"This is a powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative pedagogical intervention. It provides ground zero-the starting place for the next generation of theorists who study the self, narrative theory, and the place of games and sport in everyday life. A stunning accomplishment by one of America's major social theorists." Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Games of many kinds have been played in all cultures throughout human history. This wide-ranging book explores the social and psychological processes involved in the playing of games. One player (or team) seeks to outwit another by undertaking various physical and communicative moves-not unlike conversations. Games have well-formed "narrative" structures, analogous to myths, that are enacted by each participant to give play to his/her self and its attendant emotions. These plays of the self enable each agent to seek adventures and heroic moments. Going beyond the mythmaking and catharsis that may be achieved by individuals, the author shows how games have been devised and played in particular societies and eras as means of promoting specific ideologies of a society, even social ideals such as utopias.

This book offers a radical alternative to the cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approaches that have dominated sport psychology, and is the first to systematically apply existential psychological theory and phenomenological method to sport psychology. This much-needed alternative framework for the discipline of applied sport psychology connects to many of the real and most significant challenges faced by sports performers during their careers and beyond, and bridges the gap that still exists between the real needs of sport performers and what is delivered by traditional sport psychology Existential psychology aims to assist athletes in their personal growth so that as they develop their physical strengths through sports coaching, they also become a stronger person, and are therefore more likely to achieve their true sporting potential. Existential Psychology and Sport outlines an approach that can be used to add something of depth, substance and academic rigour to sport psychology in applied settings beyond the confines of mental skills training and good listening skills.

"This is a powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative pedagogical intervention. It provides ground zero-the starting place for the next generation of theorists who study the self, narrative theory, and the place of games and sport in everyday life. A stunning accomplishment by one of America's major social theorists." Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Games of many kinds have been played in all cultures throughout human history. This wide-ranging book explores the social and psychological processes involved in the playing of games. One player (or team) seeks to outwit another by undertaking various physical and communicative moves-not unlike conversations. Games have well-formed "narrative" structures, analogous to myths, that are enacted by each participant to give play to his/her self and its attendant emotions. These plays of the self enable each agent to seek adventures and heroic moments. Going beyond the mythmaking and catharsis that may be achieved by individuals, the author shows how games have been devised and played in particular societies and eras as means of promoting specific ideologies of a society, even social ideals such as utopias.

The aim of Comprehensive Applied Sport Psychology (CASP) is to challenge our field to look beyond its current status and propel applied sport psychology and mental training forward and outward with a broad and multi-layered examination of everything psychological, emotionally, and socially that the athletic community contends with in pursuit of athletic success and that sport psychologists and mental trainers do in their professional capacities. Comprehensive Applied Sport Psychology is the first professional book aimed at offering a truly expansive and deep exploration of just about everything that applied sport psychologists, consultants and mental trainers do in their work. CASP plumbs the depths of the athletic mind including attitudes, psychological and emotional obstacles, mental "muscles" and mental "tools," quality of sport training, the health and well-being of athletes, and other areas that are essential to athletic success. This new volume examines not only the many ways that consultants impact athletes, but also explores their work with coaches, teams, parents, and interdisciplinary groups such as sports medicine team and sports management. The book is grounded in both the latest theory and research, thus making it a valuable part of graduate training in applied sport psychology, as well as a practical resource for consultants who work directly with athletes, coaches, teams, and parents. The goal of CASP, in collaboration with dozens of the leading minds in the field, is to create the definitive guide to what applied sport psychology and mental training are and do.

Discover how to reach your greatest potential in golf by focusing only on the shot in front of you-nothing before or after-with the world's preeminent sport psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella. Acclaimed sport psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Bob Rotella has advised countless professional golfers, as well as athletes in individual and team sports at the amateur and professional levels, on how to flourish under pressure and win championships. Rotella strives to make average athletes exceptional. With his decades of in-depth research and practical experience, he has encouraged people worldwide to persevere through adversity in a dozen internationally bestselling titles. In Make Your Next Shot Your Best Shot, Rotella's message is simple but effective: to reach your greatest potential in golf, you need to set your sights high and always think positively. He wants you to aim for something incredible: free your mind, concentrate on your process, accept whatever happens, and commit to making your next shot your best shot. Rotella shows you how to focus your mind, create a routine for success, persevere, and overcome failure. Drawing from lessons learned in other sports, this book is about how to train your mind to play in the moment. It's about spending your lifetime chasing greatness-and having a ball while doing it.

Harvey Dorfman literally rose from a childhood sickbed to his place of world renown in the field of sports psychology. Here he recounts the early experiences that 'persuaded' his future years. Dorfman takes the reader along this journey to his initial experience as an educator. Writer/theologian Frederick Buechner calls the book, "moving, convincing, alive and true; these chapters are (as) authentic a picture of a boy's finding his way as any I know." This first of two volumes closes on a twenty-seven-year-old readying himself for a career that would take him from high school coaching to his current prominence in the world of professional sports.

