So all in all the new exercises have totally spiced up my training, and I've definitely lost body fat (I have some body fat scales so can measure it) and weight, and my core muscles feel much stronger. I've also discovered a new stress relief system in hitting the punchbag! Given that I have bought a huge number of fitness books and most of them lay gathering dust not adding anything to my regular gym routine this has been a great investment.

Here's a quick critique for you:

PRO:

- Ian Oliver is clearly a man who knows his stuff.
- Plenty of colourful pictures for exercises.
- Not a bad price.

CON:

- Surprisingly small book. This is not a manual - it is more like a handbook, being almost pocket-sized in stature.
- Terrible editing job. The book doesn't know where it's going. You jump from aerobic training to resistance training to calisthenics to circuits etc. But there's never any clear indication what routines you should be doing - there just seems to be piles and piles of exercises listed, as though it were a directory.
- The book tries to pack in too much into too little space. There are loads of chapters, but few of them exceed 10 pages. Yet some of these chapters cover enormous topics. Take calisthenics, as an example - only a handful of pages are dedicated to this, yet a guy like John Peterson devotes a huge, heavy manual to this art. Same goes for chapters on key issues like nutrition. In fairness, Oliver does give suggested references (like Anita Bean), but if you're not going to cover the topic sufficiently, then why bother to include it in the first place? This is what I mean by the book being "over-packed".
- No tailored routines are supplied. Maybe you're looking to lose fat, or build muscle, or achieve maximum fitness. Sure, it could be argued that boxing fitness "is what it is", and that it provides all of the above. I'm just issuing a note of caution to anyone who wants/is expecting specific routines for specific goals. You're not going to get it.
- Not enough space is dedicated to exercise form.

I think this book just struggles to figure out what it is. It's too small to be a manual, but it's slightly too dense to be a handbook. It has pretensions to be about boxing training, but little coverage is given to punching techniques. Oliver clearly wants to pack in a lot of information into a small amount of space, but this clearly results in a loss of attention.

I think there are plenty more fitness books out there that you can and should pick up before this one, many of which are tailored for SPECIFIC needs and, therefore, don't skimp on the detail for what you need. I purchased this book on the back of the 5* recommendations and, to be honest, I feel a little wronged! 5* really should be reserved for outstanding pieces of work, and this is far, far from hitting the fitness book canon.

This is just the type of book that i was looking for and highly recommend it to anyone with no experience of boxing and want to get into it, and also learn how to get fighting fit.