The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer

There are hundreds of good tips in this book. It dispels dozens of bits of long-held exercise dogma with plenty of hard science. I would put it in my top five books on exercise and nutrition, and I plan to download the Kindle version and will refer to it often.

Okay I learnt a LOT from this book and would definitely recommend it. Gretchen squeezes a lot of the most recent findings related to exercise and nutrition into a concise and informative narrative.

This book has changed the way I think and do my exercise and have already incorporated HIIT style running sessions in my training with great results. There are many other gems of information but I won't spoil it. If you are remotely interested in fitness or just turning back the biological clock this is a must read.

Notes from a low-carb perspective...
Unlike other books the author does not unnecessarily demonise fat, but seems not ready to make the leap to saying fat can be healthy, and Gretchen still conveys a carbohydrate centric view of diet which was a mild but not unexpected disappointment.

In the end her only concession was saying high fat diets are fine if you exercise, I might argue similarly for carb based diet, but thats still not mainstream opinion. Even if you are keto / paleo there is still plenty to learn from this book. enjoy.

Not sure if I agree with everything she says, but it was a good book

I would recommend that friends read this book rather than try to live through this narration of it.

Filled with great, up-to-date information

The narrator detracted from the book in every possible way. At times she sounds like a computer-generated voice. She gets overly-perky at other times. The sentences are jerky, with pauses coming at odd times. It is difficult to follow the meaning of the sentences sometimes. I could only listen for brief intervals.

I was greatly looking forward to listening to this book, having heard the author on Fresh Air. I had read the first chapter of the book and I truly wish that I had ordered the book, rather than the audiobook. Let this be a lesson to me. From now on, I will listen to the sample before ordering. The narrator totally ruined this book for me. I've never written a review here before, but I feel so strongly about this poor choice of a narrator and I don't want anyone else to waste their money on it. Why couldn't they have let the author read her own book? She sounded great on Fresh Air.

So. Many. Pauses. Her reading style reminds me of a teacher reading to a classroom full of young children and there are so many pauses at sometimes-odd intervals that I found it difficult to connect the first part of many sentences with the last. I really don't think the performer captured the style of the writer on this one.

Yes, but in small doses. Just when I would get so annoyed with the slightly-to-cheerful, breathy, pause-ridden reading that I would think about abandoning the effort altogether, I would learn something interesting enough to convince me to commit to one more chapter.

The material is interesting but it really could have been expressed using fewer words.

The research on exercise physiology has never been summarized so well before. Gretchen Reynolds does an outstanding job of presenting the research in an especially helpful manner. I am a medical doctor & runner who finds her writing enlightening & refreshing, as well as inspiring.

She is comprehensive, yet summarizes exercise physiology research in an extremely helpful manner.

She reads beautifully with appropriate emphasis in her voice.

It would need to be a documentary. "Even very little exercise preserves the brain, as well as the entire body."

I would recommend this book to everyone.

Maybe Ms. Reynolds, but definitely not Ms. Saltus

I can't really judge the content, because the narration was unbearable

She sounds detatched, overly cheerful, and condescending all at once. From the way she reads, including a slow pace and strange emphasis, I get the impression she doesn't fully understand what she is reading, and/or assumes the listener will not. Ugh!

Disappointment that such a poor narrator was chosen.

If this title interests you, get it in print.

There is some important and interesting information here, but the narrator is not a great audiobook reader. So many of the better readers use their voice to help guide the listener to what is most important. This one seems excited about everything, which, ironically, made the book feel monotonous. She might do better with a different kind of book. Until I checked, I thought the book had been read by the author.

I was not impressed the amount of documentation of the book. I do not know what Ms. Reynolds qualifications are. She is obviously a proponent of High Intensity Training.

I was simply not a fan of Ms Saltus's voice quality and she is obviously not medically trained. There were several words that we not pronounced with emphasis on the right syllables.

yes, it is full of reasonable information that reinforces the notion of living healthy.

sure

the performance was fine

yes