Running the Edge: Discover the secrets to better running and a better life


Adam Goucher - 2011
    By tapping into the transformative power found in the distance run, Running the Edge inspires readers not only to push their limits as runners, but as human beings in a relentless pursuit of excellence in everything. Borrowing from philosophical notions ranging from humanistic psychology and Buddhist monks, all the way to adrenaline junkies, Alcoholics Anonymous, and even the World of Warcraft, Goucher and Catalano take readers on a pilgrimage of self discovery and personal improvement. Six mirrors guide the way as Running the Edge methodically leads readers to a heightened awareness of their own personal attributes, and compels them to break free from the curse of normal and the chains of average by "running the edge" towards their maximum potentials. Interlaced with rich storytelling along with personal insights offered from elite runners: Alan Webb, Amy Yoder Begley, Chris Solinsky, Dathan Ritzenhein, Galen Rupp, Kara Goucher, and Paula Radcliffe, the book reads at a brisk pace worthy of its subject matter. Although there is a sharp focus on running, the principals and tenets outlined in Running the Edge could be equally applied to almost any passionate pursuit in life. Even non- runners will find the stories and philosophies enlightening, uplifting, and motivating.Fans of the book Running With The Buffaloes by Chris Lear will find an older more introspective Adam Goucher. He pulls no punches as he draws on his faults and short comings both as a runner and as a person. He recognizes the mistakes he has made in his training and life and uses that awareness to propel him forward in a quest of self improvement.

The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion


Simon Marshall - 2017
     You don’t have one brain—you have three; your ancient Chimp brain that keeps you alive, your modern Professor brain that navigates the civilized world, and your Computer brain that accesses your memories and runs your habits (good and bad). They fight for control all the time and that’s when bad things happen; you get crazy nervous before a race, you choke under pressure, you quit when the going gets tough, you make dumb mistakes, you worry about how you look. What if you could stop the thoughts and feelings you don’t want? What if you could feel confident, suffer like a hero, and handle any stress? You can. The Brave Athlete from Dr. Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson will help you take control of your brain so you can train harder, race faster, and better enjoy your sport. Dr. Marshall is a sport psychology expert who trains the brains of elite professional athletes. Paterson is a three-time world champion triathlete and coach. Together, they offer this innovative, brain training guide that is the first to draw from both clinical science and real-world experience with athletes. That means you won’t find outdated “positive self-talk” or visualization gimmicks here. No, the set of cutting-edge mental skills revealed in The Brave Athlete actually work because they challenge the source of the thoughts and feelings you don’t want. The Brave Athlete is packed with practical, evidence-based solutions to the most common mental challenges athletes face. Which of these sound like you?· Why do I have thoughts and feelings I don’t want?· I wish I felt more like an athlete.· I don’t think I can.· I don’t achieve my goals.· Other athletes seem tougher, happier, and more badass than me.· I feel fat.· I don’t cope well with injury.· People are worried about how much I exercise.· I don’t like leaving my comfort zone.· When the going gets tough, the tough leave me behind.· I need to harden the f*ck up.· I keep screwing up.· I don’t handle pressure well.With The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion, you can solve these problems to become mentally strong and make your brain your most powerful asset.

Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life


Max Lugavere - 2018
    After his mother was diagnosed with a mysterious form of dementia, Max Lugavere put his successful media career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance. For the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and visited the country’s best neurology departments—all in the hopes of understanding his mother’s condition.Now, in Genius Foods, Lugavere presents a comprehensive guide to brain optimization. He uncovers the stunning link between our dietary and lifestyle choices and our brain functions, revealing how the foods you eat directly affect your ability to focus, learn, remember, create, analyze new ideas, and maintain a balanced mood.Weaving together pioneering research on dementia prevention, cognitive optimization, and nutritional psychiatry, Lugavere distills groundbreaking science into actionable lifestyle changes. He shares invaluable insights into how to improve your brain power, includingthe nutrients that can boost your memory and improve mental clarity (and where to find them);the foods and tactics that can energize and rejuvenate your brain, no matter your age;a brain-boosting fat-loss method so powerful it has been called “biochemical liposuction”; andthe foods that can improve your happiness, both now and for the long term.With Genius Foods, Lugavere offers a cutting-edge yet practical road map to eliminating brain fog and optimizing the brain’s health and performance today—and decades into the future.

