Mental Skills for Athletes

Mental Skills for Athletes is an excellent volume that is a must have for any applied sport psychologist working with athletes and coaches. We can always use additional worksheets/exercises for our toolboxes, and Shoenfelt does a great job providing background for different critical areas within our sport performance contexts and provides wonderful exercises to address these key areas. Specific examples from a variety of sports are provided that make the exercises even more useful. This book will also be very helpful for classes addressing mental skills training . - Michael L. Sachs, Temple University, USA. Mental Skills for Athletes is written by Elizabeth Shoenfelt, a sport psychologist with more than 35 years of practical experience working with Olympic and variety athletes and weekend warriors. This exciting Workbook is an in-depth, thoughtfully organized introduction to important mental techniques such as self-talk, relaxation and arousal, and performance routines for enhancing sport performance. A major contribution to the literature is the accompanying exercises designed for perfecting the use of the sport psychology techniques and then practicing them for success use in diverse competitive sport environments. - Bonnie G. Berger, Ed.D., Bowling Green State University, USA. While today's athletes and coaches are keenly aware of the importance of mental skills in achieving successful performances, few know what these skills are or how to acquire and improve them. Often these important skills are relegated to the simplistic slogans of just believe in yourself or think positive . This book provides a valuable alternative. Based on research findings, Dr. Shoenfelt clearly enumerates, defines, and explains the specific mental skills that are associated with high level performance. This book provides highly valuable tools and instructions for self-evaluation of mental skills and detailed specific exercises for improving each skill. - Jack J. Lesyk, Ph.D., CMPC, Director, Ohio Center for Sport Psychology, USA.