About the Book
Force is a biomechanics book written for coaches and athletes who want a clearer understanding of how training actually works. It begins from a simple observation: sport requires us to change motion, and motion only changes when force is applied. From that starting point, the book develops a practical explanation of what force is, how it is produced, and why it underpins so many of the decisions we make in training.
Rather than presenting mechanics as an isolated set of equations, Force builds its narrative from the training process itself. Concepts such as impulse, rate of force development and work appear only when they help to explain a real sporting task. It also addresses why the language of biomechanics can easily mislead when everyday definitions and mechanical definitions diverge, showing how misunderstandings around terms like “power” and “force absorption” can distort training choices.
A major theme is specificity. Force reframes dynamic correspondence around a more fundamental requirement: whether an exercise allows overload or variation of the relevant force-production qualities. Only once that is established does it make sense to consider kinematics, direction of force, or the details of coordination. The book explores how different force-production strategies – push, pull, bounce and block – emerge in human movement, and how athletes shift between them depending on the demands of their sport.
Throughout, Force remains grounded in practice. It aims to show that biomechanics is not an academic layer added after the fact, but one of the foundations of effective coaching. By clarifying how the body produces force, why it matters, and how these ideas shape training decisions, the book offers a more reliable lens for understanding performance and designing training that genuinely transfers.
What You'll Learn
You’ll learn to think about movement through the lens of force – not as an abstract quantity, but as the mechanism behind every change in motion. The book shows why impulse often matters more than power, how the duration of force application shapes outcomes, and why peak metrics can be misleading.
You’ll develop a clearer sense of how athletes actually produce force. This includes the different strategies the body uses – push, pull, bounce and block – and why sports reward these strategies in different proportions. You’ll learn to recognise these patterns in real movement and understand why two athletes can complete the same task with very different coordination.
You’ll also learn how to make better decisions about training. The book shows why specificity is not about copying movements but about targeting the relevant force-production demands. You’ll see how to evaluate exercises using overload and variation, and how to judge whether a lift or drill offers the right kind of mechanical challenge for the sport.
Finally, you’ll learn to navigate common training ideas with more confidence. The book explains where widespread misconceptions arise – from the misuse of mechanical terms to oversimplified force-vector narratives – and replaces them with a mechanics-first framework grounded in how athletes actually move.
Who the Book Is For
Force is written for strength coaches, personal trainers, sport scientists, physiotherapists, athletic development staff and curious athletes — anyone who wants a clearer understanding of how the body produces force and why that matters for training. You do not need a background in physics or mathematics; the explanations are plainspoken, direct and grounded in the realities of coaching and performance.
The book is for practitioners who want to understand why certain exercises work rather than relying on tradition or borrowed language. It is for coaches who want to move past vague notions of power, explosiveness or “force absorption” and replace them with mechanically coherent ideas they can use on the gym floor. It is equally useful for practitioners who find themselves navigating contradictory claims — from force–vector theories to overly complex systems thinking — and want a way to evaluate these ideas without getting lost in jargon.
It’s for anyone who has wondered why two athletes can perform the same movement with different strategies, why some cues seem to help one person but not another, or why an athlete’s performance changes when the environment shifts. The book helps readers recognise these patterns and understand the mechanical principles underneath them.
Finally, Force is for people designing training programmes who want confidence that their choices will transfer to sport. If you want to reason about technique, select exercises with more precision, or design training that truly improves force expression in the sporting environment, this book is written for you.
What They Said
Force: The Biomechanics of Training is a mix of theory, practical examples and myth debunking all wrapped up in a book about force. It is a biomechanics book and therefore will appeal to individuals who enjoy biomechanics, but ultimately in sport we are frequently required to move our bodies, and thus exert a force, hence understanding force has such wide reaching applications.
As a non biomechanist, some chapters were outside of my comfort (knowledge) zone but these were few and far between as Cleather does a good job of making the text accessible to all. Throughout the 26 short and digestible chapters there are multiple occasions where Cleather demonstrates his deep thinking on a topic. These include triple extension, force-velocity relationship, force-velocity profiling, and force absorption. Quite comically, the force-vector theory is described as “the worst name for a theory ever…”.
Insightfully, a suggested update to the dynamic correspondence criteria is outlined, starting with the more practical questions of can you overload or variate the training or exercise before returning to the more traditional mechanical criteria.
I would recommend this book to individuals who design training programmes (e.g., strength and conditioning coaches). Remember, we exert forces, not absorb them.
DR. DALE B. READ, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY
Rating 9/10
About The Training Wisdom Collection
The Training Wisdom Collection began as an attempt to make sense of the ideas that kept returning in coaching conversations - the patterns that sit underneath good training, regardless of method or sport. Over time it grew into a set of books and courses that approach training from first principles, not fashion.
The Collection isn’t a system. It doesn’t claim to reveal the hidden truth of strength and conditioning or promise a shortcut to progress. Instead, it tries to show how training actually works: how bodies learn, how stress and rhythm shape adaptation, how coordination becomes skill, and why long-term development depends more on clarity and patience than on novelty.
Each book takes a different angle on that same problem. The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom was the starting point - a compact attempt to explain why simple principles matter, and the thread that runs through everything that followed. The Practice of Change looks at the rhythms of work and recovery that shape adaptation. The Force series examines how movement and load interact. The courses take these ideas into practice, turning them into tools a coach or athlete can use straight away.
The aim is simple. Training should feel understandable. It should have a shape that makes sense. And it should help people build capacities that last longer than the programmes they come from. The Training Wisdom Collection exists to offer that kind of clarity - not by reducing training to rules, but by giving people a language that reflects what actually happens when bodies change.
