Book Review: Tapering and Peaking for Optimal Performance

Once in a while I'll try to read something related to my endurance hobbies. This time I wanted to know more about tapering, preparing for competitions. From some blogs I run into Inigo Mujika and his recent book Tapering and Peaking for Optimal Performance.

Inigo Mujika is respected researcher and also have lot of practical experience from coaching many teams and individuals. His background made it is easy to believe what he is saying about the subject.

I did expect book to have more practical tips about tapering, but book had lot of scientific knowledge about the subject. It went through tapering from so many different approached based on scientific researches, that it was even bit hard to follow all the differences. Information was really valuable, but I have to admit sometimes I didn't fully understand all the nuances of different studies.

At the end of the book there were real life stories and plans from world class athletes, coaches and teams. It was excellent, that those examples were really from the best, olympic medalists and world champions. Those gave excellent practical knowledge on tapering. Of course tapering is different for world level athletes, than for normal amateur athlete, but same laws mainly should apply.

I recommend this book to all coaches and athletes who really want to make it to the top. For amateur athletes, like I, book is bit too technical. One need to be really into understanding small details, if they're going to read this. So I recommend this book, but with a small note aside.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku

I love futuristic estimates of what world will be in coming years. So often most of those are total nonsense, but from the reviews I understood that this book might be different. I was eager to Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Future.

Even though the idea of the book is to guess future, Michio Kaku does guessing with so much facts about current science and knowledge from the leading experts on their field, that many guesses will happen for sure.

Book makes estimates about future of computers, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, space travel, wealth and humanity. It gives estimates about all of the subjects for near future (next 20 years), mid century (2050-2070 timeframe) and end of the century (2100). All estimates are based on facts about current situation and from history of innovations.

I loved every page of the book. It was interesting to know about current situation about innovations and science in different areas. Also the predictions as such were fun to read. All the time I just kept thinking, will i live to see that happen. Hopefully many of the things mentioned in the book will happen on my lifetime. World needs many of the inventions speculated in the book.

 I can highly recommend this book to everyone. It is interesting, provocative and raises lot of thoughts. I can't remember when was the last time I hoped that book wouldn't have ended so fast. And the book was more than 400 pages long. I loved it and many others will too.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Little Book of Talent - 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills

I loved Daniel Coyle's previous book the Talent Code. That's the reason I wanted check another book from him, The Little Book of Talent - 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills.

Quite soon after I started to read this book, it became obvious that this book has the same contents as his previous one, just in much simpler form. For that reason, it is hard to review this one as a separate book. The ideas and information behind all the tips are good ones. Formatting these to the form of short tips although drops something out of the credibility of the content.

Formatting book in form of short tips about how to make things better, makes books easy and enjoyable. It hopefully then helps to get more people to read the message. Once in a while I do read books formatted like this, but I always miss the background information. Same happened this time, I would have liked to really get some more information about facts and stories behind each tip. I guess it just me, for many people this kind of formatting might be enough.

Content of the book is excellent. It tells about how people learn and gives good tips on learning. It is based on visits on, what Daniel Coyle call, talent hotbeds and actual scientific proof on nervous system studies. So there's a true basis where these tips are based, it just doesn't come out in a good form.

I recommend to read either this book, if you are bit lazy or the other one, if you want to know the backgrounds too. Daniel Coyle's message is worth of checking out.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen