Athletics Books

I coach 7th and 8th grade girls basketball. I had high hopes for this book when I ordered it directly from the author. I bought it assuming that it might be helpful for our CYO program. It wasn't. After taking a look at it, I decided not to share it with either parents or fellow coaches. I was able to locate free publications from CYO and materials from our AAU program that handle the sportsmanship issues better. I believe that this book was represented to be more than it was. The author may have had good intentions, but this book just doesn't deliver.

This book deals with issues that aren't generally discussed at sport specific clinics and that many coaches don't learn until they've had a bad experience. The liability chapter alone was a huge eye opener to me. I'd recommend this book to any coach, regardless of sport or experience.

An excellent resource for every coach but especially the parent who never thought they would be a coach, but find themselves with a whistle around their neck. It is easy to read and has wonderful realistic examples of dealing with many situations not related to the game itself.

This book is great for those just starting to coach children and the weekend parent-coach. I've never coached children before and found the chapters to be concise and easy to follow. I especially liked the bulleted summary at the end of each chapter. I have confidence that I could be a successful youth coach and will have this book as a reference by my side!

I looked through lots of books at the Bookstore and I was looking more for ideas for practice and helping kids learn new skills. This book provides learning through games, strategies and many more useful tools. I think that keeping the kids busy and learning in practice with little idle time is essential. It also gives you a plan for the year per age group. This book has given me lots of ideas. Thanks.

A more appropriate title would have been "The Psychological Aspects of Coaching Youth Softball". This book's strength is in that area. However, I was very disapointed in it's minimal discussion of specific drills (batting, defense, base running etc.)

This book is a great book to discuss the pshycological aspect of coaching. The book discussed what it means to be a coach and how to deal with parents. It did have a few drills at the end of the book that were somewhat helpful but overall this book didn't have a lot of useful information for myself. If you want a great book for coaching, buy "The baffled Parents Guide To Coaching Youth Softball".

As a first time league softball coach, I was looking for some pointers on teaching basic skills, drills, and organizing practices. Boy, does this book deliver. In simple prose, and with helpful diagrams, this book lays out a thoughtful approach to teaching every aspect of the game, and making it fun. I am beginning my first season with more confidence having read this book. Play ball!

Great book about the Championship season of 88. Lou is a master motivater and takes you inside the college football world and tells what it takes to be a champion. If you give this a bad review, you must be one of the many Irish haters.

Lou Holtz is an excellent football coach. In this book he shows the reader what it takes to win in the high pressure sport of college football. The chapter on Lou Holz's view of life is worth the price alone.

Coach Holtz gives a great description of what his championship season at Notre Dame was like. From player quotes to narratives by outside sources, this book is well worth reading. Just as importantly, Holtz gives his view on the game of life and how to succeed in it.

I love Notre Dame football and am a huge fan of Lou Holtz. But this account of the Irish's championship run is excruciatingly dry to the point of frustrating. Lou's quoted many times saying "...he'll be a fine player..." ugh! Passion and wit were lacking throughout the book. If you want prose above a fifth grade level, save your money.

Are you kidding? People actually write books about one of the worst franchises in the history of sports? Please. The title should be "We are the professional underachievers of the modern era". The Red Sox and the word dreams should never go together in a sentence. Unless of course it's used in the context of destroying people's dreams. That would be correct. If you have any respect for baseball history you should just forget this book. It's a piece of garbage - don't even bother.

This book is really deceiving. There are tons of Red Sox books out this year and this book is not only the cheapest but the cover, except for the Fisk photo, is sort of a weird color. But it's one of the best Sox books I've ever read. The book is a collection of stories from 1901 until the present written by people covering the Red Sox. About 95% of it was new to me and about 95% of that was great. There are stories about the Red Sox world championships (!!!) in 1903 and 1918, Gammons and Ray Fitzgerald on the 1975 World Series, tons of stuff on the Impossible Dream team and even a really really funny poem about Bill Lee. There's a whole section on Ted Williams and the Jackie Robinson tryout, too. It's sort of like reading Red Sox history as it happened. When I showed it to my Dad he remembered some of the old writers and started telling me stories about them and we stayed up late skimming throuigh the book and talking about them. It was really fun.

This is a good anthology of Red Sox writing, but none of these excellent writers is able to change history so that the Red Sox win THE BIG ONE once in awhile. Read Bill Lee's The Little Red (Sox) Book to see a whole bunch of happy endings told in a hilarious way by the one and only Spaceman!

