Customer Reviews

Functional Training for Athletes at All Levels: Workouts for Agility, Speed and Power

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a certified personal trainer and a large part of programming for all of my clients is based of functional fitness. I also
utilize agility based training for most of them as well. By making appropriate modifications most anyone can get tremendous benefits from
a more athletic based approach to fitness. This type of training works the body in all the planes of motion and stimulates
the neuromuscular system more thoroughly than just the typical sagittal plane cardio-machine and machine based resistance training approach.

I bought this along with another book on agility to aquire more tools for my "toolbox".

On the positive side, I feel that the author was extremely thorough and covers a lot of ground, both in explaining the background information and by including a large variety of exercises.

On the less-positive side, there are quite a few times where I felt the presentation could have been laid out more clearly throughout the text. I've re-read
several parts, several times and I'm still a bit unclear of "exactly" what he meant, especially in the execution of the more complex exercises.

This book would greatly benefit from a companion dvd or at least online accompanying online video because there are some subtleties that are almost impossible to explain with words and photographs alone. This is particularly apparent in the "Sprint Training" section of the book and is a huge oversight in my opinion which I hope they will correct in the future.

I'm not saying they have to show "every" exercise, but those that are the most complex in nature. In fact, the other book I purchased at the same time "Training for Speed, Agility and Quickness" (Human Kinetics) includes a dvd to cover the most complex drills and usefull tests included in the book. This makes a huge difference in terms of the the superior effectiveness of that book as a teaching tool.

All that being said, James Radcliffe did do a great job of putting together a compendium of exercises and a system for using it specific to a wide variety of sports. He should be highly commended for his efforts. In fact, if they just had that accompanying footage it would be almost perfect (and surely I'd have given it 5 stars!) :)

I don't like having to criticize this book at all because the positives are heads and tails above the negatives, but I felt I should be honest in my assessment of all aspects of the book.

I purchased this book for two reasons, first because I'm familar with the author and second because I was looking for a new book to help with planning workouts for athletes of varying sports. This book provides a lot of great information and provides easy to use workouts at any level.

This book is fantastic. The focus is on lower body power and movement and is great for building overall athleticism.

Jimmy Radcliffe is one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in college sports as he has been the head man at U. of Oregon for nearly 2 decades.
He is considered one of the leading experts in explosive/plyometric training and also movement/agility training in general.
This is a good book for those relatively new to the strength coaching field who need some guidance in program design and exercise selection for their athletes.

Well written and complete from warm-up to power. You can find good
exercises for your functional training program.

I have enjoyed reading the book and it has shown me some fundamentals of exercise that I had forgotten. I enjoy the descriptions of the exercises and the muscle groups working. overall I am quite pleased with this book and use it to show me how to do the exercises properly.

Tony