Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the forces that drive high-performance athletes and professionals to succeed.
Explaining how one’s mental capacity and mind power overrules raw physical strength and athletic endurance. Is it the instruction from our brain or our muscles that leads to our resulting action or inaction. Consequently, our ability or inability to achieve the results we set out to achieve.
A well written, engaging and intriguing study of human potential and how we achieve it.
How high or far or fast can humans go? And what about individual potential: what defines a person’s limits? From running a two-hour marathon to summiting Mount Everest. In summary, we are fascinated by the extremes of human endurance. In effect, testing both our physical and psychological limits.
The science of human fatigue explained.
In Endure, Alex Hutchinson, PhD, reveals why our individual limits may be determined as much by our heads and hearts as by our muscles. He presents an overview of science’s search for understanding human fatigue. Including, results from crude experiments with electricity and frogs’ legs to sophisticated brain imaging technology.
Going beyond the traditional mechanical view of human limits. Consequently, he argues that a key element in endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals. Regardless, of heat or cold or muscles screaming with lactic acid. Markedly, reveals that we can train to improve brain response.
An elite distance runner himself. Hutchinson takes us to the forefront of the new sports psychology. Including, brain electrode jolts, computer-based training and subliminal messaging. Additionally, he presents startling new discoveries enhancing the performance of athletes today. In conclusion, he demonstrates how anyone can utilize these tactics to bolster their own performance. As a result, to get the most out of their bodies.
Visit Alex Hutchinson on Twitter for more insights:
https://twitter.com/sweatscience
Another interesting book also focused on human performance and self-control that I can recommend is by Charles Duhigg – The-power-of-habit
