Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health, & Life

The Biohacking Tome for the Performance Athlete
My latest obsession has been all things biohacking. When Ben Greenfield announced his latest book, Beyond Training, I was over-the-top excited. I have been listening to his podcast since 2009. As a marketer myself, it’s been fun to watch him grow his brand over the past few years.Beyond Training was no disappointment. I am no endurance athlete–which the book is geared towards–though I would consider myself a non-competitive female bodybuilder. Regardless, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in improving performance in all areas of life, not just short-term, sport-specific training.What I liked most about the book:- Easy-to-read. It was not hard to read or understand, and I am no biomechanist or health scientist. There are a few tough terms, but Ben explains them in layman’s language.- Comprehensive. I think Ben touched on just about all aspects of training, recovery, health, longevity, hormones, biohacking and everything in between. It felt like a very organized version of the topics he talks about in his podcasts.- Practical. Ben is human, just like the rest of us. If you ever wondered how he gets in all his biohacking, recovery, training and racing into his daily life, read this book. He shares his daily schedules and how he gets in everything he talks about without getting stressed out.- Resource Lists. Most of us don’t want to dig into scientific journals or spend boatloads of time researching supplements to ensure their efficacy. Ben does it all for you at the end of each chapter. You get a comprehensive list of all the supplements and where to purchase them. The book would have been more than worth purchasing for this aspect alone.- Addicting. This book was very hard to put down. I saved it for reading during my Bulletproof Coffee breaks and before going to bed.What I would have tweaked:- Prioritization. If you are relatively new to biohacking, it’s tough to know exactly which purchases you should save up for first. I would love a price list of all the hacks, how much they cost, and somehow ranked on a scale of 1-10. This would be very helpful for us budgeters, who want to allocate funds monthly to biohacking without breaking the bank.- Expensive. You could spend tens of thousands of dollars on all these hacks, if not more. Start with the stuff that is free or low cost, and work your way up the ladder.- Focus on other athletic types. It’s definitely geared more towards endurance athletes, as those are Ben’s specialty and his own personal passion. He does mention Crossfit a bit, but that’s a bit different than what I do. His book would probably need to be volumes long to include all athletic types, but there are a few questions I had about how his hacks affect physique athletes.- Overwhelming. If you get easily overwhelmed, this book might make you like there’s no possible way for you to do everything, all the time. My advice would be to pick one new “hack” to implement each week. That’s it!In conclusion, I would highly recommend this book to both seasoned and new biohackers. This is one of those books you must have in your biohacking library and as a reference for when you’re ready to try a new hack for enhancing a specific area of your life.

Love the book
As a college baseball player, turned competitive snowboarder, turned triathlete over the period of about 10 years, I found this book to be a deep resource of material for so many areas of life. It’s very easy in the modern age to make scientific claims based on reading abstracts or cherry-picking data, but the principles of Ben’s book and his whole philosophy are sound and demonstrable. As a personal anecdote, I trained exclusively for my first half-Ironman in the methods he advocates and was able to drop a 5:35 without too much of an issue. To put that in context, one year ago I could barely run a mile. So whether or not you put crystal lamps in your room or sleep on a bio-matt, it’s important to remember that the core principles in the book are to help you live a life that makes you capable of performance while feeling, looking and thinking your best. Ben is up there with the Tim Ferriss’ and the Robb Wolf’s of the world, but has his own personal style that is deeply admirable.

First of all, the title of the book says it all. This isn’t your typical “bench twice a week, 4 sets of 10-12 reps…” this books dives deep into healthy living as a whole while obviously holding fitness/nutrition as the main pillars. I purchased the audio book about a month ago and man… there’s way too much information for me to properly unpack without having je actual book handy. When I was younger (only 32 so not that old!) my concept of training was simple. Push as hard as you can and as often as you can. Eat a lot, lots of protein, stretch occasionally, watch your sleep. That was really about it… as I’ve gained age and a certain level of maturity (my wife might disagree but what does she know?!?) I’ve come to understand that fitness and health is truly a marathon. Stop chasing the “easy” stuff, do it properly. I’ve gotten injured just about every year from a mix of marathoning, weight training and martial arts. It sucks. I’ve been digging I to a variety of experts in the fields of circadian rhythm, sleep, nutrition, stretching, running, weight lifting etc. I’d highly recommend that you make Beyond Training an addition to your library, ASAP! You’ll thank me later. Happy reading.

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