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9 of the Best Fitness Books I Read in 2022
Credit: SofikoS - Shutterstock

Learning about fitness from digital sources is great, and learning from real live people can’t be beat. But sometimes you want to curl up with a good book on your rest day, and so I have some suggestions. These aren’t all new books, but they’re all books that I read or re-read this year. If you’re looking for something to inspire you to hit the gym or inform you on what to do when you get there, read on.

The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive by Jim Afremow

The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive by Jim Afremow
Credit: The Champion’s Mind

A weightlifter at my gym turned me on to this one. Mental training is important in any sport, but when you compete, your thoughts begin to matter in a way they never did before. You can mess up because you’re nervous—but then you can sometimes pull through in a tough situation because of your mindset. The Champion’s Mind is full of practical advice on preparation and little sayings to repeat to yourself. One I can’t forget: “Train like you’re number two, but compete like you’re number one.”

Base Strength: Program Design Blueprint by Alexander Bromley

Base Strength: Program Design Blueprint by Alexander Bromley
Credit: Base Strength

Bromley coaches strongman and powerlifting, and his YouTube channel often has helpful teardowns of lifting programs and training principles. If you want to learn how good strength-training programs work or gain a few insights so you can tinker and start writing your own, Base Strength provides an excellent introduction. It also has several pre-written programs in the back, including one that Bromley later released on its own for free: Bullmastiff.

Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon by John D. Fair

Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon by John D. Fair
Credit: Mr. America

I first encountered John Fair’s work from the book Muscletown USA, about the York barbell company and weightlifting team. (You can still visit the company’s little museum today, and I have.)

The story in Mr. America intersects with that one. It chronicles the rise of bodybuilding as a sport and the internal politics that shaped both the competitive side and the way weight training was marketed by the big barbell companies. There’s plenty of sexism, racism, and homophobia in the story, and it’s slightly hilarious how the organizers of the Mr. America contest were always looking at the Miss America contest and wondering why people wanted to watch that instead.

Assault on Lake Casitas by Brad Alan Lewis

Assault on Lake Casitas by Brad Alan Lewis
Credit: Assault on Lake Casitas

The odd one out on this list, this book is a memoir of an Olympic rower who pulls off an underdog win in 1984. It was recommended to me when I was looking for more books like The Champion’s Mind. While it’s nothing like a mental training manual, Assault on Lake Casitas is both inspirational and instructional.

Lewis is an elite rower who decides to train alone, then is forced to try to fit in with a team. Ultimately he breaks away, but has to partner up with a fellow underdog to see his dreams through. There are many lessons to take from this story, but the one that stood out to me was about finding the right balance between trusting others and taking responsibility for yourself.

Kelso’s Shrug Book by Paul Kelso

Kelso’s Shrug Book by Paul Kelso
Credit: Kelso’s Shrug Book

This is another straightforward training book, but about an area of strength training that is often neglected. You may know “shrugs” as a specific exercise where you stand with a barbell in your hands, and shrug your shoulders upward. But in the Shrug Book, Kelso explores all kinds of shoulder, chest, back, and core exercises that are done with straight arms. (A friend sent this book to me after seeing me do a shoulder protraction exercise, which he recognized as “bench shrugs” from the book.) There are also lat shrugs, which are a great finisher after barbell rows, and about a dozen others that are criminally underappreciated.

Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn’t Built for Us by Allison Mariella Désir

Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn’t Built for Us by Allison Mariella Désir
Credit: Running While Black

Running While Black is the newest book on this list—I just picked it up from my local bookstore after pre-ordering it earlier this year. (Highly recommend doing this when you can. It’s like giving surprise gifts to yourself.) I’m halfway through and it’s an engrossing read on several levels: it’s a memoir, a history, and a call to action.

The book grapples with a question—why is distance running so white?—that many of us have probably asked in passing, but Désir digs in. She finds historical ironies, like that the running boom caught on during the same era as legal fights over integration. “We couldn’t use a state park while white people were starting to jog in them,” she writes. In reality, Black athletes had been running all along, but the image of a runner as a skinny white dude is something that was constructed over time and needs to be challenged.

Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sport by Jaime Schultz

Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women’s Sport by Jaime Schultz
Credit: Qualifying Times

The chapters of Qualifying Times each deal with a different issue in the social history of women’s sports: tampons and sports bras each get a discussion, as does the question, controversial at times, of whether women should engage in competitive sports at all.

I found the discussion of tennis clothing surprisingly riveting, as players struggled for decades between the demands of being comfortable enough to play, fashionable enough to court media attention, and conservative enough to be taken seriously. Players needed to strike different balances between these factors depending on race and social standing as the sport evolved into its current form—where attire is still controversial today.

The Science of Running: How to Find Your Limit and Train to Maximize Your Performance by Steve Magness

The Science of Running: How to Find Your Limit and Train to Maximize Your Performance by Steve Magness
Credit: The Science of Running

The Science of Running is a nerdy look at the nuts and bolts of running. It’s divided into two sections: The Science of Distance Running, and How to Train. In the science section, we learn about how the lungs power the muscles, and where fatigue comes from (spoiler: it’s complicated). The training section explains how training leads to adaptation, and walks through how to design programs and workouts for different goals.

The Truth About Weight Lifting, by Alan Calvert

The Truth About Weight Lifting, by Alan Calvert
Credit: The Truth About Weight Lifting

The Truth About Weight Lifting is the oldest book on the list, originally published in 1911. I like it because it documents a bunch of old lifts that aren’t done anymore, like the dumbbell swing and the harness lift. And I love it because it has all the dirt on what’s really going on behind the scenes in strongman shows of the day.

Calvert ran one of the major equipment companies at a time when you couldn’t just walk into a sporting goods store and buy a dumbbell. He knew who was using fake weights, often because they bought their weights from him. Calvert was also a studious keeper of documentation and buster of myths. If somebody claimed to be the strongest or to be the only one who could do a certain feat, Calvert often had the receipts to prove or disprove the claim. Read this book to learn which of the old-timey strongman tricks were impossible, which are easier than they look, and how people were doctoring their promotional photos back when a “photo shop” was a building rather than software.