Category: Reviews

Testimonial – Tamryn, former member and ongoing fan of Formosa Fitness

I spent three months as a student in Taipei in 2012. During this time, Formosa Fitness became my favorite place to train. I was worried that I would not find the right environment to maintain my fitness levels and continue to develop my training goals, so even before arriving, I did some research and was extremely happy to come across Formosa Fitness. After my first session, I was not disappointed. Dave Chesser and his team are pushing forward their knowledge and passion for functional strength and power training with time-efficient, structured programs that continue each week to challenge your body and build up physical and mental well-being – whether you are just beginning to realise what your body can do or if you are a CrossFit contender. Their philosophy and approach is shared by leading trainers around the world, including the US and Australia. What I discovered, though, is that it is unique to Taiwan; what an opportunity. How could you not train there?!

I never get tired of hearing things like the comment below from clients. This is a testimonial from a recent client. We love helping you guys out and hope to keep bringing you the best in fitness and nutrition that we can! Thanks for the wonderful compliments!

Just wanted to add here that I met with Dave last weekend to discuss my training options, and I could not be more satisfied.

I have the ‘skinny guy’ problem, where I’m not out of shape in any way, fairly athletic, but I just can’t put on any muscle mass. Dave taught me some new techniques with correct posture and form and gave me a workout routine that will help me build muscle mass instead of just burning calories. He also taught me more effective (and time saving) stretching techniques and gave me some nutrition advice and ways to limit wasting the precious amount of calories in my system. I generally can get out of the gym in around 30-40 minutes depending on how many people are in there, and I feel like I’ve received a real workout thanks to the full-body exercises Dave recommended for me. When you can feel every major muscle group in your body pulsing you know something is right.

It’s been about a week now and I have already starting adding weight to my workout, which is a sure sign that I am progressing way more than before. Dave is a real pro, and I recommend that anyone who is serious about their fitness goals should definitely meet with him.

Just read it and it’s an improvement for sure over the 1st edition. This is the lifting protocol I’m currently using and I love it.

Here’s the full contents:
http://www.jimwendler.com/2011/12/531-2 … -for-sale/

The new stuff that I saw was:

• Training Fashion – 19

• How to Have Stronger Abs – 45

• The Great Debate – 45

• Programming Your Assistance Work: Simplest Strength Template – 52

• Rest Pause Training – 58

• 5/3/1 Full Body Training – 79

• 5/3/1 and Crossfit – 85

• 5/3/1 for Beginners – 90

• Eating for Size and Strength – 94

• 10 Training Rules to be Awesome – 118

• 5/3/1 Percentage Charts – 119

• 5/3/1 Training Log – 123

• Meal Plan Tracker – 131

• About the Author – 132

This edition has a lot more variation than the first one. He went into heavy detail on the assistance work right down to suggested %s for each lift each week. Tapering down as you approach the third week is made obvious this time and that’s smart. I didn’t think of that.

The Doggcrapp section isn’t full-blown DC training (I’m not an expert in this, just going by what I’ve read) but a way to incorporate rest-pause into 5/3/1. He gave lot of examples to avoid confusion.

Another section gave a nod to Broz and the rest of the “train everyday” folks with a squat 5x a week program. Looked brutal.

The CF section will be discussed a lot I think but it’s pretty basic. Wendler lists the many things he thinks is wrong with CF and then suggests doing a main 5/3/1 lift, an assistance lift, then a circuit of 3-5 movements x3 or so. It’s basically a way to mix the assistance lifts with whole body moves in circuit fashion for a conditioning effect.

The 5/3/1 for beginners section was interesting and I couldn’t help but think it looked a lot like the Greyskull workout. It’s a full body workout 3x a week but stressing one lift more than the other three and keeping assistance out of it or to a minimum. Still I don’t think I’d use it with a beginner because they can ride a straight LP for quite a while and don’t really need to work with %s IMO. But it looks interesting.

The diet stuff was simple but very common-sensical. Learn to love the whey, I guess.

The big question will be whether or not people should upgrade and I can’t answer that. The first edition laid out the basics really well. Thing is, with this edition you seem to have a one-stop resource for almost every thing you could do with the system (5/3/1 for powerlifting not included) making it a good deal IMO.