Why did Michael Jordan quit basketball and take up baseball? Why was Martina Navratilova so successful as a professional tennis player? These and many other questions about aspects of motivation and emotion in sport are addressed in this book which is newly available in paperback. Reversal theory's systematic conceptual framework allows a unique perspective for interpreting behaviour in sport contexts. Within each chapter, real-life examples are combined with research findings to provide an understanding of the emotional background and changes which accompany the individual's unique experience in sport. In addition, suggestions as to alications of reversal theory in new areas of sport psychology and the future direction of reversal theory-based sport research are outlined. For those interested in a truly insightful understanding of human behaviour in sport, this book will be required reading.

Increasing numbers of professional teams and athletes look for assistance with the psychological factors of their performance, and there exists a growing body of professional sport psychologists ready to provide support. Despite this, it seems at times there remains a significant gap between the real needs of sport performers and what is delivered by traditional sport psychology. The existential approach described by Mark Nesti offers a radical alternative to the cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approaches that have dominated sport psychology, and represents the first systematic attempt to apply existential psychological theory and phenomenological method to sport psychology. This much-needed alternative framework for the discipline of applied sport psychology connects to many of the real and most significant challenges faced by sports performers during their careers and beyond. Existential Psychology and Sport outlines an approach that can be used to add something of depth, substance and academic rigour to sport psychology in applied settings beyond the confines of MST and good listening skills.

Are pain and injury managed appropriately in the environment of commercial sport?

Is sports medicine a tool to empower or to disempower athletes?

Sport, Professionalism and Pain considers these and other pertinent concerns as it questions whether, in the world of modern sport, it is the participants themselves or the sport's administrators who exert more control over athletes' well being. It is asserted that, because of the distinctive nature of sport, the power to transform medical practice and application of sports medicine lies not with physicians but within the practices of sport itself.

Sport, Professionalism and Pain bridges a perceived space in the literature between medical anthropology, medical sociology and sport studies, examining issues such as:

- the relationship between sports medicine, the body and culture
- the power struggle between sport administrators and participants
- the historical transformation of sports medicine

Pure Sport is a practical guide that provides insights on asserting positive mindsets, realising potential, remaining resilient against setbacks and using these experiences to move on to greater success. The book follows the journey of the athlete through six clear steps, creating a logical framework for applied sport psychology or a path you can follow in your own practice. The third edition is fully updated and now more accessible than ever, including new advice on maintaining a resilient attitude and taking care of athletes' mental well-being. Drawing on decades of both practical and theoretical knowledge, the authors deliver practical advice with a thorough grounding in sport psychology, supplemented by case studies, reflection questions, common problems and effective solutions, and useful summaries of key points. Pure Sport is essential reading for all those actively involved and interested in sport, from sports psychologists and academics, to athletes and coaches.

Contents:
Introduction Part One: Sports Medicine: Pain and Injury in Context 1. Investigating Sports Medicine: Medical Anthropology in Context 2. Amateur Pastime to Professional Specticle 3. Sporting Bodies: mortal engines Part Two: Pain, Injury and the Culture of Risk 4. Pain and Injury: signal and response 5. The Importance of Injury in the Commercialised World of Sport 6. Risk Culture as 'a Product' Part Three: Theory into Practice 7. Distinctive Community: The Welsh Rugby Club 8. Elite Distance Runners 9. Bodily Dysfunction: The Paralympics as an Arena for Risk 10. Conclusions

The psychological health of competitive athletes is of paramount importance to performance, retention, and well-being in sport, and national governing bodies are increasingly concerned with its promotion. Psychosocial Health and Well-being in High-Level Athletes offers students, researchers, and practicing sport psychologists an accessible and rigorous grounding in the manifestations of psychosocial health in athletes, the threats athletes face to their psychosocial health, and the interventions which can be designed to enhance it. Seeking to guide future research and expand professional understanding of psychosocial issues in sport, the book is based on a model of cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual health. It clearly defines these dimensions in a sporting context before discussing pertinent threats-such as career transitions, injuries and abuse-and interventions, including adversarial growth, life-skill interventions, prevention and organization policy, and mindfulness-based interventions. Providing an innovative and integrated perspective on psychosocial health and well-being in competitive sport, this book is essential reading for upper-level students taking any clincial sport psychology modules, and for sport psychologists, coaches, and administrators working with competitive athletes.

