Performing Under Pressure is an essential resource on improving sporting performance in high-pressure situations. Perry's work guides coaches and athletes through nine key elements of the sporting mindset to help athletes to perform at the highest standards, even under the most pressurized of situations. This valuable read includes empirically-based advice on areas such as embracing competition; building confidence, concentration and focus; maintaining emotional control; learning from and coping with failure or injury; being braver; and being able to push harder. Perry also provides 64 strategies to support each sporting mindset, offering not just the evidence as to why they work but exactly how to implement them. This book uniquely offers those supporting athletes a toolkit of sport psychology strategies and interventions in a way that is evidence-based, accessible and engaging, whether you are starting out studying sport psychology, on a sports science course, or are a coach of many years' standing, for both elite and amateur athletes.

Much too often, the mental aspect of sport performance is overlooked. While all top athletes are in outstanding physical condition and technically exceptional, mental preparation is often what separates the best from the rest. This is just as true for young athletes as it is for pros and Olympians. And even though relatively few athletes will ever reach the top of their sport, the attitudes and life lessons learned from mental training-such as motivation, confidence, focus, perseverance, and resilience-will serve them well in all aspects of their lives. In Train Your Mind for Athletic Success: Mental Preparation to Achieve Your Sports Goals, Dr. Jim Taylor uses his own elite athletic experience and decades of working with some of the world's best athletes to provide competitors of every ability with insights, practical exercises, and tools they can use to be mentally prepared when it really counts. His Prime Sport System explores the attitudes that lay the foundation for athletic success, the mental obstacles that can hold athletes back, the preparations they must take, the mental muscles they should strengthen, and the mental tools they need to fine tune their competitive performances. Most importantly, Dr. Taylor shows athletes practical strategies they can use to become mentally strong so they can perform their best when it matters most. Train Your Mind for Athletic Success goes well beyond the typical mental skills that are discussed in other mental training books. Readers will not only learn why mental preparation is so important to athletic success, but also where they personally are in each area thanks to brief mental assessments in each section of the book. In addition, each chapter includes exercises to show athletes how to incorporate mental training directly into their overall sport training regimen. The most comprehensive and in-depth book on mental preparation for athletes available, Train Your Mind for Athletic Success is an essential read for athletes, coaches, and parents.

Sport Psychology: A Complete Introduction is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key areas that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the basics in clear, jargon-free English and providing added-value features like summaries of key experiments and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam. The book uses a structure that mirrors the way sports psychology is taught on many university courses, and is split into theory and application. Chapters in the first part include coverage of essential personality traits, including mental toughness, confidence, motivation and character. The chapters on applied sports psychology cover topics such as assessment, working with groups, skills training, coping techniques and working with coaches and children. There is also substantial coverage of measurement questionnaires, skills and routes to practice. Sport Psychology employs the 'Breakthrough Method' to help you advance quickly at any subject, whether you're studying for an exam or just for your own interest. The Breakthrough Method is designed to overcome typical problems you'll face as learn new concepts and skills. - Problem: "I find it difficult to remember what I've read."; Solution: this book includes end-of-chapter summaries and questions to test your understanding. - Problem: "Lots of introductory books turn out to cover totally different topics than my course."; Solution: this book is written by a university lecturer who understands what students are expected to know.

In The Winning Mindset, Professor Damian Hughes, the acclaimed author of Liquid Thinking and How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson, draws on both his lifetime experience and academic background within sport, organization and change psychology to reveal the best ways to create a winning mindset in both personal and professional life. Having worked with some of the top teams in the UK, and watched some of the best coaches in the country at work, Hughes distils the five keys principles that separate the best coaches and teams from the rest: Simplicity; Tripwires; Emotions; Practical; Stories: STEPS. The role of a sports-team leader is fascinating, complex and tough. Fantasy football leagues may convince us that success is all about buying players and selecting a team. In reality, it is about creating winning environments - recruiting, developing and nurturing talent, effectively communicating a shared vision with a diverse collection of individuals, delivering on enormous expectations from a range of stakeholders, overcoming significant challenges, handling pressure and staying focused throughout: a set of challenges familiar to leaders in all sectors.

