Parenting Sports

In September 2015, Shane Watson, one of cricket's greatest allrounders, was contemplating retirement. At 34, he was still in great physical shape, but his form had deteriorated following a tragedy the year before. Mentally, he was in the darkest hole of his life. A chance meeting with IndyCar champion Will Power changed everything, prompting Shane to work with world-renowned mental performance coach Dr Jacques Dallaire. It was a decision that would reshape his life. Watson discovered the keys to a consistent mental process that gave him access to his skillset once more.

In What It Takes to Be #1, Vince Lombardi, Jr. explores his father's leadership philosophy and extracts powerful lessons about what it takes to be an effective leader. Taking as his jumping-off point his father's legendary 1970 speech on the supreme importance of self-knowledge, character, and integrity, Lombardi, Jr. examines each of those qualities and offers guidelines on cultivating and applying them at work and in your personal life.

Elizabeth Clor wanted nothing more than to qualify for the prestigious Boston Marathon. Dead-set on achieving this goal, she found herself bound up in a vicious cycle of perfectionism and anxiety that thwarted her at every turn, despite making significant gains in her physical abilities over seven years. Boston Bound is the story of how Elizabeth discovered that her own brain was the culprit, and explains the steps she took to completely overhaul her mindset about her running and her life.

In his quest to define ‘sporting greatness’, double Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee has spent nearly four years interviewing and training with some of the greatest minds in sport to discover what it takes to become—and remain—a champion.

The transformative mind-model for performing under stress and making pressure your advantage. Used by the planet’s top performers. In Performance Under Pressure, forensic psychiatrist Dr Ceri Evans gives you the tools to take control of the moment. Beat doubt, worry, regret and burnout with simple mind techniques and discover the secret of how to be ‘comfortable being uncomfortable’. No one is immune to pressure. We all fall victim to its effects in the same ways. But pressure is misunderstood.

The benefits of mindfulness for general well-being have been discussed extensively, but little has been written about how mindfulness can be applied to running. In this book, leading health and fitness journalist Mackenzie L. Havey explores how combining mindfulness with running can not only improve sporting performance but can also enhance overall health.

Published in 1916, this story is over a hundred years old, yet its message is just as relevant today as it was in 1916. Perhaps even more so. Why? Because never have we had greater access to information yet at the same time we’ve never been more deficient in common sense. Advertising legend David Ogilvy believed this book changed his life and was so passionate about its message that he had his employees read it every year. This is less a book about advertising, or even about Adams himself, as much as it’s a book about the power of mindset.

Miss Val has shaped her UCLA gymnastics program as a life-skills class, and now she's sharing those lessons with you, whether you're an athlete, business leader, or simply someone who wants to own his or her destiny. Miss Val's philosophies are timeless. Her coaching style is unorthodox. Life Is Short, Don't Wait to Dance is a thought-provoking, fun journey through the personal stories and anecdotes of the 35-year career of a dancer/choreographer turned athletic coach.

No one sees baseball like Joe Maddon. He sees it through his trademark glasses and irrepressible wit. Raised in the “shot and beer” town of Hazleton, PA, and forged by 15 years in the minors, Maddon over 19 seasons in Tampa Bay, Chicago, and Anaheim has become one of the most successful, most colorful, and most quoted managers in Major League Baseball. He is a workplace culture expert, having engineered two of the most stunning turnarounds in the past quarter century.

Long before he became manager of the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals, Mike Matheny grasped the core values of what really mattered when it came to playing baseball. It wasn't attention from fans or the trophy at the end of a season that guided his morals, but the hard-won discipline, labor, and humility that he incorporated into every game he played. Now, in The Dad Coach, Matheny puts his philosophy into action and provides a step-by-step template for coaches and parents to develop solid fundamentals and a strong sense of character in their players.

Lawrence’s accomplishments are nearly impossible to comprehend. After breaking two Guinness World Records, he shattered possibilities in 2015 by completing 50 full-distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. Yes, THE IRONMAN®, “the single most difficult day in sports”—a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles on a bike, then a 26.2-mile run, all completed in under 17 hours. It is a race so intense that less than .01% of the population have completed one.

In Unbreakable, Jay Glazer talks directly to you, his teammates, and shares his truth. All the success from his screeching-and-swerving joy ride through professional football, the media, the MMA fighting world, Hollywood, the military-warrior community, comes with a side of relentless depression and anxiety. Living in the gray, as Jay calls it, is just a constant for him.

When Pat Cummins unexpectedly became Australia's 47th Test captain at age 28, he inherited a team with a long and storied history, but also one on the cusp of reinvention. It was the beginning of a personal leadership journey for him, a unique moment of challenge and pressure that would see him become a seasoned captain and, in his private life, become a father and husband but also lose his mother to cancer.

If you want relations that bring joy, fulfilment, and peace into your life. Then you’re looking at the right book. Most people have a hard time nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships. You’re exposed to new people daily at work, at the gym, or even at the supermarket. Despite this, less than one in ten interactions end up flourishing into a friendship.

Fishing was Mark Hume’s passion since he was a young boy, a lifeline through a childhood marked by his family’s frequent moves. When he became a father, he knew he wanted to pass on his love of water, fishing, and the natural world to his daughters. Most of all, he wanted to give them hope for their future. As soon as they were old enough, Mark taught his girls how to read the water and see the patterns in nature. He discovered that fly fishing and fatherhood require many of the same skills: patience, flexibility, and the knowledge of when to reel in and when to let go.

An epic adventure full of incredible characters, death-defying athletic achievement, and bleeding edge science, The Fear Project began with one question: how can we overcome our fears to reach our full potential? Who among us has not been paralyzed by fear? In The Fear Project, award-winning journalist and surfer Jaimal Yogis sets out to better understand fear - why does it so often dominate our lives, what makes it tick, and is there even a way to use it to our advantage?

Eddie Jones is one of the most successful sports coaches of all time. From coaching three different nations to Rugby World Cup Finals and with a winning record with England of nearly 80 per cent, Eddie Jones knows what it takes to lead and manage high-performance teams. For the first time, Eddie Jones shows just what it takes to be a leader in a high performance and high pressure environment and how these lessons can be applied to every walk of life, from coaching the U9 rugby team to leading a multinational organisation to simply doing your job better.

If anyone knows tough, it’s Jay Bilas. A four-year starter at Duke, he learned an incomparable work ethic under coach Mike Krzyzewski, battling against the greatest college players in the game. After playing professionally overseas for several years, he returned to Duke, where he served as Krzyzewski’s assistant coach for three seasons, during which the Blue Devils won back-to-back titles. Featuring never-before-heard stories and personal philosophies on toughness from top players and coaches, Bilas redefines what it takes to succeed.

From well-known nature and adventure writer Dan Koeppel, whose work has appeared in Audubon and National Geographic Adventure, comes this true story of one bird watcher's incredible achievements.

As a therapist, physician, and mental coach, Dr. Michael Lardon has dedicated his career to helping athletes understand and better achieve peak performance. In Finding Your Zone, he shares with listeners what he's discovered about reaching the state in which "thoughts and actions are occurring in complete synchronicity" and how this state is accessible to all, not just the few. In 10 key lessons - illustrated by personal anecdotes from his clients - Lardon teaches listeners how to access the zone not only in sports but in all aspects of their lives.