the hill to get home. (One of the things I found with doing the exercises was that I was fit enough to do everything vigorously. I ran for the bus. I ran to the shops. I took steps two at a time when going upstairs. When you get started, you find that you do a lot more exercise than just what is in the book). I was very, very fit. (Fifteen and a half stone might sound heavy but I'm six foot six inches tall, so it was quite slim). Unfortunately, I sustained injuries in my knee and ankle, which have troubled me ever since and I cannot do that kind of exercise any more. So now I'm big and fat again. Sigh.

I found the advice in the book very useful and I recommend it. Just make sure you don't damage any tendons.