BOOK REVIEW: CRUSH IT! by Tony Horton

Admittedly in my review of Bring It!, I wasn’t totally blown out of the water with amazement.  Not to say it was bad by any means.  It just wasn’t cutting edge or had much to say that wasn’t said before.  His follow up book, Crush It! is Tony Horton taking another swing at the ball and hoping to hit a little farther.

Crush It! for starters is strictly an eBook as it has videos throughout its pages, making the reading experience quite revolutionary and opens up new possibilities.  For example, if you own an AppleTV you also have the option to Airplay the videos should you own the iOS version.  If you own a Kindle you can get the book, but the videos are only available on iPad and iPhone/Touch.

Luckily for all you good people it turns out the Dysfunctional Parrot is a hip and groovy iPad owner and very much plugged into the Apple ecosystem, so I went ahead and bought the book for $9.99 with the goal that you, the unwashed masses, can once again reap the comforting warmth of my wisdom and suck upon the chaffed nipples of my vast intellect.

Crush It! is Tony’s Warrior Workout broken down to the raw details.  The written portion is 41 pages, while pages 42 to 181 are move descriptions/videos, and 182 to 189 is his closing comments.  So as you can see the book draws heavily upon its new-media strengths.  But be aware that this is not an encyclopedia of all things Tony as he does not spend a lot of time discussing his personal journey.  It does however have a fair bit of overlap with the philosophy of his popular workout videos such as P90X, P90X2 and so forth.

Where Tony might throw people off is his total abandonment of gimmicks.  There is no magic in this book.  No super-secret to give you six-pack abs in a week.  Mr. Horton believes in eating right and working your butt off and because of that his programs are being scooped up faster than people send their Ab Rollers to the garbage bin.  Want hard abs?  Read the book, do good form, eat right and hit the floor.  That’s the secret, and that philosophy is consistent throughout Crush It!.

CONCLUSION

I appreciate the new approach to writing that Tony has taken hold of and delivered.  The videos are obviously not just thrown together quickly: the man has clearly put a lot of effort in here to try and explain each move as good as can possibly be expected.  If good form is paramount in your workouts…and it darn well should be!…this book will certainly be a welcome addition to your digital library.

My only real complaint is I suppose it could have been longer in the dietary descriptions, however there is a reason for that information being brief.  Tony mentions in the book he desires to create a third book called Eat It! which will go into greater detail on the power-foods that drive him to physical excellence.  If that is also going to be a video rich eBook, I will buy it without a second thought.

When you consider that most decent books on fitness at a bookstore run in the $20-$30 range, Crush It!  starts to look like a massive bargain.  But again, the videos are only available for Apple iOS devices, thus leaving you with two options:  trade in your knockoff tablet for an iPad ( seriously, grow up!! ) or consider how much value the videos are to you.  Personally I found great value in them so their absence would definitely be a deciding factor.

Available on the iTunes Bookstore ( with media ) and Amazon Kindle ( without )