Balancing training, stress, and recovery is essential for achieving optimal performance. The performance of professional athletes can be severely compromised by overtraining, injuries, prolonged periods of competition, or even life events outside their sporting lives. The current recovery-stress state depends on preceding stress and recovery activities, but through simultaneous assessment of stress and recovery, a differentiated picture can be provided. This manual includes two measurement instruments to gauge individual recovery, enabling both athletes and coaches to better understand the often-unconscious processes that impinge upon peak performance, and to monitor the physical, mental, emotional, mental, and overall recovery-stress state before and after training. The Acute Recovery and Stress Scale (ARSS) and the Short Recovery and Stress Scale (SRSS) are instruments that systematically enlighten the recovery-stress states of athletes. Through utilization of the ARSS and the SRSS, athletes and coaches can better understand the importance of daily activities, including how they can relate to stress/recovery and the direct impact on athletic performance. In addition to the instruments themselves, both of which are simple and easy to use, the manual also discusses their development, their basis in theory, and case studies showcasing their usage. The ARSS and the SRSS provide important information regarding the current recovery-stress state during the process of training, and are essential tools for coaches, sport scientists, sport psychologists, and athletes alike.

Dynamic interceptive actions play a significant role in human behaviour, and are central to all forms of sporting activity. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive review of current theoretical research on dynamic interceptive actions, as well as demonstrating the connections between theory and practice for a wide range of key sporting skills.
An international team of authors, including many of the key figures in the field, present important new work on many of the most fundamental sporting actions such as : *catching
* hitting
* external-paced striking
* self-paced timing tasks
* locomotion towards targets or long surfaces
* kicking.
This book offers a wealth of theoretical material, as well as unique analysis of dynamic interceptive actions in practice. It will be essential reading for anybody with an interest in motor control and skill acquisition, and will also be of interest to students and practitioners in sport psychology, movement science and coaching science.

‘I really recommend this, it's a cracker. A top read and a great tool to use to improve and enlighten. It doesn't matter who you are – you will all get something out of this. Lovely stuff.' Ben Ryan, Olympic gold-medal-winning coach and author of Sevens Heaven: The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji's Olympic Dream ________________________ ‘I urge anyone who has the ambition and passion to develop themselves and those around them to read this book. I’ve worked with Matt for over fifteen years and have seen first-hand how he is able to get the best out of people with his unique awareness of soft skills, human values and long term vision' Leon Smith OBE, Great Britain Davis Cup team captain ________________________ 'This book brilliantly underlines the core principles needed to prepare for the next stage of your career. Terrific read.' Ross Hutchins, former British tennis player and Commonwealth Games silver-medal winner ________________________ Drawing on more than a decade’s experience working with former tennis World Number One Sir Andy Murray, The Way of the Tortoise introduces you to the benefits of the slow lane and reveals why it’s the only true path to a high-performance mindset. Taking inspiration from Aesop’s well-known fable of the Hare and the Tortoise, internationally renowned trainer Matt Little recognizes that there is no fast path to success. By focusing on immediate results, we can gloss over process in the race to get ahead, skipping over the lessons and experiences that we all need to build solid foundations for our future achievements. Matt shows that taking the slow lane can not only help you reach your goals more effectively, it can make your successes more sustainable by increasing your motivation, energy and resilience. Packed full of examples from the highly adaptable worlds of sport and business, as well as Matt’s own remarkable career, The Way of the Tortoise reveals, through practical exercises and techniques, the essential strategies we can all use to achieve extraordinary results.

This text, intended for undergraduates on various education and sport related degree courses, covers the key, current issues in the field of sociology of sport and physical education. The first section of the text covers the importance of sport in culture, its theoretical background, and methodological issues in research. The main body of the text then discusses issues including the sporting body, participation and socialisation into sport, the hidden curriculum, critical pedagogy, and sport and the media. Laker discusses in depth gender, race and ethnicity, class, and equality, and he looks at sport and the media, and the involvement of politics. The chapters are each rounded off with challenging 'reflection' questions, activities and tasks for the reader to fulfil.

Skill Acquisition in Sport gives academics, students, coaches and practitioners the broadest and most scientifically rigorous grounding in the principles and practice of the field. Fully revised, updated and restructured, the third edition integrates theory and practice, and provides more material on practical application than ever before. Divided into four sections - providing instruction and feedback, organizing effective practice, training high-level skills, and the theories and mechanisms underpinning skill acquisition - the book covers a full range of key topics, including: the role of errors and rewards in motor learning instructions, demonstrations and feedback imagery in motor learning constraints-based and self-directed learning technique change, creativity training and visual gaze training practicing under pressure the neurophysiology of learning. Based on the latest research, including chapters on emerging topics, and written by a global cast of world-leading experts, Skill Acquisition in Sport is an essential textbook for any kinesiology or sport science student taking skill acquisition, expertise development or motor learning classes.

