Description: Join us on today’s show with Andrew Magness, a renaissance man who is a father, husband, trained physicist, former high school teacher, race director, climber, surfer, writer, endurance junkie, conservationist, philosopher, critical thinker, apocophiliac, and an avid neologist, to name a few.

He learned the art of suffering from a decade long love affair with climbing and mountaineering that started during his university years. It was a spectacular but at times abusive relationship, resulting in three of his four broken bones (the other was rollerblading!), but left him with a healthy and perhaps rare sense of what his mental and physical limits actually were.

This knowledge has served him well over the more recent decade when he’s turned his affections towards the slightly more forgiving mistress of endurance racing. During that time, he’s participated in a range of events from marathon swims to ultra-distance winter bike rides to 10-day adventure races. His book, UltraMental, explores the mental components of such undertakings and describes how he has effectively used extreme low volume training to approach some of the hardest endurance events in the world.

On today’s show, Andrew tackles the exciting evolution of endurance training and the new perspectives that are maximizing results and minimizing health risks. So if you have any interest in training less but gaining more, then this is the show for you.

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Show Notes:

• What kind of events does Andrew get involved in?  What is adventure racing? [00:01:17]
• What is the drive behind what he does? What got him into something like a 4-day race? [00:07:09]
• What is the new approach to endurance training that Andrew has discovered after confronting trouble in his own life? [00:11:17]
• Andrew found that deviating from the conventional methods of training time actually improved his time in races. How did he do it? [00:15:27]
• Mark has said, after reading Andrew’s book, that the world of endurance training is on the verge of an evolution. [00:23:06]
• What is Andrew’s 80-20 rule in training? [00:25:39]
• The critical mental components involved in high intensity training. [00:32:21]
• How does high intensity work translate into endurance? [00:39:42]
• How are hormones involved in a high intensity life? [00:43:47]
• How long has Andrew been doing his modified form of training? [00:46:37]
• Are fitness and workouts the same thing? [00:48:12]
• The website Ultramentalbook.com has a free guide for people who want to start Andrew’s approach to training. [00:49:37]
• You have to be realistic about the goals you set in your life as an athlete—about the time
• you can divide between your training and your relationships. [00:50:52]

Selected Links from the Episode:
Primal Endurance
The Paleo Thyroid Solution
Ultramental

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