Sports Books

This is the Wal-Mart of Triathlon training guides. There is a representative in every department of training, but it does not contain enough of the depth of knowledge and detail that you would like from a "Bible" to be truly satisfying. Throughout the book you will find diluted versions of other works and training books/products (Pose Method, Total Immersion, Paleo Diet, etc). I've found that reading the original sources is much more satisfying for that craving of knowledge. If you are really looking to gain in depth knowledge about the skills, training, and diet necessary for triathlon I would recommend reading the following books as either a supplement or replacement for this book:

1. Dr. Nichloas Romanov's Pose Method of Running (and DVD)
2. Daniel's Running Formula
3. Triathlon Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion Way for Anyone
to Master Open-Water Swimming
4. Easy Freestyle DVD (also by Total Immersion)
5. Bicycling Magazine's Complete Book of Road Cycling Skills
6. The Paleo Diet

One word: AWSOME.

Get it as fast as you can. Everything is finally available for even the non-pro.

it takes either a lot of hubris or some sort of confidence to put "bible" into the title of your book. joe friel doesn't do so without good reason. not only does this book come highly recommended from my collegiate triathlon friends, but in taking a triathlon "class" this semester to help with my pre-season training, this was our supplementary textbook. a great book through and through with advice for athletes on so many levels from a proprietor of the (tri)sport.

Buy this book! If you are a Triathlete, novice or Elite, this book will help you to train smart and reach your goals! Period.

This is a great book for both beginnners and intermediate triathletes. The book contains the basics, as well as advanced techniques, of training. The concept of "periodization" was especially helful for me. It is easy to read and the author fully explains everything. It is does not matter whether you train for sprint events or Iron Man level events, the concepts still apply.

Sometimes the irony of a certain situation strikes me as highly profound. The person that recommended me this book happens to be an assistant manager that I work with. She told me how she learned so much from Dungy's life, and how it changed her life. And her recommendation of this book was what convinced me to read it. Yet when the store manager threw her a bone that she didn't expect, she didn't handle it like a professional. She handled it like a little first grader because she didn't get what she deserved, and because life isn't fair. And after reading what Tony Dungy went through, and how he pressed on, I want to press on, regardless of my circumstances. So my goal isn't to be better than my assistant manager, but to focus on my life. That's what Tony Dungy did. He focused on his life and on his team and his goals.

"Quiet Strength" sums this up very well. All the while he looks back on his career in football, it never seems like he chalks it up as bragging rights. He just counts it as the life he lived. He takes lessons from the great Chuck Noll, to just go out there and "Do what we do" as a team. He talks little about his family, but from what I can see, his family comes before football.

Dungy takes disappointment combined with elation in the ups and downs of his career, let alone his life. Things have not always come easy for this man, and have in fact, gotten harder in some aspects. Especially in one situation with his son that many knew about in the middle of the 2005 season. But that didn't stop Tony Dungy from pressing forward. And it didn't stop him from leaning on Christ Jesus in the thick of things.

As I still see my assistant manager from day to day, I still extend my hellos and she extends hers. There is very little respect for her these days from my perspective, but that's ok. I do what I do. I'm pressing on. Tony Dungy pressed on. Tony Dungy is an NFL Champion, and all he has to show for it is quiet strength. Because that's all he needs! Thank you, Tony Dungy.

I highly recommend this book to ANY reader--the football fan, the God fan, the prayer fan, or othewise. It is an excellent, life-changing read.

This book is very powerful for anyone striving to excel with God as your guide. Tony Dungy is a great example of a faithful man in the face of tremendous success and soul shattering pain. Thanks for writing the book, all of us that read it are indebted to you.

Tony Dungy shows that the quiet man can accomplish great things. Coaching,and life do not require boisterous, bloviating and bullying to be sucessful. We need more coaches like Tony. In sports and in life itself.

Even if you are not a football fan, there are "life" lessons and leadership qualities that can be very beneficial to anyone who has to deal with people. This book is inspirational, using Christian principals, useful in everyday life.

Hiaasen's recent book is not more of the same. This one is NOT funny. If you are a golfer, love a golfer, or are related to a golfer, this book rings WAY too true. Bought it, read it, passed it on to my golfer son-in-law, and asked him to ignore the parts about politics and just wince at the rest of it. I've read all of Hiaasen's books and as many of his articles as I could lay hands on here in Michigan and when visiting Florida, and have always loved his stories. I would hope, for the sake of his readers, that he goes back to his stories and lets the truth- telling lie there, near the cup and the alligator.

In true Hiaasen form, this is a humorous look at what many contend to be a serious sport. I was laughing out loud by page 20, and appreciating his serious rant by page 38 as he decried the development of ever more golf courses and golf course subdivisions chopping up his beloved Florida landscape. Hiassen is a great writer, one of the best at using current situations to develop biting humor.
This personal account of his return to golf after a 30-year hiatus is a great read.

