Review of Visual Impact for Women By Courtney Westerdal of CriticalBench.com
Fitness trainer and author Rusty Moore considers himself to be an expert in helping people develop the bodies they want. But unlike most trainers, he doesn't really focus on teaching his clients how to get big and strong but rather on how they can develop visually appealing physiques. His approach to weight training is essentially all about looking your beach body best. He refers to his training system as 'Visual Impact.' He first developed the Visual Impact program for men and now he's developed one just for women.
Visual Impact for Women is built on the same foundation as the men's program, but for this version, Rusty has customized it to help the ladies develop the perfect beach body with curves in all the right places. And although the two programs share basic principles , Rusty did not just repackage Visual Impact for men and slap a new title on it. He's actually started from the ground up, developing an entire program specifically for women.
Like his VI program for men, VI for Women is well-written and thorough. And knowing the kind of guy Rusty is, it's no surprise that he packs a lot of information into 89 pages. The book includes 20 chapters --each outlining a different aspect of the Visual Impact approach.
He starts off by talking about how so many personal trainers and so-called fitness experts have it all wrong when it comes to women and weight training. Basically, it comes down to the fact that most trainers assume that women want to look like Jilian Michaels--lean and muscular--but in reality, most want to look like Jessica Alba--curvy, yet with some definition. After this, Rusty gets into dispelling some of the common myths about women and training. Interestingly, most of what you hear said is just not true and again, much of the misinformation is being spread by personal trainers and fitness experts.
The overabundance of false beliefs and training approaches that fail to address what women really want from strength training actually forms the basis of Rusty's approach to presenting the rest of the chapters. For example, in chapter two Rusty talks about current training fads that ditch cardio in favor of circuit training and how this 'anti-cardio' approach is misguided and ineffective. Similarly, in the following three chapters he discusses misconceptions about high-rep training, low-rep training and training to failure.
Chapter six is one of my favorites because here, Rusty talks about how most women avoid free weights because they're afraid of getting overly muscular and bulky. This is yet another widespread belief that isn't necessarily true. Rusty's viewpoint is that in the quest to achieve maximum visual impact, the ideal training approach for women incorporates both free weights and machines. This is followed up a couple chapters later with an excellent presentation of how adding a little bit of muscle mass boosts fat burning. Rusty devotes three chapters to outlining the Visual Impact approach to diet and nutrition.
Beginning with chapter 12, he begins to pull it all together, showing women how to implement the Visual Impact program themselves. In addition to providing a variety of training routines, these chapters cover topics such as cardio workouts, setting up a simple home gym and how to customize the Visual Impact workouts. And to make the VI program even easier to follow, the program also includes a number of supplemental guides including a 229-page exercise demonstration book, a complete set of printable workout charts and a 12-week progressive cardio program.
Rusty's Visual Impact for Women has really taken off and become a big hit. I would attribute the program's success to three key factors:
1) first and foremost, Rusty is one of the few fitness professionals who has gone to great lengths to truly understand the things that women really want to achieve through working out;
2) Visual Impact for Women is an easy read--thorough and complete, yet free of unnecessary jargon, buzzwords and scientific lingo; and
3) most important, the program works.
So many programs being promoted today are touted as being the next magic bullet, but the fact is, they're nothing more than empty promises wrapped up in lots of marketing hype. It's refreshing to see a knowledgeable expert like Rusty develop a program that isn't based on hype, but solid principles that work. And more important, he's designed the program to enable women to obtain the kind of body they want, not what a bunch of so-called experts, think they want.
