The Mental Athlete: Inner Training for Peak Performance in All Sports

by Kay Porter

Improved mental ability means improved sports performance. Athletes who excel do so not just because of their physical abilities but because of their mental awareness, preparation, and skills as well. The Mental Athlete will help improve your overall performance by providing the tools, guidance, and practical insight you need to sharpen your mental skills. This conditioning manual for the mind will help you ·further enhance mental strengths and address weaknesses through effectiveself-assessments,·increase confidence in personal abilities and avoid the fear of failure,·heighten awareness of inner-thought processes and learn ways to improve them,and·be free of inhibitions to initiate action and to respond intuitively andpositively to challenges. No matter what sport you play and at what level you play, you will find this practical, reader-friendly book useful because it not only lets you know what you need to do to improve your mental abilities, but it also shows you how to improve them. It contains exercises, tests, and worksheets that help you move through the steps of mental achievement. In addition, The Mental Athlete contains the following ·Sections that cover specific sports and issues·Sport-specific visualizations for football, soccer, volleyball, and manyother sports·Information on issues such as team building; recovering from injuries; andletting go of mistakes, losses, anger, and fear Take full advantage of your physical skills by fully developing your mental skills—the aim of The Mental Athlete !

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conveys the importance of being volitional with your mental attitude and self-concept, as well as conveying the importance of being "mindful about your mindfulness"--cultivating the ability to observe and adjust your mental attitude. The context here is (obviously) sports, but the book's ideas can be... [see the rest on my book review site.]

[Mariah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

A lot of repetition. but it serves the purpose of being meditative. I like that there are emboldened sections for the meditations as this is really meant to be a book to come back to. I liked it but gosh, the grammar in these self-help books sometimes be wilding.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think Positive. Visualize success. You know the drill.

[Femi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only for athletes.

[Jeffrey Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book for anyone trying to move to a higher level in sports or just trying to capture these concepts to improve in other areas of life. Positive self image with affirmations, meditation, and using the mind's visualization power to achieve better performance.

[Lia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly insightful & helpful book for refraining your mind for success in ANY part of life, even if you're not an athlete, loved it!

[Marquis Mcmahan]

Marquis McMahan
Mr. Mascio
English 2 Period 5
3/13/15
The Mental Athlete
In the book the mental athlete the author Kay Porter, catch the reader’s eyes throughout the power of sports. The Mental Athlete will help improve your overall performance by providing the tools, guidance, and practical insight you need to sharpen your mental skills. The Mental Athlete provides exercises, self-tests, and worksheets that facilitate mental training for sports performance. You learn to identify your strengths and weaknesses and then work on increasing confidence and responding intuitively to challenges.
The book The Mental Athlete not only give readers the physical tips for sports but the mental tips to. No matter what sport you play and at what level you play, you will find this practical, reader-friendly book useful because it not only lets you know what you need to do to improve your mental abilities, but it also shows you how to improve them. It contains exercises, tests, and worksheets that help you move through the steps of mental achievement. The mental athlete also shows ways for teammates to get along because if you want to win, most sports involve needing team chemistry.
The Mental Athlete help athletes in many ways overcome the mental instead of the physical. In this book it talks about what u need to be a good sport player. It also explains why you need them things to become a good sports player. For example one of the things you need is humility because without that players just wouldn’t have that desire to win. Another thing is you need confidence because without confidence someone can bring a player down easily and make the player think bad about themselves.
So them the main points I want to get across over this book. The book help people in many ways. People need help with a lot playing these kind of sports but its not all about who have the most handles and who the best, in thus book its all about who have the most heart. That’s why I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend this book to everyone.
Thank You

[Jorge Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un buen libro de contenido didáctico. Es un apoyo interesante para el entrenamiento mental, sin embargo comete varios errores pedagógicos y filosóficos, confunde el espiritismo con la vida espiritual, para fines dialécticos la autora maneja al cuerpo y la mente como si fueran cosas diferentes, hubiera preferido una lectura con un conocimiento más profundo en el tema antropológico y de unidad de vida. La motivación servicial, trascendental o motivación altruista nunca es manejada.
También existe un vacío importante al tratar de conceptualizar el entrenamiento mental como técnica, pragmática y "conocimiento" mental reduciendo así la esfera trascendental del ser humano y la razón.
El manejo de la ideología de género podría ser mas perjudicial que bueno.
Un buen libro en el cual se debe de tener cuidado y tomar cierta distancia sobre los conceptos "humanos" del libro.

[Rafael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mental athlete by Kay Porter is an amazingly profound and amazingly informative book about sports psychology. As an athlete myself, I found this book amazingly helpful in many areas, Specially pre-competition techniques. The book recommended various tips, and tricks to calm your nerves down and how to reach your goals. It mentioned visualization techniques, breathing exersizes and many other small tricks that really help you be the athlete you want to be. Kay Porter, the author, is a world famous sport psycologist that has helped various olympic athletes reach their goals and even obtain an olympic gold medal. I genuinly recommend this book to any athlete, public speaker or anyone that sometime in their day has to calm down and relax. This book was amazingly helpful thus I plan to read more books written by the amazing Kay Porter.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely worth a read for athletes and coaches alike. Touches briefly on importance aspects of the mind/mental state on performance and has some great activities that athletes can do to assess their current state of mental performance and then develop plans for change.

Some of the material is now outdated, and it does not cover things in depth. But a good overview/introduction to mental skills training for athletes.

[Phil Calandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think most of us have heard some of these techniques to peak performance mentioned in this book. Although,upon a cursory look at these techniques, a normal reaction might be "heard that, done that, not a big deal", these techniques can only be verified through intense effort and focus. However, this is an interesting and compelling read that could perhaps change one's life if one is truly dedicated and willing to change the way one thinks and feels about himself.

[John Wozniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my personal opinion this a great book for athletes. If your not an athlete I could easily see you being lost and bored in this book. This is because it talks about individual sports and the struggles/blocks you go through in those sports. For me being an athlete, I absolutely loved the book and have learned so many techniques to help me get through my struggles and hardships throughout the season. I hope others enjoy the book as much as I did.

[Wystan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great mental exercises. A little outdated now, but definitely a good read for athletes. I took it a chapter at a time through my shoulder rehab and found it to be tremendously helpful and inspiring.