I very much enjoyed this book as I do all of his books. This is a light fun and quick read. Being a duffer myself I can relate to what he went through.

I used to play golf and quit for various reasons. I couldn't even finish this book because of the bad memories. Mark Twain said it best...." golf is a ruin of a perfectly good walk".

With apologies to Henry Higgins, "He's Got It...By George, He's Got It..."

Carl Hiassen is one of us. He knows what its like to make a "comeback" for someone who never was (a golfer)!!!

And he puts it all into a most readable book: the joy, the laughter, the heartache, the sorrow, the ectasy, the agony, the anger of it all, especially the downhill lie.

For a would-be comeback golfer, reading this book is kind of like looking up at the night sky and knowing, "We are not alone...we are not alone..."

While writing a human resources / management book, I realized that many of my references did not come from the world of business but rather from diverse subject matters. Nothing in my large stack of reference material was more useful than Laurence Gonzales's book on survival.

I greatly appreciated the writing style and the pace had me finishing the book in two settings. More importantly, I was so very glad to find that the lessons in this `survival' book could be readily applied to the business arena.

The lessons in this book: be calm, be decisive and never give up, were massaged and incorporated in my work. Together with surveys provided by our military leadership in Iraq, I was able to develop a guide for management in not only how to survive but thrive in a hostile environment.

I highly recommend this book to business leaders that truly want the best for their organizations and themselves. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author ofWingtips with Spurs

This book is a must read for anyone who hikes or travels into the wild or beyond your own backyard. Gonzales tells a great story and helps you understand the risks when outside our civilized comfort zone. This is particularly important read for those who camp and hike and venture into the "wild".

Impressive, it exceeded expectations. I did not have great hopes of loving this book and had passed it by for years, even though the topic is right up my alley. Well, I was surprised to find this interesting, engrossing and remarkably fresh.
I'd heard all the survival stories in the book before, but the author put a fresh spin on them and kept it suspenseful. The mix of survival stories, anecdotes and psychological discussion are well-balanced.
I highly recommend this book.

This is a nonfiction book set in the framework of a thriller. Gonzales frustratingly leaves stories in suspense. He often interrupts a gripping real-life story with pages of interpretation, some of it irrelevant and forced, and all of which could have been left until after the story finished. Besides this, his connections are often pretentiously esoteric (with a lot of tenuously-related Tao Te Ching verses), and he writes about things he doesn't seem to actually understand that well. One of his theses is something about chance being a pretty small factor in survival situations, but it's an underdeveloped thesis, and doesn't convince well. Other ideas are similarly unconvincing. He uses sources only tangentially connected to his idea, and repeats himself a lot. This book could have probably been cut down to half (or less) its current size, and organized better. I learned some, but I had to piece it together for myself.

After writing this review, I thought better of it and wanted to change it to two stars, but Amazon won't let me do that in the "Edit Review" thing.

Explores engaging concepts of what makes one a survival, although it's questionable as to whether a survivor is born or made. Could do with a little less of the analysis and a few more examples.

as I was mid-way through this book, there were only two thoughts going on in my mind -
1. this guy is human/normal like us with all frailties/insecurities
2. and gosh what extremes are humanly possible!!... the triumph of human spirit! very humbling. very inspiring.

A page-turner like no other, once I started it, I couldn't stop. Without a doubt, Lance is one of kind athlete, but that's not the point. The early achievements, the cancer battle, the return to the sport - it's an amazing story of the resilience of the human spirit, both on the account of people around him, and Lance himself. It's a gem of a book and an inspirational read, it reminded me of what we are all capable off.

I picked this book with trepidity. Having read scores of biographies from succesful sportspersons, I did not expect this one to be any different. They struggle, they compete, they succeed. I started reading this purely based my wife's strongly recommended this.

And it just did move me completely!


Once I started reading, there was no looking back. This is gripping cover-covcer. I guess the cycle races are such. We get so involved in the sport. Whern Lance talks about Cancer, it is not in absurd medical terms or over-simplification. He did carry me long - thtough his journry. I could vicariusly experience being with him in the ward in Idianopolis or at the Finish line of Tour De France.

A narrative style that takes the audience at a leisurely pace, keeping the reder hooked and attached to the strory.

Truly inspirational. A day after I finished the book, today, I am shaving my head for a cause - cancer patients!

I had a meeting with VP in the company and as I got in his office you can sense he was a Lance fans. I'm not! Maybe for his way to act that he so well describe in his book! As an ex-athlete my self I could not hide my opinion about Lance. It was a nice and healthy conversation. Few weeks later I had another meeting with the same VP and as I walk in to his office he gave me this book as a present, knowing I'm an avid reader.

I read it during the long flight back home! Great inspiring book! Never did read a sportsman biography but this one is worth each single word.

