Shawn LeBrun is the owner and operator of Shawn LeBrun Fitness.com, an online fitness training and publishing company. His latest book is the 99-page Simple Steps to Get Huge and Shredded: A 12-Week Program for Achieving Physical Excellence.

Despite the title, this book seems to be geared toward people who are looking to weight training not to get “huge and shredded” but rather to lose fat and gain muscle, period. As a bodybuilding book, therefore, the program earns about two out of five stars.

And although it is aimed at the beginning lifter, there does not seem to be quite enough information to completely educate the user on how to do exercises, safely, and so on. Of course, quality does not always equal quantity, so the fact that it has only 99 pages instead of the more usual 200+ isn’t a flaw on the face of it, but when you dig into the book you do find that quite a bit of absolutely essential information is left out. Of course, there are plenty of bonuses that fill in some of the gaps, but they too are rather generic in subject.

Weight Training Program

Shawn provides you with a detailed twelve week program, and so each chapter first presents the exercise sets for that week – broken down into exactly how many reps you should do, as for example:

Flat bench press with straight bar:

1 easy warmup set of 10 reps

1 slightly heavier set for 6 reps

1 even heavier set for 3 reps

2 heavy sets for 3-6 reps (want to reach failure in this range)

Each workout has you exercise only one major group of muscles at a time, of course, thus chest and triceps one day, legs, shoulders and abs after a day off, backs and biceps after the next day off. In between, on your days off, he has you doing cardio.

While he mentions a bit about intensity, he doesn’t discuss tempo, the importance of proper form, and so on. If you’re an experienced bodybuilder you don’t need that kind of information, of course, but this book seems to be aimed at the beginner, and thus there is not enough information included.

Because of the way this book is designed, it’s rather difficult to fully appreciate Shawn’s program. Each week/chapter has a new workout, and interspersed among the workout lists is advice (indeed, chapters 8 through 11 focus on specific muscle groups – arms, legs, etc.) but he just makes it really difficult to get a handle on everything. It’s necessary to read the entire book through a couple of times to absorb everything, which is really too much mind-work to have to do.

Cardio

It is in the Week 3 chapter that Shawn discusses cardio. Now, most advocates of body building to get huge, dismiss cardio, as it “strips muscle” rather than helps you build muscle. Shawn doesn’t mention this aspect of cardio, but merely emphasizes its “fat-burning” aspects. But from the aspect of over-all health, cardio is essential, as far as I’m concerned, so I have no problem with his advice here.

Diet and Nutrition

Dieting for muscle gain and fat loss gets covered in brief sections in both Weeks 3 and Week 4 chapters, which is a bit irritating. I’d prefer all of nutrition and dieting to be covered in a single chapter. Shawn discusses diet and nutrition as thoroughly as he can in the space he’s allotted himself, and there’s some good information here. He advises you to eat 4 – 6 meals a day…but his reasons for advising this is strictly to keep your appetite under control, rather than the “real” reason, which is that because you’re working to build muscle mass its your muscles that you have to feed every 2 to 3 hours! Shawn doesn’t discuss this concept.

Supplements

In Week 7/Chapter 7, Shawn discusses supplements. There are too many supplements on the market, and most of them don’t do what they claim. Every legitimate body building manual will tell you this, and Shawn is no different. He then proceeds to discuss the supplements that are effective – meal replacements (shakes), protein, creatine, glutamine and so on.

Bonuses

The bonuses are not much to write home about. There’s an ebook, All Star Personal Trainers’ Secrets, which is a “compilation of all-time favorite articles from some of the top fitness writers and personal trainers.” He lists no names of who is included.

Then there’s Bodybuilding Recipes, which is valuable, as it gives you dozens of great muscle-gaining and fat-loss recipes.

A bonus I’m not too sure about is “Supplement Prizes.” Your name is entered in a drawing every week, and if your name is chosen, you’re awarded $100 worth of supplements of your choice. Some bonus!

More valuable bonuses includes access to videos demonstrating how to perform over 300 exercises, access to a nutrition database, and a free year’s subscription to his newsletter.

Complaints

Oh, there are so many!

It’s really a bare-bones ebook, with no professional gloss at all. (No headers, no footers, no page numbers). There’s a table of contents, but of course, no page numbers there, either. Also, the TOC seems too detailed in some ways, and not detailed enough in others. Chapter headings are not hot-linked to the chapters themselves, so you have to click and click and click to get where you want to go.

Since it’s an ebook, the amount of pages being taken up is not a concern, yet there’s no page break between chapters/weeks, which would have been nice, both esthetically and as an ease-of-use feature.

The information is divided awkwardly between the 12 chapters. Put all the workout routines and information at the end of the book, and all the info on cardio, diet and nutrition, and so on, at the front of the book.

Conclusion

To be blunt, this book is not really recommended.

Shawn offers quite a bit of material on his website – but really, that site is just as disorganized, as well. He may know his stuff, but if its not presented in an orderly and effective way…it’s best to steer clear of it.
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