Quick Review: Endure by Alex Hutchinson on Human Performance

We have all seen a world records being broken. The athlete crosses the finish line and a new bar has been set. But you have also seen that the athlete is alive and moving. Which means he/she had more to give!

Whats our limits?

What sets the limit of human endurance? Is it mental or physical? What is the absolute limit given we found the perfect athlete and perfect condition? These are some of the questions this book tries to answer.

Notes from Endure

📝 Expectations matter! How many tries you know you have to do something impact how you pace yourself. Even if you’re told to do your max for each rep.

📝 Gabrselassie (marathon champ) sweats up to 3.6 Liters/hour.

📝 The extraction of mindfulness from it’s Buddhist context began in the 1970’s with Jon Kanbat-Zinn.

📝 Central governor, Anticipatory regulation, Pacing instinct – it goes by many names – basically, the theory that the brain stops us from running ourselves to death.

📝 Pain in training leads to a higher threshold for pain. High intensity training heightens your pain tolerance while medium intensity doesn’t.

📝 Experiment shows that seeing a smiling face, even subliminally, induces a sense of ease.

⭐️ Takeaway: Motivational Self-talk works!

The no.1 advice (except to train hard!) is to pursue motivational self talk during training. Because it really works! Training is the cake and believing is the icing.

Book Verdict:

My second favorite book that start with “Endure”. The first one being Endurance by Lansing. Maybe not the best metric to compare books with, but to be fair, it’s a good book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to people that don’t have a special interest in human performance and endurance. You need a bit of passion to stay focused with all the data being presented. Spoiler: all the conclusions are: “it’s unclear”, “we have to wait for the final data”, or “its complicated.” But I rather have that, than oversimplification of a complex reality.