Mat Fraser is such an inspiration!! I have been following him for such a long time and I'm so glad I got to deep dive into him and his brain!!!

A good, fast read heading into CrossFit Open season!Features lots of recipes for fans of Feeding the Frasers, and ample illustrations for form, technique and sample workouts that actually translated well on Kindle (not always the case with digital copies). Also good journal prompts for thinking about your training and lifestyle more deeply, since CrossFit can be as much a mental sport as a physical one.

At times reads as arrogance, but he IS the most accomplished CrossFit athlete of all time and in reading the book, I learned that this may actually be one of his coping mechanisms for hyping himself up, never letting the competition gain an insight into his weaknesses, training those weaknesses and embracing the suck that results, and what he refers to as “training through fear.”

My thanks to Netgalley, Mat Fraser & Rodale Books for the advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. This book is great for all the CrossFitters in your life. Former champion and retired CrossFit athlete Matt Fraser walks you through the steps of working harder and becoming a great CrossFit athlete.

This is an informative book for anyone interested in improving their fitness through CrossFit training. I thought this was going to be a memoir, and it turned out to be a nice blend of the author's personal story with training tips and workouts mixed in. If you are serious about using his workouts and recipes, I recommend getting a hard copy (versus the ebook).

This book was amazing. I have to admit, it was not what I expected it to be. I have read a decent amount of CrossFit athletes books and they were more ‘memoirs’ where this is more of a guide for athletes who essentially want to perform at Mat Fraser’s level. I have been doing CrossFit for about 12 years now and I am by no means an elite athlete, I just enjoy the workouts. But I was able to take away a lot of things from this book. IT IS SO SO GOOD. Mat Fraser is a no nonsense kind of guy and he has this presence about him that really stands out from other athletes. This book explains that and more and you have to respect the guy even more because of it. The pressure to continue to perform at the highest level for as long as he did and deliver 5 times in a row is a feat in itself. To retire from the sport and be as humble as he seems to be is just downright impressive. This guy is the real deal. Take the time to read this book. It is so worth it!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.

This book is hot trash.
I want to like it because I like Matt Fraser. I like his legacy and history, I like his personality and his interaction with fans. But this book feels like he wanted to check "write a book" off his Bucket List and threw together a pile of words into a word processor.
Part of the problem is the ebook formatting; it isn't, it isn't formatted. I know an advanced reader copy can be weird like that (I once received a print copy with no pictures, just blocks with "Image to be printed in final copy", that was weird) but this was borderline unreadable. Paragraphs were broken up by images of how to lift weights and recipes for the entire text, which made it hard to keep track of the ideas. I'm assuming this will be fixed before sale, so maybe check a couple reviews before you buy the ebook.
But that ARC-issue aside, this actual content was absurd. Fraser is a trained Olympic lifter. He acknowledges in his book how long it took him to learn the foundations of weight lifting but he used this foundation to build his CrossFit legacy... and he then proceeds to try and teach these complicated lifts through pictures and textboxes? What the cinnamon toast fuck? Why not just say "These lifts are super important, make sure to listen to the coach at your local CrossFit box to get the technique down, that's how I became so mind-blowingly-awesome" or something similar?
The stories about Matt's career and how his hard work paid off aren't bad, though often a little short... like, why bother telling a story in one paragraph just to get a point across when its a book, just tell the full story with context? Well, dumb nuts, this isn't a memoir or storytime, this is a work book and journal. Ok, so its a creative decision, alright. I don't like it but I can acknowledge its a creative thing.
I admit I did like that he calls out CrossFit a couple of times for some of their infamous stupid decisions during competitions, as well as a couple of individuals (he doesn't name names, but I wish he did). The stories about special games and events during his career were overall pretty good, though mostly too short. Things like when CrossFit signed a new sponsor, get familiar with their equipment because they new sponsor will want their stuff used in as many events as possible; cute, relatable, not obvious to an outsider, lots of tidbits like this.
But the recipes, why?
The recipes are sprinkled throughout the book instead of all at the end, which is fine. But I got REAL confused by the context. On the chapter on Strength, there are recipes for Strength... ok, bulking recipes, cool. The chapter on Endurance has recipes for Endurance... so, meals for cutting weight, meals that digest easy on long runs, I can see that, even though these recipes don't really look like there would be good for that, but ok. The chapter on Coordination has recipes for Coordination... what the actual literal fuck is this? Meals to help with eye-hand coordination? Meals to stabilize your rotator cuff during muscle-ups? Did, did you just want to put a handful of recipes at the end of each chapter and so I'm misreading this, or are the recipes organized by something other than their title, "Recipes for Coordination"?
And what if I don't want to use ButcherBox meat? Why is this the only name-brand used? If you're paid to use them, great, say so. But if not, you'd better say why their beef is worth it, yes?
The workouts/training plans are cookie cutter, get-anywhere-online plans. I know Fraser sells personalized training coaching that is probably pretty good, so anything he's giving away for free (sold in the book) isn't going to be great, it will have to be something aimed at the average reader. I get that, but why bother?
Overall, this book isn't awful, but its not great. It's like someone had a checklist of "book but retired athlete" and just walked through it. Stories of being awesome, check. Stories of losing, but using that to become more awesome, check. A handful of oddly impersonal journal prompts, got 'em.
This is a book for Fraser or CrossFit fans, not really outsiders.
**I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It's always going to be fascinating to try and get into the mind of a highly-successful athlete, and Fraser's book is no exception. Part self-help guide, part roadmap to CrossFit success, part confessional, and part recipe book, it's a versatile, entertaining read that doesn't require prior knowledge of the sport, its famous annual Games, or, honestly, even familiarity with Fraser himself.

Those looking for the secrets of his craft will find some pearls hidden in the pages--some worth a laugh in terms of how clever they are--but know that a few aren't just exclusive to winning a competition. One or two could be applied to some of the workouts you do in the gym on a weekly basis.

The real appeal of the book, I find, is that it introduces you to the athlete *outside* of competition, whether that's covering what he'd do in the off-season, how he found his way to the sport to start with, and his thoughts on CrossFit at large. Such stories are compelling and interesting from basically any person who darkens the doorstep of a gym, but, clearly, one would want to know what might separate Fraser from the rest, right?

There's nothing necessarily provocative or tea-spilling to be found, which is pretty cool, as most of the content is focused on providing the reader with technique tutorials, workouts, and surely tasty meal instructions (which are parsed out quite evenly throughout as opposed to being just an appendix).

A recommend from me. Liked it quite a bit.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Rodale Books for the advance read.