Chasing Mastery: 25 Lessons to Cultivate Your Full Potential in Endurance Sports

There's more to endurance performance than training. Best-selling author and coach Matt Fitzgerald gives athletes five keys to unlock their true potential and master their sport.

Every athlete's pursuit of performance will eventually become a game of diminishing returns. Matt Fitzgerald invites endurance athletes to focus on mastery, and performance will follow.

The path to mastery goes well beyond an athlete's training program and stretches beyond the realm of sport. The end goal is for the athlete to realize their full potential, which will elevate their experience both in their sport and the rest of life.

Fitzgerald identifies five foundational aspects of mastery:

Motivation: How You Feel
Knowledge: What to Do
Understanding: Why It Works
Assimilation: How It Works for You
Challenge: How to Keep Pushing Your Limits

Drawing lessons from history, literature, and science, Fitzgerald shakes up the traditional paradigm of athlete development with thought-provoking ideas and valuable practices on each ambition. Chasing Mastery is a springboard for athletes of all ages and abilities to engage their true potential.

Table of Contents

I MOTIVATION
1 Love Wins
2 Die Running
3 Hard Fun
4 Everything Matters
5 Fear Not

II KNOWLEDGE
6 Best Practices
7 Consider the Source
8 Plan in Pencil
9 Deliberate Practice
10 Extended Health

III UNDERSTAND
11 First Things First
12 But How Do You Feel?
13 Hurry Up and Wait
14 Bombs and Bullseyes
15 Hot and Cold

IV ASSIMILATE
16 Choose Your Own Adventure
17 Disrupting Complacency
18 Advancing in a Different Direction
19 Train in Style
20 Hedgehogs Are Slow

V CHALLENGE
21 Keeping It Real
22 Unsexy Restraint
23 Personal Best
24 Oh Good, It’s Raining!
25 More with Less