Best Books For Mental Training.

[dirtypool40]

Guys, I thought I would start a thread about mental training books (and tapes) , and what you liked about them individually. There are other threads out there that touch on this, or individual books. The idea here is a running list of books (tapes too) as we discover and use them, with reviews by our kind of users.

I’ll start us off…

Lanny Basham’s book With Winning in Mind is a must read, really the foundation for high level mental training, with some good drills / techniques and because it’s based on shooting (albeit 3 pos) you don’t have to read always transposing tennis, or golf into IPSC. Get a copy, hell get two.

Mind Gym, by Gary Mack is mostly a collection of situational anecdotes, almost like a “Chicken Soup” book for athletes. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, or won’t refer to it regularly, but it’s just a different take. I learned of this book here on Benos, and consider it another staple for any mental training library.

Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge was giving to me by a friend. It’s a neat premise, one I was thinking of writing a Front Site article on. Basically it shows a relationship between controlling your heart rate and staying in control during high performance situations of stress, ie combat or high level competition. About 145, or a good, sustained cardio pump, is about the top end where you can still be efficient and fluid, things degrade rapidly after that, like they would in a panicked 180bpm situation. Simple; expose yourself to the most realistic stress you can, and you’ll be more in control when you actually encounter it.

I haven’t gotten all the way through it and while good in theory, it has limited cross over to our sport. (Before you ask about the article, I was hoping to record my heart rate during practice, local matches and major matches and see if I was getting more excited, and therefore less efficient at the bigger contests. Alas, heart rate monitor watches won’t plot the jump for 6-20 seconds most of our stages cover. Neat idea though, huh?)

Matt Loehr’s (?) Toughness Training for Sports is excellent, but less mental theory and more “nuts and bolts”, or active, physical things you can actually DO. This is not a bad thing, just different, and a good foundation.

All the jedi mind tricks you ever read about won’t work if you aren’t tough from daily workouts. Look at the items coverd in his books as blocks to check, especially before a big match. They are simple and common sense; things like, finding tough competition, rest, active recovery, hydration, nutrition, ab work outs, and building cardio reserves. This stuff may not seem to apply to action shooting, but ours is a marathon sport, and when you tick down that list, you can imagine being pretty comfortable in high level competition if you had all of them covered.

Lastly I’ll leave you with an obscure one I really like. I’m not even through it yet but Nideffer’s Psyched to Win, seems right up my alley. It’s a dozen years old (so is Brian’s book), and has a cheesy 90’s tennis player on the cover, but once you get past that it’s great. There’s a lot of confirmation of things you always wondered about, things I needed to hear. Like that there is no magic word or hypnosis program, and that you won’t always play in the zone. And playing in the zone does not represent your “super, ultra, 100% potential”. But if you keep working and improving, your average keeps getting better, so some days you can win when you thought you didn’t shoot very well. Simple things like that, that let you relax into YOUR game more.

Ok, your turn, and no, you can’t list Brian’s Book.

Which ones did you like and why?

Edited January 31, 2006 by dirtypool40

[BigD]

The Book of Five Rings, written by Miyamoto Musashi in the early 1600's, is a book on strategy that can be related to competition, battle, business and a way of life. There is no substitute for the book itself, but the book in a nutshell can be found at http://artofwar.thetao.info/japan/

Buy it, read it, learn it, live it.

Lanny Bassham's book and CD's on mental management are excellent to get your head right with winning. It's like me to shoot well.

[XRe]

I'll pitch in for Kubistant's Performing Your Best again...

[dirtypool40]

Since you already mentioned it, how about Art of War? Not so much focused training, but more strategy, still good mental gymnastics.

[spook]

- Brian's Book. No need to explain that one.

- Mind Gym. It really is the athlete's Mental Chicken Soup (nice metaphor DP)

- The Inner Game of Golf. I liked it better than the Tennis version. Golf relates to shooting and this book is written in a more mature comprehensive way.

- With Winning in Mind. Great theory. I shot some of my best matches after reading it and applying the stuff in the book. I do however find it hard to have the discipline to follow "the rules"

- Tao Te Ching. For overall peace of mind

Edited February 1, 2006 by spook

[AzShooter]

Best book I've every read to improve my mental conditioning was

Phycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

It takes some time to get into it and figure out how it is related to sports but it does prepare you to let your mind go and do the things that need to be done.

[carinab]

The Mental Athlete by Kay Porter, Ph.D. and Judy Foster - even has a chapter on psych issues for female athletes.

The Warrior Athlete by Dan Millman - It's somewhat "tie-dye/fruit and nut bar" but there are some good points within it's pages. Dan Milman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior is fictional, again steeped in birkenstock hippiness, but is a decent primer on zen and learning that reactions are creations of the mind often with little basis in reality (good for those with negative self talk).

Gotta second the Musashi book.

There's a host of zen books that are lurking in the benoverse threads somewhere...nearly all of them would be appropriate. For me, those texts help me quiet my mind (which trust me, goes full tilt occasionally) so that my best performance can happen.

[Tangram]

Inner Game of Tennis especially the newest edition. Never read the Inner Game of Golf so no comment on that.

[Clay1]

I'm surprised that it wasn't mentioned earlier, but I really enjoyed Saul Kirsch's latest book: Thinking Practical Shooting. It expanded on many of the Lanny Bassham concepts.

Rick

[dirty whiteboy]

"Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect"

Bob Rotella,

people always say "But I don't play golf" I know, I know.but it tells you what you should concentarte on during a competition and what you shouldn't!

[pskys2]

Five Rings is deeper than it seems at first read, and quite good.

Sauls latest Thinking Practical Shooting is great.

Probably should read some of the Martial Arts Books, you know using your "enemies" momentum against them thing. Of course in shooting you are your own enemy.