Unlocking Your Athletic Potential for Health - and Injury Prevention

I'm a personal trainer, running coach, and longtime runner. This book is absolutely excellent a must read for anyone who works with runners or is a serious runner. I got the kindle version and may get the print for easier reference on the assessments and corrective exercises. The tables are pretty hard to read on a kindle.

This book is definitely well written! I would consider it a must read for many including health care providers, runners (obviously), athletes and anyone looking to move better or perform better. Here is my full review that I wrote up on my blog! [...]

this book is amazing. it can change your whole approach to running. rather than running more (or doing more stupid drills) to get better at running this book will help you find your weaknesses before they become hazardous to your health (if they haven't already).

As a runner and a sports medicine physician, I thought I myself well tuned. After several bouts of increasing knee and hip pain, I knew I was wrong. This book was recommended to me by a fellow runner (who is also a physical therapist). The title is somewhat misleading, as he covers not just anatomy, but physiology, kinesiology, testing, and correcting form and strength issues, all in a way that is easy to understand and flows together well.
If you are a runner, especially longer distances, and you have pain, get this book. If you do not have pain (not yet), get it anyway to protect your body further down the line.
Enjoy and happy trails!

I can't say enough positive things about this book. I can't put it down and even my physical therapist says that Jay is a guru in this field. If you want to run strong and healthy this is your manual.

The author certainly knows a great deal about how to assess and improve body positioning, mobility, and stability to improve running efficiency and prevent injuries. The self tests are incredibly invaluable as are the corrective exercises.

The only content drawback is that the author uses a lot of technical terminology that can tax a reader's understanding of the material.

There is one additional problem which has to do with the e-book's page layout, not its content. Often the description and corresponding picture of each self-test or exercise and not on the same page. Rather a description and another test or exercise photo are on the same page. This is confusing as to which picture goes with which exercise or test. The publisher could easily correct this by labeling each photo or changing the page layout to better match e-book versus print book specifications.

Overall the content and practical self-tests and exercises are incredibly valuable for any runner. So if you are a runner or are thinking about running this book is a must buy. It will improve your performance and help prevent injuries that would hinder your ability to run.

This book is great for the tissue descriptions alone. After a full read I feel that I really learned a lot about anatomy and how it relates to running. Great glossy paper with color pictures is unexpected at such a low price.

The opening chapters are some of the most disorganized writing I've ever seen. As others have mentioned, the author brings up an example, then bounces around a ton and "we'll come back to that later". I was all set to jot down notes and found the information so dispersed that it's impossible to find the takeaways. Frustrated.

Very informative. Hands on tips to improve running performance. Author is extremely knowledgeable. Its a captivating read for anyone that ever struggled with injuries or just wants to improve performance.

After seeing Jay in person and having him work an absolute miracle on my post-surgical spine I had to get his book, just to check it out. He treats in the same "voice" as he wrote the book. I never imagined that an anatomy book would be a page-turner, but this one is. The way he lays everything on the table in a simple way that everyone can understand is no doubt an unbelievable skill. For anyone who has struggled with injury and had an even harder time sorting through all of the conflicting information of how to treat it, this book will provide you with the foundation to make smart decisions, and more than likely it will give you the skill-set to fix yourself.

I have been recommending this book to everyone and I highly recommend it to you, injured or not!

This is an amazing book about how to keep yourself healthy through correct running form and through clear tests identifying your particular weaknesses and instabilities. It makes intuitive sense that having high forces acting upon unstable levers is a recipe for disaster and injury, but this book explains exactly why, which gives interesting and useful information for constructing a plan for injury prevention. I'm just starting out as a runner, and since a lot of the people who I began running with have gotten injured, I knew I had to have an injury prevention plan to keep myself active and trucking along. So far (knock on wood), it's working out in my favor.

Author began the book telling about his own story and experience(injury) and try to develop his point of view step by step to help every runner to understand how to build a flexible, strong and injury free running body. Very simple to read and all photos of each exercise is well demonstrated, I wished they index the list of exercise, so it makes it easier to access.

As a competitive runner and a coach of beginning runners, I have benefitted from many sources of information about running form and preventing injuries. However, I've also felt that some pieces of the puzzle were missing from existing publications and seminars. I think that "Anatomy for Runners" is a significant addition to the existing books and articles on healthy, efficient, and fast running.

I found this book to be a great combination of science and practical application! In writing the book, Jay Dicharry draws from his experience as a physical therapist, biomechanics specialist, and formerly-injured runner to provide a toolbox of self-assessments, corrective exercises, and explanations. I think that reading this book would be an excellent choice for runners who have frequent injuries. It would also be beneficial for those who are now healthy but want to reduce their likelihood of getting injured while training hard.

