The TB12 Method by Tom Brady (August 2019)
The TB12 Method is a valuable book that I imagine many TOA readers will find to be too much effort. It's dense with information yet slowed by marketing, almost like how pop-up videos interrupt websites (supplement this workout with TB12 Electrolytes!). A lot of the insights should be familiar to anyone who has (or had) a mother (drink water, eat fruits and vegetables, etc). The book felt like it weighed twenty pounds. Overall, it's a strange book, yet I think it explained enough to me in plain language that I ended up taking away more from this book than I did from almost any other in 2019.
The core idea is pliability, achieved when workouts prioritize increasing elasticity and flexibility in muscle ahead of adding raw strength. This prepares people to absorb stressors from strain, impact, or extended activity without resulting in damage common to joints, tendons, or muscles stiff with bulk. The book explains this in great depth and includes specific workouts to help readers emphasize range of motion ahead of weight resistance. It also describes massage techniques that combine applied pressure with muscle contraction to simulate the way stressors attack active muscle. Overall, The TB12 Method provides a unique framework to help readers build functional strength and long-term resilience against routine muscle stressors and damage.
There are endless details in this book but the ones that stood out to me often came from simple explanations. For example, Brady repeatedly stresses the importance of ensuring strength workouts follow the function of the eventual activity. Simple, but I remember my college's long distance runners bench pressing. Brady also suggests that rest after an overwork injury is only beneficial because you feel better. If you want to become better, you must rebuild the body’s responses that caused the injury in the first place. Again, simple stuff, but then why do some many return from injury to do the exact same thing that caused their initial damage?
The challenge of this book is that its quest for thoroughness forces knowledgeable readers to struggle through parts that they already understand. In some cases, I felt my understanding exceeded that of the book. For me, I thought about 80% of this book I didn't need to read; a further 10% I ignored because I'm not a professional athlete. Most of these thoughts are collected here in my notes.
The remaining 10% made me smarter. I'll post a shortlist of these insights later this week.