If you liked Red Sox Century then you will absolutely love this. This book is the best writing about the team ever put together, mostly from the newspapers, so it includes stories by guys who write now like Tony Maz and Buckley and Shaughnessy (not his obnoxious stuff) and old timers like Gammons, George Frazier and even Dave Egan. I'm a huge Sox fan but I hadn't read most of what is in here. Original stories from ther 1903 1912 and 1918 World Series, too. I mean this as a compliment, but it's perfect for the beach or the bathroom, or just to have next to your chair as you watch the Sox this summer. It's perfect to browse through while watching a game. I just wish it ended with the Red Sox finally winning the world series.

This book was excellent,because I liked how the book started ended.I liked how the author described the characters.It had excllent plot.She did a wonderful job because she likes her step mother,step father,steps brothers,and sisters.She has a great attitude,because she treats her friends nicely.I would like to read the whole Baby-Sitters series because I think they are all great books.I think the book is wonderful I wouldn't change anything,because I liked it.I would recommend it to others.

This book was excellent,because I liked how the book started ended.I liked how the author described the characters.It had excllent plot.She did a wonderful job because she likes her step mother,step father,steps brothers,and sisters.She has a great attitude,because she treats her friends nicely.I would like to read the whole Baby-Sitters series because I think they are all great books.I think the book is wonderful I wouldn't change anything,because I liked it.I would recommend it to others.

Karen went to Stoneybrook and joined the swim team and she wants to be able to swim fast. She also has three best friends and they call themselves the Three Musketers. Karen likes having fun and swimming with them also until Coach Carson starts acting mean and says that the team needs to work harder and they are not working hard enough then Karen has to find out what the problem is with Coach Carson and she does that by getting help from her friends.

This book is pretty good. Karen joined the Stoneybrook swim team which was coached by the famous Stoneybrook swim star Ron Carson! She thought she was such a lucky child to have a superstar coach. But she was wrong. The coach acted mean to the team.He said they were not working hard enough.She told Daddy and Elizabeth how mean the coach was,so,on the day after the team has lost to Rockville, Daddy and Terri's father, Mr. Barkan went to the Community Center to talk to the coach. Daddy also said that that day chilly and gray, and the practice must be cancelled.In the end,the Ron Carson resinged to be a coach.

The writing of this book is very technical yet if you are looking for the training regime and/or secret of why the kenyans win so many races, you will be disappointed as it writes a lot on geographic differences....

This book is a must read for anybody that is interested in running. Everyone always wonders why the Kenyans are such good runners? This detailed, and interesting, book allows you to learn and understand the people of Kenya, and also why they are such good runners. Throughout their turbulant history it seems as though games, or sporting events, have been an important part of their culture. Becasue of their deep rooted cultural activites, as well as the colonial influence from the British, the Kenyans have been able to excell at events that revolve around running. Bale and Sang bring fourth a lot of information that allows you to learn about running in Kenya, and also the impact the Kenyans have had on runners around the world yesterday, today, and into the future.

This book is a must read for anybody that is interested in running. Everyone always wonders why the Kenyans are such good runners? This detailed, and interesting, book allows you to learn and understand the people of Kenya, and also why they are such good runners. Throughout their turbulant history it seems as though games, or sporting events, have been an important part of their culture. Becasue of their deep rooted cultural activites, as well as the colonial influence from the British, the Kenyans have been able to excell at events that revolve around running. Bale and Sang bring fourth a lot of information that allows you to learn about running in Kenya, and also the impact the Kenyans have had on runners around the world yesterday, today, and into the future.

How are we to explain the seemingly phenomenal success of East African athletes in the sport of track and field? One approach, advocated by Roger Bannister, former mile world record holder and currently a consultant neurologist, is to explain such success in biological terms. During 1996, in a series of speculative statements, not grounded in any `scientific' facts, Bannister highlighted the importance of `race' in determining thesuccess of East African athletes. On reading Kenyan Running, it is clear that, on this occasion, Bannister is firmly on the wrong track.

John Bale and Joe Sang have produced an excellent account of the emergence and development of Kenyan athletics. This carefully crafted text demonstrates, time and again, the socio - cultural determinants of sporting success. In offering a cogent, social scientifically based account, Bale and Sang provide a clear riposte to advocates of biological determinism. In particular, in chapter six, the environmental and racial myths associated with `Kenyan' success are carefully dissected. Besides, who are these `Kenyan' men who succeed in specific athletic events? This book provides the answers. The debunking of biological determinism is an important achievement in itself. This book, however, does more than this. It has several other virtues.

In Kenyan Running we see not only the theoretical advocacy, but also the empirical demonstration, of an approach to the study of sport that draws on geography, history and sociology. While I would have liked the authors to have been even more explicit in this regard, the book provides a very good example of the potential stemming from a blending of different disciplines. No doubt, advocates of these disciplines would have liked to have seen more of `their' knowledge base in the book, but what has been produced provides an important pointer to what inter - or multi - disciplinary research can achieve.

Bale and Sang also provide a detailed account of a century of Kenyan involvement in modern athletics and, in doing so, assess the role of tribal traditions, colonial heritage and `development' processes. In these areas they provide a solid account of the actual dynamics involved. Drawing on traditional geographical methods, but also in keeping with new geographical directions, the authors provide a series of astute historical geographical insights. They are not content, however, to explain the `success' of Kenyan athletics solely in terms of `internal' developments. The authors show how such processes have to be explained in terms of the globalization of sport.

This connection between Kenyan athletics and the global sport system is another virtue of this book. For them, the emergence of Kenyan athletics is bound up with the globalization of sport. Drawing on Wallerstein's World System theory, Bale and Sang interpret Kenyan athletics in terms of a process of `underdevelopment'. Far from western coaches and sporting aid assisting Kenyan athletics uniformily, these authors argue that aspects of the sport have been, wittingly or otherwise, `underdeveloped'. For example, and in very concrete terms, Kenyan field athletic performance has declined over time. In contrast, through a combination of `channelling', self selection and role modelling, some Kenyan men excel at middle and long distance racing. This very success, however, leads to a dependent form of development. The `natural' resources of Kenya are drawn away from the periphery to the core. In sporting terms, the core involves American colleges and the European Grand Prix circuit. Bale and Sang rightly point to the costs, as well as the well publicised `benefits', of these processes.

The debate regarding sport and globalization is complex. The Wallerstein model has been rightly criticised by Robertson and Featherstone in the mainstream literature. It is no surprise then that reservations can also expressed in the context of the study of sport. The role of cultural relations, civilizational exchanges and lived experiences do not occupy a central place in the model. To be fair, Bale and Sang are keen to address aspects of these issues. Perhaps, however, in their conclusion to a fine book, they should have shown how their approach fits in as part of the debate about sport and the global system more generally. In addition, it would have been helpful to have returned to the theme of debunking the myths and biological determinism that underpins much of the media reporting, coaching beliefs and sport science assumptions concerning Kenyan athletic success. These are, however, minor quibbles. This is a book that can rightfully claim to be both imaginative and path - breaking.

Joseph Maguire

Loughborough University

From the PGA Teaching Manual to The PGA Manual Of Golf I have had the opportunity to gain the knowledge that has help me become a good coach and teacher and not just a instructor. If you are serious about your game and want to get better I sincerly recomend that you add The PGA Manual Of Golf to your library. Coach H Turk Walker

After having some trouble with my swing, I knew that I had to better understand the basics of the game in order to improve. I got this book as a gift and it really helped me define the fundamentals of golf and improved my play. I enjoy the game more now. The concise and straighforward presentation was easy to read. The format made it easy to find just what I was looking for. I highly recommend this as a great gift to the golfer in your life!

This is one of the most comprehensive books on golf around. There is a wealth of information on virtually every aspect of the game, from the physical mechanics of making the stroke, to the mental side of playing. Everything in here is required knowledge for anyone playing golf, or someone looking to get started.

Probably my only problem with the book is the lack of exercises listed. A great many appear as pictures with short captions, but many of these drills may be helpful to a variety of players. If performed incorrectly, they may damage your game, which is probably why they were not described in detail, but given that almost every segment ends with "Listed to what your PGA instructor says", it would be nice to know that the PGA trusts its readers to do just that.

Another part that would have been nice, but not neccesary, would be a more in-depth section on club design and construction. With so many people going out to buy custom made equipment, a little more information on exactly what standards are used to determine club length etc. might have put some people's minds at ease when at the pro shop. We all trust the PGA and its professionals, but knowing what they know isn't going to detract all that much from our experience. Rather, it can help us understand why we pay more for fitted gear.

In sum, buy this before you buy any other book on golf. Then, if you still feel you need more even with an instructor, shop around.

This book was a poor choice for me.

I am taking up golf for the first time so I was looking for a book that would be very specific to the fundamentals. I wanted step by step instructions that included detailed pictures. I also wanted concise information on golf rules, etiquette, and equipment technology trade-offs.

