Book Review: Head in the Game
Head in the Game: The Mental Engineering of the World's Greatest Athletes by Brandon Sneed:
Goodreads Summary:
The next frontier of sports training doesn’t rest with the body, but with the mind
For years, common wisdom has held that athletic performance is rooted in genetics and peak physical enhancement of the body. But journalist Brandon Sneed has another idea: that mental engineering — training the cognitive process of the brain — presents yet a new level of sports performance, and that athletes, despite already being at the top of the genetic pool, can actually become better.
This is a watershed idea — the conscious alteration of our brains can have drastic effects, so much so that elite athletes around the world are already seeing incredible results: stars like Steph Curry, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Russell Wilson, and dozens others are experimenting with this concept. They are hooking their brains to computers and using other cutting-edge technology that seems like stuff out of sci-fi movies to get at the root of their respective performance. What they are finding helps them is eye-opening, powerful, and, in their words, “life-changing.”
In Head in the Game, Sneed takes on a mesmerizing tour of what seems to be a new frontier in performance enhancement, from neuroscience labs at Duke, to the Super Bowl, to the mountains of Patagonia, to the Taj Mahal of virtual reality, to the jungles of Peru, and beyond. Anchoring all of this is a dynamic cast of characters, from the director of human performance at Red Bull, to the former Nike higher-up who left to start his own cognitive engineering company, to the drug addict who built sensory deprivation chambers in a fit of near-madness only to find them in high demand by the world’s best athletes, to paradigm-shattering neuroscientists who have created technology that allows athletes to look at their brains using a headset and a smartphone, and many more.
What does all of this add up to? Not only is it dramatically altering the gazillion-dollar and ever-expanding landscape of sports business, and revolutionizing how teams and owners analyze athletes — it is changing the way we think about how athletes do what they do, and what we might learn from them. Most of all, this is not going away.
My Summary:
1/5 stars
I used to be a pretty big athlete, and honestly always see myself eventually coaching. Soon I figured while I was on a self-improvement kick I might as well pick this one up.
Sneed had done his research and the techniques and devices he discussed were very impressive. I also enjoyed his use of his personal story. What led him to want to pursue this, as well as personal experiences with these different ideas. There was also top name athletes mentioned, which I found interesting to hear what athletes took what approach to improving their game.
The biggest problem I had with this book was I honestly didn't understand most of it. I'm not a science person, and although the research had been done there was no dummy version. I felt myself skipping over paragraphs at a time cause I didn't know what to make of the big scientific terms being used.
Goodreads Summary:
The next frontier of sports training doesn’t rest with the body, but with the mind
For years, common wisdom has held that athletic performance is rooted in genetics and peak physical enhancement of the body. But journalist Brandon Sneed has another idea: that mental engineering — training the cognitive process of the brain — presents yet a new level of sports performance, and that athletes, despite already being at the top of the genetic pool, can actually become better. This is a watershed idea — the conscious alteration of our brains can have drastic effects, so much so that elite athletes around the world are already seeing incredible results: stars like Steph Curry, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Russell Wilson, and dozens others are experimenting with this concept. They are hooking their brains to computers and using other cutting-edge technology that seems like stuff out of sci-fi movies to get at the root of their respective performance. What they are finding helps them is eye-opening, powerful, and, in their words, “life-changing.”
In Head in the Game, Sneed takes on a mesmerizing tour of what seems to be a new frontier in performance enhancement, from neuroscience labs at Duke, to the Super Bowl, to the mountains of Patagonia, to the Taj Mahal of virtual reality, to the jungles of Peru, and beyond. Anchoring all of this is a dynamic cast of characters, from the director of human performance at Red Bull, to the former Nike higher-up who left to start his own cognitive engineering company, to the drug addict who built sensory deprivation chambers in a fit of near-madness only to find them in high demand by the world’s best athletes, to paradigm-shattering neuroscientists who have created technology that allows athletes to look at their brains using a headset and a smartphone, and many more.
What does all of this add up to? Not only is it dramatically altering the gazillion-dollar and ever-expanding landscape of sports business, and revolutionizing how teams and owners analyze athletes — it is changing the way we think about how athletes do what they do, and what we might learn from them. Most of all, this is not going away.
My Summary:
1/5 stars
I used to be a pretty big athlete, and honestly always see myself eventually coaching. Soon I figured while I was on a self-improvement kick I might as well pick this one up.
Sneed had done his research and the techniques and devices he discussed were very impressive. I also enjoyed his use of his personal story. What led him to want to pursue this, as well as personal experiences with these different ideas. There was also top name athletes mentioned, which I found interesting to hear what athletes took what approach to improving their game.
The biggest problem I had with this book was I honestly didn't understand most of it. I'm not a science person, and although the research had been done there was no dummy version. I felt myself skipping over paragraphs at a time cause I didn't know what to make of the big scientific terms being used.
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