Review 2555

Gavin’s weblog, “Natural Physique Development” has a tagline which states that ‘It’s not about where you are right now, it’s about the direction you’re moving in.’ This is a good job really, because where his site is right now is somewhat limited in its scope and we can only hope that the direction he is moving in will improve on things somehow.

First impressions of the site are, well, that it isn’t actually a weblog at all. This is only a half- truth though because it DOES contain written content which is organised in date order, archives going back to the year 2000, some photos to enhance the entries a bit and links at the bottom to other relevant sites. So yeah, technically it’s a weblog.

However, this is the first weblog I have come across which contains only one weblog entry per year. In fact not even that really, because the first entry actually covers 2000 and 2001 (according to the entry title) and actually has 2002 bolted on the end as well. So, with the short entry for 2004, there are a grand total of three entries for the whole weblog. The archives aren’t linked to at all because, er… they all fit on to the main page anyway. In fact, bearing in mind the lack of a template and the fact that all the entries are written in the past tense I would suggest that the author must have put the whole site together during a spare afternoon, content and all.

Ok, so what is actually in the content then? Well it basically offers weight training advice. Throughout the twenty minutes it took me to read the site, I was always looking for the “catch” – what it is the site’s selling, what is its purpose, but I must admit the content does seem fairly genuine. There a few endorsements of other products though, and people are becoming more and more devious in their attempts to sell things to unsuspecting people, so don’t hold me to this. I have some knowledge of weight training issues and the advice given on this site doesn’t seem unreasonable, though it is often very unclear exactly what the specific exercises are which he is doing and the directions occasionally seem contradictory. In my experience, joining a gym and consulting a professional is by far the best way to learn- after all you can’t go wrong with professionals whereas you probably can with some guy’s rather dubious weblog.

In conclusion, this is a rather poor attempt at a weblog and all I can suggest is that, if the author is genuine, try looking at some of the high scoring weblogs to get some inspiration as to why yours only scored a 0.5. To be fair, I realise that weight training is not a short term project and there are some improvements to the site promised for March. All I can hope is that his skills as a weblogger improve during that time along with his physique.Natural Physique Development