Sports Development

Champions, as the familiar adage preaches, are not born—they're made. Reaching the top of any sport, or any aspect of life, takes years upon years of dedication and proper preparation. But if there's a huge pool of individuals who have undertaken the same commitment and steps towards becoming the best, what truly separates the winners from everyone else? Joanna Zeiger believes proper mental preparation is the answer. The Champion Mindset is a much-needed and long overdue look into how to program a competitor's mind to achieve optimal success.

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.

Are you looking for unique ways to "get into the game"? To enhance your training and find focus? You aren't alone. Increasingly, athletes and coaches are incorporating mindfulness practices into their training. That's because mindfulness can help you lower your stress levels, connect with the moment, and mentally bounce back after setbacks. So whether you're a sports enthusiast or a professional athlete, mindfulness can also help you deal with physical aspects of training, such as fatigue, aches, pains, injury, burnout, and exhaustion.

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.

It's described as the greatest achievement the modern game has seen, and Ivan Cleary is the man behind it - the astonishing, historic benchmark of multiple back-to-back premiership wins by the Penrith Panthers in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In his own words, Cleary tells all about what he's learned and how he leads, informed by his decades as a player and coach—a playmaker, team builder, mentor and leader who understands that not everything counts, but everything matters.

There is a special bond between mothers and their sons, and it never goes away. This book contains some of the best stories and poems from Chicken Soup's library honoring that lifelong relationship between mothers and their male offspring.

Teresa Edwards has won more Olympic medals than any other basketball player in history with four golds and one bronze. She is the youngest woman to win a gold medal in basketball - and the oldest. She’s a WNBA pioneer and has been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Now, for the first time, she shares the story of her greatest loss - and her most incredible victory.

Now, for the first time, athletes from all sports and skill levels can easily learn and master the same Sport Psychology Training Skills previously only available to professional and Olympic-level athletes. Own the Game will provide you the hands-on tools necessary to increase your self-confidence, focus, concentration, and poise -ultimately allowing you to play to your highest athletic level!

In 2015 former England football star Rio Ferdinand suddenly and tragically lost his wife and soul mate, Rebecca, age 34, to cancer. It was a profound shock, and Rio found himself struggling to cope not just with the pain of his grief but also with his new role as both mum and dad to their three young children. Rio's BBC1 documentary Being Mum and Dad touched everyone who watched it and won huge praise for the honesty and bravery he showed in talking about his emotions and experiences.

In speed skating, a hard pivot is an aggressive shift of direction that requires courage, practice, and split-second timing. For Apolo Ohno, the most frightening hard pivot of his life didn’t happen on the ice—but rather, when he had to hang up his skates for good. “After my final Olympics, I felt confused, vulnerable, and adrift without purpose,” he says.

From the majesty of Uluru and its surrounding deserts to the rugged grandeur of the Kimberley and Pilbara landscapes, the Australian Outback inspires a deep connection with the timeless wisdom of the natural world. It is a place where this wisdom reveals itself in many ways, each day, when the walkabout soul allows themselves to be seduced by the wonder of this ancient land, and its physical and spiritual magnificence. Walkabout to Wisdom, an evocative story of such a journey, reintroduces us to the essence and importance of this natural wisdom, and its inherent capacity to teach and heal.

Not only is Andre De Grasse blazingly fast on the track, he’s also incredibly popular with his fans. His beaming smile and magnetic personality have won over millions of people around the world. Who could forget De Grasse’s friendly rivalry with sprinting legend Usain Bolt? Or when he became the first Canadian to capture medals in all three sprint events during a single Olympics? His gold medal victory in the 200-metre race at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics captivated Canadians witnessing a feat not accomplished by any other Canadian in close to a century.

In Life as Sport, sport psychologist Dr. Jonathan Fader shares the skills that he teaches professional athletes - to enhance motivation, set productive goals, sharpen routines, manage stress, and clarify thought processes - and applies them to real-world situations. Dr. Fader's audiobook is the product of thousands of hours of conversations with athletes from various teams and sports.

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.

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents - her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father - and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver.

Do you want to be slim, healthy and fit? Are you over 40 and confused about what your exercise plan should look like? Are you discouraged and ready to give up? If so, Strength Training for Life is the perfect book for you! This book will teach you everything you need to know about weight lifting and muscle building for achieving your body's natural potential. It will show you exactly how often and at what pace to exercise and help you design a personalized fitness plan that will show real, visible results!

Happy Feet is the ultimate resource for soccer parents. Written by best-selling author, Dan Blank, it will give you a better understanding of the game, its rules and terminology. This remarkable book includes links to seven excellent videos that help explain soccer's more mysterious concepts such as offside, the advantage rule and systems of play. By the end of Section 1, parents with no soccer background will have a working vocabulary of this strange sport and an understanding of all its moving pieces.

Kirk Herbstreit is a reflection of the sport he loves, a reflection of his football-crazed home state of Ohio, where he was a high school star and Ohio State captain, and a reflection of another Ohio State football captain thirty-two years earlier: his dad Jim, who battled Alzheimer’s disease until his death in 2016.

Arnold Palmer taught world-class pro golf instructor Brad Brewer how to play golf. But that was just the beginning. For more than 30 years, Palmer taught Brad how to live. As a businessman, a father, a celebrity, a philanthropist, and a friend, Palmer showed those around him that true success has nothing to do with the final score - and everything to do with how you play the game.

Bill Geivett draws on his 28 years of experience in professional baseball to answer these questions. He offers his insights from his time as a player, scout, and front office executive. Do You Want to Work in Baseball? is more than a "how to" description of details to remember. It is filled with Bill's real-life lessons learned from the varied roles he has held for Major League Baseball clubs including the California Angels, New York Yankees, Montreal Expos,Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Colorado Rockies.