Intelligent Fitness

The book overall is great and can be useful for any beginners and most intermediates or people that only limit themselves to bodybuilding and/or powerlifting style training. The books talks about training concepts and philosophies of Simon which I think a healthy philosophies to have. Most of the book is a combination of exercises, powerlifting, bodyweight, core, bodybuilding and endurance training wrapped all in one. He provides over 15 different celebrity's sample workouts, 11 Male Celebs (Mostly Full Body workouts with Upperbody Focus, any lower body exercises used are variations of squats, deadlifts and lunges), 1 Senior Male Celeb workout (mostly exercise for back/posture and shoulder mobility health) and 3 female workouts mostly muscular endurance and mobility work (a surprsing lack of DIRECT glute work, like glute bridges, hipthrust, kickbacks or firehydrants etc for a female...those exercises have been shown to be significantly more efficient for glutes compared to lunges, deadlifts and squats see Phd. Bret Contreras for glute stuff).The down side of this book is that it teaches you how to build a work out for a particular day but there is ZERO programming apart from "try to lift more or do more reps next time".Another downside is that the core template of the book the "5-2 method" is not really doable for most people since the vast majority of people use a commercial gym to exercise. This book is more tailored to those with Home Gyms (not many machines required though really) and for personal trainers. If you have a friend who is a personal trainer or you are personal trainer this book is actually quite useful since Simon gives a back story to everyone of his celebrity clients and provides a sample workout.If you wanted to do this work out in a commercial Gym I think you would have to break it into two parts instead of 5-2. Doing the 5-2 method as recommend in a gym would definetly get people pissed off and probably get yourself a conversation with management. Unless you started you workout at 5am or after 9pm. Anything in-between 6am and 9pm would probably be too busy to take 3 to 5 pieces of equipment for over 30 minutes...so Probably Exercise A and B in a 2 to 1 style and then do exercise CDE in a 3 to 1 style.I suppose you could just do different days of the week with different celebrity workouts which would have you covered for 15 workouts. You can assume if you are a guy and just cycled through all the male celebrity workouts over and over, ate alot of protein and did that for 2 years you would be in solid shape and wouldI would of also liked to see at least 1 week of sample workouts per celebrity. What was particularly disappointing is that there was only 1 Daniel Craig/James Bond Workout. Considering Simon worked with Daniel on all 5 movies apparently I would of liked to see at least 1 workout per movie. Particularly Casino Royale when Daniel made the most progress.Summary:Overall it's a great book and the workouts are definitely hard if you do them as prescribed.Not really any progression/programing (for over the course of weeks and months). I hope there is a second edition which I will purchase. I think 2 sample workouts per celebrity's MINIMUM would be better going up to 1 workout per movie. So lets say closer to 30-35 workouts in the next book. I would pay double for a more for a more detailed book with twice as much programming and/or workouts.If you are doing the female workouts definitely add some glute work in there too.

A lot of stories from workouts and training with stars like Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux and a lot of others

Ok. This book is very very light on actual workouts and technique and heavy on anecdotes about his experiences with actors. More specifically how he got Daniel Craig into shape. But even then the details are scant. There are definitely good techniques, pieces of advice, and things I picked up. However, I don’t feel any smarter about how to “reboot” my body. And I definitely don’t get the feeling that I’m any more intelligent about fitness. I’m not saying that as an expert, but a lot of what is in this book is in myriad other books, magazines, and Instagram posts.I think this is a great book if you’re looking to get a behind the scenes look on how one trainer interacts with clients. Not so much a book for anyone looking for detailed instruction on how to gain “intelligent fitness.”Again I’ll use some of the information, in the end I only paid 20 bucks for it, but it does feel like I paid 20 bucks for a very long mens health magazine article.

This book is a pretty transparent attempt for the author to brag about his interactions with celebrities. It is in no way a well thought-out exercise manual, but rather a collection of anecdotes that chronicle the workouts that his famous clients used, and the descriptions are pretty thin.

Lots of good philosophy and wise insight but if you expect a workout list, don’t bother. There are single day workouts for a few celebrities but no full workout plan or regimen. It’s just a sample of their workouts. It literally says “make your own”. The ladies workouts are all legs and the guys are just chest, back, biceps. Very disappointing.