I saw that you’ve written a ton of books on training. For someone not familiar with your work, what would you say is your best book on training that you still stand by today and why?
I was glued for several weeks to Arthur Jones’s first book back in 1970: Bulletin No. 1.
The Nautilus Bodybuilding Book (1982), with Joe Means on the cover, was a take off on the first Bulletin. That book of mine is still an interesting read.
Years later, in 2007, I wanted to do something different. I condensed Arthur’s materials and added a lot of my own techniques. Then, I dug up all of Arthur’s interesting old photos and added them to the best of Chris Lund’s related materials.
For those of you who don’t know Chris Lund, he’s from England. Chris took bodybuilding photos for me for 20 years and we assembled a dozen books on bodybuilding. Chris also photographed all of the great champions – first for Bob Kennedy in Canada, and then Joe Weider throughout the world.
Chris’s award-winning photography brought an appeal and excitement to my writings and I’m very grateful for what he added to my courses.
Tim Patterson in Colorado Springs heard about my project and he wanted to help. Tim has a great eye for what works and doesn’t work – and a terrific creative team who make it all happen.
I took all of these materials to Tim Patterson’s headquarters in Colorado Springs. Over a two-week period we hammered out a way, a different more exciting way, to deliver the goods.
Initially, we wanted to title the manual: The New High Intensity Training, Part II – because my New High Intensity Training book from Rodale (2004), with the big arm on the cover, was still selling well. But at the last minute we thought a stand alone title might be better and we went with The New Bodybuilding for Old-School Results.
This book, which was printed by Testosterone Publishing (T-Nation) in 2007, is my masterpiece. There are not many copies left and it will never be reprinted. If you haven’t seen it, you’re going to like it, especially if you think old-school training is lit.
Furthermore, you have my personal guarantee on this product. You can order it from T-Nation and Biotest.
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Got it, and it’s prettt awesome 
They’re not shipping to Sweden, bummer. Would’ve loved to read more about stacks and everything else that’s in there.
Well, I want to but my Swedish shipping address is not accepted. Do you have any European affiliates also selling the book?
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Not currently, but we do intend to eventually release the ebook version.
That’d be a boom. Less environmental impact just purchasing a file:)
BTW, why can’t you ship to Sweden? With the supplements I get that there might be a regulatory issue, but not a book, and I presume that the answer is simply that the web-shop doesn’t distinguish between products in this manner.
Hard to pick one favorite but Darden’s High Intensity Bodybuilding was my first exposure to HIT
and I’ll never forget it . His descriptions of particular workouts he watched in person along with those B&W images - like the Platz shoulder workout that opened the book - hit me like a Mike Tyson punch. I was sold !
Later I got a hold of Dr. Kens Steel Tip news letter and loved that too.
The two best writers on HIT training ever , Darden and Leistner.
You’re right, Sweden doesn’t permit the importation of dietary supplements.
We ship to 184 out of 195 countries. This means there are only 11 countries in the world where we could ship books, if we went through the programatic nightmare to not show the other products to those countries. Considering we only have one last physical book left in the store, that makes no sense.
Going forward, however, we plan to offer a lot more ebooks, which can be sold everywhere (including Sweden).
Except from the EU presumably, I’ve ordered from the UK plenty of times.
Will keep my ear to the ground for ebooks though.
Yes, Ken Leistner was a great writer. One thing I really liked about Ken was you could get into an argument with him, and he would still be your friend. Although one time, it took him two years to simmer down.
Speaking of good writing, today on T-Nation there’s a well written article by Nick Tumminello, “Five Lies About Lifting Weights,” that I agree with. If you haven’t read it, do so today.
You can order the book and have it shipped to an EU address where we ship, or a friend in the USA, then forward it to you.
I’ll ask around! Cheers.
tzabcan,
High-Intensity Bodybuilding was published in 1984. It was the first book in the market that used big exciting photos the way I did. It was reprinted 30 or more times and the follow-up manual: Super High-Intensity Bodybuilding was equally popular. In Super we had many two-page spreads and even one three-pager.
Those were the golden days of book publishing.
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High Intensity Bodybuilding had the best opening that any book ever had . Right off the bat your account had the reader spellbound , sitting right there watching with you.
Your line , “ … when most guys are ending their set, Tom is just getting started … “ still goes through my head in my own workouts today, 36 years later !
What an impact your descriptions of these intense workouts had on us …
Yes, I remember that as if it was a couple of days ago.
Chris Lund had a dozen or so photos of Platz training and he threw them across my desk. They were taken during Tom’s actual workout that Chris watched and recorded in 1981. Nothing was posed.
“I had to sit on the floor, crawl on the floor, and shoot under a bench or two,” Lund said to keep out of the way.
You could see and feel the sweat dropping off of Tom’s quivering muscles, as he pushed and resisted the barbell. The photos were the bomb. I knew it and Chris knew it.
I had to drag him into the gym for a complete breakdown of each exercise, rep by rep.
When he finished, we both felt like we had tried to duplicate Platz’s bombastic training session.
It was now up to me now . . . to put it all into a thousand words.
I’m pleased people like tzabcan appreciate the efforts that went into such endeavors.
That was fast, this is great, what format is it (PDF, KIndle, ePub)?
Thanks