Welcome to our latest installment of our product-review series. This time, we're covering a mix of gear to build your body, DVDs to build your workout arsenal, and a book to build your knowledge.

E-Z Dip Dumbbell Dipping Belt

Dipping belts have been a gym staple for a century. They're essential for adding significant load to body-weight exercises like chin-ups and dips. But besides a few material changes, there hasn't been much innovation in decades. Most are just pieces of leather and chain, and they can be tricky to load and adjust once you start piling on the plates.

Now the folks at Hypertrophy Enterprises (they're the ones who created Haulin' Hooks) offer the E-Z Dip Dumbbell Dipping Belt, promoted as a giant step forward for those of us who need to train with a bigger load than nature and protein supplements can provide.

The belt comes with a dumbbell hook (shown in the photo at right), and you can buy an optional plate loader. We didn't test the plate loader, but we used the belt with the dumbbell hook for several weeks at the gym, and came away impressed:

• The hooks really do hold heavy dumbbells without any slippage.

• It really is easy and fast to put a dumbbell on the hooks, and take it off after the set. This is a huge improvement over the traditional dip-belt chain, which is awkward to load.

• The chain is easy to adjust for length, so you can hang the weight between your legs without the risk of bruised knees or entangled manhood.

• Since the belt itself adjusts, it fits snugly around your waist — unlike traditional dipping belts, which balance precariously on your hips.

• The belt is padded with strategically placed six-millimeter Neoprene hip cushions, making it more comfortable than basic leather belts.

• The manufacturer claims it can support 450 pounds. Since Dave Tate wasn't available, we have no idea if this is true. All we can say for certain is that it's very well made, and should last for years and years.

Our only complaint is that it doesn't come in pink zebra strips to match our sexy bodybuilder pants.

The belt costs $59.95, plus shipping. In theory, you can pick one up here. We say "in theory" because we didn't see the belt listed on the site. There's also a phone number (800-851-7892); we left a message but hadn't heard back by the time we ran this article.

Rock-climbing chalk bags

Tired of missing lifts due to sweaty palms? Train in a sissy gym that won't let you in the door with chalk? Want to feel like a badass and throw clouds of sodium carbonate into the air like Lebron James? Then it's time to take a lesson from the rock-climbing community and pick up a refillable chalk sock with carrying bag.

It's a lot easier and less messy than carrying a block of chalk in a zip-lock bag or Tupperware bowl. The chalk powder flows through the sock, so all you need to do is hold it in your palms for a couple seconds to dry the sweat and improve your grip. Slip it back in the bag when you're covered, and you've gotten all the benefits of chalk without any of the mess. Well, hardly any. But whatever chalk is left on the equipment can be wiped down in seconds. (You do carry a towel with you, right?)

So if your gym forbids chalk, the sock and carrying bag allow you to use it without drawing any attention to your crime. If your gym allows it, you can be a good citizen and clean up after yourself. Your lifts will go up, thanks to your improved grip, and the gym manager who named a mop and bucket after you will appreciate the fact you left no trail behind.

You can head to your local outdoor store to pick it all up, or buy a refillable chalk sock for $4.25 here and the carrying bag for $15.95 here.

Strength Training for Fat Loss & Conditioning

Coach Nick Tumminello has been one of our more prolific authors lately. The editors appreciate his creative approach to training; he never fails to come up with at least a couple of exercises we haven't seen before.

This new DVD shows that side of Tumminello — we don't think there's a trainer or gym rat on earth who can watch all 38 minutes and not see at least one exercise or exercise variation that's completely novel — while also showing training techniques that are simple and practical.

Since the focus here is on fat loss and conditioning, Tumminello sticks with what he calls the Three Cs:

Combinations (two exercises combined into one, like a deadlift and bent-over row)

Complexes (series of exercises performed with the same piece of equipment, such as deadlifts, rows, shrugs, clean, presses, and squats, all done with a barbell without setting it down between movements)

Circuits (series of exercises on different pieces of equipment)

That part's not novel — you can pick up any issue of Men's Fitness or Men's Health and see combinations, complexes, and circuits. What's unique is the way Tumminello uses these basic training methods. With each of the Cs, he shows how to put together routines using a barbell, dumbbells, kettlebells, bands, cables, body weight, a medicine ball, a Sorinex Landmine, and his own invention, the Core Bar.

He even shows a complex you can do with a single 45-pound weight plate: shoulder-to-shoulder press, bent-over row, plate push on the floor (use a towel under the plate if the floor isn't carpeted), push-up, and rollout (slide the plate out, as you would an ab wheel, and then pull it back in, using your abs, lats, and triceps).

The DVD costs $50; you can order it here.