You learn something new every day! I guess I learn something more about a great individual and athlete!

PS - I have a colleague that is fighting a similar battle and I gave the book to him because sometime other peoples words are better then your.

A story of courage, transformation, inspiration, love, failure, success, it has absolutely every element of the most thrilling book you have ever read. Get this book if you want to laugh, cry, scream, shout and jump for joy. Lance's triumph over his bought with cancer will leave you feeling grateful, in awe, and thoroughly filled with life-affirming happiness.

Sally Shields, www.TheDILRules.com

This is the best chipping, pitching, and sand play manual that I have ever read, and I've bought a number of books over the years. I'm a 10 handicapper that's played for 35 years and my short game was never great and recently gotten horrible. This book gives you great visualization techniques that are very simple and easy to conceptualize. I didn't even have a chance to practice, but only memorized the hand position tips, shoulder position, pivot, and weighting, and went out to play a few days later. I had 10 excellent chips and pitches (each to within 5 feet and several were tap-ins) along with a sandie. I would normally have 9 crappy chips including two skulls and 4 chunkers. That improvement is not coincidence, but a demonstration that what he tells you can translate to immediate results. Utley says that you'll suddenly say 'eureka' when you make solid contact is exactly what happens. This is definitely a great teaching book - short and sweet with pictures - that even guys who think they know it all (or thought they did, like me) need to get. It's very easy to see why this guy teaches the pros. A must-buy.

The techniques described really work after a little practice. My only difficulty was relating the pictures to the text. The text does not reference the pictures so you have to read the text, look at the pictures, read again and then determine what the pictures apply to. However, the methods really work and have already helped me drop a few strokes per round in 3 weeks.

After reading this book, I am confident that my short game will improve. However, time will tell with practice and repetition, I should see a significant improvement.

This is a different approach to the short game which seems to really work. I've tried it for just two weeks and the improvement is already evident.

After reading Stan Utley's "The Art of Putting," I spent four months retooling my putting approach to great effect. I was really anxious to read his ideas about short game shot-making in this book.

After four weeks of absorbing and practicing his ideas in this great little book, I'm a bigger Utley fan than ever. He explains his short game ideas very clearly and concisely here. As in his first book, he gives some entertaining professional examples of tour players he works with.

Stan Utley emphasizes a natural, mini-swing approach to the short game, and he clearly shows how to make a simple, pivot-based swing for chipping and pitching. His sand shot technique is very interesting as well and will help to make more consistent and feel-based shots in bunkers.

great book for beginners to advanced runners. It will let you go from short distance to long in a short period of time, but remember no magical formula without discipline !

If you only buy one book on how to train, this is the one. I tell all my running friends that are looking to go longer distances or get their running to the next level that they need to buy this book and ChiRunning. This one to figure out how fast to run and how to train. ChiRunning to figure out how to run pain free and use gravity to run faster.

Buy this book. It has everything you need to figure out how fast you should be running in order to maximize your potential. It makes so much sense and it really works!

The book describes a new approach to train long-distance running.
The key idea is to cut down to three days of intense running per week augmented by two days of cross training.
The authors provide complete instruction to execute their training approach along with scientific evidence that their approach actually works.

The approach sounds appealing as it can save busy people interested in running a lot of valuable time. The evidence presented sounds solid but I was not yet able to complete 16 weeks worth of training since buying the book.

The downside of the book is that it is a compilation of a series of articles that previously appeared in a magazine. Hence, it is full of repetitions and contains lots of testimonials from people that tried this approach. These testimonials are initially fun to read, but then they get boring.

Summary: the approach sounds cool and worth trying out (I will), but the book could be improved by compressing the essential information in about 40 pages and putting the rest on a website.

I am enjoying this program so far. In a nutshell you run 3X a week. One run is a Long run, one a Tempo, and one Interval. This covers the three areas you want to improve on. My goals are to improve my personal bests this year in the 5 & 10K. I also plan on doing my first mini Triathlon. I like the idea of running 3X a week and having more time to train in other areas. Most other running programs have you logging a lot more miles. The proof will be in the pudding in a few months when I go for my PR's.

A month ago I finished training for a marathon using the FIRST program from the internet (the one with a goal "to finish"). While I didn't finish in my desired pace (5:30), I did feel great while training and was ready to start training again sooner than I ever have been before (1 previous marathon, 10 half marathons). Now I'd like to train for a 2:30 half marathon, and I bought this book hoping it would illuminate the paces (such as ST, MT, and LT - short, mid and long tempo) that are not spelled out in the online half marathon training program.

Instead, I found the slowest marathon time included in the pace tables is 4:51:56 (2:19:03 half). And formulas to derive the paces are not included. The rest of the book has some explanation of why the key runs are set up the way they are (which I read on Runner's World), and TONS of success story letters (which I could have done without).