In my opinion, the title of this book doesn't fully describe all that the book offers. While "Anatomy for Runners" certainly includes detailed information about the structure and function of the body, it goes way beyond that. Furthermore, the book is both interesting and understandable (not at all like a boring textbook). Here is my one-sentence summary of what the book is about: How to develop healthy movement patterns and improve your body's strength and mobility so that you can run with more efficiency and less risk of injury.

I learned a lot from this book and would highly recommend it!

This book contains a WEALTH of information for anyone who wants to run "smarter", instead of just harder. Beautiful simplicity in that several of the tests for stability are also the exercises you perform if you need to improve. Well thought out and engaging.

Really impressed with this book. Have already implemented some strengthening and balance techniques into my training regimen as I try to do more preventative work. I can't recommend this enough!
Planning on buying copies as Christmas gifts to friends and family who run.

A well-written workbook for runners and coaches by a clinical running expert. It pairs well with Your Best Stride by Jonathan Beverly. It was through
Beverly's book I became aware of Dicharry's. These books give current information on form, structure, and movement and ways to understand and improve overall performance.

A well-written workbook for runners and coaches by a clinical running expert. It pairs well with Your Best Stride by Jonathan Beverly. It was through
Beverly's book I became aware of Dicharry's. These books give current information on form, structure, and movement and ways to understand and improve overall performance.

Great resource for any serious runner or coach. It helped me immensely in understanding a limitation faced by one of my athletes, and it provided great guidance in developing corrective drills, which have already had a significant impact.

This book is fantastic. He writes clearly and without an agenda, giving you practical tests and exercises to follow that will make you a stronger, less injury-prone runner. I've been recommending this book left and right with an almost evangelical fervor -- it's really that good. I rarely feel strongly enough about products to write reviews on the store, but this book deserves some good press.

Excellent book!

Having been on the running-injured-rest cycle for a couple of years now, Dicharry helped me to understand why this was happening and how to stop the cycle. If you are struggling with nagging injuries, this book could help you strengthen your body to prevent future pain and/or injury.

While some parts of the book are pretty detailed, it serves to build to create a solid foundation for understanding your bodies "weak points". There is a great chapter with simple tests testing your abilities. With these assessments, you can begin to build up your body.

The biggest take away for me: rest doesn't solve a weak or damaged muscle group. I've always been told to take a break when the pain begins, but that isn't going to fix a weak glute or hamstring. Dicharry gives you the tools and exercises to repair and rebuild whatever weakness you have.

Couldn't recommend this book more.

The best science and practicality without any spin. The author's experience and expertise becomes vivid through the way he describes complex biomechanics, properties of tissue healing, and neuromuscular adaptation through simplistic analogies. As a physical therapist with an intense interest in running injury prevention/treatment and improved running efficiency, this book is a must have. I would argue that this book is a must have even for the therapist who doesn't work with runners, but wants to learn how tissues in the body respond to mechanical stress and effective techniques to restore optimal mobility and stability and soft tissue function. The final 2 chapters of the book provide the reader with easy, effective self assessments and corrective exercises. Take home message from the book is that runners and coaches focus too much on the engine, but it's the chasis that breaks down and leads to injury and leaks in performance. Currently using this book as a soft blueprint for establishing a running specific biomechanics assessment program.

I massively recommend this book for any runners. Debunks a lot of old school "truisms" about how to treat your body, and gives all the information you need to keep your body running faster and faster without injury. Reads like a college textbook, but if you're passionate about running the pages will fly.

Jay Dicharry manages to take physiology and break it down into easily understandable and usable information. Every runner should work on their efficiency to help avoid injury - this book can help show you how.

This book is a comprehensive look at running mechanics and how they effect your whole body. It will help you identify any weaknesses you might have and correct your flaws for healthy injury free running.

The author gives good background information behind the mechanics of running, and what underlying deficiencies may be causing you problems while running. However I found the self-assessment tests to be lacking in detail. The pictures accompanying the assessments were not captioned, and so I couldn't tell if the person in the picture was doing it wrong or right. I failed several of the tests indicating that I needed to improve certain areas, but the exercises are not organized in a way that made it easy to know exactly what to do to fix those problems. In fact, it would be difficult to come to this book with a specific problem (such as ITBS) and find the exact recommendation to fix it as the exercises are fairly general and nonspecific. I think the provided background info and basic mobility/strength exercises would provide a good foundation to a beginning runner.

The book is very good in listing specfic exercises to fix problems. I think his conclusions are practical and easy to understand. It is very good resources to fix problems, but I two issues. First issue is he had two ads for products in the book. Yes, they are ads. Secondly, there is no set way to optimize the correction process. Meaning he doesn't say do tissue work and then corrective exercise for this issue. He just lists the exercises for each problem and a progression. There should be a little more of flow chart to optimize the process. However, it is still a great resource a must read.