Customer Reviews

Let's Kill 'Em

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"One Western advocate of compassion as a motivating force in professional athletics is the basketball coach, Pat Riley, coach of the Miami Heat, as of this writing, and former three-time world champion coach of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. Riley consciously uses anger as a motivational device for his team, regarding anger as an `art' that requires advance planning, great timing, and exquisite sensitivity. It also requires something else: `Compassion is vital. Without it, anger degenerates into brutality...'"

I enjoyed the topic and found Leizman's arguments not only interesting, but also well-justified. The reading was moderately painful due to the academic nature of the work. The essay was probably originally conceived as a Ph.D. thesis. But for a scant 100 pages it was well worth the effort. I credit Leizman for developing a stout bibliography to justify his positions, as well as incorporating a non-traditional approach into changing violent behavior. In particular, Leizman makes the recommendation that athletes, especially those at the professional level, should strive to re-unite body and mind, and to practice compassion as a motivating force. He incorporates learning from several Eastern sources as the basis of his recommendation, with a special emphasis on the Aikido school of martial arts. In addition to athletes, Leizman comments on coaches. He asserts that the biggest hurdle facing today's professional coaches is how to challenge their players intellectually. That's why I like Pat Riley's quote. Maintaining physical skills and sharpness is the easier part. At the highest level of sports competition physical fundamentals comes naturally. It's the mental game that is difficult. Leizman's contention is that a focus on competition and winning does not give athletes an avenue to improve mentally. Whereas, a focus on personal excellence does.

Jon Leizmans book Let's Kill 'Em: understanding and Controlling violence in sports is a book that addresses the issues of violence within sports in the western culture. This is a book for the well educated and who want to learn something about the issue of violence in sports. There has been many instances in the past where sports have been know for violent behavior and in this book Leizman goes over issues that shows the origins of violence in sports. He writes as far back as the Olympics and progresses to the present day. This book was written to further prevention of sport violence and Leizman gives us different ideas on how we can stop this problem. Leizmans talk about how we can use martial arts to learn how we can control our tempers and for those who are unable he talks about bringing up stiffer fines and penalties to reduce the occurences. The book as a whole was very interesting and enlightening, but younger readers beware this book can be confusing at parts.