Yoga for Runners


Christine Felstead - 2013
    You can feel that impact in the muscles, ligaments, and bone structures throughout your body. Thankfully, Yoga for Runners addresses both the physical and mental demands of the sport. Whether you are new to yoga or have practiced for years, Yoga for Runners provides you with the most effective poses--88 poses in all. Each pose is described in detail to ensure correct execution, maximizing the physical benefit and decreasing the risk of injury.You'll learn how simple yoga techniques can be incorporated into your existing running workouts and routines to eliminate chronic aches and pains. Discover how each pose can be sequenced to address a specific need, such as strengthen and lengthen the hamstrings, strengthen and increase mobility of the hip joint, eliminate lower-back and upper-body discomfort, speed the recovery process after a practice run or a race, maintain a strong core, or just restore and rejuvenate to prepare for an upcoming event. These sequences target all troublesome muscle regions. Anatomical illustrations and descriptions explain why these poses and sequences decrease your risk of acute or chronic injury as well as why they are beneficial to your training regimen.After just a few weeks of following Yoga for Runners, you will feel stronger, more balanced, more in tune with your breathing, and more aware of your posture and technique. Your entire running experience--endurance, strength, breathing, and mental sharpness--will be more productive, positive, and enjoyable.

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health


T. Colin Campbell - 2004
    If we’re obsessed with being thin more so than ever before, why are Americans stricken with heart disease as much as we were 30 years ago?In The China Study, Dr. T. Colin Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The report also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and opportunistic scientists. The New York Times has recognized the study as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” and the “most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.”The China Study is not a diet book. Dr. Campbell cuts through the haze of misinformation and delivers an insightful message to anyone living with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and those concerned with the effects of aging.

Be Iron Fit, 2nd: Time-Efficient Training Secrets for Ultimate Fitness


Don Fink - 2010
    The ultimate training guide for the ultimate in fitness

Older Faster Stronger: What Women Runners Can Teach Us All About Living Younger Longer


Margaret Webb - 2014
    A former overweight smoker turned marathoner, Margaret Webb runs with elite older women, follows a high-performance training plan devised by experts, and examines research that shows how endurance training can stall aging. She then tests herself against the world's best older runners at the world masters games in Torino, Italy.Millions of women have taken up running in recent decades--the first generation of women to train in great numbers. Women are qualifying for the Olympic marathon in their 50s, running 100-mile ultra marathons in their 60s, completing Ironmans in their 80s, competing for world masters records in their 90s. What are the secrets of these ageless wonders? How do they get stronger and faster long after their "athletic prime"? Is there an evolutionary reason women can maintain endurance into advanced years? Webb immerses herself in these questions as she as she trains to see just how fast she can get after 50.

Ride Your Way Lean: The Ultimate Plan for Burning Fat and Getting Fit on a Bike


Selene Yeager - 2010
    The best way to lose weight is on a bike. In Ride Your Way Lean, Bicycling magazine columnist Selene Yeager provides readers with a comprehensive cycling plan that allows them to shed fat, streamline their bodies, and hone their skills on a bike. Cycling is gentle on the joints, easy to do with friends and family, and burns literally thousands of calories without being a bore or cause for suffering.A weight-loss program for people who want to drop pounds of fat while learning a new sport, this book offers training plans that turbocharge metabolism along with complementary nutritional advice. Each chapter is seasoned with anecdotal tips, success stories, pitfalls, and other advice from real people who have ridden themselves lean.

Beyond Impossible: From Reluctant Runner to Guinness World Record Breaker


Mimi Anderson - 2017
    With a renewed sense of purpose, she decides to take the sport that saved her life to the next level, training hard and throwing herself in at the deep end by entering the epic Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert, despite still being a novice runner. One startling success leads to another, as she finds herself taking on ever-more-challenging races – from the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, USA, to the 6633 Arctic Ultra – all building up to her biggest challenge yet: attempting to gain the Guinness World Record time for a female running 840 miles from John o’Groats to Land’s End.This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners and die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it’s never too late to achieve your dreams and do the impossible.

Pretty Happy: Healthy Ways To Love Your Body


Kate Hudson - 2016
    I had to learn how to do so over time, and I continue to learn—each and every day. This is a process, and my body is constantly changing. So is yours. And when I learned how to accept that I will always be like this, I relaxed. Our bodies do not stand still for time.When you understand yourself and connect to how you can become body smart, you realize pretty quickly that the perfect, the ideal is not the goal. Instead, the goal is feeling good in your body. That’s what leads to confidence, to feeling and looking fit, and being pretty happy. Doesn’t that sound great? I think so! In almost every interview she gives, Kate Hudson is asked the same questions: What do you eat? How do you stay so fit? What workout do you do? What’s your secret? Well, the secret is that the sound bites the media loves so much don’t tell the story, and the steps you need to take to have a healthy, vibrant and happy life can’t be captured in a short interview. The key to living well, and healthy, is to plug into what your body needs, understanding that one size does not fit all, all the time, and being truly honest with yourself about your goals and desires.Like everyone else, Kate is constantly on the move, with a life full of work, family, responsibilities and relationships. In Pretty Happy, Kate shows how she honors her relationship with herself through exercise, making the right choices about what she eats, and constantly going back to the drawing board and starting fresh, instead of holding herself to unrealistic standards of perfection and giving up when she falls short. Focusing on the Four Pillars of Health to enhance her well-being, Pretty Happy shows the benefits of:Cultivating an Intuitive Relationship With Your Body Eating Well Awakening Your Body through movement The Miracle of MindfullnessFull of questionnaires to help you assess your Body Type and your stress levels, advice about cleanses and keeping your diet and body balanced, and plenty of interactive Drawing Board exercises, Pretty Happy is a beautiful, insightful, and personal look at health from the inside out, an authentic plan for an authentic life from a woman who truly lives what she speaks.“Kate Hudson’s Pretty Happy is a smart, insightful and realistic primer for making healthy habits part of your everyday life. I met Kate in person, and judging by my impression of her, she must be doing things right. From exercise to mindfulness to knowing what your body really needs to thrive, she pushes you to throw away your ideas around perfection and find your own Pretty Happy.”—Alejandro Junger, New York Times bestselling author of Clean, Clean Gut, and Clean Eats“Though it may seem like sporting that signature winning smile is her natural state of being, Kate Hudson’s path to happiness is an active one. She refuses to wait for happy to happen. Instead, Pretty Happy details all the ways she makes it a priority every day. Honoring our bodies with clean eating and smart cleansing, our minds with meditation, our purpose with authenticity, and our fun with spontaneity, playfulness and pole dancing - yes! - this is a hands-on approach to owning our potential. And if you've ever found yourself wondering how she maintains that famous bod, Kate is spilling the beans on that, too in her trademark best friend-who's-been-there style - lucky us!”—Daphne Oz

Zen Mind, Strong Body: How To Cultivate Advanced Calisthenic Strength--Using The Power Of "Beginner's Mind"


Al Kavadlo - 2015
    It’s also a philosophy that’s allowed Al to sculpt a magnificent physique—while maintaining an ever-burning passion to further develop his calisthenic excellence.Al’s “secret sauce”? A Zen-like attitude to physical cultivation—which marries intense focus with a light-hearted “joy-in-the-journey.” Zen-like too, is Al’s insistence on intuitive simplicity and his celebration of personal, direct experience as the most trustworthy teacher.Zen Mind, Strong Body culls 26 of Al’s favorite articles, elaborating his position on a wide spectrum of fitness subjects from diet and supplements, to machines and free weights, to cardio options, to mental training. For Al, though, all roads finally lead to Bodyweight Exercise—as the supreme path for all-around, everyday athleticism and practical functionality.Want what Al Kavadlo has? Absorb the hard-earned, earthy training wisdom in Zen Mind, Strong Body—and you will be on your way.Discover:•How to put the fun back into your fitness—instead of treating your workouts as a chore…•How to combine “presence” and joy—for a deeper, more rewarding training experience…•How “light heart” translates to “heavy payload”—when it comes to spectacular, long-term physical gains…•How to infuse “warrior spirit” into your body-mind—and attain the calisthenic ideal of physical excellence…•How to recruit the power of the “Big 3”—Experience, Logic and Intuition—as your preferred allies in the battle against weakness, fatness, slowness and tiredness…•Why to beware of the “Tricky 3”—Dogma, Faith and Science”—when it comes to wise practice in diet and exercise…•The empowering secret of “open-ended” program design—to free you from the shackles and restrictions of one-size-fits-all fitness shibboleths…•The key differences between gymnastics and calisthenics—when considering your optimal goals for physical development…•How to make impressive gains year-after-year—while staying off the “injured reserve” list…•How to marry fun and function—for athletic longevity and enhanced well being…•How to use your mind to manifest what you choose—including the body of your dreams...•The “Specificity Principle”—and the direct approach to getting better and better and better…•The hows and whys of building strength without mass—when whipcord-functionality is your goal…•The #1 factor to consider in practicing strength as a skill—it’s the difference between longterm success and the also-rans…•What “business” you need to focus on first—if being a lean ‘n mean machine is what you want…•Why “subtle nuance” can be more important than “gross motor”—when developing supreme movement skills…•The 5 major levels of bodyweight strength—so you know where you stand in the chain of greatness…•The 4 best bodyweight drills to emulate the benefits of the traditional deadlift—when you don’t want to bother with a barbell…•The

The Incomplete Book of Running


Peter Sagal - 2018
    Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s beloved show Wait Wait..Don’t Tell Me and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares his insightful and entertaining look at life and running that explores the transformative power of the sport.

Training Essentials for Ultrarunning: How to Train Smarter, Race Faster, and Maximize Your Ultramarathon Performance


Jason Koop - 2016
    Now the sport's leading coach makes his highly effective ultramarathon training methods available to ultrarunners of all abilities in his book Training Essentials for Ultrarunning.Ultramarathoners have traditionally piled on the miles or tried an approach that worked for a friend. Yet ultramarathons are not just longer marathons; simply running more will not prepare you for the race experience you want. Ultramarathon requires a new and specific approach to training. Training Essentials for Ultrarunning will revolutionize training for those who want to race an ultramarathon instead of just gutting it out to the finish line.Koop's race-proven ultramarathon program is based on sound science, the most current research, and years of experience coaching the sport's star runners to podium performances. Packed with practical advice and vetted training methods, Training Essentials for Ultrarunning is the new, must-have resource for first-timers and ultramarathon veterans.Runners using Training Essentials for Ultrarunning will gain much more than Koop's training approach:- The science behind ultramarathon performance.- Common ultramarathon failure points and how to solve them.- How to use interval training to focus workouts, make gains, reduce injuries, and race faster.- Simple, effective fueling and hydration strategies.- Koop's A.D.A.P.T. method for making the right decisions to solve a race-day crisis.- How to plan your ultra season for better racing.- Course-by-course coaching guides to iconic U.S. ultramarathons including American River 50, Badwater 135, Hardrock 100, Javelina 100, JFK 50, Lake Sonoma 50, Leadville 100, Vermont 100, Wasatch 100, and Western States 100.- How to achieve your goal, whether it's finishing or winning.A revolution is coming to ultrarunning as ultramarathoners shed old habits and embrace the smarter methods that science and experience show are better. Featuring stories and advice from ultrarunning stars Dakota Jones, Kaci Lickteig, Dylan Bowman, Timothy Olson, and others who work with Koop, Training Essentials for Ultrarunning is the go-to guide for first-time ultrarunners and competitive ultramarathoners.

In the Flo: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life


Alisa Vitti - 2020
    It is essential to be aware of and take care of this rhythm, but it has been widely ignored by medical, nutrition and fitness research. So as women, we diet, we deprive, and we cram as much as possible into our day, striving to accomplish impossible to-do lists, and scheduling our lives based on a 24-hour time cycle, ignoring the intuitive time our bodies naturally keep: a monthly cycle with four hormonal phases that offer incredible advantages. In the FLO presents a revolutionary 4-week solution to manage your energy and time according to your female biochemistry. By working with each phase, you'll support your hormones, unlock peak creativity and performance, and avoid burnout. You'll know exactly when to eat certain foods, clear your social calendar, or ask for a raise—and you'll have the tools to do so, including:• Meal plans and recipes for each phase• Charts for phase-specific exercises, work tasks, and relationship activities• A daily planner that helps you align with your strengths in each phase• A biohacking toolkit for navigating period problems and hormonal birth controlAlisa Vitti, functional nutrition and women's hormone expert, bestselling author of WomanCode, and founder of modern hormone healthcare company FLOliving.com, has been teaching women how to reclaim their rhythm for nearly twenty years and has witnessed the incredible rewards it offers—including losing stubborn weight, regaining energy, clearing skin, and minimizing PMS.By getting In the FLO, you'll get more done with less effort, you'll feel better consistently throughout the month, and you'll enjoy the freedom that comes with living on your own time.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It


Neal Bascomb - 2004
    In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners each set out to break this barrier.Roger Bannister was a young English medical student who epitomized the ideal of the amateur — still driven not just by winning but by the nobility of the pursuit. John Landy was the privileged son of a genteel Australian family, who as a boy preferred butterfly collecting to running but who trained relentlessly in an almost spiritual attempt to shape his body to this singular task. Then there was Wes Santee, the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy and natural athlete who believed he was just plain better than everybody else.Spanning three continents and defying the odds, their collective quest captivated the world and stole headlines from the Korean War, the atomic race, and such legendary figures as Edmund Hillary, Willie Mays, Native Dancer, and Ben Hogan. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and Chariots of Fire, Neal Bascomb delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.