Book picks similar to
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners: 101 Inspirational Stories of Energy, Endurance, and Endorphins by Jack Canfield
running
non-fiction
nonfiction
sports
Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear. Get On the Mat. Love Your Body
Jessamyn Stanley - 2017
Now she brings her body-positive, emotionally uplifting approach to yoga in a book that will help every reader discover the power of yoga and how to weave it seamlessly into his or her life.
Hal Koerner's Field Guide to Ultrarunning: Training for an Ultramarathon from 50K to 100 Miles and Beyond
Hal Koerner - 2014
Don’t learn the hard way, get a jump on training for ultramarathon with Hal Koerner’s Field Guide to Ultrarunning, a comprehensive guide to running 30 to 100 miles and beyond.Hal Koerner is America’s top ultrarunner with podium results in more than 90 ultramarathons. In his Field Guide, Koerner reveals hard-earned wisdom, smart habits, and reliable tips to help you prepare for your most epic runs. You’ll hear entertaining stories of trailside woe and practical advice on the smartest ways to fuel, trail running technique, and mental strategies to carry you to the finish line. Koerner offers 3 detailed training plans to prepare for 50K, 100K, and 100-mile ultramarathons.
The Big Five: Five Simple Things You Can Do to Live a Longer, Healthier Life
Sanjiv Chopra - 2016
But few books can make the promise of this one: if you adapt these five simple, virtually-free suggestions you will live a longer and healthier life, guaranteed.This is no fad study. Each of the recommendations outlined in this book has been proven by an overwhelming number of tests, trials, and studies to increase health and lifespan. There are no gimmicks, no catches, no ifs, ands, or buts.Presented by a trusted expert, The Big Five includes easily digestible data and startling results from real studies conducted by reputable universities and involving thousands of subjects. Readers of The Big Five can see for themselves that, without a doubt, these five simple actions offer many more proven benefits than the latest expensive supplements, fad diets, jazzy exercise programs, and state-of-the-art gym equipment.
Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement
Kay Wills Wyma - 2012
Cleaning House is her account of a year-long campaign to introduce her kids to basic life skills. From making beds to grocery shopping to refinishing a deck chair, the Wyma family experienced for themselves the ways meaningful work can transform self-absorption into earned self-confidence and concern for others. With irresistible humor and refreshing insights, Kay candidly details the ups and downs of removing her own kids from the center of the universe. The changes that take place in her household will inspire you to launch your own campaign against youth entitlement. As Kay says, “Here’s to seeing what can happen when we tell our kids, ‘I believe in you, and I’m going to prove it by putting you to work.’”
Yoga for Runners
Christine Felstead - 2013
You can feel that impact in the muscles, ligaments, and bone structures throughout your body. Thankfully, Yoga for Runners addresses both the physical and mental demands of the sport. Whether you are new to yoga or have practiced for years, Yoga for Runners provides you with the most effective poses--88 poses in all. Each pose is described in detail to ensure correct execution, maximizing the physical benefit and decreasing the risk of injury.You'll learn how simple yoga techniques can be incorporated into your existing running workouts and routines to eliminate chronic aches and pains. Discover how each pose can be sequenced to address a specific need, such as strengthen and lengthen the hamstrings, strengthen and increase mobility of the hip joint, eliminate lower-back and upper-body discomfort, speed the recovery process after a practice run or a race, maintain a strong core, or just restore and rejuvenate to prepare for an upcoming event. These sequences target all troublesome muscle regions. Anatomical illustrations and descriptions explain why these poses and sequences decrease your risk of acute or chronic injury as well as why they are beneficial to your training regimen.After just a few weeks of following Yoga for Runners, you will feel stronger, more balanced, more in tune with your breathing, and more aware of your posture and technique. Your entire running experience--endurance, strength, breathing, and mental sharpness--will be more productive, positive, and enjoyable.
Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life
Joe De Sena - 2014
In 2014 there will be a race every other day in 15 countries on five continents. What do these Spartans know that you don’t? They know that we all have a fire burning within us to prove ourselves. Joe De Sena has captured that invincible Spartan spirit in his manifesto for bold living, SPARTAN UP! A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; May 13, 2014; $24). De Sena’s prescription for life’s insurmountable obstacles is to get off the couch and crush them through hard work and force of will. A legend in the ultramarathon community, he created Spartan Race, extreme obstacle races where no one knows what to expect, but to finish is to be transformed. Spartan Race drives participants to their very limit to learn what they are capable of and to set a new frame of reference; one they can draw upon in the face of life’s harshest challenges. Everyday disappointments and setbacks seem small when you’ve been to the other side of hell and made it back as a victor. In SPARTAN UP! De Sena paints a picture of how he created the Spartan way of life, beginning with an unexpected challenge by a friend that got him back into shape through endurance racing. After that first race, De Sena completed more than 50 ultramarathons (in conditions ranging from -30 to 120 degrees) and 14 Ironman events, including the 135-mile Badwater ultramarathon, the 140.6 Lake Placid Ironman, and a 100-mile Vermont trail run—in a single week. The harder the race the more he loved it; he was hooked.SPARTAN UP! is more than an insider’s view of the world of obstacle racing, it’s a manual for the Spartan way of life, including :• Finding the will to succeed: The first half of a race you run with your legs; the second half you run with your mind. Turn your pain into an outboard motor to drive you forward. • Tossing your cookies: The Cookie Test can teach you how to overcome the need for immediate gratification and help you prosper in the long term. • Changing your frame of reference: Reset your inner default as an antidote to dissatisfaction and the insatiable need for “more.” • Getting Spartan fit: Survival of the Fittest means training outside the gym for strength, endurance and flexibility throughout the entire body—and don’t forget those burpees! • Moving mountains: Whether metaphorical mountains or the ones on which Spartans race, what you think are your limits can be a mere starting point for transformation. Age, gender, and physical ability are no barrier and finishers become entirely new people, without limitations, living life to the fullest. That’s why the Spartans say: “You’ll know at the finish line.” JOE DE SENA is a cofounder of Spartan Race, which began as an obstacle race based on the extreme spirit of the legendary Death Race, and has become a multi-million dollar global lifestyle company in less than 10 years. It was voted Outside magazine’s Best Obstacle Race. In one year’s time he competed in the Raid International Ukatak in Canada; the IditaSport in Alaska; the Odyssey Adventure Race and the OAR Beast of the East, both in Virginia; the Raid the North Extreme in Newfoundland, the Adrenaline Rush in Ireland and the Discovery Channel World Championships in Switzerland. He resides in Vermont with his family. For more information, please visit www.spartanupthebook.com.
