Krav Maga: An Essential Guide to the Renowned Method--for Fitness and Self-Defense


David Kahn - 2004
    Swift, powerful, and simple, it is an effective method for fending off any kind of attacker—and it is also an amazing workout.Regardless of size, strength, and fitness level, anyone can master the essentials of krav maga—and reap the rewards of increased safety, confidence, and conditioning. With moves you can learn in as little as five minutes, or train and practice for long-term success, Krav Maga covers all the below:*What is Krav Maga all about*Instruction on how to protect your body's vulnerable target and learn weapons defense combat*Use an opponent's momentum to fuel your counterattack*Escape all kinds of grips and holds*Combine training punches, kicks, and other moves into a powerful conditioning workout---to lose weight, increase core strength, and improve muscle tone *Use specially designed drills and a 12-week training program to become a kravist---a smart and prepared fighterWritten by one of America's foremost krav maga experts, this exciting new guide opens the door to an empowering and important set of techniques that you or anyone can master.

Bikram Yoga: The Guru Behind Hot Yoga Shows the Way to Radiant Health and Personal Fulfillment


Bikram Choudhury - 2007
    Bikram Choudhury, the world's foremost authority on Hot Yoga, is here to show you the true way to self-improvement and a new love of life. Based on a centuries-old and scientifically proven pathway to health, Bikram Yoga will whip your body, mind, and spirit into shape.Based on Bikram's signature program of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, this book will help you combat a variety of afflictions—from stress and insomnia to arthritis and back pain—and maintain exceptional health for years to come. The various postures work your muscles, increase flexibility, and flush toxins out of your system—a completely natural, full-body workout without the unhealthy stresses and dangers of a gym. It isn't easy: It's a rigorous, body-bending program, and Bikram gives it to you straight in his outspoken, charismatic, and tough-love fashion. But just like the hundreds of thousands of students who go to his studios across the country, you'll end up sweaty and exhausted but keep coming back for more.Additionally, Bikram Yoga can help you do much more than drop inches from your belly. Bikram explains how practicing yoga is also a mental and spiritual mission that can help you create a path to true happiness. When it comes to love and marriage, realizing your full potential, or living a life in perfect balance, Bikram's yogic philosophy shows you how physical strength and flexibility can be a gateway to mental clarity and spiritual calm.If you've never tried Bikram's yoga, get ready for the deepest, most beneficial class of your life. And if you're an old hand at it, your understanding of the postures and the sequence will increase exponentially, as will your results.So are you ready to achieve lasting health and happiness? The time has come for Bikram Yoga. Grab your mat and get ready to change your life.

Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge


B.J. Penn - 2007
    This work outlines his revolutionary system of fighting, detailing techniques, fight against the cage and formulate strategies based upon your personal attributes and strengths.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running


Haruki Murakami - 2007
    A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and--even more important--on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running."

The New Rules of Lifting Supercharged: Ten All-New Muscle-Building Programs for Men and Women


Lou Schuler - 2012
    The New Rules of Lifting Supercharged is a total reboot of the weightlifting workout book that launched the series in 2006, packing even more power on every page. Featuring ten completely new workouts for both women and men, Supercharged emphasizes four major movements that do the most to change the way your body looks, feels, and performs: squat, deadlift, push, and pull. In addition, Cosgrove’s updated total-body workout program improves core strength, mobility, flexibility, balance, endurance, and athleticism . . . all in just three hours a week of exercise. Another big change from the original New Rules of Lifting is a self-customized workout system. Readers can choose their own exercises from a menu for each movement category, allowing beginner and advanced lifters to get tremendous results from the same basic plan. Each workout ends with a “finisher”—five to ten minutes of fun but high-effort drills such as complexes, intervals, and density training, with the choice of the reader’s favorite exercises. The ultimate guide to total-body strengthening, this supercharged edition of The New Rules of Lifting will lift readers to stratospheric results.

The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing


Philip Maffetone - 2010
    Dr. Philip Maffetone’s approach to endurance offers a truly “individualized” outlook and unique system that emphasizes building a strong aerobic base for increased fat burning, weight loss, sustained energy, and a healthy immune system. Good nutrition and stress reduction are also key to this commonsense, big-picture approach. In addition, Dr. Maffetone dispels many of the commonly held myths that linger in participatory sports—and which adversely impact performance—and explains the “truths” about endurance, such as:The need to train slower to race faster will enable your aerobic system to improve endurance Why expensive running shoes can actually cause foot and leg injuries The fact that refined carbohydrates actually reduce endurance energy and disrupt hormone balance And more. If you are looking to increase your endurance and maximize your athletic potential, The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing is your one-stop guide to training and racing effectively.

