Athletics Books

This book has the goods - it is very serious, not a typical sports book, but it teaches at every level. Civil Rights. Science. Women. Black Power. It is tough to think of what it leaves out. Starts slow, but really picks up and by the time it is done, it's like you've been watching PBS for two hours and didn't feel it. Learn.

This book really helped to open my eyes about the events surrounding the 1968 Olympics. More than that, it also talks about many other significant issues such as women's roles during that time, the way certain people saw various events before, during, and after the times. Be prepared to be patient when you read this. Dr. Bass takes her time and goes way back with her research leading up to the games in the late 60's. There were some areas I was not too interested in, such as some scientists' claims that black superiority in the athletic arena is due to biological and genetic advantages. Yet there were other times in the book like when Tommie Smith explained the MEANING, the TRUE MEANING, behind he and Carlos' actions that really made me take it in and appreciate the courage they had to take a stand at that time on that particular stage. From the black socks to the scarf Smith wore on his neck to both of them not wearing shoes on the victory stand while the national anthem played. More than just discussing the Olympics, she digs deep into the perception of the black athlete, from the 1930's when Jesse Owens was the man to the 60's, and to the 90's with Michael Jordan. Like I said earlier though, be prepared to be patient when you are reading this. There were some parts that I had to bear with to get to what I wanted to read, but all in all, it's a read that can definitely challenge your views not only about the black athlete, but sports and life in general.

A work that provides insight into how race is understood and projected in U.S. society -- and the world -- and where its ties to nation, class, gender, etc. come into play most dramatically. This exploration of the black power movement at the Mexico City olympics is a critical examination of a multitude of topics: television, sports, civil rights, humanity, globality -- the list is varied and important. Complex, complicated, interesting, imperative. A learning experience for all who turn its pages.

I learned so much from this book. I thought that it might be too hard to read, but it was worth it: I will never watch sports -- especially the Olympics -- the same way again. There's too much to list contained here: the Olympics, the media, race, sexuality, women -- it goes on and on. I think everyone should read it.

I frequently referred to this book in our company library. Now that I'm retired I bought my own copy. I looked at several books on the topic and found nothing and good at explaining how our bodies work. I've saved myself a lot of medical fees over the years.

I have had this book for over 20 years. It is a great reference covering just about every part of the body. Any muscle or joint aches and pains, this book tells you what causes it and how to fix it.

Great analysis of cause and practical approach to cure. Especially good with joint issues. Thanks Dr. Garrick, your efforts have limited my pain and time in recovery! You should be everyone's first responder to sports injury...another edition??

This is the best book on athletic injuries I've used. It's old, but the sound advice hasn't been improved upon. I had a chronic hamstring injury when I got the book (back in '86) and for the first time in years I was able to rehab it completely and compete pain free. I've since referred to it for advice on knees and shoulders. Most recently I had an early stress fracture only a few weeks before an important competition. Following Garrick's guidlines, I was able to recover completely before the event. Garrick understands an athlete's need to stay active and take positive action to recover from an injury and tells you exactly how to do this. He also realizes that an injury that is "cured" by rest and cessation of the activity most often returns when the activity is resumed unless active rehab has been performed.
Highly recommended. The only reason I gave it four stars rather than five is it's brevity. I wish he would write a much longer and more detailed reference.

No matter what your level of running is, you can learn something from this book. There is a wealth of information here from basic fitness running to competitive running...this book has it all. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about what would appear on the surface to be a simple sport.

This is a great beginner's book on learning how to run. The advice is practical and it had me running with confidence in no time. Buy this book if you want to learn the basics of running without a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo.

I found myself picking this book up again and again, reading another one of the many pieces of wisdom on one of the so many topics of running covered by this book. I have been running for over 10 years, from marathons to triathlons to weekend trail runs, and yet this book tells me things about running that I have either forgotten or had not yet learned. And the format of the book makes it easy to read a topic for a quick bit of insight or motivation. A good solid resource for runners from beginners to veterans!

