It's been a while since I've read a good book, besides an Anatomy, or Psychology textbook. But over Christmas I received Faster Higher Stronger by Mark McClusky. I just got done the other day, so here are my few thoughts.
The subtitle for the book goes "How Sports Science is creating a new generation of super athletes - and what we can learn from them." Essentially is a review of some major topics in sports science. I think it's necessary that this is described as sports science vs exercise science. The second premis of that subtitle is obviously geared toward your recreational runners, the subject matter is on professional athletes training at the highest level. McClusky touches on some classic topics such as nutrition, supplements, altitude training, pacing, the talent vs training debate. Doping was the controversial one. And there's a real interesting chapter of sports analytics which is immensely popular for NBA, MLB, and NFL. My favorite was his coverage of the lactate myth and the central governor theory.
The author crams a lot of information in here. But not so much in the academic-article style. He's a journalist by trade, and a lot of the chapters would probably make great magazine or news articles. But with the number of anecdotal examples used, the organization feels very jumbled and haphazard. I suppose it doesn't really need much flow, but the chapters could've been randomly shuffled, and you'd never even know.
Overall though, I thought the book was excellent, but I am a little biased. Sports science is a fascinating subject, at least for me. For myself, it's not just about going out in training. I need to know how to develop my own training plan, the purpose of each workout, etc. And that's not enough; I need to know HOW those mechanisms work.