Samurai Strategies: 42 Martial Secrets from Musashi's Book of Five Rings


Boyé Lafayette de Mente - 2005
    Musashi fought his first duel to the death when he was 13, killing a veteran warrior more than twice his age. By the time he was 29 he had killed over 60 other warriors in death duels and was a legend in his own time.Just before he died, Musashi recorded his philosophy, strategies, and tactics in a short treatise entitled Go Rin Sho "The Book of Five Rings". Samurai Strategies has extracted the fundamentals of Musashi's tactics from this esoteric little book and explains them here in the modern context of business, politics, and war. Musashi's strategies for winning are as valid today as they were in seventeenth century Japan and provide valuable insights for anyone in any field of endeavor--from business, war, and sports to the fields of art, love, and politics.

Convict Conditioning: How to Bust Free of All Weakness Using the Lost Secrets of Supreme Survival Strength


Paul Wade - 2010
    That is to say, for us humans who live lives of such relative security that we cultivate our strength and power more out of pride and for a sense of accomplishment than out of an absolute need to survive in the wild. The professional athlete hones his body to function well in a sports event-rather than to emerge safe from a life-or-death struggle. And even those in our military and LEO rely more on the security of their weapons and armor than on their own personal, raw power and brute strength to carry the day. There remains one environment where exuding the necessary degree of authoritative strength and power can mean the difference between life or death: the maximum security prison. In maximum security, the predator preys on the weak like we breathe air. Intimidation is the daily currency. You either become a professional victim or you develop that supreme survival strength that signals the predator to stay at bay.Paul Wade spent 19 years in hell holes like San Quentin, Angola and Marion. He entered this world a gangly, terrorized weakling and he graduated to final freedom, pound-for-pound one of the strongest humans on the planet. Paul Wade dedicated his prison life to the cultivation of that supreme survival strength. And ironically, it is in America's prisons that we can find some of the great, lost secrets of how to get immensely powerful and strong. Paul Wade mined these secrets as if his life depended on it-and of course in many ways it did.Finally free, Paul Wade pays his debt to society-not just with the horrors of his years in the hole-but with the greatest gift he could possibly give us: a priceless set of progressions that can take ANYONE who has the will from abject weakling to strength specimen extraordinaire.

Yojokun: Life Lessons from a Samurai


Kaibara Ekken - 1982
    With the value of their martial skills on the decline, the samurai sought new spiritual, moral, psychological, and physical moorings. Tsunetomo Yamamoto, author of the now-classic Hagakure, combined a Confucian sense of justice with a Zen-influenced abandonment of the ego to espouse loyalty and death as paramount qualities of the samurai's calling.Kaibara Ekiken (16301714), a samurai physician with philosophical and Buddhist leanings, took the opposite approach. He sought ways for a healthier, more rewarding life. In his Yojokun: Life Lessons from a Samurai, he collected six decades of study and observation to compile one of the most remarkable commentaries of his age. Ekiken's sweep was vast. In Yojokun, he combined his knowledge of holistic health, the principles of chi (the material force that pervades all things) and jin (human heartedness), Buddhism, Confucianism, and the art of living. He addressed concerns that ran from mental and physical health to spiritual matters. His discourses examined the intake of food and drink, sexual practices, sustaining stamina and health in old age, overindulgence and restraint, bathing and healthy habits, and more. And throughout his discussion he wove a subtle but potent spiritual and philosophical thread. Yojokun offers startlingly profound and fresh insights into many of the same problems that concern us today. Translator William Scott Wilson notes Ekikens relevance for the 21st century: The Yojokun, then, is not just a vestige of quaint Orientalia, but rather a living guide to a traditional Way of life and balanced health. If we do not immediately understand some of its more exotic prescripts, it may be wiser not to dismiss them outright, but to approach the work as Ekiken himself might have: with humility, curiosity, respect, and imagination.

Simple Taoism: A Guide to Living in Balance


C. Alexander Simpkins - 1999
    Divided into three parts, the book outlines:A clear explanation of Taoism and how to apply its best aspects to your daily life.Simple instructions for exercises to lead a fuller life—meditation, breathing, chi kung, and tai chi chuan.An informative discussion of key Taoist concepts, including wu-wei (nonaction), yin and yang, and Te (power virtue, life).

Got Fight?: The 50 Zen Principles of Hand-to-Face Combat


Forrest Griffin - 2009
    Forrest Griffin is the light-heavyweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and was the winner of the first season of Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter; in Got Fight?, he shows you how he did it. With Erich Krauss, Muay Thai fighter and co-author of “The Prodigy” B.J. Penn’s Mixed Martial Arts: The Book of Knowledge.

Beyond Violence


Jiddu Krishnamurti - 1972
    This fascinating analysis will provide readers with an understanding of the connection between humans and violence and will demonstrate how to achieve mental liberation and tranquility. Realizando que el mundo esta lleno de violencia, tanto en el nivel global como individual, el autor sostiene que el cambio de la sociedad surgirn de la mente y la tranquilidad total.