This is an ideal book for those beginning running and hoping to improve. What should you wear, what should you do, how can you avoid injury? All the answers are here in a well written, clear and concise format. Joe Henderson has written many books and for the beginning or intermediate runner this might be not only his best, but the best currently available. Tips, tables and helpful hints from years of experience and years of running are here.

Many, many great concepts and ideas in this book have changed and confirmed lots of things I do with my teams. Very valuable!!

This book, as well as all books by this author, are excellent. They are obviously an good resource for its intended audience of coaches, but it is also useful for any leader. I consider, and recommend this book to others, as my bible for leadership. It is easy to read and understand. The concepts build logically and interact well with each other.

An excellent resource not only for coaches and those involved in sport activities but also for parents and educators. Janssen and Dale talk about the importance of team building and the real reasons most kids get involved in sports: to have fun and to have social opportunities, among many others. That is not to say that winning is unimportant but rather that it is only one aspect of involvement with sports. A must read for parents and educators who believe winning is the ONLY thing.

This is very good. Well written, easy to follow, and very practical applications for yourself and your team. Most of this stuff I am going to implement or had already implemented.

For any beginning coach, or coach that is struggling with reaching your players, you must have this book. If your team is underachieving, this book will help. The references to successful coaches and their experiences is really a positive.

The one funny about this book, is how much it refers to Gary Barnett in a positive light. This is kind of ironic based on what is happening to him right now...

Coaches should buy this book...

I purchased this book when it was first released in late 1990 and have read it cover to cover several dozen times over the years. Unfortunately, most of the attention and commentary regarding this book give a false impression of its content. Though the narrative does culminate in the drug scandal in Seoul, the topic of drug use by athletes (and by Charlie's sprinters in particular) is really of secondary importance and only constitutes a small portion of the book.

Speed Trap is primarily an autobiography of Charlie's career as an athlete and coach. In the course of reading about Charlie's training as an Olympic sprinter himself and the subsequent evolution of his coaching methods, the reader is treated to perhaps the best education on the technical aspects of sprinting ever put into print. From his early training with Percy Duncan and Harry Jerome to his subsequent tutelage under legendary sprint coach Gerard Mach, Charlie describes what he learned from these greats as well as how he synthesized and adapted their methods in developing his own training system. I know of no other book on sprinting that comes close to providing the quality of technical insight found in Speed Trap. To a certain extent, Speed Trap is a technical treatise on sprinting masquerading as an autobiography. While the description of the careers of athletes such as Ben Johnson, Angela Issajenko, Desai Williams, et al., is entertaining in its own right, it also serves to provide anecdotes that illustrate many of the technical concepts discussed throughout the book. Anyone who has met Charlie in person knows this is exactly how he teaches. In her own autobiography (Running Risks) Angela Issajenko describes how Charlie always seemed to have a story to explain any point he was trying to get across to his athletes.

Even on the topic of drugs, Speed Trap offers insights not found anywhere else. Most if not all of the literature related to anabolic steroids is dominated by the field of bodybuilding and to a lesser extent powerlifting. Charlie explains how steroid use by sprinters and similar athletes is a world apart from bodybuilding. As an example, in her first year of steroid use, Angela Issajenko's total dosage for the entire year was about 700mg, an amount many bodybuilders would use in a couple days. Much of the discussion of drug use by athletes is part of the larger topic of how sport is administered by the various governing bodies around the world. Charlie provides a very sobering insight into the bureaucratic and often corrupt nature of international sport.

Lastly, in addition to the quality of its content, Speed Trap is also remarkable for the quality of the writing. The narrative is written in a very conversational style that makes it very easy to read. Having met and trained with Charlie on a couple of occasions, I can attest to the fact that the book reads pretty much the way Charlie talks. I cannot recommend this book more highly for those interested specifically in sprinting or just training in general. If you can find a copy, it is well worth buying.

Even though I know drug use runs rampant in track and field today, this book presents a side of the sport that dearly needed to be said. Most people have been too scared to publicly talk about it which I applaud him for. This book also brought to my attention the new style training methods on speed which I found extremely helpful. I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks Maurice Green or Donavan Bailey aren't on Steriods or any other form of banned ergogenic aids.

