The Champion's Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive: A review
Review 1: The Champions Mind
Thomas Regan
PsychElite Performance
15/10/2017
My Mistakes Where Made For You
Ever since I could remember, I hated reading books and would quit half way through them because I got bored very quickly. Fiction books just do nothing for me and I think its because I have a really bad imagination. Even though my Mum's side of the family loves reading (they would read a book every week or two), I never really had their passion of reading books. When I was a kid, I used to read the same Roald Dahl book because they were easy (very fixed mindset) and when I got to secondary school I remember not being interested in reading along with the other kids in class. One time I even fell asleep in a GCSE literature class reading Frankenstein. As I got to university, I had to read allot of journals and academic books related to my studies to help my academic knowledge. Again, more of an extrinsic motivation to get better grades rather than reading it because I liked reading. As the years of university went by, I started reading a few books related to football hooliganism such as Cass, Away Days and Scally. Even though the books were good, it never give me any knowledge that I could use... apart from keeping my head down at away games. Please, if you are reading this as a teenager or a student and you do not like reading. Do not make the same mistake. Start reading.As an up and coming mental conditioning coach, I thought this book would give me an insight into the minds of successful athletes. So I could take things from this book and use it for the potential athlete I will have in the future. Hence, buying this book right here. The Champions Mind was a great first book to read.
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| The book cover for The Champions Mind |
Quick Overview
The book is a great tool for any individual that wants to improve their daily lives. Even though the book states its for athletes, this can be relevant to any part of your life. Not just sport. This book is basically a mental skills book with the examples and references being sport related but the book is very flexible to cover different aspects ranging from business, personal growth and money managing. The books primarily focus’ on the mental side of athletic performance (if you never already guessed) whether you’re are a weekend warrior or a professional athlete, this book will benefit you ten fold.The book has many different mental techniques to change and enhance your mindset to a champions mindset. Studying this at university, I believe the techniques are very simplified but that’s all they need to be for your 'Average Joe.' Short, easy and right to the point. The author, Jim Afremow, has worked with a range of different professional athletes including gold medal Olympians, MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL athletes. Additionally, the sports psychologist has many years of experience and he wouldn't write a book if he knew it wouldn't help the average joe. His reputation wouldn’t allow him too!
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| Sport Psychologist: Jim Afremow, PhD |
Think Positive
Overall, I thought this book was brilliant and from a psychologist’s point of view, it was great to see him incorporate so many mental conditioning techniques into the book without going into scientific detail. As this prevents boredom to the reader, they only really care about the main outline of the theory rather than the method behind it. The book incorporates different sports and different professionals as examples giving a wide range of sporting examples instead of just focusing on the 'big sports' like football, American football, hockey and such.Also, having some of his clients writing their own thoughts and feelings of their mindsets gives the book a personal feel rather than Jim just talking about theory and giving examples. The first person narrative aids the reader to believe that not one mindset is right for everyone. As we know, we are all different and so are our brains! For me, reading these narratives and reading their different motivations was a breath of fresh air in a book. Personally, I would love to read short narratives of different athletes mindsets for a whole book and the athletes to go into further detail in which they discuss what theories work for them (or what doesn't) to give them 'the champions mindset. ‘By doing so, as a psychologist, it would help increase our knowledge of the difficulty, diversity and challengers working with elite athletes. If there are any books like this, then please let me know (don’t say autobiographies).
Negatives
There are not many negatives in this book in my opinion but I would love more of the narratives from more athletes. Furthermore, a greater in-depth of descriptions of their mindsets and more information about certain parts of their career and how they used psychological techniques to aid their performances in important competitions or games. I think the narratives are very brief and do not explore the athletes mindsets to their fullest and sometimes I think it is sort of cliché as well. Possibly, the athletes were not asked to go into too much detail.In addition, in my personal opinion, I never really liked the chapter 'Zen in the Zone.' If you do not know, Zen emphasizes self-control, meditation-practice, an insight into Buddha Nature and the personal expression of this insight in daily life. Even though I am an atheist, I believe that Buddhism has many great teachings into self-respect, self-control and self-enlightenment of becoming the best human you can possible be.
However, I did not really get some of the stories and their references to sport. I think this chapter was very different to the other chapters and it was like reading a different book but that was just my take on it. Other people could find it a lot more useful than what I did. Maybe being an atheist made me pre-judge the chapter but I read it with an open mind and never really got into it.
Rating 4/5
Great read. Go Buy it right here.
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