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Spring Into Fitness With 7 New Books

Spring has sprung (despite those lingering snowbanks), and you may find that your New Year’s goals have become a distant memory.

As you shed the sweaters and sweatpants, you might be looking for a little fitness inspiration, and we’ve got some new fitnes books to get you in the right mindset and shake up your workout routine.

fitness-books

7 New Fitness Books

1. Mind Your Body, by Joel Harper (HarperOne, $27.99; out now). Joel Harper, who is Dr. Mehmet’s Oz’s personal trainer, offers up a whole-body approach to fitness by exploring the connections between meals, moves and mindset. The book focuses on 10 core concepts needed to get lasting results: shut out noise, maximize inner motivation, cultivate grit, set specific intentions, visualize success, eliminate excessive choices, extinguish escape routes, yield to traffic, believe it — become it and jump for joy. In addition to loads of workout moves and plans, the book also features an eating plan with recipes, and a mental edge plan to get and stay in the right frame of mind.

2. LeBootCamp Diet, by Valerie Orsoni (Berkley, $26.95 out April 14). Valerie Orsoni is a celebrity fitness coach, cancer survivor and and healthy living entrepreneur. Her latest book, quelle popular in France, spells out her balanced, patient approach to making change permanent. Why patient? She tells readers to embrace those weight-loss plateaus, which she renames “benchmarks.” “When our body is off balance, it resists weight loss. It is its way of saying ‘Stop, I need to fix a few things here,’” she says. “Give your body time to adjust. When all is back in balance, your pounds will start dropping again.” Orsoni is a big fan of switching up your fitness routine when first kicking off your weight-loss plan. Once you find workouts you really love, stick with those for the long run, she says.

3. The 30-Second Body, by Adam Rosante (Zink Inc., $17; out now). Eat clean, train dirty, live hard — that’s Adam Rosante’s three-part roadmap to success. The “regular guy” fitness, nutrition and wellness coach is here to get you off the treadmill and out of the overpriced spinning class and simplify your fitness routine using just your own body resistance. The book is full of short but intense workouts, some yoga moves for recovery, and super simple eating advice. He’s not an adherent of calorie counting and he’s not afraid of carbs — but it’s the right carbs, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains.

4. The Women’s Health Little Book of Exercises, by Adam Campbell (Rodale Books, $17.99; out now). This book is so cute and compact you could easily tuck it into your duffel bag and follow along at the gym. Adam Campbell, contributing editor for Women’s Health magazine, has put together 240 pages of workouts that you can do with dumbbells, barbells, resistance bands, stability balls, gym equipment or simply your own body weight. There are loads of color photos that show you exactly how to do the moves, and you can choose from workouts for a warm-up, total-body, chest, back, shoulders, arms, quads and calves, glutes and hamstrings, and core. This book doesn’t get into diet — it’s all workouts. (There’s also a Men’s Health Little Book of Exercises for the dudes.)

5. Ultimate Booty Workouts, by Tamara Grand (Ulysses Press, $14.95; out now). Tamara Grand is a Canadian personal trainer with a PhD in biology who is passionate about helping women in their 40s and 50s feel and look their best. Grand, the author of the Fitknit Chick blog, outlines a comprehensive 12-week workout plan to get your backside in shape, and it’s not just to look good in skinny jeans. Glute training helped ease her lower-back pain and she wants the world to know that a better butt can help improve posture, reduce back, hip and knee pain, reduce abdominal “pooch” and can increase your metabolism because those glute muscles are large and in charge (of a lot of calorie burning).

6. Push, Pull, Swing, by Myatt Murphy (Rodale Books, $26.99; out now). Myatt Murphy, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, has designed a well-balanced guidebook that uses dumbbells, kettlebells and sandbags to work not only your upper body but your entire body. Pushing, pulling and swinging weights engage all your muscles and guarantees you won’t have imbalances. There’s a chapter devoted to each tool, as well as chapters on nutrition, anatomy, and even a how-to on how to make your own sandbags. There are lots of color photos that illustrate the moves and workouts with pointers on why to do the moves and how to perfect your technique.

7. The Lean Muscle Diet, by Lou Schuler and Alan Aragon (Rodale Books, $27.99; out now). Although the word “diet” is in the title of the book, authors Lou Schuler and Alan Aragon want to stress that this is not a diet book. Aragon, who is known as a voice of reason in the diet guru-saturated world of the internet, has designed a plan that complements the total-body training program outlined in the book. The goal? You eat the right amount of food for the body you want, and your workouts will shape that body. Though the book is a little “dude specific,” the advice in it is valuable for anyone who wants to optimize their eating and workout plan.

What’s on your fitness reading list for this spring? Gail

FTC disclosure: We often receive products from companies to review. All thoughts and opinions are always entirely our own. Unless otherwise stated, we have received no compensation for our review and the content is purely editorial. Affiliate links may be included. If you purchase something through one of those links we may receive a small commission. Thanks for your support!

Comments

18 Comments
  1. Cassie says:

    Great books! I want to read the Blogilates’ Hot Body Year Round book when I receive it!

  2. Tamara says:

    Gail thanks so much for including my book in your round-up!
    Lots of great company here.

  3. Carolyn says:

    I keep #4 in my gym bag!

  4. Danny says:

    Hi Gail,

    Thanks for sharing this list. I love Mind Your Body. It’s not your typical fitness book. What I love most about this book is that Joel Harper has emphasized the importance of focusing on both the body and mind in order for a fitness plan to work. This book is almost perfect. Perhaps, it could have been the best if there have been photos of the recipes.

    Thanks,
    Danny

  5. Annie says:

    Nice list of fitness book. I own “The Women’s Health Little Book of Exercises”. next #1 will be in my reading list.

  6. Jenny says:

    Hi,

    I am about to finish The 30-Second Body, by Adam Rosante and I really enjoyed reading it.
    You really made my life a bit easier by featuring these 7 amazing book. Good to see you have mentioned “The 30-Second Body” which I have already read. Going to order 2 books from the 7 books you have mentioned here.

    Regards
    Jenny

  7. Victoria says:

    Hi Gail,

    Thank you for sharing this list. All 7 are interesting but I am more curious about the “The Lean Muscle Diet”.

  8. Aristide says:

    The “The Lean Muscle Diet” is the best on my opinion. This book has helped greatly with recovering my strength and starting to see my muscle again after a long period of sedentary behavior.

  9. Maria92 says:

    Great compilation of books, I ve read a couple of them and I can say that they are full with excellent tips and solid insight.

  10. StaceyM says:

    Books always offer reliable info and advice. Usually the problems start after reading them when you have to apply what you have learned. I am a very good reader but I still dont get in shape 🙂

  11. Excellent choices and not only for spring. I wish more of them were translated in my mother tongue (italian)

  12. LenaJones says:

    I enjoyed really much this list and I have actually bought two of these books. I am eager for the coming one. thanks in advance

  13. Thanks for sharing your informative blogs.

  14. Thanks for sharing really awesome post.

  15. ice list of fitness book. I own “The Women’s Health Little Book of Exercises”. next #1 will be in my reading list.

  16. addy says:

    hello,
    Great post the books indeed are superb.

  17. As spring is comming we must start to exercise more regulary. The “Ultimate Booty Workouts” works great for me, even in lockdown.

  18. Thank you for sharing. It was very informative.

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