A well-written book. I highly recommend this to anyone involved in developing sprinters, as it sheds the light on the techniques of one of the sport's greatest coaches of all time. I applaud his courage to step forward on an issue that is commonplace these days. Both men's and women's elite sprinters are on performance-enhancing substances, and will remain as long as GH and such substances cannot be detected (forever). The fact remains that Ben Johnson performed at the level that he did in a time when all other sprinters were unable to do so. The current sprinters are breaking his record, and are doing so through the same means. Again, an exciting read for coaches interested in following the development of some of the world's fastest men and women in the way that it should be and is done.

This book was written after the Seoul Olympics and after Ben Johnson's 1st place finish. However, the logic and the motivation for using synthetic performance enhancements amongst world class athletes is clearly outlined and is applicable to all professional athletics, not just Olympic level track and field, where the financial stakes are huge for both participants and sponsors, and media attention is unrelenting. Recent revelations by MLB stars like Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti confirm the logic and motivation so clearly, honestly and cogently outlined by Francis in Speed Trap.

Most disturbing is that there doesn't seem to be any turning back on this path of drug use among elite athletes as long as athletics continues to be the potent economic engine that it is, and continues to hold out the promise of lottery-type earnings to hopeful young athletes all over the world.

The Paperback version of this book was given to me free when I was a medical student in 1985. I practice rheumatology and am an athlete myself. Whenever a question comes up regarding an athletic injury, if I am not immediately familiar with the disorder or can't find information from other sources, I dust off this book. I can't recall a time when this book failed me or the patient. Its conservative approach with a big measure of wisdom makes it the best sports medicine book I have ever seen. With regard to non surgical treatments, it never seems to get out of date. For this reason it is probably the only textbook I still own dating back to my medical school years. The reason I accessed this site was to see if a revised edition exists, which sadly doesn't seem to be the case. This book is not only the best I have seen for a physicians use, but for a therapist or sophisticated athlete as well. I would welcome any information on a possible successor to this edition.

We have owned this book for many years and reference it regularly. It has been loaned to a number of friends and colleagues many of whom purchased their own copies after reading it. The descriptions of injuries are excellent, and, although is was published a number of years ago, the the advice is still sound. I highly recommend it to anyone who plays sports or exercises or has family members who do so. It is also a great reference to have at gyms and company libraries. I highly recommend it.

We have owned this book for many years and reference it regularly. It has been loaned to a number of friends and colleagues many of whom purchased their own copies after reading it. The descriptions of injuries are excellent, and, although is was published a number of years ago, the the advice is still sound. I highly recommend it to anyone who plays sports or exercises or has family members who do so. It is also a great reference to have at gyms and company libraries. I highly recommend it.

I have played just about every sport known to man in my 43 years of life. I bought this book in 1985 after a softball injury kept me from going to a national tournament. IT IS TIMELESS. It is organized by body section, which makes it an easy reference manual for the non-medical folks like me. Leg injury, find it in the leg section, back injury, back section, etc. I came here because I hurt my back this weekend while loading moving boxes into storage and one of the MANY boxes contains my "sports injury bible" (obviously this book). I frantically searched through as many boxes as I could to find it without hurting my back further, but it is KILLING me that I can't find it (killing me MORE than the injury!). It has become a trusted friend over the years and I came here thinking I wouldn't mind having a backup for now. Mine has been leant out MANY times over the years to teammates and other friends, and saved me TONS OF MONEY by replacing doctor and hospital visits. If you are an athlete and endure the typical weekend sportsman's injuries, and HATE going to the doctor only to hear: "Take two of these and call me Monday", find this book and hang on to it! It shows you how to rehabilitate AND strengthen injured muscles, ligaments, etc. My softball injury was a second degree tear of the rotator cuff muscle (I found that out from reading the book and WITHOUT going to a doctor ONE!). The book told me how to figure out what was wrong, how to fix it, when I could go back to playing (both conservative AND agressive estimates), AND THEN how to strengthen the muscle and surrounding muscles so that there would be MINIMAL scar tissue. Within months my throwing arm was even STRONGER than before the injury. Dr. Southmayd has many interesting stories of helping pro and amateur athletes with their rehabilitation intermingled with the why this works and that doesn't. He writes from an understanding of the perspective of the athlete (when can I get back to playing?!?). I consider myself lucky that I have one of these, bought ignorantly as an alternative to seeing a doctor in 1985. Get one if you can, I can't wait to unload these boxes and find mine!

