A short list on purpose. The genre has a padding problem, and the honest reason to read a training book in 2026 is not to get a program, because those are free. It is to understand why a program is shaped the way it is, which is what lets you change it when your life does.
Start with one of these
The Muscle and Strength Pyramid, Eric Helms and co-authors. Two volumes, training and nutrition, organised as a hierarchy from most to least important. That structure is the whole value: it tells you explicitly that adherence and volume matter enormously and that exercise order barely matters at all, which is the opposite of how most content is weighted.
Scientific Principles of Strength Training, Israetel and co-authors. The framework behind a lot of modern hypertrophy programming, including the volume landmarks that turn up everywhere now. Dry, systematic, and genuinely useful once you are past the beginner stage.
For technique
Starting Strength, Mark Rippetoe. The technique chapters are outstanding: precise, well-illustrated, and better at describing what a movement should feel like than almost anything since.
The programming is a different matter. Linear progression works, for a while, for beginners, and the book presents a narrow model with a certainty the evidence does not support. Read chapters one through five, take the program as one option rather than the answer.
Practical Programming for Strength Training extends the same framework and carries the same caveat.
If you want the underlying theory
Science and Practice of Strength Training, Zatsiorsky and Kraemer. Academic, demanding, and the source a lot of popular material is quietly derived from. Worth it if you want to read the originals rather than the summaries.
Supertraining, Siff and Verkhoshansky. Enormous, disorganised and frequently cited by people who have not read it. There is real material here, and it is a reference to dip into rather than a book to read.
For endurance
Daniels’ Running Formula, Jack Daniels. The standard reference for structured running, and the source of the VDOT system most pace calculators are built on.
Endure, Alex Hutchinson. Not a training book. It is about where the limits of endurance actually sit and how much of the ceiling is in your head, and it is the best-written book on this list by a distance.
What to read instead of most of them
Honestly, the r/Fitness wiki and the free program libraries cover practically everything a book will tell you about what to do. See the best fitness subreddits and free workout plans worth following.
Buy a book when you have been training a couple of years and have started asking why, not what. That is the point at which the reasoning becomes worth more than the prescription.
The audio and video equivalents are the best health and fitness podcasts and the best fitness YouTube channels.