Product Description

Reach a higher level of athleticism with Functional Training for Sports!

Functional training is a complete system of athletic development that focuses on training the body the way it will be used in competition, making it the most efficient and effective form of training today.

Author Mike Boyle, renowned strength and conditioning coach formerly with the Boston Bruins, addresses movement, body positions, and abilities that are essential for success in competition. Through Functional Training for Sports, you will improve your total athleticism, enhance your performance, and reduce injuries through exercise progressions that will spur your development potential for specific movement patterns you commonly use in your sport.

Providing tests for you to determine where to start, the progressions focus on training for the torso, the upper body, and the lower body. The book also provides detailed programs that incorporate the exercises and methods for these progressions. As you master each progression, you will be preparing yourself to perform in any situation with notable improvements in stability and balance, reaction time, core strength, and power.

This whole-body, sport-applied system makes Functional Training for Sports your key to today's most effective and efficient training!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34745 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780736046817
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

“Mike Boyle knows how to get results. He helped me reach my full playing potential, and in Functional Training for Sports he'll show you how to condition your body to perform its best during competition.”

Brendan Shanahan
Detroit Red Wings

“With Functional Training for Sports you can become stronger and faster than ever. Boyle's system works! He helped me reach my dream of being a professional football player and enabled me to perform better than my peers.”

Marcellus Wiley
San Diego Chargers

“Mike Boyle's training techniques have helped me to be stronger, quicker, and fitter. His approach prepares me for the long soccer season and gives me the extra edge I need. Functional Training for Sports presents the most effective and efficient training program available today!”

Kristine Lilly
15-year veteran of the U.S. women's national soccer team

From Book News, Inc.
“This book offers a complete method for athletic development that focuses on training the body the way it will be used in competition, in order to develop movement skills, body positions, and power for any sport. Boyle (a strength and conditioning coach formerly with the Boston Bruins) provides tests for athletes to determine their starting points for training, and then divides regimens into training for the torso, the upper body, and lower body. The exercises focus on improving total athleticism, enhancing performance, improving stability and reaction time, and reducing injury. The exercises are demonstrated in black and white photos.”Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc.

From Running.about.com
“I have found in my own life that when I am doing things to develop my overall condition my running improves to a phenomenal degree. If you find only one thing in each cross-training book that I recommend you will agree, I am sure, that every book purchased is worth it's weight in gold. This one is certainly no exception.”

From SJSports.com
“Mike Boyle could be called "the strength coach's strength coach," this book is amazing!..... This book should be a part of every coach's arsenal.”

From AthletesAdvisor.com
“Boyle makes a very good point about training for the specific demands of your sport.”

About the Author
Mike Boyle is regarded as a leader in the field of strength and conditioning. Before his work with Athletes’ Performance, Boyle was owner of Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning, which emphasized performance enhancement and injury prevention to provide athletes of all ages.

Before opening his business, Boyle spent 17 years as the strength and conditioning coach at Boston University and 10 years as the strength and conditioning coach for the NHL’s Boston Bruins. He was one of the first strength and conditioning coaches to prepare athletes specifically for the NFL Combine, a trend that is now industry-wide. He also was the strength and conditioning coach for the 1998 gold medal-winning U.S. women’s Olympic ice hockey team.

Widely known for his work with hockey players, Boyle also has trained athletes in many of the major professional sports leagues in North America, including the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, and WNBA.

Boyle lives in Reading, Massachusetts, with his wife, Cynthia. He can be reached at mboyle@athletesperformance.com.

Customer Reviews

Good Starting Point For Functional Training
This book is a good basis for functional training for anyone who is attemtping to make the switch from traditional training philosophies to more sport specific functional training philosophies. Although it lacks a tremendous amount of scientific backing, the concepts as a whole make sense and can be a valuable tool to make the transition to functional training. This book is not for the person who already has incorporated functional training into their own program design or the program design of their athletes. If you are already using functional training methods, this book will seem basic and simple with little or no new information from what you are already applying in your workouts, but if you want to understand why the deadlift is superior to prone hamstring/leg curl for speed development and why push-ups are better than traditional bench press then this book may be right for you.

Excellent
I have never written a review before but this book was so good I wanted to make others aware. Finally someone has written a book about functional training that makes sense and shows practical progressions.
I could never understand why I was always pulling my hamstrings on the court in spite of doing tons of machine leg curls. This book does a great job of explaining why using machines make you good at lifting a lot of weight on that machine, but doesn't help your athletic performance. Excellent explanations without bogging you down with technical jargon. The exercise progressions are clearly explained. The only small deficiency in my mind is that I would like to see a healthy shoulders section (although he does touch on this in various places).
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the most current techniques in athletic training. Far, far better than Rosemarie Gionta Alfieri's mess of a book and much more accesible and practical than Gambetta's Guide to Functional Training. So far I haven't seen anything else like it on the market. I hope there will be more books like this.

Good Examples ... No Backing
Let's start out with the good: there are lots of exercises, many of them creative, to give the athlete or coach new tools to use in their program. Michael Boyle brings lots of experience to the table through his involvement at his training facility.

But I was also very dissappointed with this book as it has no research backing and is opinionated. The entire book has only has 7 references, none of them being research articles.

Boyle states that functional training is based on the "latest scientific research" yet there is no research presented in the book at all. He states that he wanted it to be simple and to be able to be read and used by diverse people. I am not sure if he purposely left out research or not but it is research that truly tells me if something works or not. My conclusion with his findings are that he derived them from his experiences and from the books he cites in his references.

Boyle also seems to hold a grudge against exercise physiologists and is in love with physical therapists. He concludes that problems with top amateur and professional athletes' training regimens in the 80's were due to the dumbfounded exercise physiologists that teams employed. Not only is it harsh to generalize to all exercise physiologists, it's also just not right. On the contrary, all throughout the book though he quotes numerous physical therapists about how revolutionary their ideas are.

The book has plenty of pictures of exercises which is great. Unfortunately, photos showing action or movement have this ghost figure overtop of the regular figure that make the whole picture hard to decipher. I have no idea what some of the exercises are because the motion picture obscures the regular photo leaving it useless to me.

On pg. 86, Boyle addresses the problem of when to train abs. He states that some people argue for training abs at the end of the workout because otherwise you would be fatiguing muscles important in stability. He disagrees with this but gives no reason why but continues on with what he believes is the best progression.

Another opinion that is brought up is how athletes focus on "mirror muscles." I guess you can't both look good and perform well.

Overall, I think the book could have been better. I think Boyle pretty much just wrote about his experiences throughout his career without thinking about any backing for his thoughts. Many thoughts are incomplete and opinioned with not much backing. The exercises are great for incorporating into a program for diversity but I was not sold on how great the performance enhancing aspects of functional training are from this book.