What I've Been Reading!

BOOKS I'VE BEEN READING

High Performance Sports Conditioning: This book gives a descriptive look into the nine basic sports performance factors: power, strength, speed, agility, coordination, quickness, flexibility, local muscular endurance and cardiovascular capacity. Each chapter is written by a coach who specializes in one of the nine factors. Some of the top coaches in their respective field give their opinion and it offers some good insight into ways to improve the nine factors. It was long, but I force myself to suffer through a few textbooks each year!

The Imaginary Girlfriend: A client of mine lent this to me when she learned that I coach wrestling. It is a memoir written by American novelist John Irving. It was a nice, quick read that offers his love of the sport of wrestling. Growing up undersized, it was tough for him to find a sport that fit his stature. Then he found wrestling. The sport changed his life and to this day, he still recalls some of those lessons and applies them to his current life.

12 Years a Slave: When I purchased this book I did not realize that the author, Solomon Northup, was the man who spent 12 years of his life as a slave. The movie (which I have not seen) is the reason for me purchasing this and for that I am grateful. Compared to other books written in this era on slavery written by a former slave, I have not read anything quite like this!

Mr. Northup was a free man living in America. His talent as a violinist led him on a tour with two men (who he never met before or seen after) performing his talent on the east coast. After one night out, and feeling ill, he went home to bed. He woke up in shackles with no recollection of how he got there and what happened to him the previous night. The remainder of the book covers the 12 years he spent in slavery and his attempts at returning to freedom. Persistence and the compassion of a fellow human ultimately led to his freedom!

You Herd Me!: Over the past 5 or 6 years, I have spent many hours listening to Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio. He is the sports talk radio guy who doesn't always discuss sports. He is a bit of a contrarian by nature and for that I like hearing his opinion (even though I do not always agree with it). He discusses everything from Tiger Woods "sex addiction" (and how it only became an issue because his wife found out), to how LeBron gets dogged for leaving the Cavaliers but Jordan left his entire sport to play baseball and he doesn't get slammed for it, to growing up in isolation and his opinion on NCAA basketball and the rule on one and doners (he is not a big fan of the rule). Every chapter is its own individual chapter with no real connection or flow from chapter to chapter, either way, decent read. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of The Herd!


A few years ago I came across the website scribd.com. At the time, it was free and had tons of great information on the site. The site has over 300,000 books on the site, different manuals, and some things I loved: copies of college football playbooks and different strength and conditioning programs. After a few years of not using I deciding to check it out recently. Turns out, it is now a paid member site (it is a little over $40 for the year) and has even more files loaded to the site. So basically, you spend $40 for access to thousands of books and files. To top it off, you can also save the files to your computer for future reference. It has been a great resource for me and highly recommend it to anyone who gets excited about reading!

Have a great weekend!
Chris Fluck