Customer Reviews

Mental Training for Peak Performance: Top Athletes Reveal the Mind Exercises They Use to Excel

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
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This book is an excellent resource and guide for anyone who is looking to try and get the most out of their sporting potential. It is an easy to read and well structured guide which gives you a number of exercises to help calm the nerves and keep the mind positive and focused. It also explains why each exercise works and has advice from elite athletes who have applied the techniques to their own sport. If you are a person who suffers from nerves on race day or looses confidence when they get to the start line, then this book is a must have for you.

In the first 69 pages of this 183 page book, the author explained how important mental training could be to sports performance supported by info/statistics about Olympic/World Class sports stars, and introduced various techniques including self talk, breathing, meditation, imagery, visual rehearsal and so on. Those were the sessions with relatively higher appeal and practical value. The rest of the book covered, in individual chapters, specifics of ten different sports (mountain biking, skiing, marathon, golf, volleyball.....), elaborated with quotes and short stories from top performers and their coaches.

For serious players, these sessions were too concise. Actually, I am an above average player in tennis, cycling and swimming. (These three were covered individually in the book). However, I dont find the chapters devoted to each of them really helpful to lift my performance up.

To those amateurs who know very little about mental training, this is an acceptably good start. For serious players, they should have known a lot more here and there from sports magazines, newspaper columns and even websites. Furthermore, I think that the book could be much enhanced if the author could shift the weight back more on general topics (he definitely has more material to write for more than 69 pages) instead of talking specifically but so little on individual sports.

To conclude, this book can be helpful, but only marginally and conditionally.

This book is perfect for any busy athelete. It's easy to read and it's principals are easy to follow and can be adapted to any type of sport. It's small enough to throw in your gym bag and take with you anywhere. It's not bogged down with testimonies from athletic super stars, just matter of fact and simple.
If your looking for an extra edge in your competitions or just looking to reach your own personal goals, this book is a must.

A well researched and written book with some very sound advice. It covers relaxation, imaging and visualisation with practical examples of how to go about the processes. It also explains the relevance and the benefits an athlete can derive from using these techniques.

A reasonable book on the topic however I found it lacking the depth I was hoping to read.

I learned a lot from the book `Mental Training for Peak Performance' by Steven Ungerleider. This book describes how mental practices can improve athletic performance. Ungerleider leads readers through the basics of mental training and then offers specific advice for cyclists, skiers, golfers, marathoners, mountain bikers, runners, swimmers, tennis, volleyball players, weight lifters and pentathletes.

As a result of reading this book, I am starting to practice imagery and visualization.

I found this book very interesting, because I do mental coaching for athletes and non-athletes. Ungerleider has written a very credible account of what it means to be an athlete under various kinds of pressures. The book is educational and entertaining as Ungerleider mentions several scientific studies and reveals the exercises used by many well-known athletes. Yet I think that someone with a restless mind might need more practical step-by-step advice on how to improve his/her concentration and stress management abilities.
But I can easily recommend this to any athlete and others who are interested in managing their mind.

I read this book several years ago, and I think I received it as an incentive for continuing my subscription with Runner's World magazine. Although I've tried, I'm not sure the information in this book has helped my amateur performances. While the information in Mental Training is helpful, I think it lends itself more to the demands of professional athletic success. And though I continue to experiment with viusalization techniques (in all aspects of life), my practical expectations are now a bit more realistic.

This book is a gold mine of information about the awesome power of visualization.

It's filled with practical information and theories, with lots of PROOFS to scientifically validate the theories contained within. Highly Recommended.

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated

I have read this book and others with the similar perspective. It's a quite applied volumen, but I prefer other with a theoretical+practical perspective... I have used it with my students, but I have needed other books...