More about Books

At a training session in Kelvin Hall on Tuesday, I was speaking to some athletes about reading about their events and about athletics generally. I thought it might be useful at this point of the year to mention some books that could be useful for the various events. For this one I'l discuss a couple of books on sprinting as a start. The best one around just now is Mike Smith's book called 'High Performance Sprinting', costs £12.99 and is published by Crowwood Press - their website is www.crowood.com and you can get it from there or from any good bookshop. It covers training at various parts of the year, warm up, drills, exercises and gives specific sessions for the different parts of the training year for 100, 200 and 400 as well as for relays. If you can get a copy of Frank Dick's book on 'Sprinting' which was published by the BAAB it is one of the very best but currently out of print - the library might get it for you. 'Sportspeed' by George Dintiman, Bob Ward and Tom Tellez is an American book and covers the development of speed for any sport - football, rugby, basketball, etc - as well as being mainly athletics. It tells you how to test yourself at the start of the training year and how to devise an individual programme. It is published by Human Kinetics and can be ordered from their website at www.humankinetics.com I costs about £15 - I'm not sure of the exact price. Of course the biographies of the top sprinters like Colin Jackson, Roger Black, Linford Christie and company all make for good reading and increase your knowledge of your event as well. Next time I'll have a word about middle distance books that are worth a look but that won't be for about another week.