Search Google images for recent, shirtless images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and you may find a sad and depressing image of the greatest bodybuilder in world history. Maybe it’s just the stress of running the state of California, no easy task. Maybe it’s the side effects of the steroids he allegedly admitted to taking. Maybe he’s just eating too much and no longer works out two hours a day like he used to claim.

It’s no longer about how you twist it though, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of 2009 is not an advertisement for the long-term health and fitness benefits of weightlifting.

Compare today’s Terminator to the author of this book, who is only five years younger.

Which one would you like to look like when you are their age?

Now that you must be convinced that bodyweight exercises can keep you young and strong, Peterson has written a book full of many ways to build muscle with his Transformametrics Training System.

The author contracted polio at the age of 4 and was left with broken legs which forced him to use crutches. After an encounter with a bully at age 10, his grandfather and a friend of his introduced him to courses by Charles Atlas and Earle Leiderman. He hasn’t stopped since.

It begins by listing the 7 attributes of dynamic functional fitness: strength, flexibility, endurance, speed, balance, coordination, and aesthetics.

There are twelve lessons and it prescribes a ten week program beginning with lessons one and two. However, Lesson One includes some extremely advanced push-ups that are not for beginners.

For my part, I was unclear on exactly which exercises to start with. Although he says to exercise for 30 minutes at a time, even doing the Lesson One warm-ups would take longer than that. In addition, that lesson includes what he calls the three most important: Hindu (or Furey) push-ups, Hindu (or Furey) squats, and the Atlas push-up.

This is a problem I have noticed in other exercise books. They give you the exercises, tell you what each one is for, make suggestions on how to do them, but it’s still up to you to design the schedule that works best for you, depending on the condition you’re in and the time you have available.

The final section of the book illustrates the problem. He promises that no matter how weak you are now, in six weeks or less you will be able to do 500 push-ups a day. Not necessarily all at once, but 500 in all. And it has several success stories.

He then provides photos illustrating 13 push-up variations. Then it just says to do as many variations as possible every day.

That is all? Should I keep running? How about other exercises? Maybe, like the military man who went from 50 pounds overweight to stud in just one month just by doing push-ups, that’s enough.

It’s worth a try.