For the record, this book is more of an encyclopedia than a single subject book. This is an excellent resource for a lot of areas around performance and health. 

Personally, I struggle with these types of books. My general feeling is that these types of books come out as a watered-down version of really high level topics. Alternatively, it is a great way to be exposed to a lot of topics. So there are pluses and minuses to these styles, as there are with anything. 

I would say Greenfield did a tremendous job of getting granular on some pretty heavy subjects. Greenfield’s strength, in my opinion, would be the ‘hacking’ side of things. He explores a general health or performance aspect to a degree that allows for optimization. This allows for pushing the boundaries, but also gives a healthy perspective on basic things that we should be doing with more conscious thought. 

One of the biggest values this book touched upon was a very wide variety of topics related to performance. Topics included health, brain function, strength, endurance, detoxification, etc. A lot of the topics went very deep which is impressive when you have this range of topics to review. The other other part that was of great value was the suggested resources to continue learning. The interaction with the website is in my opinion the next wave of resources in the future. 

The struggle with a book like this is when they dive into subjects that are within my personal domain and can tarnish the value. The strength training section was good, nothing I could disagree with, but left a lot of things that could be improved. It would be a tall order to say a 600 page book covering such a range of topics could nail the section that I would consider myself an expert. 

One the areas I would have liked to be different would be a more unbiased view in regards to strength training. On one hand, it was impressive to get a peak under the hood of how Greenfield utilized his research and testing (genetics specifically) to develop his training program. I would have liked to have seen a less specific program. His program focussed on compound bilateral lifts combined with HIIT training. It most certainly is not the worst advice, but there is definitively more that people should be focussed on in regards to a holistic training program. 

The area Greenfield mentioned was preference to training from home or outdoors rather than a big box gym. At first I was skeptical; it seemed like convenient logic. But the rationale was based on high EMF (electromagnetic frequencies) from the higher number of cardiovascular machines, screens, wifi, and cell phones in use there. This can be amplified by poor air quality, overly sanitized or in some cases under-sanitized work areas (mold and bacteria), and lack of quality air circulation. The final area that would be of significance would be excess blue light from screens and fluorescent lighting. 

Although I generally believe that people should train with other people, these are fair points. The downsides of training in a commercial gym could be offset by training in a smaller full print or boutique gym. Just inventory my business – plenty of natural light, tons of circulation, and no machine based cardiovascular equipment. The point is that I definitely paused and thought as to if my business was avoiding some unnecessary problems. 

The take home from this book is that it is Pandora’s box in regards to training and optimization. Lots to pull from, lots to dive into, lots to think about.