This author of this book, Tony Westbury, a Sport Psychologist, aims to answer 75 questions that athletes or coaches may be thinking about.
Westbury is both an applied sport psychologist and a lecturer so spans the world between academics and consulting. In this book he brings the academic theory to try to answer some of the common questions that receives when working with athletes. In doing this he offers a gentle introduction to many of the processes, ideas and theories behind sports psychology and the ways they can be used to support athletes. It covers a wide range of subject areas (particularly helpful ones included retirement, perfectionism and youth sports) and a huge number of popular theories, explained simply but effectively, making it a great general introduction to sport psychology in an accessible format.
I really like the emphasis on wellbeing with the word ‘Happier’ in the title as the wellbeing of athletes once you get into a performance setting can sometimes be forgotten but in my opinion is the most important element, for both their mental wellbeing and success.
Undergrads interested in going into sports psychology, coaches, PE teachers, physiologists, physiotherapists, parents or trainee psychologists would all be able to take something from it, but a specific audience was not obvious and this made the book a little hard to follow at times.
Westbury definitely succeeds in spanning the gap between research and practice, but you do come away with questions of ‘but how would I actually do that,’ and you would need alongside this book a practical, intervention focused book to help you put these well explained ideas into action.
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