A brisk, well-researched study of athletic performance.
How to nurture women athletes.
Based on scientific papers and more than 140 interviews with athletes, parents, coaches, and researchers, this book by sports and health journalist Yu, who is also an athlete and yoga teacher, takes a close look at the challenges faced by women in sports, where their performance, training, and needs have long been assessed against norms and data gathered from men. Historically, women were discouraged from participating in athletics, believed to be inherently physically inferior to men. Moreover, they were told by doctors and teachers that they risked harming their reproductive systems if they invested their energy in sports. Even after women became increasingly engaged in athletics, sports science focused on men, whose bodies set standards for nutrition, endurance, treating injuries, and even designing gear and clothing. Clothing manufacturers, for example, came late to offering a range of sports bras that provided comfort and support. The onus, therefore, has been “placed on women to overcome the obstacles inherent in a system that was rigged against them from the get-go.” With more women involved in research in the 1980s, though, the focus has shifted, revealing surprising information on their abilities and potential, such as the impact of women’s menstrual cycle on performance; their nutritional needs and risk of undernutrition; and their aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and ability to metabolize fat that gives them an advantage in sports such as distance running. Yu addresses three stages in women’s lives during which profound physical changes must be acknowledged: adolescence, pregnancy and the postpartum period, and menopause. Muscular, skeletal, hormonal, and psychological changes during adolescence, for example, should factor into a girl’s training regimen, which too often emphasizes early specialization. More informed guidance by coaches and intervention by nutritionists might keep girls from dropping out in discouragement. Yu urges more research and awareness of the scientific evidence that has emerged to “celebrate women’s unique abilities.”
A brisk, well-researched study of athletic performance.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780593332399
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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