Athletics Books

This is the best in-depth instruction geared toward youth basketball that I have read. It gives parents and coaches step by step instructions for teaching the fundamentals of basketball to young players.

Having been both a player, coach and referee for many years, I found Dr. Brown's work to be a complete text on coaching youth soccer. This handbook takes the reader through the basics of developing a new soccer club, working with parents and the players and provides a comprehensive understanding the roles and responsibilities of the the coach, players and parents. Included are indepth descriptions (with diagrams and photographs) starting with basic soccer movements and going through complex team drills. If one had to pick only a single book on the game of soccer, this handbook would be it.

This series Zanbanger, Zanballer and Zanboomer are about a girl named Suzanne who is constantly told she can't play sports that are supposed to be "boy sports". If you like stories about determination, hard work, and winners this is the series for you! - I also read this back 20 years ago and even still have my copies. Fantastic BOOK!

The problem with giving a Michael Lewis book five stars is that there is much better stuff out there. Lewis can be entertaining, and, to give credit, he hits out of the park in his choice of topic here. But he's an arrogant writer, with something of the "brilliant" graduate student after a couple of drinks about him, prone to sermonizing way off topic. He even did this in his first book, Liar's Poker, when he abruptly dropped his fascinating first person account to digress into the history of Salomon in the 1970s. Here - ditto. All the stuff on the A's and Beane is great. However there are way too long digressions into Bill James and the history of stats in baseball, which had me turning pages. Lewis is also fairly repetitive - this book is at least 90pages too long. If you want to read a great, great writer talking sports, try Tom Wolfe's powerhouse short story The Last American Hero, on Junior Johnson and the beginnings of NASCAR, found in his collection The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake. Wolfe is a genuis and can say more in 45pages than Lewis manages here with just under 300.

This is an excellent introduction to the conception and process of applying sabermetrics, the objective cold-hard-facts method of valuing baseball players in terms of their probabilities of generating runs on offense and preventing runs on defense, to the cost efficient management of a baseball team.

This introduction is accomplished through an almost allegorical tale about Billy Beane, first as a baseball player and then as the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. As such, it tends to read a bit like a tribute or hero-worship novel as Billy Beane is touted for his trailblazing approach to using statistical analysis, not baseball "wisdom", to value players and assemble winning teams within a fixed budget. But there is purpose in the telling of "The Billy Beane Story" and it is to use it as a literary device to keep the reader engaged as a rather dry subject (statistical analysis and dispassionate player evaluation) is revealed.

If you think that Derek Jeter is a great fielding shortstop, you will learn about tools that demonstrate rather convincingly that, despite Jeter's Gold Glove awards, he is a rather pathetic fielder for a major league baseball player. You will learn about tools that allow a baseball general manager to recognize the value of rather unimpressive physical specimens (e.g., catcher turned first baseman Scott Hatteberg) as surprising productive players when they are important contributors to team success.

Sabermetrics is not widely respected among most who run the show on major league teams today. But there is a slow yet growing recognition of its value. Billy Beane and the Oakland A's may have bmost recently the first, but such methods are being adopted by more and more teams, including the and the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox. (Is it merely a coincidence that the Red Sox finally won the World Series after an 86 year drought only once its ownership and general management adopted a sabermetric approach to player evaluation?) This book will effectively and entertainingly expose you to subtle yet powerful new approach to team management that is growing within baseball. If you love baseball ... if you think you know how to evaluate baseball players ... this is a very worthwhile read.

The beauty of Moneyball is Michael Lewis' ability to communicate an excellent baseball story that satisfies hard-nosed Sabermetricians, but do in a way that doesn't alienate non-numbers oriented baseball fans. The story of how Billy Beane got to where he is today (as GM of the Oakland As) is quite compelling, and clearly of key importance to the main question Lewis sets out to answer -- how the Oakland As manage to be successful despite their (relative) lack of salary. The politics of Sabermetrics aside, this is a terrific read and a book all baseball enthusiasts should read at least once (if not once a season).

For many years, I walked by this book on the shelf of my local library and gave it no notice, as the "Moneyball" title gave me the false impression that it was all about economics. I should have heeded the book-readers creed: Never judge a book by its cover. From the very first chapter, I was hooked by the unique philosophy of the text and fascinated by its divergence from traditional baseball maxims. Essentially, Michael Lewis (essentially a conduit for Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane) discusses two subjects:

First, there is the radically different method, started by Bill James, of evaluating players. Instead of the traditional home runs and RBI stats, James (and later Beane) determined that on-base and slugging percentages were the best predictors of successful performance. Instead of looking at factors beyond the batters control (like RBI), one must look at how the batter controls each plate appearance. I could go on and on about the theories developed in this book, but suffice it to say that they are (or at least were in 2001) a complete digression from traditional baseball wisdom, thus are generally scoffed at by "real" baseball people.