This book weaves together theory, research, and practical information related to the psychological aspects of physical education. Unlike other exercise/sport psychology books on the market, The Psychology of Teaching Physical Education is written especially for future and practicing physical educators and focuses on the psychological principles and strategies that are most relevant to them. The book covers the important topics of motivation, reinforcement, feedback, modeling, prosocial behaviors/moral development, and self-perception. In each chapter, narratives about real practicing teachers show how they apply the principles and theories of psychology to physical education, and particularly to actual situations that readers are likely to encounter professionally. Each chapter contains three main sections: following an opening scenario in which Blankenship captures the reader's attention with a real-life problem, the author then (1) highlights theories related to the subject matter of the chapter, (2) summarizes the research that has been conducted on the theories and the chapter topic, and (3) gives examples of practical applications of the theory and research to physical education. Throughout the chapter, as the theory, research, and application of the topic are discussed, Blankenship presents possible solutions to the challenge presented in the chapter-opening vignette. The classroom applications and real-world examples are relevant to many different physical education settings, including those at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, in both urban and rural schools representing various geographical regions of the country. These examples bring the theories to life and help readers envision how their own classes will benefit as they apply what theyA ve learned about the psychology of teaching physical education. Key Features of the Book A theory-to-research-to-practice approach. An author whose background in both sport psychology and physical education makes her uniquely qualified to write this book. Chapter-ending application exercises that encourage readers to go beyond rote memorization of concepts and principles to apply what they learned in various specific examples. Sample instructional models and guidelines to enable readers to incorporate concepts discussed in the chapter into their own classes. A comprehensive glossary.

This accessible introduction to sport psychology is suitable for students with little prior knowledge of either psychology or sports studies. Motivation, personality and attitudes, aggression, social influences and anxiety and stress are all discussed with the minimum of jargon.

Related link: Available for Inspection
Related link: Free Email Alerting
Related link: A-Level Psychology Website

Biofeedback (BFB) in practical sport and exercise is under used and misunderstood, despite recent remarkable technical advances. It is a vital method of training athletes which increases individual awareness and control over the body and reduces habitual physiological tensions.

Written by leading international experts, this ground-breaking book brings together, for the first time, current research and applications and shows how different BFB approaches can be used in various sports. Unique features of this book include:

• How to transfer BFB training from the lab to the field

• BFB intervention for the daily training process

• BFB training geared to a specific sport

• How to measure athletic self-regulation

• An appendix detailing the latest BFB devices

"This text is long overdue and combines knowledge gained through psychophysiological research and applied to the implementation of biofeedback techniques with athletes. In my view there is no comparable publication to date. It should be useful as a resource for students and practitioners alike." Dr Jan Graydon, Head of Sports Studies, University College Chichester, UK

Sport and Exercise Psychology: Practitioner Case Studies focuses on the most current issues in the field, integrating research and practice to develop a coherent understanding of current knowledge, future research directions and applied implications within the field. This is the first book to include theory-based case studies for sport performance, exercise and skill acquisition in one publication. This text provides content that is directly applicable to those students wishing to enter the profession via various national accreditation schemes, in addition to providing chartered psychologists with a text that can directly inform their reflections of their own practice. Sport and Exercise Psychology is supported by an online learning environment that includes talking heads videos for each chapter, further resources, questions and links to relevant external materials.

Once athletes reach the highest levels of competition in college and professional sports, the mental aspect of the game becomes increasingly vital to performance. The Seven Practices of Mentally Superior Athletes is a short and snappy reference text intended for repeated use that explains the importance of the mental side of the game and offers concise advice for improvement. Wald outlines the most important sport psychology skills in a way that can be easily understood and applied to athletes regardless of what sport they play. It also features illustrative stories that demonstrate exactly how these skills can be applied on the field, court, course, or arena. This book is particularly helpful to busy athletes with demanding lifestyles. It will also be useful for coaches who want to continue their education and learn more about sport psychology and how to implement these mental training habits with their athletes.

How does thinking affect doing? There is a widely held view-both in academia and in the popular press-that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. Once you have acquired the ability to putt a golf ball, play an arpeggio on the piano, or parallel-park, reflecting on your actions leads to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis-that's what is widely believed. Experts, according to this view, don't need to try to do it; they just do it. But is this true? After exploring some of the contemporary and historical manifestations of the idea that highly accomplished skills are automatic and effortless, Barbara Gail Montero develops a theory of expertise which emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action. She aims to dispel various myths about experts who proceed without any understanding of what guides their action. (For example, that proverbial chicken sexer who can't explain why he makes his judgments? He simply doesn't exist.) Montero's critical task also involves analyzing research in both philosophy and psychology that is taken to show that conscious control and explicit monitoring of one's movements impedes well practiced skills. She explores a wide range of real-life examples of optimal performance-culled from sports, the performing arts, chess, nursing, medicine, the military and elsewhere-and draws from psychology, neuroscience, and literature to offer a refreshing and persuasive view of expertise, according to which expert action generally is and ought to be thoughtful, effortful, and reflective.

