Interested in some of the best resources available in the field of peak performance? Read our blog for reviews on the books, articles, and events that will boost your awareness of the most important issues in sport psychology. 

The Little Book of Talent

Daniel Coyle

One of the literary staples of sports psychology has always been The Mind Gym, by Gary Mack. It is an easy read (40 short chapters) and tremendously practical. Anyone who has read it can tell you at least one thing that improved the way they think before, during, or after competition. As such, it is THE book I give away to athletes who are hungry to develop their inner game.

I have recently found the perfect follow up to The Mind Gym: Daniel Coyle’s book The Little Book of Talent (52 Tips for Improving Your Skills), a sequel to his New York Times bestselling The Talent Code. In a nutshell, this book was written to help average athletes “change the way they think about practice”. Effective practice, practice that gets engraved into an athlete’s muscle memory must be done in a specific manner, for a specific period of time, and with a specific intent. Anything less and the benefit of practice are greatly diminished. Coyle’s research on talent hotbeds (sport specific schools and/or trainers) that crank out elite athletes reveals that the one distinguishing feature that they all share is their relentless commitment to “deep practice” verses “shallow practice” which is that casual approach to practice so many athletes take.

Not surprisingly, the most important component of this deep practice has to take place outside of team practice. Group practices do not typically offer the dedicated time for an individual to finely tune their skills and engrave them into the neural pathways for automatic retrieval. Chapter topics such as practice snacks, reaches and reps, learning velocity, making games of practice, making the most of mistakes, and practicing with your eyes closed (one of my personal favorites) are guaranteed to provide any athlete, or coach with ammunition to transform their approach to practice, and take their skill development and performances to an entirely new level.

I found the information in The Little Book of Talent so useful that I have put together a “Top 5 Skill Development Plan” for my clients that can turn a bench warmer to a starter, a starter to a standout, and a standout to a super star. The sooner you start, the sooner you will enjoy the benefits of accelerated skill building.  

Peak ; Secrets from the New Science of Expertise 

By Anders Ericsson

This may be the most influential book that will ever be read by any athlete, coach, and parent who aspires to "exceed the norm" and get out of the world of just good enough and on to the road of extraordinary.

Peak is a first person account written by the guy who literally wrote the book on how people excel. By studying performers in every imaginable field - from London taxi drivers to national spelling bee winners, Top Gun fighter pilots, chess masters, and even wine experts -  the author has overwhelmingly debunked the myth that most of our greatest athletes, scientists, entertainers, and world leaders have some innate ability that caused them to rise above the masses.

The book centers around the idea of "deliberate practice", the essence of which is a formula of identifying experts in your field, determining what skills they possess that makes them so good, discover the training methods they used to develop those specific skills, and implementing a training regimen to improve on your weaknesses and increase the level of your eventual performances.

It's all about engaging in individualized practice activities and spending the right amount of focused energy and time challenging yourself beyond your comfort levels. Without that combination, most athletes and performers in every field remain in some place of being good enough, but not great. Deliberate practice can be applied to any activity on the field of athletic competition, at home, in school, and even at work.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is how it considers the variety of ways deliberate practice has been applied by people we all know about (Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, Mozart, the Beatles, Bill Gates, Pablo Picasso, and Tiger Woods) to attain their statures of greatness.

I sent every high school and college athlete I work with a summary of the deliberate practice method and instructions on how to turn their off season into a career turning point. You can too, by developing your own "practice-driven mindset".

If you are a student of improvement, a serious seeker of positive change and growth in your life, this book is for you! Don't miss it!!