Mind Gym

An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence

This is a great book for anyone trying to understand how to improve overall performance in any endeavor – not just sport.

How does stress/pressure affect performance?  Consider this:

Imagine yourself in a parking lot.  On the ground in front of you is a parking stop – the long concrete block that keeps your car from rolling to far forward.  Your job is to walk from one side to the other.  No problem, right?

Now imagine that the block has just been lifted up 25 feet in the air.  Your task is the same, walk all the way across.  The block is the same, it has in no way changed.

What’s different is the penalty for failure.  On the ground there is no risk of injury or humiliation if you slip off.  In the air though, at 25 feet, the question is not whether you will be injured, the question is how bad will it be.

Walking across on the ground is easy.  In the air, all control seems to have completely slipped away.  Why?

Logic tells us that if you can do it on the ground, you should be able to do it at 25 feet.  A deeper understanding of the human condition, however, tells us that understanding how to train the mind to perform in any environment is as – if not more – important as training the body.

I recommend Mind Gym – An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence because it opens the curtain to understanding optimal performance in the extreme environment.