Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body

First off, kudos to the author for having the wisdom and initiative to take the road less traveled in the fitness world. Both his theoretical perspectives and his concrete applications deeply resonate with my own fitness journey, both as a client and a coach. I've been an athlete my whole life, starting ice hockey and soccer at age 5, playing through high school, getting immersed in endurance and outdoor sports during college, finding and falling deep into the CrossFit world in my early adult years, branching out into more focused gymnastics and mobility and movement-quality based paradigms and eventually transitioning from the hardcore dogma of "constantly varied functional movement at high intensity" to a more mellow, Daoist-like fitness philosophy. And, that philosophy cannot be better summarized than by the words of Lao Tzu himself: "Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." Such words fly in the face of today's conventional fitness values that seem to always amount to an egotistical ambition to be 1) appealing to the opposite sex and 2) intimidating to one's own sex (assuming the athlete is heterosexual) and that the pursuit of these ambitions requires you to regularly endure PAIN, as in "no pain, no gain." What I like about Scott Hogan and others like him (Jerzy Gregorek, Tim Anderson, Dr Eric Goodman, Ben Patrick) is that they take ego out of the fitness equation by waking people up to a fundamental truth: you are not meant to be in pain. Pain, unlike what the ego tells you, is a sign that you're doing fitness wrong, not right. Hogan's book indeed takes this big picture approach and challenges readers to zoom out and reevaluate why they're really training in the first place. For that alone, I'd say it's worth a read. Another thing I really like about Hogan's work is his emphasis on joint health and range of motion as the non-negotiable foundation of all meaningful health and athleticism. Just stop to think for second: of what use is strength or muscle size if you're unable to simply occupy natural human positions? Any fitness paradigm that does not have mobility and movement quality as its foundation is a house of cards. Strength, power, and speed are all great, but when developed at the expense of natural range of motion, those "gains" eventually become "glitches." Kudos to Hogan for creating a program that will help exercisers of all stripes to repair and rebuild a solid foundation for pursuing their fitness goals. This is a great resource for anyone interested in staying supple and strong for life.

This book couldn't have come along at a more perfect time for me. I was in a big slump mentally after having tried to get back into recreational sports for the umpteenth time. I had even thought I was going about it the right way by consulting a PT first before creating jumping into a new routine, and followed their work out plan to a T, but I kept getting hurt. Every month/week/day I'd get some new overuse injury, lay off it/ice/stretch/foam roll/NSAIDs and next time I'd see the PT, I'd get a new diagnosis and a new set of exercises with no idea how to add them in to the old set I'd been given. I was beyond frustrated and depressed. That's when I decided to order this book that I'd seen on Amazon a few times. It was like the author was reading my mind. It was super validating that there are good reasons why the medical community's response to my injuries were hurting me instead of helping me, and I learned A TON about what to do instead. I will say, this book is dense. Another reviewer likened it to a Master's Thesis and that's not far off. I read it twice and felt like I absorbed even more on the second read. That might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I really dug it. I feel like I know a lot more about how to safely manage my fitness journey and advocate for myself along the way, and I'm on to the implementation phase now with a lot more hope than when I sat down to read BFB for the first time.

Overall BFB is an excellent source of information for anyone interested healing their body. At first I had a a couple of quibbles: 1. There are times when the terms that refer to body parts are too technical. Particularly the first time a term is used an illustration would be useful. 2. This may be my fault because l read the book on my cellphone, but the pictures were too small and not lit as well as they might have been. However, having seen the free added instructional and informational material, I have awarded BFB 5 stars because it goes fare beyond what I had hoped for. The videos of the exercises are pricesless, as are the printable PDFs of the exercises and the regenerative therapies. I strongly recommend it, whether you need help in healing your body or you simply want a very complete workout training manual. That said, l definitely recommend it.

Great book, although a bit too technical for me. I bought a second copy of this to give to my physical therapist, and he seems to like it.

