BOOK REVIEW: “SCRAWNY TO BRAWNY” BY JOHN BERARDI AND MICHAEL MEJIA

 

Time for another book review.  I stumbled across this book as part of my voracious reading of all things related to eating to gain weight, as, once again, my obsessive tendencies tend to get the best of me (and I fully appreciate the pun of relating reading to voraciousness in a discussion of eating), and seeing Berardi’s name peaked my interest.  I’ve been a fan of the dude ever since I read about his involvement in Dave Tate’s initial transformation from fat and dying to jacked and dying slower, and having been a member of the t-nation forums since 2007 (once again, I have to take a moment to reflect on how goddamn old I am becoming) I’ve already had much exposure to Berardi’s work and found it gelled well with my own perspective (I WAS going to say I found him palatable, but I’ve already done enough dumb puns).  I had no idea who Michael Mejia was, but was willing to take the risk with Berardi’s name attached.

 

WHAT THIS BOOK IS

This is something you woulda found in a Borders...back when that was a thing

The intent of the book is incredibly on the nose: transform the reader from scrawny to brawny.  It’s a book for “hardgainers”, which has ALWAYS held a special place in my heart.  I never considered myself a hardgainer, but the opposite as an endomorph (oh boy I upset a lot of nerds by bringing up the somatypes, but stuff it for a second) in that I seem to put on tissue quite easily, whether it be fat or muscle.  I was a fat kid growing up as a result of my natural bottomless appetite for everything, which is why I tend to gravitate toward lower carb diets, as its far easier to overhead on carbs than on protein and fats in my experience.  All that said, I like hardgainer books because my thought process “growing up” in lifting was: if this works for hardgainers, it must work REALLY well for everyone else.  That, of course, turned out to be kinda sorta true, but my recent forays into insanely stupid high volume training have shown that there are many ways to skin cats.

 

Ok, that intro got away from me, but point being: it’s a book aimed at transforming small, thin and lanky dudes into big and strong ones.  It is broken into 2 sections: one on training and one on nutrition.  Berardi helms the nutrition section, while I infer from the reading that Mejia is who heads up the training portion, but with frequent nod’s to Berardi along the way.

 

WHAT I LIKED

For starters, it is far more nuanced than this

* Despite me talking about the book being for hardgainers, the authors are quick to dismiss that term, which is a great paradigm breaker.  They utilize somatypes, which, again, upsets a certain nerd contingent on the internet, but they also go on to explain how the “science” behind determining somatypes was pretty goofy but that it can STILL be a useful means to describe a trainee: in this case, long of limb and thin of frame.  They even go on to explain how many instances of “fast metabolisms” are a result of poor eating habits along with general propensity to engage in non-exercise activity that burns calories (even something as simple as fidgeting or just being generally more active).   

 

* This is one of those “all in one” books that I really appreciate.  It’s nice to be able to give a trainee ONE product and say “read this and you’ll be good”.  And this one actually delivers.  It contains a 4 phased lifting program AND a very well structured nutrition protocol to support it.  I’ll discuss both in more detail below.

 

* The training protocol goes through an initial phase of structural assessment for the trainee.  It addresses postural issues and muscle imbalances and contains a training protocol to address and correct them.  As much as it upsets me that such a thing would even be necessary for a trainee, it’s a sad fact: most trainees are in too poor of shape to even train in the first place.  I attribute this to a lack of “play” during childhood along with lacking participation in sports growing up.  This should be REALLY helpful in overcoming the millions of “I’ve tried squatting for 4 years and I STILL can’t do it right” complaints that one tends to see in underperforming trainees.  This section ALSO contains information on how a long limbed/lanky trainee can modify big compound movements to better suit their anatomy.  I dig that for sure.  If one doesn’t want to powerlift, they don’t need to do the powerlifts, or do it like a powerlifter. 

Don't get me wrong: you CAN still lift big if you're tall...but still

 

* As I don’t ever tend to speak to a training protocol I haven’t personally tested, I can’t vouch for if what is in the book will work or be of any value, but it at least appears well thought out, intelligently designed, and with a purpose.  It’s not a routine but an actual program, and the authors do their best to guide you through it.  The first phase is fixing postural issues, then it’s about growing muscle, then there is a strength based phase, and then you go from full body training to a split program in the final phase that is supposed to take advantage of that strength phase and really drive home some hypertrophy.

 

* I found the nutrition section to be absolutely superb.  It holds the hand of the trainee, which is exactly what needs to happen in a book like this, telling them exactly what to buy at the grocery store and how to cook it.  It also goes into the details of meal prep regarding how to prepare MULTIPLE means at once, down to the basic logistics (“start the oven, while it warms, chop the veggies, etc etc).  So many underweight trainees are there because they lack very basic cooking and shopping skills, and this gives it to them.  HOWEVER, Berardi also does a great job helping to ween the trainee into self-sufficiency, explaining what food substitutes are acceptable, how macronutrients work, etc etc. 

 

* The nutrition matches the training, which, of course, I am huge on.  As the training phases ramps up, so does the nutrition, and Berardi explains how to make simple additions to previously established meals in order to meet these goals.  It’s simple and effective.  You can also observe elements of basic carb cycling as it relates to what is consumed on training days vs non-training days.

 

 

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

Aged about as well as this

* Mejia and Berardi are yet another set of cringe inducing authors, along the line of Josh Bryant.  The book was written in the mid-2000s, and it lets you know that with frequent pop-culture references that have aged poorly (“this is like scoring a date with Britney Spears”), which honestly speaks to the idea that there was no intent for this book to “go the distance”.  They also spend a LOT of time hammering “comedic” analogies will past the point of any value to the dialogue.  I can’t tell if they did that with the hopes of padding the book out to be longer, or if they thought the attempt at comedy would make the book more enjoyable, but it lands flat more often than not.  I’ve said it the past few reviews now, but these days, I wanna read from an author who lifts vs a lifter who authors.  Paul Kelso spoiled me that way.

 

* Once again, I caught myself reading passages of the book and having significant déjà vu, only to realize it was because I had read these passages previously as articles on t-nation.  It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when a “book” is really just taking a bunch of articles and putting it in one spot.  This most likely dates back to when I spent $40 on the Elitefts Basic Training Manual only to get it and find out it was all the articles I had already read on Elitefts put into a spiralbound paperback.  That said, the whole book isn’t previously released articles, and does contain some original content.

 

* I skipped significant sections on the discussion on anatomical structures.  I’m sure that interests some people, but I just plain don’t care.

 

SHOULD YOU BUY IT?

Don't be like these dudes

If you are the intended audience for this book, you absolutely owe it to yourself to pick it up.  It’s going to set you up very well for success.  If you’re already an experienced trainee, there’s nothing in this you don’t already know, but I still enjoyed the nutrition section immensely.  If nothing else, you old souls may just get the entertainment value out of it I did of reading about mistakes trainees have made, nodding, agreeing and smiling thinking about how you made those exact same mistakes.