This is not your typical reading list of sport psychology books. At Headstrong Mindset, I want to start by acknowledging that there are a ton of fantastic books out there on mental toughness, navigating pressure, and overcoming mental obstacles for athletes in sports. The problem is that most of them are written by men about male professional athletes. As a former professional and collegiate athlete who has spent a lifetime competing and working in women’s sports, I don’t find most psychology books relatable.

I have always enjoyed reading the books of Hall of Fame level coaches such as John Wooden’s A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and Pete Carroll’s Win Forever . There are also fantastic books by sport psychology giants such as George Mumford’s The Mindful Athlete and Timothy Galloway’s classic The Inner Game of Tennis. I have deep respect for these sports legends. However, the experiences they describe in the books often feel otherworldly to female high school and collegiate athletes or coaches who don’t have access to the same level of resources or privilege.

Therefore I have compiled a list of books that are mostly written by women for everyone. These books seek to support the whole athlete and coach. These are the books I share with my current college and elite athletes and coaches. These are the books I wish I had when I was playing.

Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life

This book by Dr. Colleen Hacker and Mallery Mann is my absolutely go-to favorite Sport Psychology book. Dr. Colleen Hacker was the U.S. National Team Mental Skills coach for Team USA when they won 1999 Women’s World Cup. She’s also a 6x member of the Olympic coaching staff. It’s a fantastic read for players, coaches, sport psychologists and mental performance consultants. In her book she identifies self-awareness and self-regulation as two of the most important mental skills that impact athlete performance.

Dear Coach

Full disclaimer – I am a super fan of Der. Erdner’s book because I had the great privilege of being mentored by Dr. Erdner throughout my doctorate program and CMPC certification process for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. I cannot say enough about how the athlete’s vulnerable letters in this book resonated with my personal experience as a former NCAA athlete and collegiate volleyball player. This is required reading for any coach that works with me. This book combines evidence-based research with athletes real life stories about their collegiate athletic experience to address systemic communication issues in college athletics.

In this book, Dr. Erdner asks all the athletes one single question: What do you wish you could have told your coach but, for whatever reason, never did?  It’s a must read book for college coaches. The answers will change the way you see your athletes and transform your relationships with them.

Rebound: Train your mind to bounce back from sport injuries

Rebound is the book I wish I had read when I was recovering from wrist surgery and trying to find my way back into the starting the line-up of my college volleyball team. In this book Carrie Jackson Cheadle and Cindy Kuzma created a guide to support injured athletes with building psychological resilience needed to recover from injury and return to sport stronger than before. They also have an inspiring podcast for injured athletes called The Injured Athlete club.

Wolfpack: How to come together, unleash our power, and change the game.

If you are looking for a fun, engaging and inspiring book to read with your entire team during the season, than look no further than Abby Wambach’s Wolfpack. The two-time Olympic Gold Medalist & FIFA World Cup Champion shares pearls of wisdom about leadership, teamwork, and balancing athletic identity. My favorite quote: “I’ve never scored a goal in my life without getting a pass from someone else.” We all have something to learn from Abby in this feminist athlete call to arms. There is also a version of Wolfpack adapted for young readers.

Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sport

Attention Leaders & Coaches: If you want to learn how to explore your athlete’s resistance to change and learn how to navigate team conflict, this is the book for you. The authors take this person-centered approach to evaluating intrinsic motivation and apply it to directly to athletes in sport. I use motivational interviewing all the time with my athletes and highly recommend this book to coaches and sport psychologists. This book goes beyond coaching… it teaches a philosophy of curiosity and human empathy. It’s guaranteed to make you a better coach and leader.

Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance

This is the sport psychology textbook that I return to again and again. I consider this book to be the “bible” of sport psychology techniques. It was required for me in grad school and I find myself continuing to reference the teachings, activities and techniques shared in this book by Dr. Jean Williams and Dr. Vikki Krane. Warning: it’s not a quick and easy read, but it covers a broad variety of topics and performance concerns that athletes and coaches experience, so you can jump to the chapter on the theme you need support around. Dr. Krane is one of my favorite sport psychology authors and researchers. She also published Sex, Gender, & Sexuality in Sport.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

This book isn’t exactly a Sport Psychology per se, but the principles in this book are absolutely transferrable to coaches and athletes. In her book, Dare to Lead, Brené Brown (researcher, social worker &  New York Times bestselling author) answers this critical question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?

Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of skills and practices that are 100 percent teachable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.”

If you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, add her book to the top of your reading list. My personal favorite of hers is: Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.

The ATHMINDSET Workbook: Training your mind for optimal mental health in sport and in life.

This work book was create by Lisa Bonta Sumii, who is a Licensed Social Worker and Certified Mental Performance Consultant. I’m a huge fan of Lisa’s podcast Athlete Mindset. The ATHMINDSET podcast and the workbook are full of gold nuggets for players, coaches, and parents supporting the mental performance and wellbeing of athletes and teams.

Headstrong

Last but not least, my mindset training guidebook was created specifically for volleyball teams to read and discuss together in the form of a book club to enhance pre-season team-building. You can buy the paperback on Amazon.

Got other book recommendations that should be added to this list? I want to hear from you. Drop me a line with a book recommendation for you favorite book on sport psychology, athlete mental health and wellness, or athlete memoirs.

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Carron & Hausenblas (1998) offer a conceptual framework for team cohesion that includes the environment (i.e., group size), leadership (both peer and coaching behavior), team (i.e., roles), and personal factors (i.e., satisfaction). This framework is based upon Carron’s (1985) two principles of group integration and the individual’s attractive to the group (Burke et al., 2014). The principle of group integration is the concept that each athlete has a unique perspective about the closeness or bondedness of the team (Burke et al., 2014). The concept of an individual’s attractive to the group reflects the athlete’s personal benefits of being on the team or how each athlete’s individual needs are being met by other team members throughout the course of a season (Burke et al., 2014).

Both group integration and the individual’s attractive to the group ultimately impact whether the team sticks together over time. The factors that contribute to a team members motivation for group integration or attractiveness to the group can be broken down into the two categories of either task or social factors (Burke et al., 2014). Task factors represent a team’s objectives or goals (Burke et al., 2014). Social factors consist of social relationships and activities within the team (Burke et al., 2014).

Questions to Ask

As a sport psychology consultant, I primarily evaluate the quality of trust in the relationships between players to players, and between players to the coaching staff. I would also examine the quality and strength of team leadership.

• Are there clear leaders on the team?
• Are the leadership roles and responsibilities clear?
• Do those leaders have the respect of their teammates and serve as a communication conduit between the team and coaches?

It’s also critical to examine the individual sport satisfaction and burnout levels of the players.

• Do the players enjoy practicing and competing together?
• Do they share common goals?
• Do they enjoy being with one another outside of the gym or competition realm?
• Do the athletes show respect one another’s differences?

Assessments

The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) created by Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron (1985) can be used to evaluate the level of team cohesion by assessing how the team members relate to and work together (Aoyagi et al., 2008). The Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire (ASQ) by Riemer & Chelladurai (1998) can also be used to evaluate athlete satisfaction (Aoyagi et al., 2008).

Closing

One important factor about team cohesion to keep in mind is that team cohesion alone does not necessarily always result in optimal or desired performance. A group of athletes could have a high level of team cohesion, but low levels of motivation or lack leadership and ultimately perform poorly. Successful teams require both cohesion and leadership to achieve optimal performance results.

References

Aoyagi, M., Cox, R., & McGuire, R. (2008). Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Sport: Relationships with Leadership, Team Cohesion, and Athlete Satisfaction. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20(1), 25–41.

Burke, S.M., Davies, K., & Carron, A.V. (2014). Group Cohesion in Sport and Exercise Settings. In Mark R. Beauchamp, & Mark A. Eys. (2014). Group dynamics in exercise and sport psychology: Vol. Second edition. Routledge.

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The impact of gratitude in sport is often overlooked by players and coaches. Gratitude is so much more than just a temporary feel-good emotion in response to counting your blessings. Gratitude has the potential to be a consistent character trait developed with intentionality over the course of a season or a lifetime.

The term gratitude comes from the Latin word “gratia” which means thankfulness or gratefulness . “The gratitude muscle is like any other muscle, in that it must be flexed periodically to remain strong”. The key takeaway here is that you can cultivate gratitude and become a more grateful person, athlete, and teammate by treating gratitude like a skill you train in your sport. In other words, the more you practice gratitude, the more naturally and consistently it will come to you.

The Benefits of Gratitude

The benefits of gratitude in sport are countless. Research shows that practicing gratitude promotes mental and physical health, improves relationships, leads to more social connections, increases self-esteem, enhances mental resilience, improves sleep, and reduces student athlete burnout. Gratitude is also considered a natural antidepressant and has been shown to reduce toxic emotions such as feelings of envy, resentment, frustration, and regret that be harmful disruptors to team-cohesion and accessing a flow state of mind for optimal performance. Cultivating gratitude helps athletes shift focus from what’s lacking or stressful to what’s available and motivating.

What happens in the brain?

Expressing positive emotions such as gratitude and thankfulness can actually change the neural pathways in your brain. Researchers have found that expressing gratitude produces higher levels of activity in the hypothalamus which influences your metabolism and stress levels. Expressing gratitude also releases dopamine and serotonin in the brain causing people to feel happier, less depressed, and less stressed out.

Expressing and receiving gratitude can immediately improve a persons’ mood, but it can also have a lasting impact on your relationships. In the context of team sports, gratitude can significantly improve the interpersonal relationships within your team. In sum, grateful players make better teammates and team leaders. They will also enjoy their sport more, be more mentally tough, and less likely to burnout.

3 Tips to strengthen your gratitude muscle

When getting starting with a gratitude routine for sports, keep these simple tips in mind to set yourself up for success.

1. Express gratitude towards the people in your support system including coaches, teammates, athletic trainers, sport psychologists, opponents, parents, etc.
2. Reflect on your past achievements and growth over the course of your season and your playing career. Focus on more than just wins, consider how you have improved and what you have learned.
3. Be specific! Specificity matters.

5 Exercises to cultivate gratitude

Integrating gratitude into daily routines doesn’t require much time or effort, but the effects can be profound. Here are 5 strategies for athletes:

1. Write a hand-written letter thanking a person who has impacted your athletic career and explain why you are thankful they are in your life.
2. Keep a gratitude journal writing down 2-3 things a day that you are thankful for related to your sport such as qualities in your teammates and coaches, or what you love about playing the game.
3. Take a gratitude walk either before or after trainings and competitions to reflect on why you are thankful to play your sport.
4. Do a daily mindfulness exercise bringing to mind all the things you are grateful in your sport.
5. Write gratitude sticky notes and leave them on your teammates lockers or on their bags to communicate your teammates (and coaches) that you appreciate them.

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A fixed mindset focuses on how good you are right now instead of your potential. A fixed mindset takes feedback personally and gets defensive. A fixed mindset avoids working on your weakest skills and does not believe that improvement is possible. A growth mindset focuses on measuring improvement and learns from a tough loss. A growth mindset accepts feedback and views criticism as constructive. A growth mindset targets your weakest skills in training and truly believes improvement is the reward of a hard work ethic.

Having belief in your ability to improve with practice is essential to succeeding throughout your career.  It is critical you trust in the potential of your ability to improve and your teammates ability to get better during the course of a season.  Here’s 4 key reminders about having a growth mindset.

1. Accept that mistakes are part of the learning process.

Mistakes show you how you can improve and what you need to practice. The frustration that comes around making mistakes is what pushes you to become a better a player. Karch Kiraly, a 3-time Olympic gold medalist and the USA Women’s Volleyball National Team coach, encourages players to “work to the edge of your abilities by taking more risks and not fearing mistakes.” Learning how to let go of mistakes quickly in competition and refocus on the next point is critical to having a growth mindset. There’s never enough time during competition to dwell on past mistakes. Beating yourself up over mistakes during competition is distracting and it damages your confidence in the moment. If you can not learn to let go of mistakes quickly, then they could end up costing you the whole game!

