Smart Exercise : Burning Fat, Getting Fit

Editorial Reviews
The best-selling author of The New Fit or Fat offers a feast of useful information and practical advice in this comprehensive guide to exercise and training. Helpful to anyone designing a fitness program, whether it's to lose a "spare tire" or train for a marathon.

Synopsis
Now in paperback--Smart Exercise, Covert Bailey's first book since he completed his 3.6-million-copy bestselling Fit-or-Fat series. Here is a comprehensive guide to exercise and training; an irreverent debunking of weight-loss myths; a lucid explanation of how our bodies stay fit or go fat. Bailey reveals the secret of true fitness: keep your muscles in peak form and everything else will follow.

Synopsis
A popular PBS-TV fitness expert presents a complete program for exercising and training that refutes widespread weight-loss fallacies while explaining how to lower body fat and improve health. 150,000 first printing. Major ad/promo.

Synopsis
Refuting the myths of losing weight, a guide to training and exercise explores the secrets of true fitness, explaining how muscles work, how to keep them in peak form, the benefits of a good workout, and how muscle efficiency provides the key to lowering body fat and improving general health.

Reviews
Reviewer: A reader from Cambridge, MA
Bailey's style can be technical and overbearing but the man knows what he's talking about. I had been exercising for about 3 years when I found Covert's book. I had lost and kept off 30+ pounds but I wasn't really getting any closer to heavenly body I wanted to have.

I could run 5+ miles, cycle about 30 and walk 20 without hurting too much. But I couldn't seem to lose that last ten or so pounds, not to mention get the definition I wanted to have in certain trouble spots like my thighs.

I did killer workouts, sometimes running in the morning and cycling at night for only minute changes in my physique. It was so frustrating I wanted to give up.

I wasn't a fat or out of shape person but I wasn't able to get the results I wanted though I was working very hard. It wasn't until I read Smart Exercise and began using wind sprints and longer aerobic sessions in conjunction with a small split weight-training routine that my body began to look and feel significantly different.

I learned how to eat to fuel my body, how long I could work out and what the best frequency was. I learned that more is not always better and I definitely learned the value of allow my body to recover. With Bailey's help I developed a schedule and routine that allowed me to lose 10lbs in a little under eight weeks. I literally went from burning 500 calories in a 45 minute session to burning over 700 in 35 minute session because of windsprints and cross-training. With what seemed to be 70% of the effort, I was getting twice the results.

If you're at plateau and you want some good advice. Or if you've been working out for a while and want to develop a more efficient routine, this is an ideal book to buy.

The Essence of Beneficial Exercise October 9, 1999
Reviewer: KARL GRUBE from Ann Arbor Michigan
What Can I Say ... this book is changing my life. I re-read sections of it daily for best results. I now find that (1) lifestyle changes, (2) exercise for strength and endurance, and (3) nutritional diet balance are UNIFIED ELEMENTS for a more healthy life. ALL three must be in place if desired results are to be achieved.

The work is substantial primarily because it complements other writings by the author. The author has created a body of work in this weight-health discipline that sets worthy standards.

I would recommend to the publisher, editor, and author that an abstract of this work be prepared and widely distributed to the general public. The abstract, "Covert Bailey's Synthesis, would make an excellent daily reminder.

Realistic Fitness & Nutrition Solutions January 27, 2000
Reviewer: Michael J Merlino from Houston, Texas, USA
I enjoyed this book so much I gave it to all of my personal training clients for Christmas last year. If you have seen those health rider infomercials then you probably recognize Covert. You will be pleasantly surprised with his knowledge of exercise physiology and his great analogies and explanations of how your body burns fat and what it takes to keep it off. Covert has a knack for taking the most complex, scientific subjects and breaking them down so anyone can understand them. Some topics can get a little heavy but for the most part you will learn fact from fiction and get a few laughs along the way. Whether you are ready to get back on track, a weekend warrior or a hard core fitness enthusiast you can learn something from Covert. Take that four letter word D-I-E-T out of your vocabulary and get ready for realistic solutions to maintaining your health and exercising smarter.

Reviewer: Donald S. Fitch from Ashland, Oregon
Get smart and fit with Covert Bailey's Smart Exercise. This well known fitness author has produced several great books over the last decade. Bailey's clear perception of excess fat as a lack-of-fitness problem is very useful. Although a few very heavy-eating fit people might be overweight, in general "being fat" is a state of not being fit. Attaining fitness will reduce and end fatness. Becoming fit, in Bailey's view, occurs at the level of the muscle cell. Aerobic exercise involving breathing heavily is the key type of exercise for allowing muscles cells to train to burn fat. Building muscle and making that muscle an efficient furnace of calories is the key to being trim. As Bailey says, use aerobic exercise to "be a better butter burner." The basic Slimming Partner movement recommendation is to move under your own power, especially walking, for at least an hour per day. Although walking is a wonderful, healthy activity for everyone, Covert Bailey would probably urge activity more demanding than walking, such as adding wind sprints to a walk. For someone quite overweight and out of shape, wind sprint would mean just a faster walking pace, maybe with some uphill. Bailey feels that the, the normal walking pace people choose is too slow to provide big fitness and weight control rewards.

He advocates higher levels exertion as a way to become fitter faster, supporting his ideas with a fairly detailed view of how muscles train on the level of the cell.

The book's analysis of training at the level of the muscular cell is informative and useful in creating positive mental images of the beneficial effects of aerobic exercise. Graphics are provided that help understanding of fairly complex subjects, energy metabolism with ATP and cellular enzymes. Bailey quickly and clearly states these subjects in ways most helpful to the person wanting to lose fat: Train your aerobic system, which he also calls your fat-burning system. This is easier to do if you can mentally visualize your trained muscle cells pulling fat out of your system and burning it as fuel.

In general, this book is an excellent addition to the library and reading list of anyone interested in becoming less fat and more fit.