We marvel at the steely nerves, acute concentration, and flawless execution exhibited on the 18th green, at the free-throw line, in the starting blocks, and on the balance beam. While state-of-the-art training regimens have extended athletes' physical boundaries, more and more coaches are realizing the importance of sport psychology in taking athletic performance to new levels. Tomorrow's record-breaking accomplishments will not be the result of athletes' training harder physically, but of athletes' training smarter mentally.

"Sport Psychology for Coaches" provides information that coaches need to help athletes build mental toughness and achieve excellence--in sport and in life. As a coach, you'll gain a big-picture perspective on the mental side of sport by examining how athletes act, think, and feel when they practice and compete. You'll learn to use such mental tools as goal setting, imagery, relaxation, energization, and self-talk to help your athletes build mental training programs. You'll also see how assisting your athletes in developing mental skills such as motivation, energy management, focus, stress management, and self-confidence leads to increased enjoyment, improved life skills, and enhanced performance. And you'll discover how to put it all together into mental plans and mental skills training programs that allow your athletes to attain and maintain a mind-set that fosters peak performance.

The easy-to-follow format of the text includes learning objectives that introduce each chapter, sidebars illustrating sport-specific applications of key concepts and principles, chapter summaries organized by content and sequence, key terms, chapter review questions, a comprehensive glossary, and other useful resources to help readers implement mental training programs for athletes.

Written primarily for high school coaches, "Sport Psychology for Coaches" is a practical, easy-to-use resource reflecting the two authors' combined 45 years of teaching, coaching, researching, and consulting experience. It reflects principles that are not only consistent with the latest theory and research, but have stood the test of time and worked for coaches and athletes in all sports at all levels. You'll come away from "Sport Psychology for Coaches" with a greater understanding and appreciation for sport psychology and the practical knowledge you need to put it to work for you and your athletes.

"Sport Psychology for Coaches" serves as the text for the American Sport Education Program Silver Level course, Sport Psychology for Coaches.

This test manual, the fourth in FIT's Sport and Exercise Psychology Test Clearinghouse, is a succinct and informative resource outlining the conceptual basis of the athlete burnout syndrome and its measurement. The manual delineates the process used in developing the ABQ and provides users with information on the meaning of scores derived from its use. Aspects related to the ABQ are presented in a comprehensive manner: Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ), along with the guidelines for administering and scoring it; Conceptual underpinnings of the ABQ, including an overview of the burnout construct and the operational definition used to guide item development, as well as a description of how the preliminary item pool was developed; Review of research using a within-network approach to examining the internal structure of the burnout construct based on the ABQ; plus a description of both internal consistency and stability of ABQ scores; Discussion of a between-network approach to construct validation by examining the relationship of ABQ scores to theoretically relevant variables stemming from stress, sociological, and motivational perspectives on burnout; Basic descriptive statistical information that can help users interpret the meaning of scores derived from the ABQ.