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The Motivation: If not now, then when? Life is too short to stay inactive.
The Challenge: If you are not willing to suffer, then you shouldn't be racing
The Dream: Staying fit and feeling younger day by day!




19 July 2010

Interesting books for triathlon and endurance sports
































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[Anita Bean'The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition' 6th edition,A & C Black Publishers Ltd, April 2009, 300 pages]
I am a research engineer in my profession and it is part of my nature to look for justified and proven information when it comes down to facts. Theory is essential in order to develop, analyse and set the ground for a topic or subject. Most importantly, however, would be to apply these ideas in practice and verify that what you've wrote down on paper is actually working and validated from actual results. The book 'The complete Guide to Sports Nutrition' is not a random collection of ideas and 'another book in the series', but a justified scientific piece of work, properly structured and presented around sports nutrition for amateurs and elite athletes who want to optimise and improve their athletic performance by considering their food intake. The content and the text material is always referenced with the corresponding research that has been undertaken at recognised Universities (from UK, US, Australia, New Zeland, etc) around the world. I find this very important, since sports science is a continuously developing area and it's critical for athletes to have the latest information available on their hand, if they want to remain updated and competitive. What surprised most about this book, is that although it has a detailed analysis for core topics such hydration, pre/post food preparation, etc, the content is really approachable to the rest of us, who are about to start a food plan for first time. The subjects are well explained and described supported by figures/tables and graphs, actually you feel like you want to read the whole book once you've started looking at it! In addition, this the 6th edition: It obvious that Anita has put down a significant effort in updating the material within the book, and she is always trying to follow and deliver to the public the latest topics in sports nutrition. I am pleased to have a copy of this book in my hands and I definitely recommend this to anyone who is into sports, regardless of his/her training level. You will benefit by reading any of the chapters in her book and you will always want to come back to it for reference and general reading.
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Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Human Kinetics; 2nd edition edition (1 Sep 1996)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0873226445

I bought this book together with 'The complete guide to sports nutrition'. I will point out the following topics which I found most useful (I'm a beginner into triathlon which is considered endurance sport, doing several other sports though).
1) Warm up, cool down techniques, stretching exercises with photos and importance of ACTIVE recovery ( different from the ordinary lay down recovery!). Most books forget about
those methods or they state them briefly. My training now includes the advice that these chapters mentioned.
2) Heart rate zones. I wish I knew about them before. It includes special article on how to calculate your Anaerobic Threshold (important if you want to raise your endurance capacity)
level by just doing a test run, or cycle or swim - no need to pay a sport's laboratory, if you
can ever reach it. This chapter actually made me get a Polar heart rate watch to look after those zones! Your performance can improve SO much if you consider the training zones during your sport.
3) At the end of each chapter there are short articles of sport's men who put down their experience on endurance sports. I think it's equally important to read such stories, it brings together theory and sports. This convinces that what you read within the book is actually happening and trusted by the world's professional athletes.

The only small drawback of this book is that it needs to be updated with the current sport's science nutrition information a bit, i.e. Glycemic Index is now an important topic too, but the book only seperates carbohydrates into complex and simple groups, no mention about GI parameter in foods. It does state, though in detailed manner the importance of
carbo loading and fuelling, before, during the after intense activity.

This book is perfect if you just starting to plan your training now and be serious about it, or you want to IMPROVE and make your training more efficient.

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