Winter Swimming

Overall a decent read with interesting insight - mostly for beginners - but I had a few issues.

Research findings were too often sprinkled with anecdotal evidence. The author acknowledges when that is the case to avoid confusion, and that is fair enough. But the reason I read the book was precisely to go beyond anecdotes and find out about what's actually backed by research.

Also, while there is a bibliography at the end of the book, there are no clear citations linked to each claim made throughout the book. It's always vaguely expressed as in: “a study” or “a cohort test”, “studies” etc. without any clear specification. That came as a surprise considering that the author has a Ph.D.

There were a few mentions here and there about obesity and weight loss that I personally found out of place and addressed quite superficially, like associating obesity with being comfortable as opposed to being active, to name one.

Finally, most of the studies mentioned only involved male swimmers or men. While that may the be the only dataset available, I would have appreciated a brief mention of the fact that there were no studies available (?) that involved more heterogeneous groups in terms of gender/age/body type. But nothing was said to that regard.