Serious Training for Endurance Athletes 2nd

I bought this book on the recommendations of Amazon customers and I must admit that I wasn't disapointed. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to get when everyone gives a book 5 stars. Sometimes it's hard to get an unbiased review.I was pleased with the book and what others have said is true. I recommend this book to endurance athletes looking for reasons and explanations on why to train a certain way and what it will do for your body in the long run.However, I am a competetive rower and there were few topics that took rowing into account. Most of the training is geared towards running/cycling/triathetes and not specific to rowing as much as I was hoping. Also, there is way too little emphasis on resistance training. Most of the book is about setting up a mathmatical training plan and says to devote time sparingly to strength training. I'm not an expert on other sports, but I do know that power through strength training is vital for a strong pull on those oars. I suggest devoting more time in the SERIOUS formula to weight training in the gym than the book suggests, especially in the early training weeks.As for the rest of the book, it's great, but it takes a *LOT* of paperwork. Fortunately my wife is handy with MS Excel and plotted all the charts for me with forulas that makes it all easy. However, without her I know that I would be daunted and discouraged at the task of making all the charts and calculations by hand. In a future updated edition (I hope that they make one) the book should come with a CDROM loaded with all the charts and formulas, or at least a web site link for downloading them. In the 21st century it's good practice to have online content and I hope to see it with this great text book.

This is by far the best book on endurance training I've ever read and applied on my training. The training and racing of seven Ironman-distance races and one Ultraman race I did was based on this book, I finished all of the races successfully. This book was written before the hype of power meters so, if you are expecting anything about it that's not the book for you. The SERIOUS training system is based on a heart rate. The SERIOUS acronym, it's intensities and durations are very well explained through the book so, even if you are a beginner, you'll sure understand it. The examples that the book brings are great for planning your own season.

I rate this book as just OK for ease of use and for understandability. It is a book for serious and dedicated athletes, who must plan everything. The weakness of this book is that it is not for casual athletes regardless of what the previous reviewers would have you believe. The second weakness of this book is you have to be able to speak the lingua franca of serious athletic training, which I guess I do not. A third issue I have with this book is that when I tried it, it took the fun out of just riding. I'm still riding but I'm not training for racing except for longer endurance races like a half century or a century ride. A better book to buy if you are trying to cycle to lose weight is Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald, which is avalailable on this site. Racing Weight advises beginners, like I used to be when I bought Serious Training for Endurance Athletes, to exercise based on what you love to do, which is how eventually you will lose the weight you want to trim off. Serious Training is an advanced book, which might be better bought and read after one has found an endurance sport they love and do it regularly for the FUN of it.

If you ever wanted a concrete way to actually do those fitness resolutions to make yourself a lean mean working machine this book is the ticket. It is a very inexpensive way to get the best coaching spelled out in an easy to read format. If you want to make yourself competitive for any sport this book will explain how...and it is a challenge and difficult but isn't that the point?

I'm a distance runner and am looking for information on how to improve my time. This book seems to do a good job going into a lot of detail on physical performance. However, I found the book very tedious to read. It read more like a textbook, than a helpful resource.

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I bought and used the first edition way back in the 80s. I like the update.

This is a very good systems design book that details how to develop a "best available strategy*" training program to accomplish a goal you set -- e.g., run a 50 Minute 10K race in late August. I know of no other book so good at letting you set a goal and then derive a fully structured training program for meeting that goal.* based on current optimization theories regarding load (HR), workout duriation, periodization ...

I bought this book together with 'The complete guide to sports nutrition'. I will point out the followingtopics which I found most useful (I'm a beginner into triathlon which is considered endurance sport, doing several other sports though).1) Warm up, cool down techniques, stretching exercises with photos and importance of ACTIVE recovery( different from the ordinary lay down recovery!). Most books forget aboutthose methods or they state them briefly. My training now includes the advice that these chapters mentioned.2) Heart rate zones. I wish I knew about them before. It includes special article on how to calculate yourAnaerobic Threshold (important if you want to raise your endurance capacity)level by just doing a test run, or cycle or swim - no need to pay a sport's laboratory, if youcan ever reach it. This chapter actually made me get aPolar heart rate watch to look after those zones!Your performance can improve SO much if you consider the training zones during your sport.3) At the end of each chapter there are short articles of sport's men who put down their experience onendurance sports. I think it's equally important to read such stories, it brings together theory and sports.This convinces that what you read within the book is actually happening and trusted by the world's professional athletes.The only small drawback of this book is that it needs to be updated with the current sport's science nutritioninformation a bit, i.e. Glycemic Index is now an important topic too, but the book only seperates carbohydrates intocomplex and simple groups, no mention about GI parameter in foods. It does state, though in detailed manner the importance ofcarbo loading and fuelling, before, during the after intense activity.This book is perfect if you just starting to plan your training now and be serious about it, or you want to IMPROVE and makeyour training more efficient.

I have had this book for a number of years and it is now suffering as it has been referred to so often. I am no athlete but have used this to help train for charity events with great success. Some of the information is getting a bit dated but the basics of structuring a training program still stand. You will find that a number of other authors have effectively copied the approach outlined in this book which I guess is the sincerest form of flattery. If you want to just buy one book on Endurance training this is a good choice, particularly if you are into multiple sports.

Fantastic book. Very thorough. You can use it at the beginner level, as I did for my first ever triathlon, right up to planning your Olympic attack for the next four years!Don't expect it to provide you with a training plan - you have to take time to engage with the SERIOUS (it's an acronym) training plan principles and design your own plan. For that reason I particularly recommend it for those of us who don't like being told what to do and would rather plan our own training if we only knew how.Be prepared to get yourself a heart rate monitor - you'll get more out of the book with one.

This book has been written a years ago and suffer a bit from this. It certainly contains all the good basic principles on endurance training, however some aspects of the approach have since been proven wrong. (An example of that is slow long distance sessions: the books says it is anything between 1 and ... 6 hours, okay for an ultry kind of event, but a waste of time for shorter events)I will still recommend this book for anyone looking at endurstanding the principles behind:-Periodisation-the importance of incorporating strength-how to structure a session-the annual training planAlso, this book is not related to any sport and the principles described can be applied to any endurance sport.

Ce livre en anglais, même s'il n'est plus tout neuf, reprend les bases d'un entraînement sérieux de toute discipline d'endurance. Il permet, si l'on est un tant soit peu doué en Excel, de préparer ses propres schémas d'entraînement, sur base des modèles fournis. Je possèdai une ancienne version, mais ai offerte celle-ci à mon frère qui s'est mis sérieusement à la course à pied (après avoir rapidement parcouru les schémas en annexe et les encodé)