Athlete Science

“Up to Speed is a roadmap and toolbox for athletes of all ages. Every coach should read it and discuss it with their athletes. I wish I had been able to read this book while I was competing.” —Kara Goucher, Olympic long-distance runner and author of The Longest Race How the latest science...

Moses and Troy Horne here. Your mental-toughness guides! We know exactly how you feel. If you are reading this, you probably have a young athlete who struggles with in-game stress and maybe even sports performance anxiety. That is why this version was mostly written by Moses. As of the time of the writing of this book, Moses Horne is a 15-year-old elite athlete who can talk directly about the triumphs and struggles of working toward being mentally tough. This is the only book that I know of with input from an actual young athlete.

Transform your respiratory system into a highly trainable tool to unlock elite endurance and rapid athletic recovery. Whether you are commuting to the gym or warming up for competition, optimizing oxygen delivery creates intense, focused resilience. Stop treating your respiration as an automatic...

The New York Times bestseller – with a new afterword about early specialization in youth sports – from the author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic...

The Athlete’s Gut is an in-depth look at a system that plagues many athletes. This guide offers a much-needed resource for troubleshooting GI problems. The majority of endurance athletes suffer from some kind of gut problem during training and competition. Symptoms like nausea, cramping...

PROBLEM: Generic high-carb meal plans and ultra-processed sports products leave many athletes fatigued, inflamed and stuck at the same race times. AGITATION: Studies from 2022-2025 confirm that metabolic inflexibility—your inability to switch smoothly between fat and carbohydrate—raises injury risk, slows recovery and causes the GI distress that ruins big-event days. SOLUTION: Evolutionary Nutrition for Athletes shows you how to align ancestral food choices with modern training loads so you can power longer sessions, recover faster and extend your athletic lifespan. ✅ Macronutrient ...

From the #1 bestselling author of Grit, a new book that reveals the hidden power of situations and how you can shape them to bring out your best. In Angela Duckworth’s first book, she showed that a common denominator of successful strivers is a blend of passion and perseverance she dubbed...

READ BY ACTOR GEORGE NEWBERN NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Franklin Foer’s dark and witty tale of the soccer world reveals the meaning of globalization in all its joys and horrors.”—Robert Kagan Now available in audio, just in time for the 2026 World Cup in North America, the bestselling sports...

Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind meets Christopher McDougall's Born to Run in this immersive, investigative look at the hidden culture of cannabis use among elite athletes (as well as weekend warriors)--and the surprising emerging science behind the elusive, exhilarating "runner's high"...

Essentials of Exercise & Sport Nutrition: Science to Practice – Second Edition provides an updated evidence-based overview of the science and practice of sports and active nutrition, physical and cognitive performance enhancement, weight management, and body composition optimization for beginners and athletes. This book serves as a foundational book for undergraduate and graduate sports nutrition classes and professionals in the field who work with athletes and clients to optimize performance through exercise training, diet interventions, nutrient timing, and evidence-based dietary ...

Until now, sport training has been more witchcraft than science. Traditional coaching is based on copying recipes written in old books, with little science and more answers than questions. Traditional physiology, also marked by reductionism and the idea that the organism works like a machine, gives us incomplete and unsatisfactory answers that are inadequate when we leave the theoretical world to go to the real world. In this book, we approach the world of training from the perspective of Complex Systems, which will offer us a new vision of the world, health and organisms. In this book, you...

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O'Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses.

In recent years "recovery" has become a sports and fitness buzzword. Anyone who works out or competes at any level is bombarded with the latest recovery products and services: from drinks and shakes to compression sleeves, foam rollers, electrical muscle stimulators, and sleep trackers. In Good to Go, acclaimed FiveThirtyEight science writer Christie Aschwanden takes listeners on an entertaining and enlightening tour through this strange world.

Born to Run meets Why We Swim and Breath in a globe-spanning work of immersive narrative nonfiction that dives into the hidden world of cold water plunging and swimming—and what it reveals about the human body, mind, and need for connection. "Mesmerizing...I loved this book.” —Adam Grant...

“This book doesn’t just teach you to breathe, it guides you back to the wisdom of your own body.” — Lee Holden, American TV Personality & Bestselling Author of Ready, Set, Slow! Discover the truth about your breathing you didn’t know you were getting wrong... Modern breathwork is everywhere, but what if your breathing is broken? No cold plunge, no breath hold, and no spiritual awakening can fix that. Dr. David Deppeler has spent decades helping everyone from elite athletes to anxious overthinkers retrain their breath and their bodies for real, lasting change. In this smart, ...

This program is read by the author. Dr. Belisa Vranich's ground-breaking second audiobook teaches the science, techniques, and benefits of breathing correctly and efficiently for warriors in all walks of life. People are less in touch with their bodies—and especially their breathing—than...

The Mental Toughness Playbook bridges the gap between complex psychological concepts and practical application for developing minds. Through simple yet powerful techniques, including mindfulness, visualization, and strategic self-talk, young athletes learn to conquer pregame nerves, bounce back from setbacks, and build unshakeable resilience that extends far beyond the scoreboard.

A former college president and bestselling author offers leadership lessons for today’s troubled campuses. “Peril and Promise is both a practical guide and a moral compass, urging those in leadership roles to lead not from fear but from purpose.” ―Forbes Higher education is under...

Why have athletes of African descent dominated sprinting for generations? Why have Black athletes transformed basketball, boxing, and American football? Why has Jamaica produced so many world-class sprinters despite its small population? Why do East African runners dominate marathon racing? And if Black athletes are naturally superior, why don't they dominate soccer, skiing, ice hockey, and other winter sports? These questions have sparked debate for decades among sports fans, scientists, coaches, journalists, and scholars. Yet few discussions move beyond stereotypes, assumptions, or ...

You have tracked every mile, weighed every gram of protein, and invested in recovery tools that line the corner of your training room. But if adaptation keeps stalling, injuries keep accumulating, and your body never quite delivers what your training should have built, there is one variable almost certainly being shortchanged. Sleep is not the passive gap between sessions. It is the most powerful physiological process available to an athlete, and it is the one recovery tool that determines how much of your training you actually keep. Inside this book, readers will learn how to: Train harder...