Sports Athletes

Like countless other kids, Phil Gaimon grew up dreaming of being a professional athlete. But unlike countless other kids, he actually pulled it off. After years of amateur races, hard training, living out of a suitcase, and never taking "no" for an answer, he finally achieved his goal and signed a contract to race professionally on one of the best teams in the world. Now, Gaimon pulls back the curtain on the WorldTour, cycling's highest level.

The Triathlete’s Training Bible is the best-selling and most comprehensive guide for aspiring and experienced triathletes. Joe Friel is the most trusted coach in the world, and his proven triathlon training program has helped hundreds of thousands find success in the sport of triathlon. Joe has completely rewritten this new fourth edition of The Triathlete's Training Bible to incorporate new training principles and help athletes train smarter than ever.

When “Renaissance runner” (New York Times) Alexi Pappas - Olympic athlete, actress, filmmaker, and writer - was four years old, her mother died by suicide, drastically altering the course of Pappas’s life and setting her on a search for female role models. When her father signed his bereaved daughter up for sports teams as a way to keep her busy, female athletes became the first women Pappas looked up to, and her Olympic dream was born. At the same time, Pappas had big creative dreams, too: She wanted to make movies, write, and act.

Arguably the most famous Canadian athlete on the planet, Alphonso Davies has been the subject of global attention after bursting onto the scene as a fifteen-year-old soccer sensation. Since then, he's won every trophy imaginable with German giant FC Bayern Munich and helped Canada reach the men's World Cup for the first time in thirty-six years. Based on years of original reporting and extensive interviews with his friends, family members, teachers, coaches, teammates, and others from his inner circle, Alphonso Davies: A New Hope paints a complete portrait of the soccer star.

Along the path to any goal - completing a marathon or a thesis paper, winning a medal or a contract - familiar mental hurdles arise: We may fixate on the odds of failure or find our interest flags two-thirds of the way through. That’s when elite endurance athletes - top performers in running, cycling, and swimming - turn to their rich arsenal of cognitive strategies to overcome self-doubt and unlock peak performance.

No matter how many times you’ve failed before, you can awaken into the person you want to become. It’s easier than you think. In this audiobook, I’ll lay out the exact steps to transform you into the assertive, successful champion you’re destined to be.

The captivating book fearless, expertly, and comprehensibly explains to parents and coaches how the brain and the minds of athletes work. Using specific examples, the author analyzes the impact of feedback on thinking, perception, attention, and even the quality of a player's coordination. Parents often do not realize how their influence shapes the neural network of their child. The book takes you into the depths of neuroscience, sports psychology, and provides you with knowledge and skills to be a better coach for your child.

They are motivators, key strategists, tough bosses, and choreographers. They can be branded as heroes, ousted as scapegoats, quietly valued as friends, and everything in between. It's all in the job description for an NHL head coach. In Behind the Bench, Craig Custance sits down for film sessions and candid conversations with some of the game's most notable modern luminaries - names like Mike Babcock, Joel Quenneville, Dan Bylsma, Ken Hitchcock, and Claude Julien - all of whom share their singular views on topics ranging from leadership secrets to on-ice game plans.

Ever felt nerves jeopardize your performance? Lost focus in a game, or had a mental block at a critical moment? You're not alone. The secret to overcoming these moments? Mental Strength. Perfect for young athletes, parents, and coaches, this book is your ultimate guide to developing the mental toughness that sets champions apart.

Dan "Hendo" Henderson was the first fighter in MMA history to become a double champion, winning championships in PRIDE Fighting Championships and Strikeforce. He faced the biggest names in MMA, on his unparalleled run through the early days of MMA through its remarkable rise in popularity, squaring off against the likes of Fedor Emelianenko, Anderson Silva, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Wanderlei Silva, Michael Bisping, Vitor Belfort, and Renzo Gracie. Henderson's first fight against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua in 2011 is considered one of the greatest fights in UFC history.

The power to become better, greater, more refined versions of ourselves is something that each one of us possesses. It is a power with which we are born, like infinite gold inside the equally infinite mine shafts that are our minds. Now, to get at that gold - there is the rub. Since time immemorial people have struggled to manage the darkness within themselves. How do we reckon our possibilities with our capabilities? How do we overcome the difficulties within? How do we shake off the invisible sandbags that seem to drag us down and run faster, jump higher, push harder?

Tia Toomey, the world’s fittest woman, has won the CrossFit Games an incredible six years in a row and is undeniably a true warrior. She has also trained for the Winter Olympics in bobsledding, competed in the Summer Olympics in weightlifting, and was a Commonwealth Games gold medalist. She is, in short, one of the most accomplished and dominant athletes in human history. But for Tia physical fitness is only a small part of overall strength. More important is building mental toughness.

Joe Friel is the most trusted coach in the world and his proven triathlon training program has helped hundreds of thousands find success in the sport of triathlon. Joe has greatly updated this new Fifth Edition of The Triathlete's Training Bible to incorporate new training methods, especially on workout intensity, to help athletes train smarter and produce better results than ever. The Triathlete’s Training Bible equips triathletes of all abilities with every detail they must consider when planning a season, lining up a week of workouts, or preparing for race day.

More than a century ago, a woman ran in the very first modern Olympic marathon. She just did it without permission. Award-winning journalist Maggie Mertens uncovers the story of how women broke into competitive running and how they are getting faster and fiercer every day—and changing our understanding of what is possible as they go.

Mike Krzyzewski, known worldwide as “Coach K,” is a five-time national champion at Duke, the NCAA's all-time leader in victories with nearly 1,200, and the first man to lead Team USA to three Olympic basketball gold medals. Through unprecedented access to Krzyzewski’s best friends, closest advisers, fiercest adversaries, and generations of his players and assistants, three-time New York Times bestselling author Ian O’Connor takes you behind the Blue Devil curtain with a penetrating examination of the great, but flawed leader as he closes out his iconic career.

Part narrative, part practical, this adventure takes you to the foothills of Ethiopia and the ‘town of runners’; to the training grounds of world-record-holding marathon runners in Kenya; racing across the Arctic Circle and the mountains of Europe, through the sweltering sands of the Sahara and the hostility of a winter traverse of the Pennine Way, to witness the incredible natural movement of runners in these environments.

Oksana Masters was born in Ukraine—in the shadow of Chernobyl—seemingly with the odds stacked against her. She came into the world with one kidney, a partial stomach, six toes on each foot, webbed fingers, no right bicep, and no thumbs. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right, and she was missing both tibias.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg offer a deeply reported account of the intertwined sagas and legacies of two of the greatest soccer players of all time—Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo—examining how their rivalry has grown from a personal competition to a multi-billion-dollar industry, paralleling the stunning rise, overwhelming excesses, and uncertain future of modern international soccer.

Why couldn't Michael Jordan, master athlete that he was, hit a baseball? Why can't modern robotics come close to replicating the dexterity of a five-year-old? Why do good quarterbacks always seem to know where their receivers are?In this deeply researched book, sports and business reporter Zach Schonbrun explores what actually drives human movement and its spectacular potential. The groundbreaking work of two neuroscientists in Major League Baseball is only the beginning.