With hints on healthy living and exhortations to women to take control of their own bodies, Fonda offers a well-designed...

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JANE FONDA'S WORKOUT BOOK

With hints on healthy living and exhortations to women to take control of their own bodies, Fonda offers a well-designed general exercise program based on a dancer's warm-up. Her own fitness story comes first--pregnant at age 30, after years of trying to mold herself into fashion's thin ideal, Fonda realized that ""my body needed to be listened to and strengthened""; here, she seeks to share what she learned ""the hard way."" To support the exercise program, Fonda gives some basic nutrition tips and discusses the four desirable elements of any exercise program. Her own program is a model: warm-up, aerobic workout, stretching, cool down--with specific target exercises for arms, waist, abdominals, legs and hips, and buttocks. There are two complete, detailed routines (beginner and advanced), clearly explained and illustrated; they might even be fun if done as suggested to music and/or with friends. Fonda, like Diana Nyad (p. 1006), recognizes many readers' ambivalent feelings about fitness and exercise, and gives a pep talk on breaking the ""weaker sex"" mold, making a commitment, and learning one's body's capacities and limits. Finishing with a call for ""a little activism in your approach to health"" (because we can only be as healthy as our ecological environment), this adds up to sound, enjoyable, movement-oriented basic exercise within reach of most readers--which Nyad's intense regimen isn't.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1981

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