Hello all,
I was just wondering about some reading material. I was trying to find books by Paul Chek and Juan Carlos Santana. I would like some recommendations or reviews. I am particularily interested in works on core work and funtionality training.
All help is appreciated,
Jim
I have Paul Chek’s Awesome Abs book and his “Eat, Move and Be Healthy” book. Awesome abs is okay. Nothing exciting. Eat, Move and be healthy is cool, but unrealistic for most people (only eating organic food and certain meats, etc.). But it has good info about food and finding out your “type” and then eating accordingly. Also has some decent training info in it, but nothing I would do (too many isolation exercises and cable exercises). Then again, Check is into a lot of “functional” training or core training and stability stuff.
Hey,
As far as ‘functional’ goes, that really depends on what your definition of ‘function’ is, whether it be GPP or SPP.
I have How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! and found it was useful when I had little structured knowledge on training, and I still follow many of the dietary recommendations. It is a very useful resource - geared towards GPP, but it if you’re a regular reader of T-Nation then there won’t be a lot of lifting information you’re not aware of. There is a good PNF stretching routine included, as well as mobility/energising movements which are pretty cool.
If you’re already an accomplished strength athlete with few injuries there will still be useful info in the book, but I think it’s more targeted at those who haven’t been reading T-Nation! 
(He has written some articles for this site, by the way.)
His website has info on all his products, and I’m sure Amazon and a search on T-Nation will yield reviews on his work.
You can also go to the perform better site. They have lots of books, videos, equipment, etc. JC Santana, Gray Cook, Mike Boyle, Vern Gambetta, Mark Verstegen, and more.
Jim
A recent thread, ‘The T-Library Thread’ is a good read and might have something of interest.
The T-Library Thread
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=657478