Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement: Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches

by Keith A. Kaufman, Carol R. Glass, Timothy R. Pineau

This comprehensive resource on the history, theory, and practice of mindfulness in sport offers a fresh, exciting approach to performance enhancement for athletes and coaches at all levels, from amateur to professional.

All athletes and coaches know that peak performance requires more than just physical exertion. There is a psychological component as well, which can be expressed in attributes such as awareness, focus, emotion regulation, and motivation. For many years, systematic mental training was ignored in athletics. Thankfully, this is starting to change.

Rooted in the traditions of mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Kaufman, Glass, and Pineau present mindful sport performance enhancement (MSPE), an empirically supported, six-session program that can be adapted for athletes or even performers in other high-pressure domains. Each MSPE session includes educational, experiential, and discussion components, as well as recommendations for home practice. There is special emphasis on incorporating mindfulness into workouts, practices, and competitions, as well as everyday life.
 
The book includes handy scripts for mindfulness teachers, athletes, and coaches, and handouts summarizing each session that are also available for download from the APA website.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published August 14, 2017

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this book overall and think the section on the various MSPE sessions was very good, it reads too much like an academic paper and that was unnecessary. In fact, some of the sections of the book were standard sections of a typical paper. Those could have been left out or moved to an appendix. Additionally, the APA formatting for references makes the text much harder to read. Perhaps a book published by the APA requires that, but again, it made the book too academic and less accessible to some of the people who would benefit from the book. Why not use footnotes instead so that readability isn't affected? Lastly, the price of the book is outrageous, and is another barrier to this material reaching its intended audience. That's a shame because I think bringing mindfulness to athletes is the next wave of performance training.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed this book. For such a potentially technical and scientific topic, the language and sources were very accessible. The sessions were easy to follow, and I got a bunch of takeaways that will hopefully be useful for me. I really appreciated the in-depth scripting of the activities, and the handouts for each session. The supplemental resources on the website will come in handy as I attempt meditation. This would be a good book for both coaches and athletes.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindfulness is the way.