This Is Your Brain on Sports: Beating Blocks, Slumps and Performance Anxiety for Good!

This is an essential book for sport psychologists, coaches and of course athletes! Each with over 20 years working in mental health and sport, Alan Goldberg and David Grand, bring not only a wealth of experience to this text, but new ideas and techniques, which in essence revolutionise the way sport psychologists can work to maximise human and sport potential. For example, competition anxiety, 'choking', is often considered to be brought about by; 'over-thinking', negative self-talk, and the pressure to perform, resolved traditionally sought through Mental Skills Training MST. However, the authors consider this is often brought about by negative emotional past events, which have their roots in traumatic experience, and may appear unrelated as well as more immediately meaningful.The authors demonstrate with high profile athletes how their recently developed 'brain-spotting' BSP approach works, and the level of success it achieves in relatively short time scales. Based on the very successful Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing EMDR approach, Dr Grand has taken this work to another level. Dr Golderberg for his part, has recognised that MST approaches traditionally used in sport psychology have limits when 'trauma', both big T and small 't' are involved. With the use of 'bilateral sounds', eye movement and fixed eye positioning, the 'brain-spot' is identified, where historical issues relating to a traumatic event are stored. They enable athletes to recover from such 'blocks', though de-activating 'frozen' trauma responses, which are specifically held in the physical body, as well as emotionally stored. Dr Goldberg is also courageous in tackling parental and coach pressures on children, and how such young athletes can become demotivated and traumatised by such experience. The authors' responses to Repetitive Sport Performance Problems RSPP, are tackled in the ingenious use of brainspotting, which enables physical desensitisation and emotional, 'schematic' reprocessing of memory to take place, and is capable of unlocking multiple as well as single traumatic events.Learn to recognise the signs and symptoms of trauma in the sporting context, and importantly know that it can be fixed. The athlete scenarios cover YIPS in golf, risk taking moves in gymnastics, goalkeeper errors in soccer, baseball, motor cycling, equestrian, as well as fear of injury. Both authors are at the forefront of emotional healing in sport in the USA and beyond.

I wanted more tips on how to improve things, there was just too much case history.

Great insights to get out of slumps.My 16 year old figure skater got his triples back after understanding where the block came from.

Simply brillant. Breakthrough science and application by David Grand and Alan Goldberg - this book will mark the beginning of a new era in sport coaching. It takes time for great ideas to spread and be integrated - but once this work will touch a critical number of influential people, it will revolutionise the current approach and open new horizon both for coaches and athletes - thank you David and Alan for this masterpiece.

adorei o livro, muito bom, didático e interessante. Não poderia ter efetuado compra melhor, estou maravilhado com o produto e atendimento

Having been frustrated using traditional cognitive-behavioral approaches with athletes experiencing freezing, choking or the yips, I was absolutely thrilled to read David Grand & Alan Goldberg's `This is Your Brain on Sports.' This book packs in all of the information you need to make a wonderful impact with athletes suffering from these recurrent sports performance issues. After reading the book, I was able to put the breakthrough therapy of `brainspotting' to immediate use with my clients and the results were spectacular! I would highly recommend this book and its' techniques to all practitioners who work with athletes. You will be thrilled with your results.But that's not all. The authors wrote this book so that athletes could also benefit. They carefully put together treatment strategies that athletes can employ even without a therapist. Therefore, I recommend this not just for therapists who work with atheletes, but for athletes themselves!Jack Singer, Ph.D.Professional and Licensed Sport Psychologist

This book was an easy read and logically organized with many examples and explanations of the basis of their approach and the supporting concepts. Real life examples are presented in a manner easily understood and comprehended by literally anyone. Any parent or coach that is honestly concerned with better understanding how to assist their children and players navigate the psychological aspects of participating in higher level sports should find the book very useful, and for many possibly a source of relief. Personally as an athlete of sorts most of my life, 15 years of coaching experience in two different sports and the father of four athletic children, the applicability and value of the information and "self help chapter" are enormous and appreciated. Well done, thank you!