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Outside Magazine 2003

Bodywork: The Future Athlete
Are You Ready?
The brave new world is coming—fast. With sci-fi fantasy turning into performance-enhancing reality, we separate the hype from breakthroughs you can use.

By Brian Alexander


	ARM YOURSELF: In the future, you will be able to upgrade worn-out appendages. (photograph by Dan Winters)

Welcome to 2014. A bevy of technological innovations have, among other things, made it possible to nail your most efficient swimming stroke, restore your injured joints to full strength in weeks instead of months, and improve your hand-eye coordination to Jason Kidd levels. And if you're really lucky, the "muscle suit"—an exoskeleton body glove that can make you 200 percent stronger—will be ready for human testing.

Yeah we know: It all sounds like a comic-book pipe dream, but each of these developments is in the works, as we learned by scouring research labs at NASA, the Pentagon, and major universities. What follows is a sneak peek at six cutting-edge technologies that will lead cooler gear, make you a better athlete, and keep a body going long past its natural prime.

Next Page: Micromanaged Metabolism

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