Carl Paoli’s Free+Style is a comprehensive look at four basic physical movements and a thorough description of how to apply these movements to other sports, exercises and everyday life. Paoli’s greatest strength is his ability to regress and progress a particular movement, modifying it to make it simpler to perform or showing how it can be advanced into more difficult feats of strength. He manages to break down complex tasks into discrete actions, explains how to perform each action as efficiently as possible, and how to reassemble these actions into a more refined and stronger complete movement. Moreover, he outlines how to develop progressions for other movements not contained in this book. The book falls a bit short on a complete description of biomechanics, omitting explanations such as why external rotation promotes more stable shoulders and hips and allows for more efficient movement. And some exercise descriptions in the brief section on programming do not appear to refer to the titles of movements in the main section of the book. Still, Free+Style remains one of the better books available on human performance, and Paoli’s skill in describing human movement for individuals at every level of physical fitness is second to none.
Rating: 4/5 stars
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