Books for National Physical Fitness and Sports Month

If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? These engaging stories and explanations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising—not to mention sitting, sleeping, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing.

A memoir of hard lessons learned in the racially segregated and sometimes outright racist NBA of the early ‘60s by celebrated NBA player and the first Black Coach of the Year, Ray Scott.

Running with Sherman is a heartwarming story about training a rescue donkey to run one of the most challenging races in America, and, in the process, discovering the life-changing power of the human-animal connection.

Sports and health journalist Christine Yu disentangles myth and gender bias from real science, making the case for new approaches that can help women athletes excel at every stage of life, from adolescence to adulthood, through pregnancy, menopause, and beyond.

The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town.

The story of visionary American running coach Bob Larsen’s mismatched team of elite California runners who would win championships and Olympic glory in a decades-long pursuit of “the epic run.”

A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped Kelsey Ervick’s life and changed women’s history forever.

Elegantly written and deeply grounded in personal experience—works by Oliver Sacks come to mind—Physical Intelligence gives us a clear, illuminating examination of the intricate, mutually responsive relationship between the mind and the body as they engage (or don’t engage) in all manner of physical action.Ever wonder why you don’t walk into walls or off cliffs? How you decide if you can drive through a snowstorm? How high you are willing to climb up a ladder to change a lightbulb? Through the prisms of behavioral neurology and cognitive neuroscience, Scott Grafton brilliantly accounts for the design and workings of the action-oriented brain in synchronicity with the body in the natural world, and he shows how physical intelligence is inherent in all of us—and always in problem-solving mode. Drawing on insights gleaned from discoveries by engineers who have learned to emulate the sophisticated solutions Mother Nature has created for managing complex behavior, Grafton also demonstrates the relevance of physical intelligence with examples that each of us might face—whether the situation is mundane, exceptional, extreme, or compromised.

Running While Black draws on Alison Désir’s experience as an endurance athlete, activist, and mental health advocate to explore why the seemingly simple, human act of long distance running for exercise and health has never been truly open to Black people.

The innovators behind The Ready State and the movement bible Becoming a Supple Leopard present 10 practices proven to enhance mobility, make you feel energetic and alive, and, like a good 401(K), prepare your body for whatever comes its way in the future.