The second portion of the books discusses how Billy Beane uses those new scouting methods to keep his small-market A's viable in the baseball market. Though fans moaned when Beane traded away such stars as Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Jason Giambi, Beane contends in this book that those trades were necessary in order to reduce payroll, plus he was able to find comparable (if not better) players through his new "sabermetric" scouting method. Being a fan of the small-market Minnesota Twins, I was most fascinated with this portion of the book, trying to determine if the Twins were following a Beane model of business.

Overall, I have absolutely no answers (being neither a baseball insider nor a statistician) as to whether or not James and Beane's theories have merit. However, they do make a very convincing argument filled with valid examples to prove their points. Plus, no baseball fan can argue with the results, as the small-market A's always seem to be in contention.

If you are a die-hard baseball lifer like myself, this is a must-read book. Even if you scoff at every single idea (though I don't think you will) it is worth being exposed to.

Michael Lewis' Moneyball, is a great introduction to the increasing role statistics play creating a winning baseball team. Lewis profiles the A's owner, Billy Beane, and shows how Beane has managed to create a winning team despite a small budget. It begins to put to rest the use of worthless stats, such as RBI, which is really only a measure of how good the batters are in front of you.

As a former baseball coach, I was interested in the chapter on how Beane selects players from the amateur draft. He creates a strong case for players attending college before entering the draft, especially if one's life long dream is to play for the A's.

If you enjoy Moneyball, I would suggest reading other similar books such as Baseball Between the Numbers, The Fielding Bible, Mind Games, and The Baseball Economist. In general, anything by the Baseball Prospectus people is a great choice.

Since I am not into football, this book was a long read for me. It could have been halved and the story complete.

Not sure what was worse, reading this 'item' or pounding my head against a concrete wall. It has received much fan-fare, and I don't know why, it's best described as...trite.

This book is good, but not great. Listening to the rants and raves of Bissinger's politics is painful, but it can be battled through if you're patient.

I was excited to read this book, to learn about the lives and the environment of football in a completely different context than the rest of us can witness. The excitement quickly dwindled as the author lost track of the actual story, and puts his own "journalistic" spin on the entire story. In the epilogue Bissinger claims that he had to report what he saw, as he had to be the responsible journalist, and from his writing it is clear that he is a typical, one side of the story journalist. Normally, I wouldn't let his clear bias affect the quality of the football story, but it became impossible to ignore, after chapter after chapter of clearly one-sided views of western Texas.

He openly mocks the fervor that the Odessa area has for George H. Bush page after page, who was running for President during this time. He makes fun of the lack of Democrats, the Texas religious beliefs, and the conservative values as if it's a complete crime that Texas supports one of its own. He doesn't even mention that Bush lived in Midland until halfway through the book, after chapters of mockery.

His view on the oil industry is completely laughable. Again, he mocks western Texas for being so foolish as to support Ronald Regan, who acted as a villain to western Texas by - ready for this - lowering oil prices. Bissinger thinks that lowering oil prices is a travesty that deserves the harshest of penalty, and that Texans are gullible for believing in the free market. If George Bush acted this way, would he be treated the same today? I wonder what Bissenger's attitude toward lowering oil prices would be now?

The football aspect is done well, with the lives of the football players, how much Permian football means to them, and the troubled and sometimes tragic life in Odessa, Texas.

Bissinger, the author, came to Odessa to follow the Permian Panthers thru their entire 1988 season, attending practices as well as games, spending time with several of the key players and their families, reading the newspapers, interviewing the movers and shakers in the desolate, tapped-out landscape in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.

Most of us have heard that Texans regard their high school football with the reverence of a born-again religion--remember the story about the mother of a cheerleader who sought to have her daughter's rival on the cheerleading squad wasted? As a one-time resident and frequent soul mate, I can vouch for its high-school football mania, in East Texas as well as in West.

