Top 5 Influential Books
Dear Coach – Sara Erdner
Dear Coach is a culmination of letters written by athletes to their coaches. In these letters, the athletes are either thanking their coach for their experience or communicating how the coach's treatment let the athlete down. This book was eye-opening because it showed a common theme of what makes a good coach and a bad coach through different lenses of athletes. A good coach cares about their athletes outside the sport. All the coaches mentioned took care of their athletes, checked in on them, and treated them with respect. The themes found in a bad coach were the exact opposite, one who only cared about athlete performance, never checked in, and showed little to no respect.
This book reinforced what I already do, going beyond the athlete and seeing the student in front of me as a person. What we do today creates ripples in these athletes' lives, and they will remember their time spent with us. We told their parents we would take care of them, they trusted us to do that when they dropped their son or daughter off with us, and it is on us to follow through with that promise.
Daring Greatly – Brené Brown
I first heard of Brené Brown through a Ted Talk she gave about vulnerability. After listening to her speak, I immediately bought her book Daring Greatly. The book focuses on being more vulnerable, allowing us to be better for ourselves and those around us. What I took away from the book is that to be vulnerable is to lean into our insecurities and mistakes. Making mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of, and it happens to everyone. We should not let these things control our lives and dictate how we live after they occur. By leaning into them, overcoming them, then we are daring greatly. Daring greatly allows us to be vulnerable, making it easier for others to connect with us and create relationships or lead.
I Hear You – Michael Sorensen
A lot of what we do as coaches is tell others what to do. There are times when we must listen, and by the nature of our careers, we forget how to do so. I Hear You is a book that describes four steps that we can implement to listen better and validate those who need us. This book was great because you can go and implement them as soon as you read about the steps. By learning how to listen better, we can strengthen our relationships with those around us and avoid conflict. Strength and conditioning is about working with a team of students and professionals to all reach the same goal. If we cannot listen to what is going on around us, what a student or colleague is telling us, we will not achieve any goal.
Movement Over Maxes – Zach Dechant
Zach Dechant has become a popular figure through social media for what he has accomplished with the TCU baseball team. His book Movement Over Maxes is one of my influential books because I agree with the over-arching philosophy. Athletes must be able to move well before adding load to movements. If an athlete adds load to a poor movement pattern, we increase the risk of injury when our job is to reduce. Coach Dechant's methodology of grooved regressions, bodyweight progressions, and main movements is easy to implement with athletes. It allows you to program a body movement and adapt it to any training age.
Gamespeed: Movement Training for Superior Sports Performance - Ian Jeffreys
Professor Jeffreys’ book, Gamespeed, is one of the best books I have read to progress my career. The gamespeed system is unique because it is a constraints-based system with a clear progression of phases. Each phase increases movement complexity, problem-solving skills, and sports specificity. The addition of problem-solving and chaos is critical in movement training because the more we can teach an athlete to run through the OODA loop in game-like scenarios, the more prepared they can be. Through its detailed and easy-to-understand framework, I use it as the basis for my movement sessions and as a unit in my internship curriculum for undergraduates to professional interns.