A Few Must-Read Books
In this short blog post I will share couple of links to Amazon/Audible for the books that I have read and that I am highly recommending.
Dan John
Thank God for Dan John. This profession needs people like Dan – those who distill information and simplify it with experience and errors they and others made. But it takes time and some broken backs to actually listen to the advice of Dan and people alike.
I followed Dan John’s work for a long time, but finally took some time to read/listen to his latest works. Plus, the insisting of my good friend Aleksandar Petrovic who recently won Gold medal with Serbian Volleyball Team at World League series as a strength and conditioning coach. I think Aleksandar is Serbian Dan John – he really likes to make things simple and easy, while making great job coaching 20+ athletes in public gym, one hex bar and couple of kettlebells. No wonder he loves Dan as well.
On a side note, I started writing an addendum to Planning the Strength training article series I wrote in 2008/09 mostly influenced by Dan John’s work. Watch this space.
These books/audio books are absolutely a must listen to. Especially Dan’s concepts of quadrants, park and bus bench training programs and so forth. Full of life-long experiences working in the trenches and great list of heuristics (“rules of thumb”) that address Elephants in the Room.
Management and Business
Managing others is one crucial role of the coach. Unfortunately, this aspect is not usually well covered on faculties and courses. Hence my constant pursuit for genuine, simple and applied advices, from Covey and Carnegie to Lencioni. I recently stumbled on the following books (I have finished Effective Manager and it pretty simple and straightforward).
Soccer Science
Tony Strudwick recently published a massive book on science in soccer. Should be a great reference to have.
Decision Making and Uncertainty
I have been bitten by “uncertainty/randomness bug” recently (as can be seen in my writings and the role of randomness in planning: see Agile) and I enjoy reading the books that deal with this subject (e.g. complexity, randomness, uncertainty, risk and so forth).
I have found the courses at Complexity Explorer bloody great and a must watch if you are interested in these topics.
Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Chaos
(and pretty much everything on that site is amazing)
The book Risk Savvy was OUTSTANDING and A MUST read for pretty much everyone. It discuss difference between Risk and Uncertainty, probabilistic vs. heuristic revolution, how to make decisions in uncertain/complex world, disagrees with Kahneman and so forth. Trust me and order it NOW!
Maps of Meaning
Friends of mine Dragan Veljkovic and Kasra Mirzaie highly recommend works of Jordan Peterson, especially his book Maps of Meaning. Not sure it is related to coaching, but definitely on my list of summer reading.
Responses