...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

Friday Night Lights
A Town, A Team, and A Dream
By H.G. Bissinger

By Cael Kiess

H.G. Bissinger spent over a year getting to know the people of Odessa, Texas. During that year he spoke with Permian football players, their families, and Odessa citizens in his attempt to write a book that told the story of how one team of teenage kids could inspire an entire town. Bissinger, an American journalist, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the National Headliner Award, and the American Bar Association's Silver gavel for his reporting. He is also the author of A Prayer for the City, and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Bissinger did a great job accomplishing his goal of reliving the wild journey of the 1988 Permian football season and the struggles off the field. He vividly portrays the racism through schools in Odessa County, the oil booms, typical school days of Permian football players, the Mojo Fanatics, and Friday Nights in late August. One chapter, "The Watermelon Feed," really describes the passion and devotion of Permian football fans and Mojo Fanatics. Bissinger writes, "The faithful sat on little stools of orange and blue under the lights of the high school cafeteria, but the setting didn't bother them a bit. Had the Watermelon Feed been held inside a county jail, or on a sinking ship, or on the side of a craggy mountain, they would still have flocked to attend and support their team." This description allows me to feel like I'm actually there and helps me sense the amount of pride and dedication given to Permian football by the fans. He also gives a second look farther into the town of Odessa, off the football field, enhancing a better view of what was occurring in the town of Odessa and its neighboring towns. There were many highlights and struggles happening in the streets and classrooms that one would not be able to find out in just the movie. One weakness of the book is the possible effect of losing the reader through the ongoing descriptions and passages of events, people, and struggles in Odessa. There is not as much of the actual football games incorporated into the book as one would think from watching the movie. In the book, Bissinger does a marvelous job describing the life and events of the 1988 Permian football players and the Mojo fans.

I saw the author interviewed by Barry Kibrick on the local community college television station. They disgussed the issue of the prohibition against organizations cultivating young potential college-ball recruits with gifts and aid and ["perhaps"] whether this was the motivation in adopting a child from the inner city, it was left unclear, of course BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A MONSTROUS THING TO ADOPT A CHILD SPECIFICALLY TO SERVE YOUR ALMA-MATERS FOOTBALL TEAM!!! This issue is deftly dealt with as an unconfronted secondary matter which really doesn't require that much attention--RIGHT!? This book delibrately avoids a hard look at a real manifestation of SLAVE CULTURE! The act itself renders secondary the childs life to a brief time on a college football team. It is saying that it is less important that a child has a history that is his own, that of his parents and grand parents, and not the history of the rich people who lived across town and were so proud of their third rate college team they just had to have a player--some kind of pet-mascot hybrid whose training program and life perspective and system of values can be molded in any way to suit that end enforcable by law--like a slave. Why? Because in their heart of hearts they believe in slavery. Like Milton Freidman says in "Capitalism and Freedom," [Robinson Crusoe, without his man Friday is not free, because he must fend for his own survival.] It becomes clearer as your read what Freidman means by this... it isn't the freedom of the wage earner that is of value protecting, nor those tied to a salary, or even the freedoms of those with a modicum of wealth, but those who've really created freedom like say in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, or even better, billions of dollars worth of wealth. What Freidman shares with most other economists in this regard is this... he chooses to empathize with those most likely to offer him a career and not those who comprise the bulk of humanity. Like this book, "The Blind Side," which acknowldges social strife in the inner city just so far as it hinders a couple of ghoulish gnomes and the recruiting hinderances of their favorite college team! Screw this book, screw Michael Lewis and Barry Kibrick!

My husband made me read this book. I wasn't looking forward to it. After about 10 pages I was hooked. I knew nothing about football going into this book and absolutely loved it. I got it for my brother for his birthday and he was obsessed. He got it for our father...he's hooked.
Great story of overcoming odds while teaching about the sport of football.

Everyone will enjoy this one!

On the surface, this is a book about Michael Oher, a poor teenager in Memphis, whose size and speed turn him into one of the country's top football prospects. Michael Lewis, one of the greats at mapping the intersection between sports and economics, expands the story to include much more. He demonstates why the frenzy occured over someone like Michael Oher (the Left Tackle covers the Quarterback's blind side, a huge gap after Lawrence Taylor showed exactly how fragile the multimillion dollar QB investments can be) as well as how people try to jump on the bandwagon.

The book is at it's finest when it shows the conflicting loyalties of people "helping" Michael Oher improve his life. What are the true intentions of the coach who also is looking for a ticket to a college coaching career? A mentor looking to assist his alma mater? Or even the unwritten - an author looking for a topical subject.

The book is a very easy read, and hard to put down. And you won't ever look at those offensive lineman the same.