While I highly recommend the FIRST training program, just get the information from Runner's World or off the FIRST website, set your tempo paces at 5K pace - 15s (ST), -30s (MT), and -45s (LT), and save yourself the cost of the book.

Note: On second thought, I wish I had only given one star, but it doesn't look possible to change it.

Disappointing. I REALLY wanted to like this book and I think I might have, if I did not already follow the EPL religiously. It is probably a good introduction to English football, but not much more. For a quality substitute try The Miracle of Castel di Sangro: A Tale of Passion and Folly in the Heart of Italy, which is extremely well written and just a better story.

Let me begin by stating my credentials: I know as much about soccer as I know about knitting, which is to say I know very little. Sportswriter Chuck Culpepper knew just a little more than I when he moved to England and decided to become a fan of the Premier League.

During the first part of "Bloody Confused" Culpepper belabors the point that he was suffering from burnout from watching and interviewing pampered American athletes. The fun really begins when the writer allows the reader to get past this and move on to Culpepper's introduction to the Premiership and how he decides which team he is going to adopt as his very own so that he can once again be a "fan."

Reading this book made me want to go to England and begin following the Premiership teams. The idea of traveling the country by train to see the "four mastodons" playing Goliath to the other teams' David sounds great. Watching teams trying to stave off "relegation" sounds very exciting. And watching teams from lower leagues trying to "play up" to achieve Premiership status sounds fantastic.

I'm not sure how "Bloody Confused" will be accepted by people who are already knowledgeable Premiership fans, but it left me wanting to get on the train to go see Portsmouth play Chelsea.

I'm almost done with this book but I already know that I would recommend this book to any soccer fan, and especially any Premiership fan! It's great to read about all the events to go on during a game in the stands. All of the Non-soccer information is also great to read about!

It was a sad day in Kentucky when Chuck Culpepper left us for Oregon. Worse, even, when he left our shores for England. But, hallelujah, he has written a book for us thirsty souls who enjoyed his writing on every sporting event his editors sent him on, and events non-sporting. Being a typical American who loves her football, the eleven-man type, the English soccer scene seems twisty (tournaments during the regular season?) but oddly familiar, too, with the descriptions of the fans of the teams. We need to sing more, it seems, to bring us even with our brethren. Wish I could have met the Blue Bear and sat in Portsmouth's home pitch and heard the die hards sing. This is Culpepper at his best, literate, readable and genuinely amazed at what he sees. I'll read it again and again until he gives us another.

This is a very entertaining book and is fascinating to read how an American sports writer learns to love sports again after discovering the English Premiership. This book is great for anyone who loves soccer, sports in general and is an Anglophile . I recommend this book to die hard soccer fans and people who are looking to learn more about the beautiful game. I will probably even read this again it was so enjoyable.

Whether you are a strength coach, any person who trains others to increase their strength or looking to learn more about improving your own strength, this is a must have. It is science digested and put into print in a very easy to understand format.

This has been a fanastic book. I coach cyclists for the Velodorme, and it has been nothing but helpfulll in bringing up the power output in riders and having them pull out some better numbers on the track.

I recomend this book to anyone who has been having trouble in getting anyone over the line in any sport that requires power, strength, or a combination of both.

This book gets 5 stars because it focuses precisely on Programming. You can see by the other user reviews that this is an excellent book.

This is the best book I've read on planning strength training programs. If you exercise for strength, you need to have this book.

However, while I thought this was a great book by the standards of the field, the lack of references really irked me. What's fact and what's opinion? It's hard to tell. Rippetoe often implies things are scientifically supported (and from other reading I have a pretty good idea about which of his points are supported), but he doesn't give you the references you would need to be able to tell. He doesn't tell you where his knowledge stops and his speculation begins. This book really is closer to best-practices than anything else out there, but you can't tell that by casually reading it.

Myth-based training and unsupported theories run amok in weight training. Scientific-ish people like Rippetoe could combat that. In that narrow sense, this book is a missed opportunity. There are readers who will get through the book and put it on the shelf next to McRobert, Mentzer and Schwarzenegger and not be able to tell the difference.

Quibbles: The Intermediates chapter, which ought to be the most useful for the target audience, is hard to follow. I was particularly disappointed in the description of the Texas Method. There's also basically nothing on mixing weight training with other sports, which is a common need.

Overall, it's a very good book, but it could have been a great one.

As with most of the books that I have read on advanced weightlifting programs, the book is heavy on theory and low on examples. The author gives some general and somewhat confusing parameters on how to design a program and then fails to give a full body workout. The book even states that working the body as one unit is the way to go, but then only gives examples on specific exercises like the push press or squat. Its well written and one can tell the author is extrememly knowledgeable. I just dont understand why he didnt give a full body workout example for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lifters.