I'm not going to tell anyone they "need" both.
As the interview with Leigh says, this started out as a completely different book called "Lift Like a Man." Only after it was written, edited, and photographed did we decide to change the title to New Rules of Lifting for Women.
If a woman is already doing NROL workouts, the main benefit of the new book is six months of new workouts designed by Alwyn. There's also a comprehensive nutrition program.
The theme of the original book was the "six basic moves" idea. In NROL for Women, I don't dwell much on the six moves, partly because I hate repeating myself. But mostly I wanted to present two new arguments that are specific to women:
First, of course, is the message of the original title -- women will get better results from training if they don't think of what they do as fundamentally different from what men do. Same species, same physiology, same approach to training.
Second is a new way to look at nutrition. This was all new to me, which I think I admit somewhere in the book. So I didn't know what a metabolic nightmare these thousand-calorie-a-day diets are for women who exercise. I think my daughters eat more than a thousand a day, so it was shocking to think of adult women eating so little and still going to the gym and doing serious workouts.
So I think the new book has a lot of important and useful information, along with the diet plan and workouts. And, like the original, I hope it's entertaining to read. But I won't pretend any woman needs this book if she's enjoying the workouts in the original. I'll take it as a triumph either way.
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