Book Review: The Sports Gene

David Epstein's The Sports Gene was exciting read for me. I follow many different sports and I've been intrigued about how much success is about nature (genes) and how much about nurture (training, etc). This was the first time I got some concrete facts about the subject.

David Epstein isn't a scientist, but a sports journalist, who has made a long learning journey to be able to write about so technical subject. I believe this book is better, when it's written by a journalist and not by a scientist. Book goes quite deep into the genes and biology, so it's better when it's written in bit more understandable way.

Book tells stories and facts about athletics, basketball, sprint running, long distance running, cross country skiing, baseball and many others. It really tries to look for patterns behind athletes and their genes. For certain sports there are definitely genetic differences that make some athletes to have a superior change to succeed to others. Still success always needs lots of training.

In one way book is depressing for some sports. As an example, with current conditions in the world Kalenjin Kenyans will rule the marathon and long distance running field for some time. But actually not that long ago, Finnish people used to rule the long distance world (Hannes Kolehmainen, Paavo Nurmi, Lasse Viren) , before we got richer and didn't run that much anymore. So in a way we Finns still might have the genes for it, but our environment and training doesn't support those anymore. The same might happen to the Kenyans at some in the future.

The whole book bounces between nature and nurture. What is certain is that there are no genetically perfect athletes, because no one doesn't have any good ideas what genes actually are needed for which sports. There are some genes found which might prevent success in some sports and some genes that are common with the elite athletes in that sport. Most often still, the genes of elite athletes can be found from thousands of other who still are not elite. So there is no one answer for nature vs nurture debate.

One other thing that interested me was the trainability of people. Different genes actually mean that people develop differently. Populist journalism often tells that training like this and that will only give results. The fact is, people acquire skills differently. The famous 10 000 hour rule, isn't exactly true, but then on the other hand it gives an idea of the ball park people need to train. People need to train the way their body and mind adapts. That's the most important lesson of the book.

I highly recommend this book the everyone interested about sport training or coaching. It felt bit longish at some point, but reading this is time well invested.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

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: Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald

Since my triathlon enthusiasm started I have been trying to get in to a lighter weight for better results. Losing weight has never been easy for me and with raising amount of training load, it has been even harder. That's the reason I got my hands in to a book from Matt Fitzgerald: Racing Weight.

Matt Fitzgerald is a sport nutritionist with a background of endurance sports, coaching endurance sports and working for food companies making products for endurance sports. For me that was background enough to prove he knows what he is talking about.

Book takes comprehensive, but simple enough approach to endurance nutrition. It talks through the basics of diets and different sources of nutrition. It quotes many studies from different points of view to diets and training. It also explains different trends in dieting and their pro's and con's.

Racing Weight ideology brings eating back to basics. It supports foods that are natural. It tells athletes to concentrate on quality of the food and then your own appetite.

Book offers simple methods to improve food quality. It recommends to think or even to calculate a bit what you are eating, but it still keeps things pretty simple. Book also offers good ways to manage your appetite and concentrate that you eat for real need of energy.

I loved the simplistic and naturalistic approach of the book. This type of methodology is not about trends or one truth about dieting. It is a comprehensive way to improve your diet and with that your racing weight. It will be easy to not lose weight or improve fat percentage after reading this book. This doesn't offer any magic tricks, but it makes you think of the elements what makes your body to lose or gain weight. For results that will last, that is essential.

I recommend this book even for the people who are not endurance sports enthusiastic. It gives so much good information to everyone about diets that it's valuable reading for all. It's easy and fun to read, so it's really for everyone

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen