Mind Gym : An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence Book

I'll get right to it. This one was tough to pull myself through. I'm very surprised at the amount of positive comments and overall rating for this book. There is an alarmingly small amount of actionable content here given its status proclaiming otherwise. The average chapter length is perhaps 3 or 4 pages long. In my opinion, it's hard to cover any meaningful topic in 3 or 4 pages.

The brevity could almost be forgiven if the writing was precise, deliberate, and the ideas well-researched. But that is not the case. Most topics are covered in personal anecdotes, inspirational quotes, and an obscure comparison connecting the idea at hand to some historical athletic figure in a situational example. Most of it confuses correlation and causation (many examples like "Nolan Ryan spent hours before each game thinking about his pitches, even refusing to answer phone calls from friends and family. He is remembered as one of the greatest pitchers of all time.")

If you've read a true behavioral psychology book - see "Thinking Fast and Slow" for example - you get a great respect for the lengths researchers go to in order to design scientific experiments, isolate variables, and do all the things necessary to prove ways in which the human mind works and how to take specific steps to better yourself and take advantage of your own humanity in that way. If that's the kind of book you're looking for, this is not it.

However, I've given it two stars as opposed to one because I understand that some may just want an easy read and pick up some quick inspiration to help prepare themselves before an athletic event. It's not scientific, it's not really even based on anything, but the ideas are agreeable enough that maybe someone can get a useful habit or two from reading.