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This log is made to assist a person on the power factor program. It has the workout routines ( A and B) plus a host of specialized programs. In addition it has charts you can fill out to mark your progress. It also has an overview of power factor training that is nearly as informative as the books you can buy on the subject. From the point of view of inclusiveness the manual succeeds; however, from the point of view of usefullness it fails.
The manual has blocks that are too small to write in, and the charts are very small. The book needs to by 81/2 by 11 to write in well, or at least much larger than it is now. Sections could also be added for warm up, stretching and cool down as the authors recommend these need to be included in every workout routine.
My largest complaint is in the amount of pages devoted to the normal power factor program. After all the other material is considered the area for the normal power factor training routines A and B comprise about 1/3 of the book. Maybe less. The specialization routines take up a lot more of the book. Why include the specialized routines in this manual?
Thus the manual does not have enough space to write in easily, does not have enough pages for the normal power factor workouts, includes too many pages for the specialized routines, and does not include fundimental information in the pages used for the workouts.
All in all a substandard effort.
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The emphasis is on explaining how we waste energy through our daily on-the-grid lives and what doing so costs in "real" terms of "dead dinosaurs" turned crude oil deposits. If I'm buying this book then it's assumed I already have some concern for the environment and my energy usage, that I already want to "get off the oil" addiction my nation has. Why propound it over and over and over in this book. Why preach environmentalism in a book bought by environmentalists? Why not give them the info they need and the courage to do it through depicting others who've done it already?
There are some stories of how others have gotten off the grid but they are short and don't really go into any of the problems one may encounter or how they can be overcome.
A disappointing book that so easily could have been much much better.
Independent living is, in short, a great opportunity for anyone compulsive about details, control, and doing it yourself. It is an opportunity to be a settler, and regain some independence, but with the benefit of today's technology.
It would be easy to dismiss the new pioneers as hippies. But at this point in our history, with mounting evidence about the dangers of relying on oil, the subject of renewable energy has become much more conventional. Far from Luddites, these people retain their high-tech habits and possessions, such as computers, TVs, stereos, cars, and air conditioners. But because they produce their own power, they are much more careful with it. Many of them are engineers. Nearly all of them have engineer's habits in their endless tinkering and tweaking, their love of gadgetry, and their search for the next technological improvement. I particularly enjoyed the brief interviews with some of the movement's leading lights: Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute; Karen and Richard Perez, the publishers of Home Power Magazine; and Paul Gipe, an owner of wind farms.
As Russell Kirk wrote, nothing is more conservative than conservation, so there is much here that ought to warm the conservative heart: family, localism, community, smallness, decentralization, independence, self-reliance, responsibility, resourcefulness, craftsmanship, and stewardship. The sort of lives that these people live are much more in tune with the local, decentralized United States outlined in the Constitution and The Federalist, the sort of country which existed before the Wilsonian fascism of 1914. By contrast, it was Marx who used the phrase "the idiocy of rural life" and who praised the breakup of traditional communities. The bureaucratic, multinational corporations of our time are much more socialistic in outlook and behavior, contemptuous of roots and continuity, dependent on government money, federal favors, and centralization of power.
This was my first venture into the field of independent home-building, and I had only a few reservations: some predictable left-wing cliches and cheerleading, lapses in organization, blurring of Potts' interviews with his own comments, and a loss of focus perhaps due to the ambitious attempt to write a "whole guide" to home-building rather than a modest introduction to a vast subject. When the book remains modest, it succeeds. It should fire up the pioneers among us.
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They key to getting any long-term value out of Maxwell's books is to highlight the quotes you love and integrate them into your daily life. Practice what you read essentially. Hope this helps everyone
But I have two main problems with this book:
(1)First, this really is just a general fitness routine book that could be applied to almost any sport, or if you were just interested in general fitness, no sport at all. Yes, the book does approach the exercises from a golfer's perspective, but a perspective is all. None of the weight training exercises or stretches are any different from what you would read in any other general fitness book, and you shouldn't be performing them any other way lest you hurt yourself. As far as the eating tips, if the saturation of news reports in the last decade on eating a low-fat, high-fiber diet haven't convinced you to eat well, then one chapter in this book ain't gonna do it either.
(2)I think the premise of the book and specifically the book title is just wrong. It has been shown through application and studies (see my review of The Physics of Golf on this site) that distance off the tee is not affected that much by moderate amounts of muscle gain, especially the amount that one could get by lifting. Golf is a game of fluidity and vectors, not solely raw power. Some of the longest hitters on the tour now (2003) are some of the skinny young kids on the tour. I agree with the author that stretching is key, but you don't need this book for that (see my review of Bob Anderson's "Stretching").
I'm confident most people already know the basics of a good golf fitness regimen: eat healthfully, jog 3 times a week and stretch all parts of your body well before and after a round or hitting the driving range.