Fitness is considered an “evergreen” topic in the publishing world; there’s always a new twist to be found on the old advice to eat less and move more. Author Giacomo Fasano proposes that the key to fitness can be found in “Revolutionary Powercycles.”
Fasano’s basic premise is easy to grasp: Run for just over an hour (68 minutes to be precise) four or five days a week, be sure you perspire heavily, and you’ve basically accessed the fountain of youth. That’s it.
Unfortunately, while running four hours a week will no doubt be a boon to one’s fitness levels, the other health claims Fasano makes go from hyperbole to dangerously unfounded. He advises eating particular fruits before your workout to give your sweat skin-conditioning properties, and claims that sweat removes heavy metals from the body and can therefore lower a woman’s risk of breast cancer. Even without a single medical expert to verify the claims, he goes so far as to advise in bold all-caps, “FOLLOW THE POWERCYCLE MODEL…AND REST ASSURED YOU WILL NEVER BE DEALING WITH THIS TERRIBLE DISEASE!”
Fasano pads the book with lengthy discussions of his technique that never really expand on his basic premise. The prose can ramble, and grammar and attention to typos come and go: “Although high in fat, the eggs in fat pay more dividends when all said and done that [sic] consuming fat of a different source.” There’s no testimony from others who have tried his methods and found them effective, implying that he might be the only test case.
Fasano’s idea is intriguing, but without outside verification of his theory, readers should be highly skeptical. While it’s clearly worked out well for Fasano, the advice in Revolutionary Powercycles isn’t ready for a mass audience yet.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
