Astley Performance Coaching

This was my favorite book that I read in 2010. Mr. Sheridan follows up his first exploration of sport fighting culture by talking to numerous veteran of various fighting forms about the keys to the mental aspects of their disciplines. Ten years ago, I would have turned up my nose at this book, but I found it truly fascinating.

Awesome book for all kinds of athletes, designed to slip into a sports bag. Also available as an ebook at http://www.lulu.com/content/2350092

This book does a great job of describing many of the sport psych techniques that can be applied to performance. It’s reads a like a text book, but the information is very good. This book may be out of print, but used and older editions are available.

Great book, written in large part for coaches. It lists and describes a lot of theories, a good reference. New copies are very expensive, so look for used ones.

This collection of case studies from sports psychologists makes for really interesting reading. It covers a wide variety of sport psych topics, so many of the chapters may not be applicable to most athletes and performers. This book might be more for practitioners than athletes.

Pretty tough to beat, really the foundation of the field. It's a little bit “zen” for some peoples' taste.

Some of this book is workouts and drills, but the strategy and mental skills stuff relating to “momentum points” is fantastic. "Total Tennis Training" is an older version with much of the same material.

A new addition to the APC library. I’m very impressed with the ideas and organization in this book. I find myself nodding along (and never nodding off) to almost everything Mr. Greenwald writes about.

Very interesting exploration of improvisation and practice in music.

Excellent, mind-bending discussion of why hard-work is much more important than talent. Eighty percent of parents think it's essential to praise their children's ability. This book explains why that is usually counter-productive. One of my two favorite books from the BU Master’s program.

This is a classic in thinking about group dynamics. Maybe a little abstract, but a great book.

If you haven't read anything by him, it's likely that Pollan will change the way you think about food. Very entertaining to read, very smart thinking about the things we put in our body.

This one really picked up steam as it went along. Great second half. There's a lot to know about high-stress choices that is applicable to performance.

Of course I'll celebrate my alma mater! I love this book, which makes a strong argument that an portion of our discontent is the responsibility that we all feel to constantly choose among many more options than we can possibly process well. It's a paradigm-shifter.