12 days until we get the chance to make Heroic history. Check out the latest Heroic Update on Wefunder! (It’s not too late to join the largest crowdfunding ever.)

Try 14 Days Free

Matt Fitzgerald

Matt Fitzgerald

Matt Fitzgerald is a certified sports nutritionist and the author of numerous books on running, triathlon, nutrition, and weight loss. His most recent VeloPress books are Racing Weight Cookbook, Racing Weight Quick Start Guide, RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel, Racing Weight, and The Runner’s Diary. Matt is a regular contributor to Competitor, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Outside, Runner’s World, Bicycling, Running Times, Women’s Running, and other sports and fitness publications. Fitzgerald is a featured coach on Training Peaks, Pear Sports, and Active.com. He is a certified sports nutritionist (CISSN) licensed by the International Society of Sports Nutrition. He lives and trains near San Francisco, California.

PhilosophersNotes on Matt Fitzgerald's Books All PhilosophersNotes

How Bad Do You Want It?

Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

by Matt Fitzgerald

Matt Fitzgerald is a journalist, coach, sports nutritionist, and author of more than 20 books. In this book, he walks us through the different scientific perspectives on how to tap into our latent potential with a deep dive into what’s known as the “Psychobiological Model.” It’s a super-engaging look at some ridiculously inspiring elite athletes and how they mastered their minds to do some extraordinary things. Big Ideas we explore include a quick look at the psycholobiological model (see: sub-title of the book: Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle), the fire walk of life (how far do you get to your wall?), the psychology of pain (brace yourself!), perfectionism (vs. optimalism), the audience effect (eyeballs = better performance), motivation (= the strongest influence) and Steve Prefontaine's approach to crushing it ("Bring it on!").

Packs:

Confidence & Peak Performance

endurance mental training Sports

+1s Inspired by Matt Fitzgerald All +1s

How Bad Do You Want It?
#703

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

Mind Over Obstacles

Matt Fitzgerald wrote a great book called How Bad Do You Want It? It’s a great addition to the sports-as-a-portal-into-enlightenment-mental-toughness series that investigates WHY we stop before we’ve given our absolute best athletic performance. (Of course, as always, the same general wisdom applies ...

+1 inspired by Note: How Bad Do You Want It?

Packs:

Confidence & Peak Performance

confidence Hope Mastery Mental Toughness Mindset Peak Performance tool Work

The Fire Walk of Life
#704

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

How Far Will You Go Today (and Tomorrow and..)

In our last +1, we checked in on how bad you want it and talked about some of your favorite coping strategies to Optimize your relationship to your perception of effort so you can come closer to actualizing your potential and truly giving us all you’ve got before you give up. (That’s an Optimizing mo...

+1 inspired by Note: How Bad Do You Want It?

Packs:

Antifragility & Confidence

Actualization antifragility confidence courage Grit Mental Toughness Work

The Psychology of Pain
#705

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

Want to Endure More Pain? Science Says: Brace Yourself

Continuing our exploration of how to endure the pain of walking over burning (psychological) coals in pursuit of the upper limits of our potential, let’s talk about one of Matt Fitzgerald’s recommended “coping strategies” to Optimize our perception of effort and get closer to that...

+1 inspired by Note: How Bad Do You Want It?

Packs:

Antifragility & Peak Performance

antifragility courage Grit Mental Toughness Mindset Peak Performance Work

The Audience Effect
#707

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

Science Says: Eyeballs Optimize

Concluding our quick tour through How to Walk on Fire (aka How Bad Do You Want It?), let’s talk about one more “coping strategy” for rocking it. It’s called “The Audience Effect.” Short story. Researchers have brought people into a lab (or brought the lab to them!) and tested ...

+1 inspired by Note: How Bad Do You Want It?

Packs:

Confidence & Peak Performance

community confidence Grit Mental Toughness optimus Peak Performance Work

Going thru the Motions
#998

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

vs. Going for Mastery

In our last +1, we chatted about eudaimonology—the study of a good soul. Recall that the ancient Greek philosophers thought that a sense of flourishing and fully expressing the best within ourselves was the summum bonum of life—the highest good. They called this eudaimonia. And, they told us that the...

+1 inspired by Note: How Bad Do You Want It?

Packs:

Modern Hērō & Peak Performance

Areté big-picture Coach Eudaimonia Excellence modern-hero Peak Performance soul Spirit