Practical Sports Psychology

This book is for athletes and coaches who have a deep desire for success and are committed to doing everything they can to succeed. You'll learn how to use your mind as your best competitive advantage. You'll learn practical ways of improving your mental game that work powerfully.

Over the years, I've added different pieces to my approach. My approach has ultimately become a combination of meditation, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, breakthrough thinking and Jungian psychology. However, you'll find virtually no sports psychology theory in this book. The ideas have been baked into the book in practical and simple ways. This is a sports psychology practice book, not a book that you'd read to understand sports psychology theory.

This is a complete volume of mental practices whose topics are wide and deep for dedicated athletes or coaches who want to explore deeply an effective sports psychology practice. This book can help guide you on your sports journey for a lifetime if you choose.

If you're new to sports or sports psychology, you might want to also consider Mental Practice I-X which is a ten volume, book series that presents similar ideas as this book, but in a logical progression from beginner to expert.

This book is different from the Mental Practice X book in that it has some new mental practices and new sections in the book including how we learn and essential mental practices. It also has simplified suggestions to use for anchor words and it has a new hypnosis script and a deep sleep script to use in mental practice.

This book has its beginnings in my own sports adventures. I competed well in football, wrestling and track in high school and enjoyed my share of successes. However, my defining moment in sports came when I joined the track team in my first year of community college and started throwing the javelin. I had no prior experience throwing the javelin, but had some immediate successes and wins in meets. I eventually qualified for the state championship and had a very good season.

For my sophomore season, I was highly motivated to improve. I worked hard on strength and conditioning, studied lots of film on technique and practiced daily until I was worn out. I did everything I knew to improve with the goal of winning the state championship and more.

The result of all of my hard work and dedication was complete disappointment. I didn't even come close to repeating the performances of my freshman year. The harder I tried, the worse my performances became. I continued to work hard through the frustration of that season with increasingly diminished returns.

That defining experience, for which I am now exceedingly thankful, fueled what has become a forty-year journey to discover what was missing for me that sophomore season with the javelin. Ultimately, what was missing was a strong mental game. I wish I knew then what I know now. However, now I have an even greater satisfaction of sharing what I've learned with other athletes who may be searching for what's missing for them.

This book has also evolved out of my work of coaching athletes. Athletes develop in their mental games in predictable stages. The speed of their development depends on how vigorously they apply themselves in their mental and physical practices and competitions. When motivated athletes are open to learning, practicing the right things in the right sequences, they rapidly progress. I've seen it time and again. The methods in this book work, often dramatically.

In addition, this book has also evolved out of my experiences of competing in golf and action pistol shooting over the past seventeen years. I've personally tested every idea in this book. Golf and action pistol shooting have been my laboratory to test and refine my ideas.