Strong Curves

The week I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I realized the only thing I wasn’t doing to be the healthiest person I possibly could, was exercise. When I told my breast surgeon that it was time to start, she laughed at me and said, “you get diagnosed with breast cancer and you think it means you should start exercising?” I raised my shoulders in a shrug, ‘Yeah!’  

I have never related to running and have no interest in spending time on tread mills. I started reading about how to lift weight, the effects on the female body, and I started surfing the web for women’s weight lifting and fitness blogs. The results I saw in women who have been lifting weights for a while were amazing, muscle definition, strength, pert pretty butts, who knew! I found Marianne Kane’s website, myomytv and began working with her over the internet. We use skype to work on proper form, email to ask questions and now, after 6 months or so, I too am seeing some great results in my own body.

During this time, Marianne turned me onto Bret Contreras and Kellie Davis who just recently came out with Strong Curves: A Woman’s Guide to Building a Better Butt and Body. Bret calls himself the Glute Guy, which is his area of study in sport science, he is passionate about The Bum and this book is a testament to his passion. Beside which, how funny is it that he calls himself the Glute Guy? And Kellie? She is awesome, her body is gorgeous, and if you check out her web site, she wasn’t born with perfect genes and gorgeous glutes, she earned them with hard work.

This book is a veritable bible for training women (although it could be used by men too). Strong Curves is 320 pages long, it is filled with full color photographs of each exercise, contains several 12 week programs to get you started. It also explains how to use the information within the book to maintain and build upon what you have learned. I admit, there are a few paragraphs that might have been edited out, but (or Butt-as the case may be) even if they were edited out, the book would not be much shorter for having done so and the information it imparts is well worth the read. If you are looking for an exercise program that will help you get the results you want? I thoroughly suggest you purchase this book. I love my copy so much, I had the binding removed, the cover laminated and a spiral binding placed, now my book opens flat.

And if I ever have a question on what exercise to substitute for a Romanian Deadlift? I know where to turn (and so does Peach, who wanted to be included in this post). I may even join Marianne, Kellie and Bret’s online community called Get Glutes.