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 25 practical lessons 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 pillars of mastery:

Motivation: How You Feel
Learning: What to Do
Understanding: Why It Works
Individuation: How It Works for You
Challenge: How to Push Your Limits

Drawing lessons from sports, history, psychology, and science, Fitzgerald shakes up the traditional paradigm of athlete development with thought-provoking ideas and valuable practices. 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 LEARNING
6 Best Practices
7 Consider the Source
8 Plan in Pencil
9 Deliberate Practice
10 Extended Health

III UNDERSTANDING
11 First Things First
12 But How Do You Feel?
13 Hurry Up and Wait
14 Keep It Simple, Stupid
15 Hot and Cold

IV INDIVIDUATION
16 Choose Your Adventure
17 Disrupt Complacency
18 Advance in a Different Direction
19 Train in Style
20 Be a Fox

V CHALLENGE
21 Keep It Real
22 Unsexy Restraint
23 Personal Best
24 What's Your Pebble?
25 More with Less

Author: Matt Fitzgerald
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 03/25/2025
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9798990795808

About the Author
Matt Fitzgerald is an acclaimed endurance sports author, coach, and nutritionist. His many books include The Comeback Quotient, 80/20 Running, and Pain & Performance. Matt has also written for a number of leading sports and fitness publications, including Runner's World and Triathlete, and for popular websites such as outsideonline.com and nbcnews.com. Matt is cofounder of 80/20 Endurance, the world's premier endurance sports training brand, and creator of Dream Run Camp, a pro-style residential training camp for runners of all abilities based in Flagstaff, Arizona. He also codirects the Coaches of Color Initiative, a nonprofit program that seeks to improve diversity in endurance coaching. A lifelong endurance athlete, Matt speaks frequently at events throughout the United States and internationally.