The Ascent Journal

Apple Inc. made headlines last week with the announcement several new products that will be forthcoming, including the Apple Watch Series 12. Among the bold claims backing the new Apple Watch, Apple notes that the Series 12 offers “the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable.” They even included a link to a new company white paper to substantiate their claim. I read the study, and there are a few details to keep in mind when we evaluate how true Apple's superlative cla

Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run is the penultimate one hundred mile trail running race in the United States. For non-elites, the WSER lottery can consume athletes’ hopes for close to a decade before their name is drawn. Once the hurdle of entry is cleared, suddenly runners are left with the burning question: “How am I going to finish this thing?” A new analysis examines more than 15 years of finisher data to help us understand how it’s done.

Running shoe research is a black box to some degree. Researchers put the shoe on a runner’s foot and have them run. Then, we measure some things while they run. In one sense, you can still argue that the results of this kind of research is useful and well controlled. Through a different lens, by changing the shoe, we’ve changed several things at once. A recent paper proposes one way to think more clearly about what might be going on inside the black box.

The evidence has been compounding for decades, and it hasn’t slowed down. Muscles matter. Human muscle mass has been shown to play a massive role not just in strength in the gym, but in healthy aging, prediction of lifespan, and regulation of key features of metabolism, like blood sugar. A new study in Nature offers greater clarity as to whether or not the New Year’s resolution we made in January, to do more strength training, will still have done us any good by the time we m

The recent work of Tizian Scharl and his team help clarify how running shoes affect female running form. Their 2024 paper is a one-hundred-and-seventeen page clinic on the form changes running shoes cause for female runners.

The implicit assumption is that all of those mitochondria are created equal. That’s where a new paper by Mikael Flockhart and colleagues at the Swedish School of Sports and Health Science in Stockholm picks up. If not all mitochondria are the same, then what exactly do the bad ones look like, and how do we avoid them?

Is your training app running the show? “All models are wrong. Some are useful.” -George Box It used to be that we decided for ourselves how we were doing. I still remember my old manual training log where I’d enter my mileage for the day and a quick thought about how it went. But the roles have reversed. If training apps and sports watches are the new training logs, then it seems more like the training log is telling us how we’re doing instead. There’s a common favorite way t

Early in my coaching career, I came across this idea that has sort of lurked in the shadows of the coaching world for decades: while science is humming along providing rigorous data on what will move the needle on an athlete’s performance, coaches are the innovators. The narrative goes “Science will likely take 10-20 more years to explain why the practices coaches are using today are effective.” The first 2 months of my masters work involved recalibrating my understanding of

One of the things that drove me to coaching years ago was how the learning process has no end. New ideas, perspectives, and data are always emerging. Along that grain, I know it's been a good year when I feel like I see the world in a slightly different light than when the year started. I found that these titles added perspective. Perhaps next year one or two of them can widen yours as well. Here's our 2025 book list.

What athletes need to know about the new ingredients in the Awesome Sauce energy gel by Spring Energy.

An explanation of how much road running and trail running fitness translate to one another.

If you’ve struggled to create a strength training habit because you’re not sure what you stand to gain from it, this article is for you.

A comprehensive guide to fueling your best long distance running performances.

How endurance athletes can avoid performance plateaus and love their sport more.

What some of the latest developments in running footwear might mean for all of our success in the sport. I grew up with the barefoot...

How is it that endurance athletes get faster and go farther? Many of us are familiar with the primary building blocks of an endurance...