If you liked Moneyball and are hoping this will be its spiritual successor, it's not. It's much more a story of one player, Michael Oher, and his travels through high school and college football (as of July 2008 he's still in college so no pro career to speak of).

I used to work as a lawyer for a pro football team so I read these kinds of stories with some personal interest, but if you're looking for a pure sports book buy Moneyball. If you like Lewis' writing style and his ability to tell a story you won't be disappointed at all. It's a great story and does contain an interesting analysis of the development of college and pro football and especially the role of the left tackle in the new offence. But it's much more personal than Moneyball - much more in the style of Liar's Poker, which becomes explained in the afterword when you discover that he knows the family described in the book personally and so he had significantly more insight into their private lives than an ordinary author.

The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis, is primarily a biography of projected future NFL first-round draft pick Michael Oher and secondarily a history of the evolution of the left tackle position in the NFL.

Lewis chronicles how Oher, who bounced around as a child and never learned to learn, was taken in by the wealthy Tuohy family, how they helped him to learn and to play football, and how he went on to start at Ole Miss. Lewis does an excellent job communicating the characters' personalities to the reader, particularly Oher's.

Interspersed throughout the book are historical anecdotes about the evolution of the left tackle position. Lewis gives particular attention to Lawrence Taylor and the shift to fast, destructive pass rushers, and to Bill Walsh, who was one of the first coaches to emphasize protection of the quarterback's blind side.

While Lewis tells a very interesting story, his writing style has its flaws. He jumps around quite a bit, which is almost as distracting (he just does it one too many times) as the sentence fragments he loves to sprinkle in. Lewis also uses the wrong word a few times. He mixes up "insure" and "ensure". He calls linemen "ectomorphs" (ectomorphs have slender builds). The copy editor for this book was asleep at the switch.

On the whole, this is an interesting and entertaining book about a likable young man, and a good recap of a major strategic shift in the NFL.

This book covers every aspect of stretching, for every part of the body. Many illustrations help the reader understand and execute the movement. The three pillars of fitness are strength, agility, and endurance. The stretch routines in this book are a supplement to whatever strength training and aerobics excercise you currently do. The rewards from the relatively easy act of stretching are many, as are the rewards of this book.

All I wanted was to learn how to properly stretch to increase my flexibility and to prevent injuries. This book not only did that, but it hammered home the message that you shouldn't compare your flexibility to that of others, and that stretching has a multitude of practical benefits, besides flexibility. This is not a book for extremists trying to do the splits on two folding chairs with a child perched on their shoulders. I've never been able to touch my toes, but this book has shown me what stretches to do to get my hamstrings more limber and it's also shown me that stretching is beneficial in many more ways than just flexibility.

For anyone in the healthcare profession(s), this is a must for getting clients into proper home care or self care, as well as anyone wanting to improve their own range of motion and flexibility

This book has great drawings of showing you the correct and incorrect ways of doing the different stretches. I only wish this version (20th anniversary) was put in a spiral binding, so the pages would lay flat when you're trying to do the exercises!

I recently purchased the book "Stretching" by Bob Anderson. It is great a book for any one that has back problems, sore hamstrings or that just needs to stretch the body from soreness. It is extremely informative and easy to follow.

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.

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.

I am an exercise scientist, and triathlete, and this is the best book on periodizing triathlon workouts that I have come across. It is very detailed, so is more geared toward intermediate to advanced athletes. If you are looking for good strength training workouts, though, this book does not have that. The strength training in here is very generic, not tri specific.

All triathletes should begin here. Even if you have lots of experience, you should own this book. Everything you need to know, every question you might have, this book will guide you in the right direction. Even after 6 years of racing, and 5 Ironmans, I still refer to it.

I bought this more than a year ago. Gave it a short trial and off it went to my bookshelf. At the beginning of this season, my handicap was 14(mainly due to a decent short game). I started practicing on the grass vs mat twice a week. As a result, I was forced to improve the fundamental of weight transfer.

I was going to play at poppy hills last month and I looked for the CD that comes with this book and listened to it in my car, but I don't think it helped me much during that round.

So why 4 stars?

I have realized that if I carefully follow the "L" drill mentioned in the book, it sets up the club on a good path and I can feel the club hitting the ball more squarely. As a result, the number of good hits went up significantly during the practice. So, in my opinion, the practice drills mentioned in the book has greater significance than the tempo theory covered in the book/CD.

I have had practice sessions where I was hitting the balls while listening to the tempo tones on my iPhone. Although, I was matching my swing to the tones, the results were inconsistent because I was not following the fundamentals consistently.