In Ninety Percent Mental, Bob Tewksbury shows readers a side of the game only he can provide, given his singular background as both a longtime MLB pitcher and a mental skills coach for two of the sport's most fabled franchises, the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants. Fans watching the game on television or even at the stadium don't have access to the mind games a pitcher must play in order to get through an at-bat, an inning, a game. Tewksbury explores the fascinating psychology behind baseball, such as how players use techniques of imagery, self-awareness, and strategic thinking to maximize performance, and how a pitcher's strategy changes throughout a game. He also offers an in-depth look into some of baseball's most monumental moments and intimate anecdotes from a "who's who" of the game, including legendary players who Tewksbury played with and against (such as Mark McGwire, Craig Biggio, and Greg Maddux), game-changing managers and executives (Joe Torre, Bruce Bochy, Brian Sabean) and current star players (Jon Lester, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Miller, Rich Hill). With Tewksbury's esoteric knowledge as a thinking-fan's player and his expertise as a "baseball whisperer", this entertaining book is perfect for any fan who wants to see the game in a way he or she has never seen it before. Ninety Percent Mental will deliver an unprecedented look at the mound games and mind games of Major League Baseball.

Anyone who has ever competed in a sport, taken an exam, or appeared on stage understands the importance of performing at the right time. Those who excel in these conditions often develop ways to cope with the stress involved, but what cognitive and emotional strategies allow some people to thrive under pressure whilst others are inhibited by it? In Performance Psychology: Theory and Practice, Stewart Cotterill examines not only how stressful situations can affect performance, but also the means by which we can reach our potential regardless. Featuring chapters on decision-making, emotion, resilience and mental toughness, cognition and perception, ageing and experience, confidence, and recovery, this is the definitive textbook in the field, mapping the core theoretical concepts but also offering practical guidance on how performance can be improved. Also including chapters on motor skills and nutrition, it is a complete and comprehensive overview of this growing field of study. Including study questions and further reading in each chapter, Performance Psychology: Theory and Practice will appeal not only to students and researchers across applied psychology, but also coaches and performers looking for ways to realize their potential when it really matters.

Adherence Issues in Sport and Exercise pulls together a wide range of current adherence themes to provide an overview of the many different theoretical approaches currently being used. Each chapter provides a theoretical framework and a range of practical implications for professionals. Written by eminent experts from Europe and North America, they discuss how adherence is affected by a wide variety of personal, situational, and programme variables.

This volume is essential reading for sport and exercise psychologists, exercise and health researchers and students of health studies, sport science, physical education, leisure studies and psychology.

"This text will be an excellent resource for scholars and practitioners regarding the latest research on adherence issues within sport and exercise settings. With contributions from leading experts around the world, Steve Bull has pulled together a comprehensive and inclusive review of predictors of adherence behaviours in the broadest sense." Professor Joan L. Duda, University of Birmingham

"This is a well-written and informative book of value to all in the field of promotion of exercise for health improvement." Selwyn Richards, Psychological Medicine, 2000, Vol 30

"Steve Bull has ably assembled a broad-based book, designed to expand research and application to new areas in exercise and sport." From the foreword by Rod K. Dishman

This updated fourth edition of Arnold LeUnesa (TM)s textbook has comprehensive coverage of sport psychology with a healthy balance between theory and application. The strong applied approach is emphasized throughout but is essentially apparent in the second half of the book.

The book features a strong pedagogical program including interesting applied vignettes, chapter outlines, emboldened key terms with glossary, very thorough chapter summaries, student-oriented suggested readings, and numerous tables and figures to visually summarize the key concepts. The booka (TM)s shorter chapters make it easier to assign one per class.

In addition, a website of supplemental resources, free of charge to qualified adopters, makes this new edition even more accessible and student-friendly.

