Showing titles in Sports Psychology

The Playmaker on any team makes the right decision at the right time, almost every time. Despite the constraints of time, tactics, and rules, the best players combine their vision and skills with razor-sharp decision accuracy for an unstoppable competitive advantage. As a follow-up to The Playmaker’s Advantage, their best-selling guide for athletes, coaches, and parents, Daniel Peterson and Dr. Leonard Zaichkowsky now focus on the split-second decision-making process that produces both clutch plays and mental mistakes.

Fearful thinking is one of the most destructive thought patterns you can fall into. Whenever you find yourself worrying, procrastinating, or questioning your potential—FEAR is getting the best of you. In this inspirational fable, Mickey McGavin is a pro boxer struggling to overcome the fears that are holding him back—in the ring and in life. With the help of a former world champion who becomes his trainer and mentor, McGavin learns he must defeat the fears in his mind before he can defeat his opponents in the ring.

Gary Bloom is a sports psychotherapist. He works with footballers, cricketers, rugby players, jockeys, Olympians and many other athletes besides. They might seem like superheroes on the pitch, but in the dressing room they're just like anybody else, subject to the same emotional pressures that affect us all. In Keeping Your Head in the Game we peer into this highly confidential world.

Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.

In any high-pressure environment, from special operations to the operating theatre, you can divide people into two groups—those whose performance is controlled from the outside in and those who control their performance from the inside out. Inside Out is about your ability to achieve incredible things on the outside by paying attention to what's on the inside.

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.

Being able to prevail over obstacles and opponents gives you a boost in confidence that carries over to your school and personal life, improving your performance in those areas as well. Unfortunately, you can’t win all the time. Sometimes, you have a bad day, or you simply get outplayed, and you end up doubting yourself and your athletic abilities. These feelings of worry, uncertainty, fear, doubt, or anxiety will make it difficult for you to perform consistently well. But with time, some effort, and the right knowledge, you can take control of your confidence.

The power to become better, greater, more refined versions of ourselves is something that each one of us possesses. It is a power with which we are born, like infinite gold inside the equally infinite mine shafts that are our minds. Now, to get at that gold - there is the rub. Since time immemorial people have struggled to manage the darkness within themselves. How do we reckon our possibilities with our capabilities? How do we overcome the difficulties within? How do we shake off the invisible sandbags that seem to drag us down and run faster, jump higher, push harder?

The penalty shootout is the most intense drama in sport. The anxious wait, the building dread, the lonely, heavy-legged walk towards the penalty spot. One kick while the world holds its breath. Even the most casual observers cannot escape the nerve-wracking suspense. What happens to a footballer's brain and body in these heart-pounding moments of pressure? Why do some thrive while others choke? In this ground-breaking book, sport psychology Professor Geir Jordet dissects each agonising element of the shootout's duel and the universal human stress mechanisms that it triggers and illuminates.

Beyond the Skills and Drills: The Keys to Successfully Coaching Youth Sports is a how-to book. That is, how do volunteer coaches create the best possible sporting experience for our kids? This book redefines the term coach and looks at youth coaching from a teaching perspective. Bill addresses the pre-season, in-season, and post-season activities necessary to create the best hours of a child's week. Every youth coach in America needs to listen to and absorb this book.

The audiobook will transfer the sport psychology strategies used to win Olympic gold and equip individuals with the psychological skills to pursue performance excellence in cycling and in daily life. For the last three Olympic Games the Great Britain Cycling Team has dominated the Velodrome events and is regarded as one of the most successful elite sporting setups in Olympic history. The emergence of sport psychology as a critical aspect of the Great Britain Cycling Team’s success has sparked wide interest in the psychological skills required to perform.

Did you know that anyone can learn to achieve flow? This book shows you how. Discover the secret weapon of champions: Flow. Unlike a rare talent, anyone can learn to cultivate this state and access peak performance in their sport. Create the optimal conditions for cultivating flow in your own athletic career. Cultivating the flow state in sport can be a powerful way to improve your performance and achieve a greater sense of satisfaction and enjoyment in your athletic pursuits.

As a professional athlete turned pastor—and a passionate leader, Seattle Seahawks in-game host, social media influencer, and fitness trainer—Andy Dooley knows all about sports and what it takes to be a Christian on and off the field, court, or wherever you may play. A 100-day devotional written to encourage and guide athletes of any age, level, or sport, Lead with Faith, Play with Purpose is just what you need to integrate your faith into what you love to do--play your sport.

Courage Over Confidence offers a new approach to conquering the mental game of sports. Written for competitive young athletes, as well as professionals and Olympians, it is also a game changer for coaches and parents looking for ways to further help their aspiring athletes. In this book, renowned clinical and sport psychologist Dr. Mitchell Greene explodes one of the field’s most common and malicious myths—that confidence is a prerequisite for athletic success.

Being mentored by Chrissie Wellington would be a dream for any triathlete. In To the Finish Line, Chrissie presents her distilled wisdom, hard-won over the course of her extraordinary career, to give all triathletes the chance to learn from the very best. Chrissie writes with emotional honesty, and her warmth and sense of humour also shine through. She speaks frankly about her own experiences - both good and bad - from her career. Such stories will be a source of great inspiration to listeners.

Confidence is essential to success, happiness, and peace of mind. Whether it be in sports, business, or any other area of life, the most confident people tend to be the most successful. But despite knowing how important confidence is, it's easy to lose your self-confidence and start doubting yourself—especially during difficult times. Revealing the confidence-building techniques used by some of the greatest coaches of all time, this book will show you how to build and maintain confidence while eliminating self-doubt and insecurity.

This superbly narrated and insightful audiobook follows the paths of thirteen ravaged champions in solitary crafts such as cycling and running, bowling and boxing, hiking and golf. These men work at and master their sports, driven only by a burning need to prove themselves. Movingly detailed here are their painful journeys to grace, and their eventual realization that no victory brings lasting happiness. In short, here is the human experience, told in seconds and miles, scorecards and records.

Sports psychology is often regarded as the key to success, but unfortunately, it typically comes with a hefty price tag that many self-supporting athletes just cannot afford. Thankfully, there are ways you can implement evidence-based and thoroughly researched techniques to improve your game and change your psychological state from loser to winner! Be proactive and embrace a new way of thinking that can drastically improve your performance and get you on track to be at the top of your game. Discover how to reach your full potential and become an elite athlete at the top of your game.

An easy-to-implement framework proven to grow rider confidence, tested by the world's leading equestrian athletes. Without confidence, achievement in competition is unattainable. When confidence is lacking in any sport, equestrian included, chances are your career will be short. Renowned performance coach John Haime has written the book to counter this challenge, providing the mental tools riders need to be better under pressure of all kinds and consistently succeed. Equestrian sport is a partnership: there's an equine athlete, and there's a human athlete.

Is your temper getting the best of you? Are you too timid or conservative to go for it when it counts? Is your personality keeping you from playing your best golf? Every golfer, whether amateur or pro, has a dominant golf personality: a set of traits that sometimes helps you win - but sometimes lands you in the rough. By carefully observing professional golfers' behavior and analyzing his own students' successes and failures, leading mental golf expert Darrin Gee has identified seven basic personality types.