Recently, I had a request by someone to list all of my favorite books to get fired up for lifting. What follows is not just a list of books about lifting, but rather the books that get me pumped to lift in addition to a couple of essentials on lifting- they’re rarely the same thing, in my experience. The links are my Amazon affiliate links, so should you purchase something after clicking the links I might get a little kickback (for which I am profoundly appreciative, by the way)
Preworkout Fiction
Red Country– Joe Abercrombie
This man’s early writing really gets my blood flowing, and I’ve used the 6 books in the First Law series as preworkout many, many times (and this was my go-to preworkout along with coffee in jail). This isn’t just bloody, hard-boiled fantasy- Joe Abercrombie is more or less a goddamned prophet. Red Country is filled with gems like this:
“To be brave among friends was nothing. To have the world against you and pick your path regardless–there is courage.”
And if that one doesn’t grab you, here’s a sentence that will hopefully effect you guys in the same way it has affected me.
“Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
The books all center around one character, Logan Ninefingers, a former Viking-style ultra-mega-badass who regrets the carnage he caused and becomes a mild-mannered pacifist… until he has to save the world.
So stop procrastinating and grab The Blade Itself and Red Country at the very least. Red Country can be read out of sequence, by the way- I know all of you guys read book series in order (which still surprises me to this day, genuinely), so I just gave you the first in the series and one that can be read on its own. I do encourage you to try reading series out of order though- you’d be amazed how easy it is to fill in the backstory from context, and it’s good for your brain. I don’t have chaos tattooed on my chest for no reason, lol.
FFO: Steven Erikson (though I hate his stuff because it’s disgustingly bleak), Robert Jordan, Jim Butcher, David Drake, Jonathan French, KJ Parker, and maybe George RR Martin’s first book (though there is literally no soap opera shit in any of Abercrombie’s stuff).
Run– Douglas E Winter
If you are a writer, you need to read this book. It’s literally the fastest-paced crime novel ever written, and it was a one-off by some lawyer who dropped this gem and nothing else. This is the only book I’ve ever read that made the pace of my breathing quicken, and I’ve read so many fucking book that I’ve got the Library of Alexandria in my head. An Italian mob NY arms dealer and his hood arms dealing counterpart get caught up in a deal gone bad, then team up against their respective organisations and the cops to kill their way out.
And if you’re into that, I also recommend Jimmy Bench Press by Charlie Stella. Fast paced mob shit centered around a mob enforcer who benches 400lbs.
FFO: Don Winslow type shit like The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, and Savages. He’s the only person who writes like these dudes, and he’s had a couple of badass movies made out of his books.
Gates of Fire– Steven Pressfield
This was my go-to preworkout book in university. I’d read a couple dozen pages of this thing at random while waiting for my Ripped Fuel to kick in, and then I’d go attack the weights like I was preparing to defend the Gates of Thermopylae myself (which is the plot of the book).
GOF is pretty much the story of the battle of Thermopylae, written in the style of Black Hawk Down. This book was supposed to be made into a movie, but we tragically got 300 instead. This book has sections that make the hair on my arms stand on end- you’ve gotta read it.
FFO: Black Hawk Down; We Were Soldiers Once, and Young (the book on which We Were Soldiers Once is based); books by Harry Turtledove (who wrote AMAZING historical fiction series set in the present day in worlds where the Nazis and the American South won as well as phenomenal military scifi about alien assaults on Earth) and John Steakley (he wrote John Carpenter’s Vampires and the amazing Starship Troopers-esque Armor); and fans of 300– you need to see the movie we should have gotten instead of that cartoon.
Lifting and Diet Related
Kettlebell’s Secret Files- Jeronimo Milo
This is a phenomenal history of the kettlebell as well as awesome diagrammed, step by step instructions on how to do kettlebell lifts, along with the history of the lifts. If this is an essential companion to the stuff I’ve written because Milo’s got access to primary sources I can’t read because they’re in Spanish. I learned a lot from this book and you definitely will to. This thing is genuinely a must-have book.
