The Playmaker's Advantage: How to Raise Your Mental Game to the Next Level - Hardcover

Leonard Zaichkowsky, a professor, researcher, and consultant for almost four decades at Boston University, pioneered sports psychology by bringing cognitive neuroscience and sports performance together as an interdisciplinary science. His academic textbooks and research publications demonstrated the importance of an athlete’s remarkable brain in anticipating and acting on opportunities during competition. He has consulted with teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, Australian Rules Football, the Spanish men’s national soccer team, and Olympic sports organizations around the world. Len is a former president and a fellow of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, and currently section editor on psychology for the International Journal of Health, Sport and Science. Recently, the American Psychological Association honored Len with the “Distinguished Service to the Profession” award. Today, Len is a cofounder and senior consultant at 80 Percent Mental Consulting, advising coaches, teams, and sports organizations on developing athlete cognition. After too many Boston winters, he and his wife now live in Fort Myers, Florida.

Daniel Peterson is a writer and consultant specializing at the intersection of neuroscience and sports performance. He combined twenty-five years of technology management experience with his second life as a sports dad and coach to explore how athletes make decisions. Now, ten years later, as cofounder and director of 80 Percent Mental Consulting, he works with coaches, trainers, and teams to understand and improve their cognitive game. Dan and his wife live outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, patiently waiting for the next generation of Peterson playmakers.

The Playmaker is the most valuable player on any sports team. Their edge? An elusive, intangible quality that combines anticipation, perception, and decision-making skills. While most sports performance training has focused on growing muscle and improving speed--with results arguably plateauing at a certain point--focusing on cognitive and emotional elements promises a much greater payoff. Meet the next challenge in athletics. Using today's technology and tools, it is now possible to understand, assess, and train this sixth sense rather than just hope it magically appears.   
Now, for the first time, cognitive science research is revealing the secrets of the playmaker's keen sense of awareness. Just as tests of speed, strength, and agility have provided a baseline of physiological biomarkers, athletes and coaches can now capture cognitive metrics including attention, pattern recognition, anticipation, and the ability to take quick, decisive action during the chaos of competition.  The Playmaker's Advantage is a groundbreaking book that will educate developing athletes, along with their parents and coaches, about this essential creative capability in an accessible, easy to understand method.