This book has been so helpful in helping me write my own training plan. Everything else I have studied is geared toward one mode of fitness. This book is exactly what I have been looking for because it covers muscle strength, muscle endurance, connective tissue health, and mobility. I programmed all my BFB routines into HEVY to make it easy to follow in the gym. I’m very excited to have finally found a truly comprehensive guide.

Interesting read on the physiology of the human body. Have not completed reading the book though the content meets my expectations.

This is not a bad book, but it isn’t a great book. The exercise science laid out in the first chapters is solid and the exercise descriptions are good. This book misses the point in several areas. First, it probably should be called Built from Damaged. If you are truly broken, the exercise programs are just too advanced. The author gives the truly broken short shrift with “here are 10 exercises you can do until you’re in good enough shape to really train. Then, those routines look like pure meathead bro science approaches that don’t really fit with what is outlined in the beginning of the book. Once you really get into this, you realize it’s a big ad campaign for the author’s collagen products (think about when Ralphie reads Drink your Ovaltine IYKYK). The book isn’t bad, it’s just lacking. Try running your rehab questions through Google AI so you get something that is tailored for you and your needs, not the muscle beach collagen crowd. Above all, find a good PT who can work with you and doesn’t have ulterior motives.

This book is a life-saver. I was sidelined due to recurring arm tendinitis and meniscus (knee) cartilage tears. I bought the first edition of this book a couple years ago and did what it told me to do. In 6 months, I was cleared to jog again. I'm now back up to 3 miles on concrete, and no pain. The tendinitis is a distant memory. My posture is better, and I've headed off other small problems before they became BIG problems. It's like getting a brand-new body. You won't get this guidance from your physical therapist or doctor. It really did heal my cartilage. I'm very grateful.

One of the best books on designing a training plan to address imbalances and injuries. Good mix of theory and practicality.

A wonderful book packed with very useful details. It had exactly what I needed.

ものすごくいい本。 あまり広く知られたくない。 でも早く邦訳を。 トレーニングで競技のパフォーマンスを高めて記録を伸ばすことよりも大切なこと。 それは怪我をしないこと。 パフォーマンスの高低にかかわらず、「良くない動き」というものがある。 特定の関節に負荷がかかる、ケガを誘発する動きである。 こうした動きを抱えていれば、どんなに鍛えて能力を向上させても、それは同時に故障やリタイヤの時期を早めていることになってしまう。 パフォーマンスが上がれば、身体への負担も大きくなるからである。 今は関節を保護するギヤなども発達しているので、悪化を遅らせることはできるかもしれない。 あるいは医療も進歩しているので、外科手術などによって再び競技に復帰できるかもしれない。 しかし、それらもけっして根本的解決にはならないだろう。 解決法はたった一つ、動き方そのものを変えるしかないのだ。 このことは、ともすると重要性を実感しづらい。 動き方を変えても、それがパフォーマンスに直結するとは限らないからだ。 しかし、運動すればするほど健康や日常生活を害しかねない現在の状況において、本書のような視点は貴重ではないだろうか。 特に、部活動など教育分野におけるスポーツ活動においては、今後こうした知識はいっそう不可欠になると思われる。 また、そうした裾野が広がることによって、日本におけるトップアスリートの競技寿命が延びるかも知れない。 才能豊かなトップ選手でも、若い頃からの運動履歴によって、何かしらの障害を抱えていたりするものである。 むしろ、そうした世界の方が問題は深刻かもしれない。 本書で具体的に説かれるのは、自重やゴムチューブ、ダンベル等を用いたエクササイズ、ストレッチの類である。 そうした動きの中で、自分の身体に染み付いた動作を改善していくのである。 詳しくは本書を参照されたい。 また、運動には代謝を高める効果があるので、ケガの回復も促進できるのだという。 既に非可逆的な障害を負ってしまったアスリートには効果がないかもしれないが、まだ痛みが慢性化しきっていない人にとって、本書は福音になると思われる。

If you really want to feel and look better, this book will show you how to do it! Thank you

I recomend THIS book to everybody , especially for people with PAIN AND acumulated tensión . THIS book help for my recovery i HAVE acumulated tension AND injurie in the back for 2 years , the doctors cant help me but this book change my Life