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

I'm over 65, and bought this book when a 20-something 'trainer' nearly broke my back with barbell squats. I wanted to know what when wrong, and so purchased a lot of training books to study the issue. Guess what, 90% of training books are based on unfounded science and 'trainers' who are already fit, but don't really know what they're doing.So, this book goes into how muscle and connective tissue is generated, inflammation after injury, nutrition recommendations for repairing injured connective tissue, what exercises you shouldn't do (i.e., remarkably benches, barbell squats, and other heavy exercises), etc., all for someone who is looking at just building strength over a longer term (not necessarily for 'muscle beach' type people. There's even a long-term plan for training. Are all the exercises given described correctly - no, world's greatest stretch is actually an advanced exercise for someone older like myself; and one should actually consult the Stuart McGill's back training book for how and why to do bird dog, cat-cow, bridges, etc. exercises for the back - especially if one is building back from a back injury.But overall, this is probably the best training book of the over 15 books I've purchased. I wish I had read this before I started training after a slight layoff. I was already fit, but not trained properly - so this book would have helped me a lot - especially the advice not to listen to any 20-somthing trainer who doesn't read, and says the exercises are obvious.

This is an amazing book. So much new information backed up by science. It makes so much sense why people suffer from so many injuries and this book provides guilders from not only preventing them but healing from them. I not only have read this book cover to cover but encouraging my adult children to read it and also put in to practice many of the exercise guidelines for my sports playing grandchildren to prevent injures! I can's speak highly enough about this book and the exercise program it details.

Really good overall reference manual for the aging exercise buff. I think he puts far too much confidence in physical therapists; not all PTs are created equal. I've had more than my share of stinkers who do more harm than good.The book does a good job with most posture, muscle, and tendon issues. It's not comprehensive; there's no discussion on the neck or involvement of nerves (nerve dysfunction can impact both muscle function and mobility)

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 is a great book. I’ve recommended it to multiple people and they have purchased it. It’s a wonderful manual for how to recover from annoying reoccurring injuries and improve your mobility and strength, especially as you get older.

Absolutely phenomenal life changing book. I had shoulder, back, and bicep pain for years. I saw sports physicians, physical therapists, my pcp, NO ONE presented me with any preventative and restorative solutions as comprehensive as this. It attacks your problems form every angle with good in depth science and backed research but no so much it reads like a medical book. I have recommended this book to all my friends and family. I can finally feel my joint pain disappearing and my mobility and strength slowly getting better each week.