Peak

Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. —MUHAMMAD ALI

In short, REM sleep enhances our emotional intelligence, a key piece of the puzzle in the evolution of humans.

Expert-generalists also tend to connect more effectively with people, and most important, connect with people from different groups. This style is referred to as having an “open network” and has been cited as the number one predictor of career success.

The problem today is the significant loss of gut bacteria diversity, which experts believe is due to our highly processed diets, lack of physical movement, heightened stress levels, and modern environments.

The other major causes of illness in athletes at the World Championships were exercise-induced dehydration, GI disturbances (12 percent and 10 percent, respectively),

At the same time, it’s incredible to think they could potentially unlock an extra 2–5 percent of performance gains by simply getting more rest.

by simply adding more relaxing activities into their lives: breath work, light stretching, meditation, float tanks, and the like. Anything to increase parasympathetic activity can help address the root cause of sympathetic dominance and yield impressive results for a dysfunctional gut.

Today, research shows athletes who fail to complete 80 percent of their training sessions do not hit their performance goals.

load, making it a highly useful tool for coaches.17 Using a daily wellness score, athletes are asked to rate their subjective feelings on a scale of 1–5 for the following five factors: fatigue, sleep quality, general muscle soreness, stress levels, and mood.