I just joined a masters' swim team. I was the same age as John Jerome when he swam in this book. I just found this book motivating and that it increased my knowledge and understanding of elite athletes. It also taught me more about the world of competitive swimming. The book mainly dealt with people who were good swimmers/competitive swimmers when they were younger. I wish at least one swimmer like me without previous experience was in the book, but I still found the book had application to me. I reccomend it.

I was a swimmer throughout my younger years. It seems that only swimmers can understand why and how swimmers do what they do.... John Jerome, in his own style and grace, creates a book that really hits home. Super for: teenage swimmers, coaches and parents of swimmers.

Well, I bought two books. The other one is about a guy who is trying to be a cross country skier. I am glad that I read the other one first otherwise if I read John's book first the other one will be super boring. This book is not just about how he becomes a swimmer but rather how people should deal with the inevitable - aging. I enjoy his writing so much that i bought 3 more of his books.

I read this book after a suggestion in Phil Whitten's book on swimming. It was hard to find, but very inspirational to me as I was getting heavily into serious swimming and athletics at 48, the same age as the author was when he got back into swimming. His adventures are thoughtfully described and his experience easy to identify with. The book got me interested in Jerome's other works, which are also very involving.

Even if you are an experienced athlete yourself, and former power lifter (like me), this book is great for the research it presents about children and weightlifting, and for the organization of the material. I found the medicine ball portion particularly helpful. Very good pictures.

Strength and Power for Young Athletes is a tremendous help to athletes with both high and low athletic standards and abilities.It is very easy to read and follow.It has appendixes for each sport and categories for each age group.Pictures and a key of what each machine works helps you understand each machine easier.Nutrition guides of carbs and protien is also a big help.This book is great for keeping you in shape.

This book was an excellent reference that I relied heavily upon to create a strength training program for our Pop Warner football team. Faigenbaum has published results of studies documenting the benefits of strength training for children. This book provides good description of exercises for each muscle group and provides variations using different equipment, .i.e. free weights- dumbbells and barbells, resistance bands and weight machines. One ommission in the book was that his published paper revealed a program that proved superior to others in controlled experiments in terms of results gained.
Program: 3 sets with set #1 being 50% of 10 rep maximum resistance (warm-up), followed by set # 2- 10 reps with 75% of 10 rep max (moderate), and set #3 - max number of reps with 10 rep max resistance.

As a former Olympic Athlete I appreciate the importance of keeping children healthy and strong. This book provides all the tools you need to develop safe and effective strength programs for boys and girls. It is an easy read and the photographs are outstanding. This book is a real WINNER!

Dr. Horrigan and "Doc" Kreis have done a great job with this book. It contains an abundance of information that anyone interested in enhancing sport performance will benefit from reviewing and reading. This text has enough "meat" in it that the strength training professional will benefit by having it on their reference list and the teaching approach is clear and so well illustrated so the athlete can use the materials also.

I just started playing hockey two years ago and was looking for a book to help me become a better player. This book is very detailed and easy to use for a beginner such as me. I have seen immediate results in my strength and conditioning since buying this book.

This is one of the finest and most comprehensive books ever written on sports conditioning. It is not only for the hockey player, but for all athletes in all sports looking to gain an edge. It gives great detail and clarity on ways to improve speed, strength, and overall conditioning. This book will make the average coach look like a genius.

This book is one of the finest and most compehensive books ever written on sports conditioning. It can stand on its own for training not only hockey, but any sport. As a strength and conditioning coach for 14 years, it is the most organized and a highly practical tool for writing and executing programs for the improvement of speed, strength and overall conditioning of every athlete. It can turn an average coach into a genius.