Kings of Strength– Edward Desbonnet and David Chapman
BUY THIS BOOK SO YOU’LL UNDERSTAND WHY I CONSTANTLY SHIT ON MODERN LIFTERS. You could pick five people at random from that book, which is filled with continental Europeans of whom you’ve never heard but should have, from the pre-WW1 era of lifting. The best lifters on the planet were wiped out between WW1 and WW2, and those who were left standing didn’t impart a respect for lifting well the way they should have. Lifting used to look like slam dunk competitions- it wasn’t enough for you to be able to lift a weight. You had to lift it effortlessly, smoothly, and with a smile on your face to be respected. People did lifts we never considered as their primary lifts, and it gave them much different looking physiques with MUCH better shoulders and arms.
There are no lifting programs in this book because no one followed programs. The programs you see from that era were almost never written by the athletes they proclaimed to, and they were written to be very easy. Hard programs don’t sell now and they didn’t then, so people only made money to live through performance or bullshitting rubes out of their money. or both.
FFO: Lifting big weights and looking good doing it.
Gold’s Gym Book of Bodybuilding– Bill Reynolds and Ken Sprague
This is the single greatest resource for workout programs I’ve ever found. It features programs from every winning lifter Gold’s Gym produced in the 70s and 80s, and this book is so fucking good I’ve bought it at least 6 times in my life (I either give them away or they fall apart from my constant paging through them.
The Warrior Diet– Ori Hofmekler
Ever wonder where that weirdo Martin Berkhan got the idea for intermittent fasting? Well, wonder no more. This book is essential for your library, because it inspired my Stewroids series as well as half the rest of the industry, though absolutely no one ever talks about this book. For the uninitiated, it’s a book about the diet of the Greeks and Romans, and how to develop a physique like they had. The author isn’t a lifter, but rather a commando in the Israeli Defense Forces who later became a political a cartoonist for Playboy. This book is dope even if the training info is neither historical nor interesting. His diet info, on the other hand, is phenomenal.
FFO: If you are reading this, buy it. Diet isn’t as complicated or as restrictive as you’ve been led to think. If it was, none of the athletes who looked and performed like demi-gods prior to 1980 would have existed. But they did, because most of what the bodybuilding industry says about diet is utter horseshit.
Rock, Iron, and Steel– Steve Justa
This book is a hail mary effort to drag you guys out of programming. Steve Justa wasn’t much of a lifter, but he did represent a bizarre sub-sub culture in the lifting world- the junkyard lifter. They’re a weird bunch, the junkyard lifters, but they have figured out some shit we could all stand to learn.
You didn’t know there were junkyard lifters? You need this book- they’re into some weird shit, but they remind all of us that doing physical shit makes you stronger. ALL physical shit makes you stronger. And the only way to build a burly body is not in the gym.
If you want another example of a junkyard lifter, there is also the Great Antonio. He lived in a makeshift shed inside the junkyard like Oscar the fucking Grouch, but he was a pro wrestler and performing strongman.
The Purposeful Primitive– Marty Gallagher
I’ve never spoken to Marty Gallagher, but aside from his love of Mark Chaillet’s dumbass lifting form this book is pretty phenomenal. You can learn about some of the greats of early powerlifting, and you’ll learn about the dude who influenced that Starting Strength dipshit to have everyone squat with their heads down like they already failed the fucking lift.
DO NOT SQUAT WITH YOUR HEAD DOWN. There’s bad information in every damn thing you read, and this book is no exception. It’s still rad as fuck though.
Tough Guy Shit
The Mammoth Book of Hard Men– Roger Wilkes
If you’ve ever thought you were a tough person, grab this book and find out that there is always a level of toughness greater than the plane on which you exist. The British seem to have invented the modern concept of the noble villain, and this book is fucking packed with them. Until the day we’re inspired by the endlessly good, let’s get inspired by hard men with a sense of nobility, most of whom made face turns before they met their end.
The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards– Robin Barrett
Though not as well-written as the previous book, this one is also dope. This one has Britain’s most dangerous prisoner in it (Charlie Bronson) alongside guys like America’s most dangerous prisoner (Thomas Silverstein); London’s scariest debt collector (Arthur White); legendary British bouncer and martial artists Geoff Thompson, and a bunch of other really interesting, violent people.
Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live– Ben Thompson
If you’ve never been to badassoftheweek.com, you should- that website is phenomenally entertaining. This book, along with the book that enabled me to kick the shit out of every history exam I ever had (The Encyclopedia of Invasions and Conquests), are part of the reason why I know so much and write such interesting shit. Like Bite-Sized History (and the Encyclopedia of Invasions and Conquests), this book is a great toilet reader.
