Book One in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” connects you with your innate wisdom as an endurance athlete. It guides you to expand your training focus beyond aerobic capacity so you can “hack” your performance potential at any age without “banging your head against the Aerobic Wall”.
So, what is the secret behind this hack? Shane “Zenman” Eversfield, founder of Kaizen-durance, and author of this book series calls it “kinetic intelligence”.
Kaizen-durance is founded on the fledgling science of neural fitness. Neural fitness is the strength of your mind-body connection. Neural fitness enables you to hack your performance potential at any age.
Finesse is stronger than force. Through Kaizen-durance, you can successfully cultivate the wisdom and mastery of the lifetime athlete. That wisdom is your Kinetic Intelligence – “K I”
Far more potent than your athletic accolades: You can also use your endurance training to develop and strengthen kaizen skills to pursue mastery and to experience brilliance in every area of your life.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Start here: Book One: “An Introduction to Kaizen-durance: Hacking Your Performance Potential at Any Age”
Order Book One here.
Book Two in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” explores a radical expansion beyond the emphasis of metabolic capacity as the basis for endurance fitness and performance.
For decades, exercise physiology has honed the science of metabolic training (also known as aerobic system training) to precision methods and mathematical formulas that can be implemented for peak performance. So, why do we need to expand beyond this expertise if we want to hack personal performance potential?
Metabolic capacity diminishes with age. It’s a losing battle, no matter how vigilant and disciplined we are! After the age of 25, VO2max declines each year. Our typical response is to resist that decline – what “Zenman” calls “Banging your head against the Aerobic Wall”. Where is the satisfaction or the sanity in that?
Book Two boldly explores a potential of exercise physiology that has seen very little scientific attention at all – the fledgling science of neural fitness. Eversfield has devoted the past four decades to the study of neural fitness and its application to endurance sports. Training neural fitness is the secret to a successful “Kinetic Intelligence Hack”.
If there so much promise in neural fitness, why has it been ignored for so long? Conventional science does not yet know how to measure and quantify neural activity and fitness. It’s still a mystery!! Undeterred by this quandary, Eversfield has conducted decades of intensive personal exploration and sensation-based research, that he presents in Kaizen-durance Book Two, “Neural Fitness: Foundation of the K I Hack”.
Discover for the first time how your neural system powers your endurance fitness so you can hack your personal performance potential. Neural training goes beyond the conventional endurance methods of body conditioning. The essence of the KI Hack is body-mind training. Forget the old adage “mind over matter”. Mastery and brilliance arise through “mind IN matter”.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Book Two: “Neural Fitness: Foundation of the K I Hack”
Order Book Two here.
Book Three in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” explores the mind element of “mind IN matter”. Conventional endurance training targets the metabolic energy systems of the body. Conventional sports psychology focuses on training mental preparation and coping skills. However, there is a disconnect between these two. Our “K I Hack” requires a continuous and seamless fusion of body and mind for kinetic intelligence.
Neural fitness creates a strong body-mind fusion. After all, our neural network wires together brain and body. It connects thought and intent, with action and balance. If our minds are distracted and our awareness is vague, our balance is off and our actions are disabled. To hack our performance potential, we must target neural fitness as we train aerobic fitness.
Neural fitness requires more than a strong and durable body; it requires a highly functional mind. We must train mindful endurance with the same rigor and precision that we train physical endurance. We can train these two simultaneously, with no additional time or equipment required. Expanding our performance scope to include mindfulness skills training does not compromise physical endurance training. It enhances it.
In this book, Eversfield introduces the Nine Attitudes of Mindfulness, identified by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Honoring Kabat-Zinn’s wisdom, Zenman presents each of them in way that is clear, relevant and trainable for the endurance athlete.
With over four decades of deep T’ai Chi practice every day, he has extensive experience with the essence of each of the nine Attitudes as it relates to precise movement, athletic performance and – more importantly – as it relates to overall health and well-being. In this book, he provides guidance and insight on how to train each of these Attitudes through the practice of mindful movement during every endurance training session.
Every moment of our lives – every relationship, every challenge and task – offers us an opportunity to train and master these nine skills. In this book you will discover how to recognize and embrace these opportunities moment-to-moment in your daily life outside of your endurance training. Beyond aerobic fitness, you will discover that you are successfully training life fitness.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Book Three: “De-Mystifying the KI Hack: Mindfulness Skills Training”
Order Book Three here.
Book Four in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” delves into the specifics of structuring and executing neurally-based training for endurance athletes – at any age, at any fitness or experience level. Neurally-based training sessions are the day-by-day process of hacking your athletic performance potential. Practiced mindfully, the benefits of neural training also crossover to affect and improve your function and performance in every area of life, including relationships and occupation.
Through Kaizen-durance, we can transform aerobic fitness into life fitness. Daily neural endurance training is the essence of our practice for lifelong improvement as athletes. It is also effective to cultivate health, brilliance and versatility as human beings.
Books Two and Three have prepared us with these essentials for neural training:
– Book Two provided us with an embodied physiological experience and practical comprehension of (the elements of and mechanisms for) neural fitness – including neural function and neural strength
– Book Three explored specific mindfulness skills and offered guidance for training and developing these vital skills. (Given that neural function is a fusion of body and mind, these mindfulness skills are essential. A strong body is ineffective when it is wired to an untrained mind.)