Many of our greatest athletes, scientists, and entertainers failed repeatedly throughout their careers, yet they refused to allow past mistakes stop them from striving for future success. Instead, they turned those so-called failures into opportunities to learn, improve, and eventually earn the achievements they are celebrated for today. Why, then, is failure considered negative in our society? Perhaps failure is not, in fact, something to be avoided, but something to be encouraged. In Praise of Failure: The Value of Overcoming Mistakes in Sports and in Life aims to change the way our society defines and perceives what is commonly called "failure." Mark H. Anshel provides a refreshing, new perspective on how we can embrace failure as part of the process of achieving and succeeding at the highest level. Anshel uses sports psychology in a grounded, easy-to-read manner to examine failure in sports settings, revealing that not only is failure inevitable in an imperfect world, it is essential. He addresses such issues as how to properly promote failure in sport and exercise settings, how errors lead to improvement, ways to constructively cope with failure, and how to help child athletes fail "safely." In the process, Anshel shows that the highest-performing athletes have one characteristic in common-they learned and improved from apparent setbacks. In Praise of Failure shares stories of professional athletes, business professionals, scholars, and famous inventors who failed repeatedly before attaining their dreams, revealing the integral role failure plays in success. Offering a fresh and exciting take on how to approach the failures we face in life, this book will be invaluable for athletes, coaches, exercise and fitness trainers, dieticians, students, and even for the corporate world.

The ability to mould a group of talented individual athletes into an effective team takes effort and skill. Team Psychology in Sports examines the crucial factors in the development of an effective team, introducing important psychological and organizational concepts and offering evidence-based interventions for enhancing the performance of any sports team. The book neatly bridges the gap between theory and practice, with real sporting case studies, examples and practical tools included in each chapter. It covers the full range of issues in team sport, including: planning communication cohesion motivation emotions momentum leadership recovery. No other book offers such an up-to-date, relevant and applied guide to working with sports teams. It is essential reading for all students and practitioners working in sport psychology or sports coaching.

Sports, and the fans that follow them, are everywhere. Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Fandom examines the affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions of fans to better comprehend how sport impacts individual fans and society as a whole. Using up-to-date research and theory from multiple disciplines including psychology, sociology, marketing, history, and religious studies, this textbook provides a deeper understanding of topics such as: the pervasiveness of sport fandom in society common demographic and personality characteristics of fans how fandom can provide a sense of belonging, of uniqueness, and of meaning in life the process of becoming a sport fan sport fan consumption and the future of sport and the fan experience. The text also provides a detailed investigation of the darker side of sport fandom, including fan aggression, as well as a critical look at the positive value of fandom for individuals and society. Sport Fans expertly combines a rigorous level of empirical research and theory in an engaging, accessible format, making this text the essential resource on sport fan behavior.

An extensive update of a successful textbook on skill acquisition for sport students. Praised for its clarity of writing style and presentation the new edition will be an essential buy for those needing a practical, sport-focused introduction to the theory and application of human motor skills.

An inspiring and thought-provoking new book that explains the power of applying reverse-engineering to all areas of your life, from a cycling champion who has proven its success. Dan Bigham is the captain of an amateur British track cycling team who rose from obscurity to beat professional, multi-million-pound teams at the highest level. Alongside hard work and dedication, Dan credits his success to one thing: reverse-engineering the result. In Start at the End, Dan uses his own story as well as wider examples and case studies from the worlds of business, personal development and other sports to demonstrate how this approach can help you succeed in any walk of life. Following each stage of the process, from setting goals and assessing your tools to developing the plan and delivering optimum performance, this book will fully explain how to set out and enact the system. A revolutionary new look at a powerful age-old wisdom, Start at the End is a fascinating exploration of how we can achieve success and proof that no goal is impossible. *** 'Start at the End isn't just a great story, but a really nice reminder of how to approach performance forensically, intelligently and purposefully - and that these lessons don't just belong in cycling but in all areas of high performance' Dr Josie Perry 'Phenomenal ... Absolutely fascinating ... Incredible stuff, really clever' Stephen Dixon, Sky News

Historically, very few sport and exercise psychologists and professionals from related fields such as disability and rehabilitation have conducted thorough research on individuals with disabilities engaged in sport and exercise. The tide is turning, however, as growing media attention and familiarity with the Paralympics and the Wounded Warrior Project begins capturing the attention of researchers everywhere. By addressing this gap, Jeffrey J. Martin's compelling Handbook of Disability Sport and Exercise Psychology is one of the first comprehensive overviews of this important field of study. In this volume, Martin, an accomplished professor of exercise psychology, shines a light on a variety of topics ranging from the philosophy, athletic identity, participation motivation, quality of life, social and environmental barriers, body image, and intellectual impairments among many others. Based on the author's own experience and insight, a majority of these topic discussions are accompanied by thoughtful directions for future research and exploration. Designed to spark conversation and initiate new avenues of research, the Handbook of Disability Sport and Exercise Psychology will allow for readers to look outside the traditional literature focusing solely on able-bodied individuals and, instead, develop a much larger perspective on sport and exercise psychology today.