BCAA's are a must for muscle building, and these capsules are a pure source of BCAA's, in the most commonly recommended ratio (2:1:1 Leucine : isoleucine : valine).

I must recommend powder, though. These, and all other BCAA capsules, are a very inefficient way to take in BCAA's due to serving sizes. A serving of BCAA's should be typically 5 or 6 grams. With typical capsules like these, that's 10 or 12 capsules per serving (.5g pills). Doing that several times a day gets old quick, and when you take other supplements with these, it would only make sense to get powders so you can make a drink with all of them at once instead of taking a handful of capsules several times a day.

ON's BCAA 5000 powder or Ultimate Nutrition's BCAA 12,000 powder are good alternatives to this product. Keep in mind that this product is actually the same powder, put into capsules and not flavored. A serious plus about the powder is that flavored BCAA powder is good at masking the taste of other supplements, allowing you to buy the pure forms of other supplements and not have to worry about the taste that some other supplements can pack (ever taste arginine by itself?). Powder is also much more efficient on the wallet. I'm cheap, and I stick to the two I just mentioned, the prices on Amazon fluctuate but those two stay relatively low.

But then again, if you're goal is for a couple grams of BCAA's a day (to each his own), you should probably stick with these. ON will never let you down, they're good at making simple, cheap products (hence the 5 stars even though I recommend a different product, for BCAA CAPSULES, it's hard to beat these). But for serious muscle building, it's either powder or a ton of capsules a day. I take around 25-30 grams of BCAA's a day with powder, it's worked out well for me over the course of several months.

Wow. I don't know what I was expecting when I requested this book. I had originally requested it thinking I was just going to hand it over to my boyfriend, let him work with it and then review it from his experiences. (I'm not a strength trainee by any means and abhor gyms with a passion - I go the meditation/yoga route.)

But this book is nothing short of awesome. Full colour pages, descriptive workouts (even loads of plans for beginners, all the way up to advanced workouts), photos everywhere and these AWESOME illustrations that show what each type of exercise technique is working on - displaying muscle tissue, bones, impact; honestly, this is a miniature, useful lesson in anatomy.

Each workout appraises you of the advantages, disadvantages, risks and provides you with handy safety tips scattered throughout the book.

Highly recommended for everyone who goes to the gym or has workout sessions at home...or even just for those of us who are artists (like me) looking for a 'different' type of anatomy book to peruse. It really is an invaluable resource.

With over 450,000 copies sold, this book is arguably the best book of its kind. What's it useful for? Mainly to help the reader (from the weekend athlete to the athletic trainer to the professional bodybuilder) figure out what exercises work what muscles.

It's neatly divided up into sections (arms, shoulders, chest, back, etc.), so all you really have to do is flip to one of these sections and it will have detailed pictures of various exercises and exactly which muscles are involved.

A great reference to keep have around, I give it five stars easy. Readers who lift weights regularly might also be interested Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff to avoid shoulder problems a lot of lifters eventually get.

Anyone (bodybuilder or not) who is interested in how do build lean mass and lose fat should have this book in their library. I am so tired of negative "reviews" that state the book has "nothing new" or its information can be found for "free on the Internet". Obviously the same can be said for almost any book-- almost anything can be found on the Internet (even copyrighted material!). However, that requires finding the material, filtering out all of the conflicting information and judging whether to trust the source of the information found on the Internet. The whole point of buying a book, any book, is that the material is edited, presented in a clear, logical fashion, is supported by citations or research, and is written by an authority. This book gets 5 stars in all those respects!