7 Books To Maximize Your Sports Mind
What and how you think of can affect how you perform in your sport
To maximize your mental performance you need to know how the greatest in your field have done it before you.
And when you do, you’ll be able to put this new learning into action to optimize your ability to perform at the highest level. For the highest of performers come from a variety of backgrounds such as business, entrepreneurship, sport, art, and music. But many of their mental hacks can be brought across to other areas of life that demand that success too.
With that in mind, here are seven books that examine how to deal with your mental performance:
1. The Champion’s Mind by sports psychologist Jim Afremow, PhD details how the mental game matters the most when competing in sport.
The author believes that our minds have more strength than our bodies when performing at the elite level.
He draws from his experience with Olympians, Heisman Trophy winners, and professional athletes and how they get in the zone of winning.
Afremow promotes the need to keep being humble and to concentrate on sustainable long-term excellence too.
2. The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance written by W. Timothy-Gallwey establishes how to improve your true potential and increase your concentration when playing at the highest level.
Although it was published decades ago, the book sold nearly 1 million copies.
It helped tennis players understand the need to focus on their minds to overcome distractions and self-doubt. But the book also became used by other high performers too. As explained, the requirement for relaxed concentration also provides the reader’s advanced ways of understanding and overcoming nervousness during sports.
3. Gallwey didn’t stop there with his writing on high performance. Instead he and Barry Green wrote The Inner Game of Music which details how the inner mind can overcome self-doubt and nervousness.
It delved into how musicians can achieve the exact intonations and improved techniques when playing their instrument. Touching on ensemble playing, composition, and creativity, the book gives a proven track record for aspiring and advanced musicians to reach their highest level of performance.
4. Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence notes how your mind shapes your performance.
Author Gary Mack is a sports psychologist and within this book, he discovers how your mind can influence your body on the court or on the field as well. He believes that your mind influences your bodily performance as much as the wellness and fitness your body does, if not more so.
Mack teaches that the mind is like a muscle of the human body, in that it can be trained to be improved to get that extra edge over the competition.
5. The Mental Game of Baseball authors H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl, speak about how peak performance strategies will prove that you’ll increase your performance level.
In this book authors, H.A. Dorfman and Karl Kuehl look at how practical strategies have been proven to work and can help you achieve your optimum performance level in baseball.
With anecdotal evidence and information form minor and major league players, the book discovers how to use your mental capacity to it capability. Aimed at baseball agents, coaches, managers, administrators, and players, this book is the ultimate mental book for if you want to succeed in baseball.
6. The Sports Gene is the New York Times bestseller. It concentrates on whether superstars of sport such as Serena Williams and Michael Phelps are genetic freaks or is it what they do in their sporting life that maximizes their chances to win regularly.
Although proving to be controversial, this book looks at the 10,000-hour rule that says that you`ll be successful if you practice enough. Here, David Epstein debates the nature versus nurture debate and looks at how science examines this. Attempting to rethink athleticism, Epstein talks about the possibility of genetic mutations or physical traits being reasons behind the success of top athletes who consistently succeed.
7. Denis Waitley’s book entitled The Psychology Winning in the 21st Century combines anecdotal wisdom and the ‘How To’s of becoming a change masters in the modern-day global economy.
In this book, Denis Waitley states that we are all ‘free agents’. And we are all capable of rapid change. Although many are motivates by fear in life, the author prefers to speak about how desire is a better motivator instead. Waitley values the need for external success is required to be core to a winner’s core values.
You can also self-determine what is your knowledge base in this world. And you have the creativity to do change and empower not just yourself to do so, but to empower others also.
Laced with humor and nuggets of wisdom the book gives timeless advice to the willing reader.
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