Achieving Excellence

Perform to your potential with proven mental training techniques! Achieving Excellence: Mastering the Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life offers a variety of peak performance strategies to help athletes, coaches, and performers of all kinds achieve a winning mindset. The book explores sport psychology concepts and provides practical, proven strategies to incorporate into your daily life and competitive career.

Renowned mental skills coach and performance psychology expert Colleen Hacker has helped hundreds of Olympic and professional athletes to achieve their individual and team goals. In Achieving Excellence, she shares her approach for cultivating confidence, focus, and habits of excellence. She will teach you how to create action plans for success and develop performance routines that optimize achievement. Inside, you will discover the strategies and practical tools needed for success in life and sport, such as these:

• Bulleted checklists that offer step-by-step application tips for mental skills
• Sidebars that highlight strategies for overcoming common challenges
• Success stories from top athletes and firsthand accounts of their experiences using different techniques

Inspirational quotes throughout the book will motivate you, and implementation worksheets—available both in the book and online through HKPropel—are provided to help you apply mental training strategies in competition or in other achievement domains.

With Achieving Excellence, you will develop a winning mindset with evidence-based, step-by-step plans that lead you to peak performance.

Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is included with all new print books.

Audience

Athletes and coaches of all sports, both competitive and recreational.

Chapter 1. Getting to the Starting Line
Chapter 2. Believing You Can
Chapter 3. Chatter Matters
Chapter 4. Being in the Moment
Chapter 5. Harnessing Imagination
Chapter 6. Energy Management
Chapter 7. Control of Calm
Chapter 8. Revving the Engine
Chapter 9. The Three Cs of Performance Success
Chapter 10. Creating an Action Plan
Chapter 11. Focusing on the Right Things at the Right Time
Chapter 12. Preperformance Routines
Chapter 13. Prioritizing Self-Reflection
Chapter 14. Growing Through Adversity
Chapter 15. Bouncing Back
Chapter 16. Highlighting We Before Me
Chapter 17. Inclusive Excellence
Chapter 18. Career and Life Transition

Appendix. Learning More

Colleen M. Hacker, PhD, FNAP, has served on the United States coaching staff for six Olympic Games as a mental skills coach and performance psychology specialist. She has also served as the mental skills coach to professional, international, and Olympic athletes in a variety of sports including Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League (NFL), Major League Soccer (MLS), PGA, National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), LPGA, swimming, basketball, lacrosse, crew, speed skating, track and field, and tennis to name a few. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University and is a Fellow in the National Academies of Practice, is listed on the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry, and is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC®).

Dr. Hacker has published more than 45 articles, book chapters, and a book (Catch Them Being Good with Gold medal and World Cup Champion coach, Tony DiCicco), as well as delivered speeches and lectures on the national and international stage. She has worked with numerous Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 corporations as well as civic groups and organizations. Her work is regularly featured on national television outlets such CNN and ESPN and also in high-profile publications including The New York Times and Washington Post.

Dr. Hacker was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Professional Practice Award from the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). She received the Honor Award from the National Association of Girls and Women in Sports, the Presidential Citation by the American Psychological Association, as well as the Letter of Commendation and the National Award of Excellence from the United Soccer Coaches (USC). ESPNW named Dr. Hacker as one of 30 women in the country who “change the way sports are played.” She serves on the National Advisory Board for the Positive Coaching Alliance and on the National Advisory Board for the EPIC Center (Education for Persistence and Innovation Center) at the Teachers College, Columbia University.

Mallory E. Mann, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University. Her educational background and training is situated between the cultural studies of sport and sport psychology. Dr. Mann’s scholarship focuses on gender issues in sport as well as coaching effectiveness. She previously coached at both the NCAA Division I and Division III level and Dr. Mann served as a mental skills coach for individual athletes and a college sport team. Her applied work continues to focus in areas related to coaching education and gender equity in sport.

“Dr. Hacker is one of the leading authorities on performance excellence. This book includes some of the same techniques and strategies she has been implementing in her own work with professional, elite, and international competitors for the last two decades. Her approach with our team wasn’t simply ‘plug and play’ coaching. It was individualized and personalized. That showed me that she respected each of us as individuals and was committed to making us the best that we could be. Whether you are a corporate executive, youth athlete, teacher, coach, artist, parent, or elite athlete, the knowledge and opportunities for application in this book will assist your training and performance.”
—Mia Hamm

Mia is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion. She was named U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year five years in a row and won three ESPY awards, including Soccer Player of the Year and Female Athlete of the Year. The Women's Sports Foundation named her Sportswoman of the Year twice. A co-owner of Los Angeles FC and Angel City FC, Hamm is also chair of the Mia Hamm Foundation. She has been inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, was the first woman inducted into the World Football Hall of Fame, and was recently inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

“In cutthroat, competitive arenas, the focus is often (mis)placed on your opponent or the other team. In Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life, Dr. Hacker helps center you, the performer, by highlighting the mental skills and strategies that will help close your performance gap in sport and life. By focusing on your own game through self-awareness and personal control, you are much more likely to enjoy the journey in your own pursuit of excellence.”
—Nomar Garciaparra

Nomar is a retired Major League Baseball player and current SportsNet LA analyst. He played nine seasons as a shortstop for the Boston Red Sox and played shortstop, third base, and first base for the Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Oakland Athletics. He is one of 13 players in Major League history to hit two grand slams during a single game and is the only player to achieve the feat at his home stadium. Garciaparra is a six-time All-Star, was the American League Rookie of the Year, and was the American League Silver Slugger Award winner at shortstop. He is a lifetime .313 hitter, had the highest single-season batting average by a right-handed batter in the post–World War II era, and was the first right-handed batter since Joe DiMaggio to win the American League batting title in consecutive seasons. Nomar is a minority investor in Los Angeles FC.
 

Being in the Moment
Creating an Action Plan
Developing Inclusive Excellence in Performance Domains