"America's preeminent sports psychologist delivers a groundbreaking guide to success in all aspects of life - not just sports - from business to relationships to personal challenges of every variety." -- from book jacket.

"Sportswriter and columnist Sally Jenkins spent her whole life literally stamping great coaches and athletes down in letters. But somewhere along the line, she realized, they had begun to write her. Their example could shape her into something better if she paid attention. What she learned from great athletes and coaches is that champions are the product of their own work. This book is an effort to catalog the inner qualities that allow ordinary people...

Although sport psychology did not fully mature as a recognized discipline until the 1960s, pioneering psychologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, making greater use of empirical research methodologies, sought to understand mental factors that affect athletic performance. Though the psychologists behind the studies described here worked independently of one another and charted their own distinct courses of inquiry, their works,...

Discover how to improve your mental game--the next frontier in sports training--to become the Playmaker on the court, rink or field. 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...

This book explores the psychological aspects of aggression and violence, to try and understand what motivates a player to embrace aggressive and violent behaviour, and to explore some of the moral an behavioural issues that surround the topic.

"This book looks at how sports negatively impact the mental health and emotional well-being of athletes as well as the reactions of spectators and media to these athletes' struggles"--