We don’t need to ignore or compromise conventional metabolic training to embrace and implement neural training. These two processes can be compatible, even as our focus changes to prioritize neural training over metabolic. For both approaches, the training objectives are still endurance, strength and speed. We can structure sessions that will improve both metabolic and neural fitness simultaneously. However, when we target neural training, we also accelerate kinetic intelligence.
In this book, Zenman shares his decades of experience with neural training and highly efficient technique: Go farther and faster with less energy, less risk of injury, faster recovery and more enjoyment. Neural training is the endurance hack.
He offers guidelines for designing and structuring neural training sessions to focus on endurance, strength, speed, recovery, and kinetic intelligence. This book includes drills and exercises to improve neuromuscular function and performance for swim, bike and run. It is important to note that Books 2 and 3 are vital pre-requisites to Book 4.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Book Four: “Neural Training: Putting the KI Hack into Your Daily Workouts”.
Order Book Four here.
Book Five in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” explores a system of self-guidance and orientation for navigating daily life – what “Zenman” calls our “GPS for Life”.
The international Global Positioning System (GPS) has changed the way we navigate our physical environment. Now, with the advent of devices small enough to wear on our wrists and mount on our bikes, it has also significantly enhanced our methods of endurance training and racing.
GPS devices inform us about location, speed and distance traveled. When this information is interfaced with a map, our devices can direct us to our destination. Many of us would be lost without our GPS units.
There is another far more powerful “GPS” that can enable each of us to navigate every moment of our lives so we can move through life with more balance, harmony and functionality. Let’s call it our “GPS for Life”. This internal GPS provides moment-to-moment guidance to make empowering and enabling choices as we navigate our daily lives – including our relationships, occupation, athletic training, even the most significant and monumental life-changing decisions each of us must face.
Each individual is equally endowed with the resources and potential to tap this GPS for Life – regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, religion, income, etc. Our GPS for Life doesn’t require any external device, or rely on modern technology. It’s free and equally accessible to all of us.
GPS uses a process called “triangulation”: The device on your wrist or in your car monitors signals sent from three of the many GPS satellites positioned in space. By comparing these three selected signals, your GPS unit can determine your current location, direction of travel, and speed.
Our “GPS for Life” also functions through triangulation. However this triangulation involves three distinct aspects of consciousness – generally referred to as Body, Heart and Mind. These three aspects of consciousness resonate throughout the universe, permeating all forms of matter and energy.
Beyond race performances, athletes often site enhanced clarity, functionality and a sense of flow in their daily lives as strong motivators for endurance training. This is a significant element of maximizing return on our aerobic investment. With training, we can strengthen the fitness of these three aspects of consciousness so that we can draw upon them equally for accurate triangulation.
Building life fitness occurs through the same processes as building aerobic fitness, and follows the same universal laws and principles. This means we can train aerobic fitness and life fitness simultaneously. All we have to do is learn to use our GPS for Life.
When you purchase a new GPS device, it comes with an instruction manual. Similar to our external GPS devices, this internal GPS for Life also requires setup and calibration, and knowledge of how to interpret and respond to the data that is displayed.
In Book Five, Eversfield offers a clear and accessible guide for the endurance athlete on how to use this GPS for Life, and how get the most benefit from it. Triangulation is essential for hacking our performance potential in any and every area of our lives.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Book Five: “The Triangulation Hack: Your GPS for Life”.
Book Five available soon.
Book Six in the series “Kaizen-durance, Your Aerobic Path to Mastery” explores the ultimate hack for peak performance: Flow State. Flow state has been the subject of many studies and books, most notably the modern classic “Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When we can orchestrate this flow state, we can enjoy peak and direct experience that leads to brilliant performance, supreme satisfaction, and genuine happiness.
Another definition for flow state is sustained brilliance. In this book, Eversfield presents the culmination of kaizen – the experience of brilliance, ease and flow in any and every moment of our lives. The five books leading to this final offering in the series provide guidance and insight for using endurance training (and racing) as a viable mindfulness practice to arrive with maximum potential for the flow state of sustained brilliance in any and every moment of our lives.
There are sequential stages – associated with specific neuro-chemical states and specific brain-wave states – that comprise flow state. Our practice of kaizen-durance provides us with daily opportunities to orchestrate this sequence. As we gain proficiency and experience with orchestrating these in our training and our racing, we discover the opportunity and the skill to orchestrate flow state during even the most mundane experiences of our daily lives.
In Book Six, “Zenman” offers guidance for training our flow skills while we are conducting our endurance training sessions. He reveals how racing provides us with a challenging opportunity to actuate sustained brilliance on higher levels that we can then actuate in our ordinary and less “significant” moments.
Most vital of all, Eversfield guides us to be vigilant so we can recognize and embrace the opportunity that is arising in each moment to orchestrate sustained brilliance in our lives, and in the lives of those around us. Brilliance is nothing if it is not shared.
Maximize return on your aerobic investment, for a lifetime. Book Six: Flow State: “The Ultimate Hack for Mastery”.
Kaizen-durance® 