This book has a lot of information but it depends on word after word to tell its story. Very few pictures are included to supplement the information. Therefore, it fails almost totally at my first requirement for detatiled fundamentals. The second requirement is partially met. There is information available on many topics but it is not concise.

Overall, reading this book was like sitting through a friend's vacation slide show. I listen to all the general comments and tangents(which someone else may find interesting), waiting for the specific nugget I'm interested in, but ultimately fall asleep.

If you enjoy broad discussions or want a higher level overview, this book may be right for you - but it did not meet my requirements.

I'm a 4.0/4.5 player who has been doing the Power Tennis Training program off and on for the past few years and would strongly recommend it for all players looking to improve strength and conditioning. Chu's book provides a 12 week workout plan (both weight training and court footwork drills) that is easy to follow and gets results. I find myself quicker, stronger, and more explosive after just a week or two. The program gives you more confidence in your level of fitness which translates into more confidence in your overall game. Some of the workout days take a few hours, but if you stick with the program you will be more than pleased with the results. Thanks for a great book Don Chu!

I guess my expectations are too high. This book was very remedial with a lack of content. I was hoping to gain some insight from this book, but the information was basic at the best, with poor choices for athletes. No regard to the biomechanics of resistance training were applied, and no effort to address the neural or physiological continuums that are extremely important to athletic development. The one bright spot is the section on the court drills. They are enough to get you started on agility and foot speed drills.

This book is a set of well crafted exercise patterns. I am really impressed by the way the author has touched upon key development areas, which, one can easily overlook. I am very regular with my gym schedules with a balance of cardio and weight training. Sticking to the book schedule of about 3 month program shouldn't be a motivational challenge. With just one week into it, I have not only seen the results in my court coverage and my game, but also into other "reflex" sensative indoor games like foos ball :)

This is the best investment one can make for playing serious tennis.

As a high school tennis coach and a tournament player myself, I have looked extensively for a training source that is highly specific to tennis and easy to follow. Don Chu's book fits both of these criteria. Chu tells you exactly what to do and how to do it; reps and sets are clearly listed and the exercises carefully explained. Several other books on the market promise a great deal, but Chu's book, in my experience, is the only one that promises to make you a stronger player and then shows you the steps to achieve this goal, provided you work hard. No other book or program on the market can do this in my opinion.

I just thought I would warn others that are like me. I didn't realize it until months after I bought it, it's only 24 weeks long! This book doesn't work if you are looking for a full-year runners diary, which unfortunately I thought I was buying to begin with. Apparently not all runners logs are created equal. I thought I would be adventurous this year and buy a diary I hadn't bought before (I've owned all of them). Lesson learned ;)

Happy trails.

Whether you are a top local racer, high-school or college harrier or just log a few miles every day, this is a diary to seek out and stock up on for the next several years.

The color photographs are fantastic and there are 56 weeks of diary pages, so you won't run short, as what can happen with some other more famous publications. The information/tips and inspirational quotes are impressive, with a great balance between serious racing and fitness running.

RunLog does not just lead the large pack of diaries, it blows the race apart and captures the gold medal with ease.

I have been using the RunLog for several years. Great Photos and quotes. Plenty of room for commentary on your daily runs. There is a summary log in the front to track race performances. There is also a histogram for weekly mileage for the year.

I discovered this log book 'new' at a used book store back in 1998 and since then I bought two more for the next couple of years. It not only allows you to log numerical data, but subjective data as well. It also contains a fill-in linear graph for weekly mileage, race results entries, a pace chart, and basic training information. I love the color and black and white photographs of runners inside. It's a very well thought out design as far as log books go, and the most highly-evolved. I don't look for any other runner's log book but this one.

My husband said the book was very helpful when he ran in the Atlanta 10k.

I bought this book for a Runner/Biker/Marathon-enter(er)... and he loved it! He was interested in the material, info, and said the book was a GREAT read!

Injury Prevention: Barrios takes the reader through details of injuries and preventions for most runners.The author offers cross-training to help prevent injuries and help speed up the healing process.
Recommended for all runners at all fitness levels to help understand the causes of injuries and the training protocol to prevent them from occuring again and again.

I was expecting more in-depth information on running injuries, but this booked contained less information than a lot of other general running books.

For example this morning I referenced the book on hamstring injuries, and the only information they had on hamstrings was on stretching.

Very disappointed in the content.