Whenever I follow the test tones along with setting up my hands in "L" position properly during my backswing, the entire swing becomes effortless with great results.

So, why not 5 stars?

That's because, greater emphasis is placed on tempo theory/tones. After you watch the video on the included CD, you get the feeling that if you can match my swing speed with the tones, you can hit the balls solid, your swing speed with increase, blah blah blah. In short, the book oversells tempo to beginning/intermediate golfer.

I recommend this book/CD along with "The Keys to the Effortless Golf Swing:..", to cover the fundamentals and tempo.

Good luck with your game and don't forget to practice your short game along with full swing! Cheers..

Tour Tempo is a very useful instructional book for someone who has an intermediate level of golf ability/experience. It may be the only golf book that deals with how fast one should swing, as opposed to the detailed positions and mechanics that also make up a golf swing. Tempo is indeed important in a golf swing, because a golf swing is not a static event.

This book is the perfect complement to another terrific instructional book, 'The Keys to the Effortless Swing' as Amazon noted.

As a coach and instructor I am allways looking for information that helps to explain aspects of the golf swing to my students. Tour Tempo has provided me with just another way of explaining what the effect of taking the club away to slowly will have on distance and direction. Thank you
John Novosel for your insite. Coach H.Turk Walker

Great product as everyone else points out. Such a simple idea, yet so remarkably capable of fixing your swing. I didn't realize just how mush I was trying to muscle the club, rather then let my natural tempo and fluidity carry it. I'm the kind of person who needs a swing thought, but at the same time they make me stiff and awkward. But if my swing thought is tempo, i.e. proper speed back and through, I become much more free loose and less timid, the club glides along rather then feeling like I have to reroute it and muscle it back to the ball. Truly a great book.

Tour tempo is easy to read, the concept is very simple to adopt and more importantly works! The downside is my wife thinks I have lost my mind walking around saying swing, set, through!

I've used this program for several years as part of my PT training cycle, and even as Ranger school prep with outstanding results. If you need a program that takes you away from the weights or you are bored easily with your workout, his program will push you out of your comfort bubble and keep you interested, especially when you see the results.

This is one of the best fitness programs ever. Regardless of if you are trying to become a Navy SEAL or not this is a great physical fitness program. The exercises are explained well and and theprogram is easy to follow. Great tips for just overall fitness are included throughout the book. I love it and use stuff from it all the time. I will be buying products from Stew Smith in the future.

If you are looking for a book that will get you into shape as well as give you a great look, well this is the book for you. I used this book a few times now and each time always see results. I must say one thing though if you are not dedicated don't buy this book. You will just be wasting you money. It is for a person with a great deal of desire and personel resolve. All in all this book is worth its weight in gold. No matter what physical expectation you are looking for this is the book for you. I have tried many other workout books and none seem to even come close to the quality of this. Just get this book and it will be your companion for a long time.

The Complete Guide to Navy SEAL Fitness is the most complete and informative SEAL preparation guide available.

The guide covers everything needed to prepare for BUD/S. It starts off by explaining how to properly warm up, then moves on to the exercises that are experienced in the workout. All of the stretches and exercises have excellent photos showing exactly how they are to be performed. There is also a helpful workout devoted to those who wish to start the 12 weeks to BUD/S workout, but who aren't yet in proper shape.

Not only does this guide cover workouts to get physically and mentally prepared for BUD/S, but it also covers how to properly run in the sand, techniques for climbing rope, and how to perform the Combat Swimmer Stroke.

All I can say is that this workout got me into the greatest shape of my life. I did the workout my senior year in high school and gained 15 pounds of pure muscle. I went from doing 13 pullups to 25 after the workout, and from 42 pushups to 100. Definite increase in chest size and some in arm size as well. Abs are now well defined. But that is not the best part. No, the best part is the unstoppable confidence that you gain from doing the workout - after this, I felt like I could do ANYTHING I set my mind to. Trust me, this workout is not easy, but it IS entirely doable. Just thinking back to the lonely nights where I was mentally and physically exhausted, having completed 60 pullups, 150 pushups, 300 situps, 100 dips...only to know that I was only halfway done...and pushing THROUGH that mental barrier gave me the utmost gratification. You feel powerful after each workout, knowing that you are doing something that the average man could not even dream of, and knowing that YOU possess the self-discipline to make yourself great is the most wonderous benefit that you will walk away with...if you complete it.

This book is not only trains your body, but your mind as well. Do it. Hooyah!!!