Product Description

If you are a serious runner, you want to improve your ability to run faster and longer without injury. Many runners have bought better shoes or spent longer hours on the track trying to improve, only to end up frustrated with back and leg pain. But the secret to improving your run is simple--your stride is only as good as your physical abilities allow. Making a few simple changes in strength, flexibility, speed of movement, and technique will help you reach your genetic potential. In Explosive Running, Dr. Michael Yessis, a respected sports fitness expert, demonstrates the method he has used successfully with thousands of runners. His method consists of three overlapping steps all runners should go through in order to improve their performance and make the transition to effective, efficient, and faster running. Included are detailed discussions of the biomechanics of running, special strength exercises, stretching, troubleshooting common problems, nutrition for optimal running, and tips to maintain a running program. This book employs unique sequence photography that captures and analyzes movements that are key to a good running stride. Explosive Running will give you a much greater understanding of the sport and help you improve in a much shorter amount of time than most other books on the subject. Michael Yessis, Ph.D., is president of Sports Training, Inc., a training facility for professional athletes. He is the author of Kinesiology of Exercise and Explosive Golf and has appeared on "Today" and CNN.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #334540 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Michael Yessis, Ph.D., is president of Sports Training, Inc., a facility that helps train professional athletes. He has appeared on "Today" and CNN.

Customer Reviews

Flies in the face of mainstream
I have read this book... and am preparing to read it again.

I have read a lot on running, and have even taken a few courses, and then I read this book - what an eye opener! I quickly realized how biased some people that teach running courses are, and how little actual knowledge is out there on many of the topics that are introduced in this book. A couple of examples:

The section on barefoot running. This is the part of the book that the big shoe companies don't want you reading. I think that it's largely true, though most would have trouble believing, it - I think that the author has done an exceptional job of backing up his theories on this one. As soon as the snow melts, I will be unlacing my shoes for the first time ever ;-)

The book has a great deal of information pertaining to running stride. A lot of what I have learned revolves around the theory that you were born with a certain stride, and you should just "run like you run" - don't worry about your stride. Obviously (if you have an open mind) you can see through that garbage, and get "real" with your running. Tons of pictures to back this up (someone could argue that the quality of the photos used in the book are poor, but I think that they are sufficient, given that they are for illustration purposes - not wall hangings).

Stretching. Believe that most everyone who is stretching today isn't doing it properly, or could certainly be doing it better. The author gets into active stretching, versus passive stretching. Very mind altering stuff... with a lot of facts to back up why this is the way to do it. I have not incorporated these stretches into my training yet, but will be doing shortly (takes a bit of work to alter what I have learned over the years). At a seminar that I attended, I asked a physiotherapist about active stretching, and why they still push static stretches... she says that while active stretches are better, it's too difficult to learn or do correctly. Doesn't look that tough, but I will soon see ;-)

Bottom line... for the price, I don't know that you can find a better book out there. So ends my two cents.

A must for all serious runners
Finally a book which gets off from the usual running book concept. This book doesn't really cover training but it's all about biomechanics of running. It teaches you to analyze your own biomechanics and teaches you to improve your running form with certain exercises. This book is mostly about strength training and stretching and it shows the proven training methods on how can you improve your performance and decrease your injuries. This book finally gave my strength training program a real direction.

Almost a good running publication
Almost. Yessis and Yessis (two authors) focus on the biomechanics of running, which is unusual and perhaps distinctive among publications - we've got the way to train, mostly from Jack D., and now this is an almost good book for telling us how to run. The descriptions of proper running style, and the exercises to achieve proper running style, are in the book.

But you really have to dig. What makes this book 'almost good' is that there is no structure or system to its presentation. Y & Y say what they have to say. Once. Twice, a different way. Third, a different way. And so on.

The redundancy is really not the bad point - the bad point is that there's so much laid out, it's hard to tell what you should do first. Doing it all, well, that would take eight hours a set.

Another bad point. There are far, far more 'non-examples' of runners displaying INcorrect running style than examples of runners displaying correct running style. For the typical reader (I presume I am among them), I want to see someone running right . . . not endless pictures of people who are running and are doing two, three, or four things wrong.

It seems like Y & Y have one favorite sprinter in the book who does it all right. Everyone else, be they your average marathon runner or the state high school 1,500 meeter champ or a nationally ranked 5,000 meter competitor, displays a running style per Y & Y that is "almost, but not quite, right."

The pictures are a great, great idea - but next version show us how to run, biomechanically, the right way. Give us pictures of people who either naturally or with training, are doing it ALL right. (A value-added add-on of course would be a DVD with video clips of runners running the right way.)

The explanations are helpful - but somehow, some way, please structure the presentation. Provide exercises per running element, or simple to easy, or beginner to advanced, SOME sort of organization that makes sense so that as readers we can figure out fairly easily what it is we each should incorporate into our workout schedule.