The Chairman's Fitness Challenge Blog

I recently read a book co-written by Eric Heiden, MD, called Faster, Better, Stronger.  Dr. Heiden, for those of you a little younger than me, is one of those athletes who competed at the highest level in both summer and winter sports.  Besides competing in the Tour de France as a world-class cyclist, he completely dominated the sport of speed skating for a time, winning a record 5 gold medals in Lake Placid.  He is now a team doctor for the US speed skating team, as well as being a renowned orthopedic surgeon.  Watching him win race after race in the '80 Olympics is probably one of the first times I remember being completely awed by an athlete. I have not seen much discussion of Heiden's book, which lays out a 12-week program for improving anyone's fitness.

Faster Better, Stronger spends its first two sections presenting some in-depth background on the physiology of exercise and food.  It does a good job of explaining, in accessible terms, the relationship between diet, exercise, and overall fitness, while providing insight into the function of the human musculature and cardio-vascular systems, and how they react to work, diet, and exercise.  Two key takeaways for me included the importance of periodization in your routines (cycling through periods of more- and less-intense workload), and how to REALLY measure how hard your body is working (VOmax, anyone?) and what the various levels of effort mean.  The depth of medical knowledge, and the straightforward way it is presented, is where this book really sets itself apart.  Is any of this information going to be new to those who read magazines like Men's Health?  Maybe not, though I'd think it is more detailed, and delves more deeply into the underlying science, than virtually every other source I've seen out there. And you don't need to be an MD to understand it... 

The final section of the book provides workout routines for the 12-week program - the programs themselves will look somewhat familiar to readers of some of the other fitness books out there, but with the added "twist" of periodization.  All in all, while I have no first-hand insight into the effectiveness of the routines, I found the book presents intelligent and accessible information.  I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about exercise and how the body responds to it.