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BALLISTIC

Henry Abbott

The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance

Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance by Henry Abbott, a journey into the new science of injury prevention that reveals how "ballistic" movement can help you get strong, stay healthy, and be elite.
For people who love to move, injuries are the worst. What if we could predict and prevent them? In Ballistic, longtime NBA data journalist and competitive amateur athlete Henry Abbott tells the story of sports scientist Dr. Marcus Elliott and the Peak Performance Project (P3), who use technology to study how athletes move, and why they get hurt. P3 has helped elite professionals compete with impressive longevity by training with "ballistic" movements?leaping and landing. Their data-driven insights offer a surprising takeaway: The explosive moves and ground impacts we often avoid in everyday workouts might provide the secret to an injury-free athletic life. Ballistic explores cutting-edge research into physiology and strength, pain and psychology, biomechanics and neuroplasticity, and presents an evidence-based case for intervening early to avoid injuries and stem our growing mobility crisis. Abbott's inspiring narrative can help readers harness the science of ballistic movement to continue the athletic adventures that bring joy. Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop. He led ESPN's 60-person NBA digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles and won a National Magazine Award. He lives in New Jersey.
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Published 2025-05-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

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What if we could unlock peak performance without sacrificing our long-term health and well-being? In Ballistic, Henry Abbott takes us on a journey to explore how to do just that. Abbott shows us that our bodies are not machines to be pushed, but intelligent systems designed for joyful, powerful movement. A must-read for anyone interested in sport or exercise. Ballistic rewrites the rules of athleticism, showing a path towards moving, feeling, and living better.

How can we find our way to a lifetime of joyful, pain-free movement? It's a deep and longstanding mystery, but Ballistic is like a modern-day Rosetta Stone. And this page-turner of a book holds a surprising key. Gifted story-teller Henry Abbott inspires us with stories of transformation and healing, in elite athletes and weekend warriors alike. In a book brimming with scientific insights, he shines the brightest spotlight on the cutting-edge work of Dr. Marcus Elliott, the sports science guru who has revolutionized our understanding of how we can safely go ballistic?airborne!?and enjoy the thrill of explosive movement at any age.

Ballistic is a fascinating, narrative tour of a new science of human movement that has the capacity to predict?and prevent?injuries before they happen. You will never think about your hips the same way again.

Data has unlocked so many insights in sports and redefined human capacity. Simultaneously, the long-term impact has failed to keep pace with the incredible feats. Henry Abbott's Ballistic weaves his personal narrative with a lifetime of professional athletics analyses to create a vision of how a deeper understanding of our mind-body connection can unlock the next evolution for humans.

If you have hips, buy this book.

Henry Abbott's deep dive into the murky science of sports injuries features great storytelling, clear explanations, and a welcome embrace of complexity over quick fixes. Best of all, you'll come away believing that injuries aren't inevitable after all.

It's not easy to write precisely and engagingly about movement. It's even harder to write about movement in a way that makes someone who is comfortably sitting?say, while reading an engrossing book?want to get up and move. But Henry Abbott has done it brilliantly. Ballistic has changed the way I think about sports, bodies, and movement?which is to say, it's changed my life.