Despite the growing literature on spirituality and its positive impact on well-being in health psychology, education, occupational psychology and leisure studies, it has been less examined in sport studies. Meaning and Spirituality in Sport and Exercise: Psychological Perspectives examines the many forms of spirituality in sport from a psychological perspective, from moments of transcendence and finding deeper meaning and value to prayer before an important competition or in adversity, such as a career-threatening injury. Based on the latest research and the Nesti's experience in applied sport psychology service delivery, this book covers a range of novel topics linking spirituality to athlete development, injury, exercise motivation, and ageing athletes, and offers applied, practical guidance for sport psychologists working with spiritual athletes. Offering a unique contribution to the study of spirituality in sport, and to sport psychology practice, this book is vital reading for any upper-level student or academic working in sport and exercise psychology, religion and sport, or the philosophy of sport, and any practising sport psychologist.

The book is relevant for various regions including the US, UK, Australia, Western European nations and New Zealand. Key informants offer insights for policy and practice. Rich theoretical analysis further contextualizes findings and provides analysis to advance the field.

As sport has grown, progressively replacing religion, in its power to excite passion, provide emotional escape, offer fraternal (and increasingly sororital) bonding, it has come to loom larger and larger in the lives of Europeans and others. It has become an inescapable reality linking public environment with intimate experience and thus offers the historian an opportunity to inspect and attempt to grasp all the dimensions of the recent past and their relative share in individual and collective experience. This collection considers the evolution of modern sport in Europe and examines its role in shaping masculine identity.

The feel good effect of physical activity is one which although realised has barely reached its potential and in the modern world of stress and inactivity for our mental health. Physical Activity and Pychological Well-being provides a research consensus on the relationship between physical exercise and the aspects of mental health. Whilst reviewing and integrating relevant information the book also considers physical activity in relation to the different aspects of mental health:
* anxiety
* depression
* mood and emotion
* self-esteem
* cognitive functioning
* psychological dysfunction.
Physical Activity and Psychological Well-being is invaluable reading for undergraduates and post graduates of sport and exercise science and provides a foundation for health services, sport specialists and psychologists alike to promote the benefits of physical activity and improve mental health.

The 'feel-good' effect of physical activity is widely reported among participants. Physical Activity and Psychological Well-Being represents a research consensus on the relationship between physical activity and aspects of mental health, providing an overview of the case for the role of exercise in the promotion of psychological well-being. Topics covered include:

* anxiety and stress
* depression
* mood and emotion
* self-perceptions and self-esteem
* cognitive functioning and ageing
* psychological dysfunction

This book is invaluable reading for students and researchers working in the exercise, sport and health sciences, and for health and clinical psychologists. It is also a foundation text for health promotion and health service professionals, particularly those working in the area of mental health.

For millions of America's young athletes, winning is everything. Sports programs emphasize success over personal growth. Overzealous parents put tremendous pressure on their kids to succeed, and even parents who mean well often put unintentional stresses on their young athletes. Will You Still Love Me If I Don't Win? teaches parents how to relate positively to their children and demonstrate genuine support.

Christopher Andersonn has spent two decades working with young athletes at all levels of sport, from amateurs to Olympians. He shares stories from the field and gives valuable instructions as to how parents can address the emotional needs of their athletic children. Will You Still Love Me If I Don't Win? provides advice for using emotional training as well as physical training to aid children in becoming well-rounded, confident young people. It demonstrates where parents and coaches often go wrong in relating to kids, what causes negative behavior toward children, and how to stop hurting and start healing.

With a foreword by three-time Olympic swimming coach Richard Quick, Will You Still Love Me If I Don't Win? guides parents to motivate their children positively for both personal and athletic achievement.

Psychology for Dancers: Theory and Practice to Fulfil Your Potential examines how psychological theory can be related to dance practice. Aimed at the dancer who wants to maximize their potential but has no grounding in psychology, the book begins with an examination of basic psychological concepts, approaches and methods, before applying theory to dance. The book explores why dance is so important in many people's lives: as a form of fitness, a profession, or visual entertainment. Each chapter then examines a different aspect of psychology related to dance in an applied context. Self-perception is examined as dancers are under great scrutiny; a grounded sense of self will ensure a positive perception of self-worth and body image, and suggestions are made as to how a healthy and motivational climate can be created. The book also places an emphasis on how cognitive skills are as important as technical skills, including the ability to learn and recall steps and choreography as efficiently as possible. Social factors are related to the dance context, with a discussion of effective leadership and communication skills and the importance of group cohesion. Finally, there is a review of the impact of emotions on dance practice and how best to manage these emotions. Each chapter reviews important psychological theories, offering practical suggestions on how they can be applied to dance practice. Psychology for Dancers is an invaluable resource for students, professionals, and teachers of dance.