Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance. In Spark, John J. Ratey, MD, embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's.  

Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.

This revolutionary training method has been embraced by elite runners - with extraordinary results - and now you can do it, too. Respected running and fitness expert Matt Fitzgerald explains how the 80/20 running program - in which you do 80 percent of runs at a lower intensity and just 20 percent at a higher intensity - is the best change runners of all abilities can make to improve their performance.

In The Science of Running, elite coach and exercise physiologist Steve Magness integrates the latest research with the training processes of the world's best runners, to deliver an in depth look at how to maximize your performance. It is a unique book that conquers both the scientific and practical points of running in two different sections. The first is aimed at identifying what limits running performance from a scientific standpoint. In section two, we turn to the practical application of this information and focus on the process of training to achieve your goals.

There is a new revolution happening in sports as more and more athletes are basing their success on this game-changing combination: health, nutrition, training, recovery, and mindset. Unfortunately, the evidence-based techniques that the expert PhDs, academic institutions, and professional performance staffs follow can be in stark contrast to what many athletes actually practice. When combined with the noise of social media, old-school traditions, and bro-science, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Recovering from Training is the ultimate guide to the theory and practice of recovery from training. It will allow the dedicated athlete and coach to plan out training, diet, and recovery strategies for optimal results. If you can recover better, you can train more, train harder, and make better gains over time. 

Why we think it’s a great listen: Want to join the “superhumans”? Luckily you don’t have to run to catch up with them, thanks to McDougall’s and Sanders’ inspiring (and motivating) journey through history, science, physiology, health, entertaining characters and unlikely friendships. Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure.

When elite and everyday ultrarunners alike want to improve their ultramarathon performance, they turn to Coach Jason Koop for guidance and council. Training Essentials for Ultrarunning takes Coach Koop's time-proven and evidenced-based methodologies that have been honed over 20 years of professional coaching and delivers it to the masses. Regardless of whether you are first-time ultrarunner, a seasoned veteran, or an ultrarunning coach, this resource is a must-have for all ultrarunners. 

In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise - to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.

The greatest athletic performances spring from the mind, not the body. Elite athletes have known this for decades, and now science is learning why it's true. In his fascinating new book, How Bad Do You Want It?, coach Matt Fitzgerald examines more than a dozen pivotal races to discover the surprising ways elite athletes strengthen their mental toughness.

Toughness has long been held as a fundamental key to achieving peak performance. For generations, we've been taught toughness means bulldozing through—pushing to the point of breakdown—and that showing any sign of weakness is failure. This model of toughness has long been glorified and celebrated. But the truth is, it doesn't work. Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, now offers a new kind of toughness—real toughness—that can help anyone navigate adversity. Real toughness works with our biology and psychology; fake toughness fights against them.

The first book of its kind, Peak Performance combines the inspiring stories of top performers across a range of capabilities - from athletic, to intellectual, to artistic - with the latest scientific insights into the cognitive and neurochemical factors that drive performance in all domains. In doing so, Peak Performance uncovers new linkages that hold promise as performance enhancers but have been overlooked in our traditionally-siloed ways of thinking.

Part narrative, part practical, this adventure takes you to the foothills of Ethiopia and the ‘town of runners’; to the training grounds of world-record-holding marathon runners in Kenya; racing across the Arctic Circle and the mountains of Europe, through the sweltering sands of the Sahara and the hostility of a winter traverse of the Pennine Way, to witness the incredible natural movement of runners in these environments. 

If you want to get bigger, leaner, and stronger without steroids, good genetics, extreme dieting, or wasting ridiculous amounts of time in the gym...you want to listen to this book. Because here’s the deal: Building lean muscle and burning stubborn fat isn't nearly as complicated you’ve been led to believe. This book is the shortcut.   

Steve House, world-class climber and Patagonia ambassador, and Scott Johnston, coach of US national champions and World Cup Nordic skiers, translate training theory into practice to allow you to coach yourself to any mountaineering goal. Applying training practices from other endurance sports, House and Johnston demonstrate that following a carefully designed regimen is as effective for alpinism as it is for any other endurance sport and leads to better performance. They deliver detailed instruction on how to plan and execute training tailored to your individual circumstances.