Good to Go: How to Eat, Sleep and Rest Like a Champion

Description

All athletes from Olympians to weekend warriors must toe the line between training and recovery to maximize the benefits of workouts and reach optimal performance. For the longest time, coaches and training manuals have emphasized training. But now sports science is homing in on an even more fundamental part: recovery. The aim of training is to force the body to adapt to stress, and this adaptation is what makes you fitter and better able to perform. But to adapt, you need to optimize recovery too. You only benefit from training that you can recover from, and the ability to recover determines how much training your body can handle. Recovery, the science shows, is a crucial component of exercise training and it's starting to look like it may be the most important one. Good to Go assesses the science and claims of a wide variety of recovery methods and potions, and debunks the junk to give a clear picture of what we should actually be doing to look after our bodies better between exercising.

Christie Aschwanden is the lead writer for science at FiveThirtyEight and health columnist for the Washington Post. She's also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, a contributing editor for Runner's World and a contributing writer for Bicycling. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including Discover, Slate, Proto, Consumer Reports, New Scientist, More, Men's Journal, NPR.org, Smithsonian and O, the Oprah Magazine. A lifetime athlete, Ashwanden has raced in Europe and North America on the team Rossignol Nordic ski-racing squad.

Christie Aschwanden is simply one of the best science writers in the world. Whether you're striving for a personal best or simply wondering about that post-workout beer, Good to Go is the definitive tour through a bewildering jungle of scientific (and pseudo-scientific) claims that comprise a multi-billion dollar recovery industry. -- David Epstein, bestselling author of The Sports Gene Recovery is the great athletic obsession of our time. But how much do we really understand about it? Christie Aschwanden cuts through the hype to explore the topic with nuance, humor, and - most important - scientific rigor. The result is a much-needed reappraisal of how we should think about recovery, making Good to Go the most important book about training you'll read this year. -- Alex Hutchinson, bestselling author of Endure This authoritative, delightful, and much-needed book slices through the hype around athletic recovery, and will surely cement Christie Aschwanden's status as one of the world's top science writers. Even if you've never run a race in your life, you'll sprint through it. I laughed a lot, and learned even more. -- Ed Yong, bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes 'A fascinating, whirlwind investigation into recovery techniques. The book offers a useful introduction to how scientific research works - and why, in sports science, it often doesn't. Such insights make Good to Go appealing to more than just gym rats and weekend warriors. It's for anyone who wonders how scientific studies happen, and how they influence the claims on products found in grocery stores and athletic stores alike.' * Science News * Deeply researched and artfully written. . . a must-read for all athletes, from the professional to the weekend warrior. * The Wall Street Journal * As buzzy as recovery is among athletes right now, the question of how to best adapt to and benefit from training is still fraught with confusion...Christie Aschwanden offers much-needed clarity on the subject in Good to Go. * Runner's World *