
The Best
How Elite Athletes Are Made
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Narrated by:
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Stuart Nurse
About this listen
Never have the best sportspeople seemed so far removed from the rest of us. So how are these extraordinary athletes made, and what do their achievements tell us about success? The Best reveals how the most incredible sportspeople in the world got that way. It is a unique look at the path to sporting greatness. This is a story of origins, training, luck, and serendipity, as well as of sports science and cutting-edge technology. Packed with gripping personal stories and interviews, you will discover how the best athletes develop the extraordinary skills and muscle memory that allow them to perform remarkable acts without consciously thinking about them.
The Best deconstructs the myths, like the notion that 10,000 hours of practice are needed to make it to the top, and explores the hidden power of the mind to reveal how athletes really think and process information during high octane competition. It gets inside the minds of champions, deconstructing what athletes see during matches and explaining how they do what they do.
Drawing on examples and lessons from throughout the sporting world, this is for anyone who wants to know what it takes to be the best.
©2020 A. Mark Williams and Tim Wigmore (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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It's you. As the speed of change in elite sports has increased, the support infrastructure around head coaches has not kept up. This has left many coaches—supposedly experts in human performance—walking zombies who don’t sleep, don’t exercise, and don’t see their families. To succeed in the modern sporting world, head coaches must face some hard truths. By grappling with these truths, which cut to the very core of who they are as human beings, head coaches can get out of their own way and achieve all-new levels of personal performance.
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Broadly applicable
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The Little Book of Talent
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The Little Book of Talent is an easy-to-use handbook of scientifically proven, field-tested methods to improve skills - your skills, your kids’ skills, your organization’s skills - in sports, music, art, math, and business. The product of five years of reporting from the world’s greatest talent hotbeds and interviews with successful master coaches, it distills the daunting complexity of skill development into 52 clear, concise directives. Whether you’re age 10 or 100, this is an essential guide for anyone who ever asked, "How do I get better?"
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buy book
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The Champion's Mind
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Champion's Mind, sports psychologist Jim Afremow, PhD, LPC, now offers the same advice he uses with Olympians, Heisman Trophy winners, and professional athletes, including tips and techniques based on high-performance psychology research, such as how to get in a "zone," thrive on a team, and stay humble; how to progress within a sport and sustain excellence long-term, and customizable pre-performance routines to hit full power when the gun goes off or the puck is dropped.
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Excellent content, mediocre narrator
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The Process
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Written by former a NCAA head coach and most importantly a baseball dad, The Process shares with you what it takes to get there from little league ages through high school. Walter is a baseball dad who played and coached for the last 40 years and helped develop both of his sons to play in college and helped his son Tyler play for the San Francisco Giants. Having lived through the entire process as a student athlete, college head coach, and father, Walter knows what matters most for your child.
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Amazing insights to youth baseball and beyond
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By: Walter Beede
What listeners say about The Best
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Tom
- 08-15-21
Better book than expected, very insightful
First of all, the most entertaining aspect of the book is that every American that was quoted ended having a Southern Redneck accent regardless of where they were from and race. Regardless, I thought this book would be filled with cliches and stories about Michael Jordan and his underdog path, however, it wasn't like that at all and found this book very insightful. I especially enjoyed some of the origin stories and how chance typically determines whether someone will become an elite athlete or not. It really went into the details about how some sports you need to invest time earlier into the development compared to others, and doesn't just spout out the same Gladwell Outliers argument that we've become way too used to. Another aspect that I found interesting was when they discussed the concept of perfectionism but NOT in a way that glamorized it but shed light on how elite athletes are more prone to mental health issues due to the path they've taken, with the Olympics and the whole Simone Biles situation it makes that situation more understandable.
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