Aikido in Everyday Life: Giving in to Get Your Way


Terry Dobson - 1993
    The late renowned aikido master Terry Dobson, together with Victor Miller, present aikido as a basis for conflict resolution. "Attack-tics" is a system of conflict resolution based on the principles of aikido, the non-violent martial art Morihei Ueshiba created after World War II. Not all conflicts are contests, say Dobson and Miller, and not all conflicts are equally threatening.

Power to the People Professional: How to Add 100s of Pounds to Your Squat, Bench,and Deadlift with Advanced Russian Techniques


Pavel Tsatsouline - 2009
    Pavel took the guesswork out of strength training and honed in with an elegant simplicity on what really worked to get stronger—and continue getting stronger. The war on weakness is a war we wage our whole lives. There is no final victory in the quest for extra strength. Only hard-fought gains—born of skill, will, and right knowledge. Losses and set-backs are a constant in this see-saw struggle of adaptation and survival. Pavel’s great contribution has been to research and identify the proven “battle” strategies that give us the best chance to keep making those strength gains—whatever the odds. And in this, Pavel has succeeded admirably, thanks to his access to the best training secrets not only in the West but in Russia—justly famous for its history of achievement in the world of strength and powerlifting. And thanks to his ability to ground theory in the proof of hard experience and earned results. In Power to the People Professional, Pavel broadens and deepens this knowledge base to encompass a vast range of little-known but highly effective methods to keep tricking our stubborn bodies into ever-greater strength gains. Some of the chapters are straightforward coverage of “how they do it in Russia”, others represent Pavel’s own original work based on years of research and experimentation. While elite athletes and powerlifters are those most likely to benefit from the advanced training information contained within Power to the People Professional, there remains a wealth of cutting-edge tips and tactics that intermediate lifters, athletes from various power sports, and power bodybuilders can use to immediately enhance their strength and power. “This is a graduate program in getting strong. If the RKC is the "School of Strength," this is the special ops class. Honestly, just pick the book up and pop open a chapter. Here are the programs, the thought process, and the actual systems used to produce stunning lifts in the three powerlifts. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. As my "Must Have" collection of books spirals higher each year, I am comfortable in saying that this book will quietly show the door to one or two of the books on my previous lists. It is that good.”—Dan John, author of Never Let Go “Intelligent intensity and total dedication along with stimulating variety is the theme among numerous training strategies featured in Pavel’s new Power to the People Professional. Top notch Russian powerlifters, exacting coaches, and meticulous research studies point to strength building schemes that absolutely PRODUCE! Since an original Russian all-rounder, George “the Lion” Hackenschmidt, established long-standing weightlifting records at the turn of LAST century, Pavel’s latest compendium of Soviet methods is way past due! Learn to freely borrow from the diversity of detailed systems discussed, and delight to the insight behind their creators’ mindsets. Then set aside Pavel’s Professional, head directly to the gym with extreme motivation, and follow the lessons toward suggested serious GRINDING!”—John McKean, Former I.A.W.A.

The Hindu Way: An Introduction to Hinduism


Shashi Tharoor - 2019
    Although there are hundreds of books on Hinduism, there are only a few which provide a lucid, accessible, yet deeply layered account of the religion’s numerous belief systems, schools of thought, sects, tenets, scriptures, deities, rituals, customs, festivals and philosophies. This book is one of them. In the tradition of classics of the genre like K. M. Sen’s Hinduism and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s The Hindu View of Life, this book captures the essence of Hinduism with brevity, insight and an enviable grasp of the myriad layers and intricacies of one of the world’s greatest religions. It is a book that is especially timely given the rather controversial role that religion has played in countries around the world. The author tells us why Hinduism is a religion that is well-suited to the needs of the world today: ‘In the twenty-first century, Hinduism has many of the attributes of a universal religion—a religion that is personal and individualistic, privileges the individual and does not subordinate one to a collectivity; a religion that grants and respects complete freedom to the believer to find his or her own answers to the true meaning of life; a religion that offers a wide range of choice in religious practice, even in regard to the nature and form of the formless God; a religion that places great emphasis on one’s mind, and values one’s capacity for reflection, intellectual enquiry, and self-study; a religion that distances itself from dogma and holy writ, that is minimally prescriptive and yet offers an abundance of options, spiritual and philosophical texts and social and cultural practices to choose from. In a world where resistance to authority is growing, Hinduism imposes no authorities; in a world of networked individuals, Hinduism proposes no institutional hierarchies; in a world of open-source information-sharing, Hinduism accepts all paths as equally valid; in a world of rapid transformations and accelerating change, Hinduism is adaptable and flexible, which is why it has survived for nearly 4,000 years.The text of The Hindu Way is embellished with over a hundred photographs and illustrations, many of them in colour, on various aspects of the religion. Based on Dr. Tharoor’s extensive writing on the subject, including the bestselling Why I Am a Hindu, this book gives the reader an unrivaled understanding of Hinduism.