The Perfection Point

John Brenkus has spent the last decade studying and popularizing the unique characteristics of the world's greatest athletes. He created the groundbreaking series Fight Science for National Geographic and presents and produces the Emmy Award-winning programme Sport Science on ESPN. He lives in Los Angeles.

What's the fastest a human can run the 100-meter sprint?
What's the longest a human can hold his breath?
What are the limits of human performance?
Until 1954, common wisdom and scientific knowledge considered a sub-four-minute mile an impossible feat for a human. But then Roger Bannister broke that mark, followed quickly by a host of other athletes. Today the world record stands at 3 minutes, 43 seconds, yet even that number doesn't tell the full story of how fast humans can run a mile—records are a mark of how well people have done, not how well they can do.
In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, John Brenkus ventures across the sports world to provide an in-depth look at the absolute limits of human performance. For years, coaches, pundits, and experts have speculated about the extremes of human ability. The Perfection Point finally provides the answers.

“Fascinating...Sure to spark debate in sporting and scientific circles, the book is engagingly written, well argued, and-even when the conclusions seem almost science-fictiony-entirely plausible.” — Booklist (starred review)
“[Brenkus] busts out some Hawking-like equations in an effort to calculate the outer limits of human athletic performance.” — New York Times Book Review
“This stuff is catnip to a sports fan.” — The Week