2. Be patient.

We have become so accustomed to getting instant results in other areas of life, that most of us don’t even realize when we are feeling impatient or frustrated in practice. Becoming aware of the frustration is oftentimes the first step to sustaining growth. Frustration can be a powerful motivator, but it helps to remember that improvement is typically not a straight line forward. In fact, oftentimes improvement is two steps forward, and one step back. You can’t just flip a switch to become the level athlete that you want to be, you’ve got to plant the seeds and wait for them grow.  In other words, you have got to put in the work, make mistakes, and learn to be patient. There is no such thing as instant improvement in sports. Those players you look up to playing in the Olympics and the Pro Leagues all put in the time and did the hard work. That’s how you improve and grow as a player. No elite athlete gets out of working hard and there’s no such thing as instant improvement in sports.

3. Celebrate growth wherever you see it.

Eventually a time will come in practice or in competition when you suddenly realize that significant improvement has been made. When you have those ah-hah moments and recognize growth in yourself or in your teammates, you need to stop and celebrate them. It’s very hard to recognize change and improvement in yourself.  It’s much easier to see change in your teammates. However, oftentimes we don’t take the time to point out and celebrate the growth and improvement in our teammates when we recognize it. Always take time to celebrate moments of growth in yourself and in your teammates.

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What does the Stanford women’s volleyball team do for mindset training? 

We do a lot of stuff that we work on individually. We see what the needs are of the individuals. We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. The other things that we talk about (are) mindfulness and finding your center. We talk about breathing. We do some meditation training. The thing that we talk directly about as far as competing on the floor is; being aware of where your thoughts in competition, being aware of where your thoughts are in practice and if they are negative thoughts, replacing those thoughts. We talk a lot about thought replacement and being aware of (what) you’re thinking. Replace the thought “I can’t do this” with – “I can do this. I am strong. I am powerful. I got this.” We talk a lot about that thought replacement.

We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. 

What type of strategies do you use to help players rebound when they have a crisis of confidence?

To me that’s very individualized and it depends on the athlete. For some of them I feel like we try to get ahead of it a little bit. One of our athletes last year was new to us and she was struggling with confidence early on. I think she was trying to decide if she could fit in the team or not. She was struggling to learn our system and all that. One of the things we talked about is how do you earn the confidence first and understand that there’s going to be this learning curve. That’s the 1st piece, giving her perspective. You’re learning a whole new system, you’re playing with new players and you’re trying to figure all this out. Just take a deep breath and be committed to the process.

I feel like my athletes are very pragmatic, they over analyze, and so if we can find the things that are necessary for them to compete and they attack those things in practice or with a little bit of extra time then usually that takes care of a lot of it.  She was a middle blocker, so for her (it looked like) getting extra footwork reps, a few more slide reps, or working on a shot.

And having a conversation – this is how it looks like this team is going to defend you, or this is how they defended you last time. We’ve done that same strategy with passers that have struggled or setters that have struggled. Instead of just saying you should have confidence, get those reps because then they feel like they’re earning the confidence. By mitigating their feelings and just saying what you’re feeling is wrong doesn’t really help them. Let’s try to give them perspective first and then let’s see if we can earn that confidence.

That’s worked out for most of our athletes actually. It’s like if they want to get an A in the class, then they’re going to study and put the time in. That’s how they’re going to have confidence on their tests. We try to draw those parallels. The challenge for all of them is trying to find that perspective. It’s the perspective that it’s okay to make mistakes right now. This is part of the process. We only care about being good in December. 

When you have a team that is very diverse and full of different personalities, how do you approach team building and leadership? 

I do my best to try to recognize leadership. Everyone talks about developing leadership, but I feel like we recognize leadership. We have to recognize who the leaders are first. We don’t have a captain on our team. We have a floor captain. We just say whoever is setting is our captain, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily our leader. We try to figure out what things we value as a group and what are our goals as a group. As you start to have those conversations the vocal leadership starts to emerge. I pay attention to that and identify the leaders. Once I identify who the (natural) leaders are, then I try to put as much on those guys to help drive the culture and the cohesiveness as much as possible because I feel like it’s always stronger when it’s coming from the athletes.