Strength Training for Triathletes
Patrick S. Hagerman - 2008
This illustrated guide offers 60 exercises that build strength for swimming, biking, and running by replicating the muscle usage patterns specific to triathlon events. The exercises are organized by sport and muscle group, allowing triathletes to quickly find the best exercise for their unique training needs. Included are sample seasonal plans for each race distance, along with instructions on adapting training plans to individual needs that make it easy to develop a personal strength training program.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Emily Nagoski - 2019
Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. How can you “love your body” when every magazine cover has ten diet tips for becoming “your best self”? How do you “lean in” at work when you’re already operating at 110 percent and aren’t recognized for it? How can you live happily and healthily in a sexist world that is constantly telling you you’re too fat, too needy, too noisy, and too selfish?Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back. In these pages you’ll learn• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnoutWith the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in these pages—and will be empowered to create positive change. Emily and Amelia aren’t here to preach the broad platitudes of expensive self-care or insist that we strive for the impossible goal of “having it all.” Instead, they tell us that we are enough, just as we are—and that wellness, true wellness, is within our reach.
The Power of Ritual: How to Create Meaning and Connection in Everything You Do
Casper ter Kuile - 2020
He argues that, while formal religious affiliation may be waning, spiritual practices remain relevant because they can cultivate bonds to the self, others, the natural world, and the transcendent. Ter Kuile explains the significance of a variety of religious practices, including pilgrimage, prayer, and meditation, and proposes ways to capture their significance through everyday activities ("anything can become a spiritual practice--gardening, painting, singing, snuggling, sitting") by focusing on intention, attention, and repetition. This approach leads to inventive explorations of social trends; for instance, the famously cultish appeal of the Crossfit fitness program is explained in terms of vulnerability and community. In ter Kuile's understanding, religious traditions are "inherently creative" and therefore good starting points for considering personalized, meaningful spiritual practices.
Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous!
Rory Freedman - 2005
And they'll guide you on making intelligent and educated decisions about food. They may be bitches, but they are skinny bitches. And you'll be one too--after you get with the program and start eating right.
Destination: Simple - Rituals and Rhythms for a Simpler Daily Life
Brooke McAlary - 2012
You don't know HOW to begin.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Katherine May - 2020
These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.
Build Your Running Body: A Total-Body Fitness Plan for All Distance Runners, from Milers to Ultramarathoners—Run Farther, Faster, and Injury-Free
Pete Magill - 2014
This easy-to-use workout manual draws on the latest research in running physiology to target all the components that go into every stride—including muscles, connective tissue, cardiovascular fitness, energy production, the nervous system, hormones, and the brain. With the breakthrough whole-body training program in Build Your Running Body, runners will improve their times, run longer and more comfortably, and reduce injury.With more than 150 workouts—from weightlifting and cross-training to resistance exercises and plyometrics—fine-tuned to individual skill levels and performance goals, PLUS: • 393 photos that make it easy to follow every step of every workout • 10 training programs to help runners of all levels integrate the total-body plan into their daily routines • Interviews with leading runners, exercise scientists, and coaches—learn how elite runners train today • Race strategy for the crucial weeks leading up to the competition and through to the finish line • Exercises to prevent injury and rehabilitate common running ailments • Seasoned insight on barefoot running, the pros and cons of stretching, and other hot-button topics • Nutrition guidance on carbs, proteins, fats, and weight loss • More than 30 recipes to speed recovery and cement fitness gains • Beginners' guidelines every step of the way • Valuable tips on proper apparel, tracking your progress, and more!
If You Only Knew: My Unlikely, Unavoidable Story of Becoming Free
Jamie Ivey - 2018
It’s exhausting, this guarding of our stories and struggles. Fear of being found out had caused me to hide—but I wasn’t just covering my flaws, I was unintentionally blocking the beauty of God’s grace. My journey to real freedom began when I quit running from my mess and started trusting Jesus to make something beautiful of it. This book is that story. It’s stepping out of shame and insecurity into gospel freedom. It’s letting God turn our failures and frailties into testimonies of His faithfulness. I’ve discovered that when we quit hiding, God gets the glory and we are able to fully embrace not only our relationship with Him, but also with one another. Transparency brings freedom, and in every moment, we'll find that God can absolutely be trusted.
The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss
Jason Fung - 2016
Weight gain and obesity are driven by hormones—in everyone—and only by understanding the effects of insulin and insulin resistance can we achieve lasting weight loss.In this highly readable and provocative book, Dr. Jason Fung sets out an original, robust theory of obesity that provides startling insights into proper nutrition. In addition to his five basic steps, a set of lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels, Dr. Fung explains how to use intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and reach a healthy weight—for good.