He's suggesting you collect the books in Required Reading before you acquire this one.
I own Sports Power, and I read a few chapters before Supertraining arrived and I put everything else down. Know that you can see the Table of Contents and read the introduction at Amazon. Just click on the picture of the book. They do it for a ton of books.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/073605121X/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-8602370-5583351#reader-link
I couldn't comment in any depth on the theory since I didn't get to it, but I was very pleased with the structure. For example, the first chapter was about assessing one's power profile. He presents the speed-strength continuum and segments it into 5 categories: 1) Speed, 2) Speed-Strength, 3) Explosive Power, 4) Strength-Speed, 5) Strength. He then presents a chart for about 40 sports (including powerlifting, weightlifting aka olympic lifting, boxing, wrestling, judo, and karate) and alots percentile requirements for optimal training in each sport. An example would be powerlifting: 1) 0%, 2) 0%, 3) 0%, 4) 5% 5) 95%.
Right off the bat I feel we may have a problem. The rise of Simmons' conjugate periodization was a matter of incorporating dynamic work into powerlifting training where before it wasn't nearly as significant; in fact, and you'll have to ask Carnal or Entropy about this, I think many powerlifters didn't train dynamically at all. So I'm wondering if Sandler prescribes to...I don't really know what to call it, so I'll call it the "Light Side." For the most part, this is a darkside board. But I'm not sure, I didn't finish the book. I'm making a number of inferences from this one chart.
Also, I recognized a muscle diagram on page 47 as the exact diagram that appears in Bompa's Periodization. Entropy informed me that Siff called Bompa a "pseudoscientist", but on the other hand Poliquin speaks very highly of him in one of his earliest articles at T-Nation.
To get back on track, the rest of the first chapter included diagnostic exercises like seated shot-puts and Smith Machine bench press throws in order to determine how your muscles are currently conditioned along that continuum. So if his theory is good, then considering the presentation of the information, this might be one of the most useful books I own.
Hope that helps.