My leadership style as a head coach, even with my staff, is to identify what people are really good at. I’m going to give you the freedom to explore those things as a recruiter, as a coach, as the competitive leader, as the task leader or as the social leader. Let’s identify what you are. Let me be a resource to help you be the best version of that leader possible and what this group needs from you. And then empower you and amplify the message. As a teacher I need to teach our athletes what it means to be a leader, empower them to develop into successful leaders and to lead the way that we need them to and in the way the group is looking for them to lead.

How do you teach communication on your team?

The most important part of communication from me and from my athletes is we’ve got to listen. When freshman come in, they don’t listen to anybody unless you scream and yell. They just want to communicate. The first step for us is we have to listen to each other. But also, if you want people to listen to you, you have to know how to communicate concisely so you don’t lose them in the conversation. And so we talk pretty openly about that. We say – be direct, be on point, be on topic and be concise with that communication in every single way. As the person that’s communicated to, let’s make sure we listen and acknowledge. Just that, (learning to) listen and acknowledge, makes us better communicators in every single way. That goes for if it’s a text I send to the group, they all acknowledge it, they all send a little thumbs up emoji or a got it, or whatever. We give them the freedom to create their own language but with these rules, you’re going to communicate concisely and receive the communication. In this world where we communicate so much through text messages, I think the acknowledgement piece and the listening piece are lost.

What type of pre-game routine do you have in your program?

I leave that up to the athletes. I would not say that we have a routine. I would say that finding a routine that works for each individual is absolutely important. You need to figure out how to prepare yourself physically, mentally and emotionally so you can play in the national championship. And then also you need to figure out how to get your head right for each match. It’s going to take practice and you gotta figure that out. And so we’d talk about that as a group. How do you get yourself ready for competition? How do you eliminate everything that’s around you and get yourself in this moment right now?Different teams have had different strategies. One group shut everything down, turned their phones off, and (found) a quiet place to meditate or breathe, but with my team last year it was like dance party. Goofiness got them in the right place because that helped them let go of everything else.

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A culture of belonging starts with belief that every member of the team has an essential role to play. Finding and utilizing the unique assets of each player on your team will optimize your team’s potential. A culture of belonging celebrates each player’s uniqueness.

A fitting in culture on a team ostracizes players who are different than the majority and forces assimilation.  Assimilation is the process in which a minority group comes to resemble or assume the values and behaviors of the dominant group. The consequence of assimilation is a loss of identity for the minority.

In her book Braving the Wilderness, PhD research professor Brené Brown describes an interview that she did with NFL Coach Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks. Coach Carroll said, “there’s no question that it’s easier to manage a fitting culture. You set standards and rules. You lead by put up or shut up, but you miss real opportunities, especially helping your team members find their purpose. When you push a fitting in culture, you miss the opportunity to help people find their personal drive, what’s coming from their hearts. Leading for true belonging is about creating a culture that celebrates uniqueness. What serves leaders best is understanding your players best efforts. My job as a leader is to identify their unique gift or contribution. A strong leader pulls players toward a deep belief in themselves.”

Inclusion doesn’t just feel good for team culture, it also impacts the performance and stamina of marginalized athletes on the team.  When players experience exclusion within a team, they tend to demonstrate lower levels of confidence, team spirit and motivation, which ultimately results in burnout.  Building a team culture of inclusion is the best way to retain your talent. 

How does it feel when you know your teammates have your back no matter what?  Do you play better or worse?

Now consider how it feels when you don’t trust teammates or when your teammates don’t trust you?

Can you see how cultivating a culture of belonging on your team is better for your performance on the volleyball court?

Building and shaping your team into a culture of belonging that embraces diversity is one of the most powerful lessons you can take away from playing volleyball.  Learning how to do this will serve you long after your playing days are over.  You don’t need to be everyone’s best friend, but if you can learn to celebrate the differences in your teammates and affirm their identities, you will be setting yourself up for success in life.

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