Product Description

A guide to intelligent training by bodybuilding's foremost proponent of the all-round fitness lifestyle: motivation, no-hunger dieting, new routines, athletic-type strength training, high-intensity aerobics, longevity and health, and exciting personal profiles. After winning the Past-40 Mr. America, this book explains the approach that allowed the author to look even better at 60.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #271433 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Richard A. Winett, Ph.D., Editor and Publisher, The Master Trainer
"Consistent with the title, Challenge Yourself, Clarence Bass has done just that by writing a book that exceeded the exceptional quality of his prior books. Since I believe Clarence's prior books were the best training books ever written, he's done the equivalent of 35 minutes on the treadmill test at the Cooper Clinic."

From the Publisher
This is Clarence Bass' eighth book and many say it's his best. He shares the knowledge gained from a lifetime quest for improvement.

From the Author
The secret is to continually challenge yourself in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive yet easy to read--great resource
This is one of the best exercise/health books of the many such books I own. It covers a lot of ground--diet, exercise and motivation--and yet it includes the latest information at the right level of detail for one who wants to know the how AND the why. There is a good explanation of interval training, periodization, and balancing high-intensity training with adequate rest. Mr. Bass' other books are all very good (I know because I've read every one) but this one is his masterpiece.

Fantastic Book!!!
This is his best book to date.I have been working out for many
years and I found his periodization work-out for advanced lifters
to be one of the most practical work-outs I have ever tried.
This book is a must read for any serious weight trainer.
I also highly recommend reading Stuart McRobert's book "Beyond
Brawn" and subscribing to the magazine "Hardgainer".
Both these authors share many of the same views on training.
Great Book!!!

Hairless Weirdo
Clarence Bass is obviously deeply in love with his body, and you'll probably find this book rather boring unless you're in love with his body, too.

This book is short on information and long on personal details of Bass' exercise routines, Bass' scores on various physiological tests, Bass' diet, and photographs of the old coot which, to me, are oddly uninspiring. Yeah, he's in better shape at 60 than my father, but at least my father's got hair on his chest (gray though it may be). In this book, you are treated to more than 50 photographs of Bass, shaved of body hair, mostly semi-nude, and usually in some ridiculous bodybuilding pose. A photograph or two might be inspiring, but this many photos is only a testament to the author's narcissim.

And, frankly, I'm actually repulsed by the author's "ripped" look, which actually makes him look weak rather than healthy. The diet he claims he eats (and promotes as an exemplar) is so boring that very few people who tried it would ever stick with it (breakfast = grain mush flavored with beans, frozen peaches, and fortified with RIPPED brand protein powder; lunch = soybean burger and nonfat yogurt flavored with aspartame; dinner = frozen vegetable stew with canned fish). Actually, there are a lot of things WRONG with this diet, including the fact that soy foods have been found to shrink your brain, as well as flood it with female-hormonelike chemicals. Also, this diet, far from being "natural", relies heavily on canned and frozen foods; furthermore, Bass is a proponent of supplementation with creatine for performance enhancement (cheating, in other words), despite the fact that it causes him side effects.

Not surprisingly, an earlier version of this diet made Bass rather unhealthy, as shown by some of his blood profile scores. He had relatively high homocysteine levels, high triglyceride levels, and shockingly high total cholesterol levels (228). How did he improve these levels? He added FAT to his diet--and the more fat he added to it, the better his cholesterol levels became! (pp. 176+; his homocysteine levels came down from vitamin supplementation). If Bass were less concerned with looking "ripped," he'd chow down on olive oil, cod liver oil, and flax oil, and live to be a hundred. As it is, I predict he won't see 70.

Bass also de-emphasizes the value of endurance training, even though for most older people walking is the best exercise of all (Bass does walk regularly, but he credits it with nothing except some fat-burning ability).

The book DOES, however, provide good (though too-brief) instruction on strength training. That's the best information in this book, but it's not worth the price of the book (instead, read: BRAWN by McRoberts).

This book is really more an autobiography than anything else, about a rather odd duck named Clarence Bass. He's really not an unlikable fellow, despite his narcissm, but you don't necessarily want to be pulled into his little world of body-obsession, either. He claims to keep a workout diary, in which he writes down what he eats every day--and he probably really DOES that, too. It's not bad, it's just weird. Can you imagine hanging around with a guy like that? He probably doesn't drink, because it might up his bodyfat by .000003 percent above "ripped", but if he does, can you imagine kicking back with him, watching a football game, while he writes down in his diary the calories contained in his beer and in the non-fat carrot stick-dip he's sharing with you?