Strong: The Movie

If you read "The Most Brutal Training Camp on Earth," you already know how hardcore Joe DeFranco's Jersey gym is.

We've got to warn you: this documentary will make you want to go and kick some serious ass in the gym. In fact, the editors had to get up from our chairs halfway through the film to have a push-up contest.

Focusing on DeFranco's dirty, loud warehouse gym, and the athletes who train there, Strong: The Movie has an energy that is contagious and scary at the same time. The training scenes border on insane, with guys flipping tires, pulling sleds, doing heavy floor presses, and puking into the bushes.

Each character highlighted in the film is interesting and inspiring in his own way.

There's NFL hopeful Deon Anderson, a 26-year-old kid from a bad neighborhood whose dream of playing professionally will determine how he can provide for his pregnant wife and unborn child. There's Mike Guadango, the small-college baseball star who's obnoxious and funny, and whose work ethic is otherworldly. You meet Craig and Dean, two rugby-playing brothers who fly all the way from England to train at DeFranco's, and who sleep in the same bed to save money. Finally, there's Mitchell MacDonald, a 90-pound wisp of a kid who went 0-22 in his high school wrestling debut and hopes to turn the tables next season.

While Strong: The Movie has some insight into Joe's training methodologies, those looking for programs and exercise selection will be disappointed. But the methods aren't the point. If you want a cool, inspiring documentary from one of the most hardcore gyms in the U.S., you can't go wrong with Strong.

You can buy Strong: The Movie here for $24.95 plus shipping.

Mr. America

Bernarr Macfadden, the subject of Mr. America, is the Abraham of modern muscle. As publisher of Physical Culture magazine, Macfadden launched Charles Atlas and inspired both Bob Hoffman and Joe Weider. But he did much more than that: He changed the way we look at health and fitness, and in the process changed the media itself, for better and for worse.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Macfadden is that he was one of the most famous people in the U.S., if not the world, in the first half of the 20th century, but by the end of the second half was virtually forgotten.

Author Mark Adams had never heard of Macfadden until 10 years ago when he stumbled across some old copies of Physical Culture in a second-hand store. He found articles advocating yoga and condemning cigarettes — standard now, but radical for 1925. He learned that Macfadden, a nobody with nothing from the middle of nowhere who'd built himself up with exercise and a bizarre diet, had once controlled a vast media empire, the influence of which is still with us today.

No idea related to health and fitness was too extreme for Macfadden. Like many alt-health gurus of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was obsessed with constipation (not without reason: conventional diets back then were nearly devoid of fiber), and advocated eating more vegetables but less total food — two meals a day, instead of three. But unlike rival health gurus, whose pleas for abstinence from tobacco and alcohol were wrapped in a neo-puritanical fear of any physical pleasure, Macfadden was a balls-out recruiting poster for carnal delight. He railed against prudishness, and in late middle age boasted that he felt no shame at being seen naked by his teenage daughters.

Macfadden, as you probably guessed, was one-quarter visionary and three-quarters lunatic. The loony side led him to create his own branch of medicine ("physcultopathy"), run for political office (his platform was based on his antipathy for white bread), and, as one of his final public acts, start a religion.

But it's the visionary part that remains with us today. In the final chapters of Mr. America, Adams notes that Jack LaLanne changed his life after attending a lecture by one of Macfadden's acolytes. Bob Hoffman of York Barbell launched Strength and Health magazine with ads in Macfadden's Physical Culture.

Joe Weider has acknowledged Macfadden's influence, and for most of his publishing career followed Macfadden's template. Even his discovery and promotion of Arnold Schwarzenegger was foreshadowed by Macfadden's launch of Charles Atlas (born in Italy as Angelo Siciliano), who gained the title of "World's Most Perfectly Developed Man" from a contest Macfadden sponsored.

And in 1950, J.I. Rodale, inspired by Macfadden, launched Prevention magazine, from which Men's Health was spun off in the late 1980s. Those magazines are probably most representative of the financial success and influence of their forerunner ... even if their conservative approach to offering health advice, coupled with their reliance on mainstream medical experts, is the antithesis of Macfadden's cantankerous advocacy.

All this barely scratches the surface of Macfadden's oddball life and oversized influence. He also created and published the New York Evening Graphic, a tabloid that was one evolutionary step removed from the National Enquirer, and invented the "reality" genre in mass media with True Story magazine and its many spinoffs (True Confessions, True Detective, True Romances ...).

Best of all, Mr. America is as entertaining a nonfiction book as you'll read all year. Adams has a robust appreciation for his larger-than-life subject, and marvels along with us at just what a crazy-ass sumbitch Macfadden was.

You can pick up Mr. America (retail price: $25.99) at Amazon.com, or wherever books are sold.

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