Showing titles in Sports Psychology

Coaches search for it. Parents dream of it. Fans love it. Athletes want it. The Playmaker on any sports team possesses it: an elusive, intangible quality combining anticipation, perception, and decision-making skills. This quality raises their game above the competition and allows them to pass when no one else can, anticipate the movement of opponents, and avoid costly mental mistakes, thus holding the team together. Using today's technology and tools, it is now possible to understand, assess, and train this sixth sense rather than just hope it magically appears.

Michael Jordan credits George Mumford with transforming his on-court leadership of the Bulls, helping Jordan lead the team to six NBA championships. Mumford also helped Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom and countless other NBA players turn around their games. A widely respected public speaker and coach, Mumford is sharing his own story and the strategies that have made these athletes into stars in The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance.

Elizabeth Clor wanted nothing more than to qualify for the prestigious Boston Marathon. Dead-set on achieving this goal, she found herself bound up in a vicious cycle of perfectionism and anxiety that thwarted her at every turn, despite making significant gains in her physical abilities over seven years. Boston Bound is the story of how Elizabeth discovered that her own brain was the culprit, and explains the steps she took to completely overhaul her mindset about her running and her life.

It is no secret that more than two-thirds of the shots a golfer makes are shorts ones: putts, chips, and pitches. Long drives may garner applause, but whether a golfer wants to win the Masters or just five bucks from a friend on Saturday morning, it’s the little shots that make the difference. In The Unstoppable Golfer, Dr. Bob Rotella takes the same wisdom and experience that have worked for clients like Davis Love III and David Toms to help you master this special art of short shots and avoid all the frustration out of this increasingly challenging element of the game.

The Unstoppable Athlete (Parent Edition) Competition anxiety and overthinking putting a wrench in your athlete’s chase after victory? Learn ways to help them overcome mental hurdles and embrace true potential. Struggling to find a training plan that doesn’t leave a young competitor impatient? Certain they could make it into the record books if they could just discover their edge? Wishing for a peek inside the minds of greats like LeBron James, Simone Biles, and Lionel Messi? After working with over 5,000 athletes, coach and author Andrew J Simpson has identified exactly what makes a ...

Evoking days gone by when coaches were respected as much for their off-court performances as for their success on the court, Wooden presents the timeless wisdom of legendary basketball coach John Wooden. In honest and telling passages about virtually every aspect of life, Coach shares his personal philosophy on family, achievement, success, and excellence. Raised on a small farm in South-Central Indiana, he offers lessons and wisdom learned throughout his career at UCLA and life as a dedicated husband, father, and teacher.

In this book, authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl present their practical and proven strategy for developing the mental skills needed to achieve peak performance at every level of the game. The theory and applications are illustrated by anecdotes and insights from major and minor league players, who at some point discovered the importance of mastering the inner game in order to play baseball as it should be played. Intended for players, managers, coaches, agents, and administrators as well as fans who want a more in-depth look at the makeup of the complete baseball player.

In this inspirational fable, Jack McKee is a professional golfer who has just suffered through the most humiliating meltdown of his career. After years of struggle, he is ready to quit on his dream. He has convinced himself he doesn't have what it takes to make it on the PGA Tour. In an attempt to figure out why his career has ended up the way it has, Jack reaches out to one of the game's greatest former players for advice. This legendary golfer teaches Jack that the problem is not in his swing, but in his mind.

Several years ago Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sport: what are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula and applied it to thousands of teams across the world from the English Premier League to the NFL. When he was done, he had a list of the 16 most dominant teams ever. At that point he became obsessed with another more complex question: what did these freak teams have in common?

We strive for success, but we are rarely happy. The more we try to win - putting on a brave face for work or family - the more we risk losing ourselves. And even reaching our goals can feel strangely hollow. The culprit? Fear. It makes us anxious, or shameful, or turns us into perfectionists. We pretend to be someone else while aiming for a status that’s never truly satisfying. There is another way. A way to find our true voice, to win on our own terms.

TJ Kostecky's Vision Training, a program that has empowered superstar soccer players around the world to make smarter decisions by expanding their field of vision, offers critical value to anyone who knows that so many life lessons are learned on the playing field. In Eyes Up!, Kostecky lays the groundwork for you to shift your lens by focusing on the 5 Ps—Perceive, Process, Plan, Perform, and Persist. With that expanded perspective, you'll learn seven key principles to transform your life and the lives of others through your leadership.

This is a manual designed to get white belts to competent blue belts in as fast a time as possible. Zen Jiu Jitsu is more a rendition of concepts than techniques. This is the simplest and easiest way to break down and simplify the many and varied ideas, philosophies, and combinations in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu arsenal. For both competition Jiu Jitsu and self-defense Jiu Jitsu, most white belts need to fully understand the concepts, but they can be VERY confusing!

Mental training is a must for high performance both on the field and off. But simply hoping for mental toughness isn't going to build any mind muscles. You need a proven routine of daily exercises to get you where you want to go. 10-Minute Toughness is your personal coach for boosting brainpower and achieving a competitive edge in whatever game you play.

Get your head in the game. Master Your Tennis Game serves up quick mental techniques, tactics, and tips for boosting your overall performance and beating your opponents. Train your brain and be the best tennis player you can be. Concise, fun, and easy to listen to, this book offers 50 practical and actionable methods that show you how to stay calm and concentrate during any tennis game. Even if your rival is tough competition, outsmart them with these targeted mental approaches.

Extreme physical effort, especially when coupled with risk and deprivation, has been known to produce strong effects in people. These range from "runner's high" or being "in the zone" to far more mystical experiences: visions, hallucinations, and superhuman performance. Bone Games is the story of Rob Schultheis' exploration of this strange terrain - the altered states of consciousness that can be an elusive product of extreme sports.

Warren St. John decided to find out why people care so much about the outcomes of games they're not playing in by joining a group where the particulars of the fan psyche would show themselves in sharp relief: the caravan of hundreds of RVs that follow the Alabama Crimson Tide across the South, taking over college towns with a moveable feast of Weber grills, karaoke machines, Igloo coolers, and fast-draining liquor bottles.

John Callahan is a man who has spent his life following his calling as a high school football coach just like his legendary father. But his dream life is suddenly being crushed. Just days before the state championship game, John receives news that his beloved school is declaring bankruptcy and will be shutting down at the end of the year. Everything John has worked his whole life for is being taken away from him. John is now questioning all his past decisions and he's angry at himself for not taking more "practical" opportunities when they came along.

With the world or combat sports put on hold and hundreds of thousands of students training from home in 2020, the mental study of jiujitsu has become more important than ever. In the highly requested third volume of the Danaher Diaries, there are now over 100 musings from the mind of John Danaher from before and during the worldwide pandemic that drove the BJJ community out of gyms and onto various online training programs. Danaher's writings cover the timely to the timeless as he reflects on the current state of jiujitsu and it's unchanging constants.

An alternative to popular positive thinking, this groundbreaking audiobook on golf psychology, reveals the practical mindfulness, techniques, and philosophies that will help you to play your best golf when it matters. Author Jon Adler has worked with touring professionals and amateurs for over ten years, helping them to overcome mental problems and blocks by developing the art of relaxed concentration.

Several years ago, Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: What are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula, then applied it to thousands of teams from leagues all over the world, from the NBA to the English Premier League to Olympic field hockey. When he was done, he had a list of the 16 most dominant teams in history. At that point he became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these freak teams have in common?