Book Review: NSCA - Developing Endurance

Written By Runnergirl Training

Human Kinetics provided me the book Developing Endurance for free from a Twitter contest. The following is my book review.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) has authored a fantastic book for designing endurance programs. 

The book provides a brief discussion of exercise physiology. Various endurance tests are explained and training heart rate and rate perceived exertion (RPE) tables are provided. There is an exploration of several training conditions including environment, health status, and more.

It does an excellent job covering nutrition and hydration principles. Basic weight lifting techniques are discussed and include the pictures for each featured lift. Running and triathlon training programs are provided. 

Several aspects needed to build endurance training programs are described. To begin, gain background information regarding history of injuries, training status, the amount of time that can be invested into training, and seasons/periodization of training for the sport. Also to be included are rest days, recovery workouts, and components of mental and nutritional training.

The mesocycle and microcycles of the training year are broken down into segments and discussed. It does a thorough job of describing the incorporation of races into the training cycles. Specific facets of training (aerobic, strength, and flexibility, etc) and tapering for races are examined. 

This is an excellent book that uses research based rationales to design endurance training programs. It is practical and easy to implement into training programs.

It is sold at Human Kinetics.