Böcker av Paul Gamble

Parents are pivotal in allowing kids to pursue their sporting aspirations and enjoy all the benefits that youth sports have to offer. Despite being much relied upon and expected to assume a host of different roles at various stages, the sport parent has to date been under-served with resources to help them fulfil these responsibilities. Sports Parenting was written to fill this gap and takes a deep dive to explore how parents can best support young performers, whether they aspire to reach the highest level or simply wish to enjoy the positive social, developmental and life-long health aspects. In an era when youth sports participation has become all the more vital to help kids flourish, parents seeking to provide their child with the best opportunities to enjoy these benefits face an ever-growing array of challenges. Surrounding organised youth sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, requiring the sport parent to be a discerning consumer. Each stage of the journey brings new trials and potential pitfalls that unsuspecting young performers and their parents can easily fall prey to. The book aims to provide readers with the knowledge to discern the best ways to support kids to negotiate the various challenges they face in their youth sports participation. Beyond supporting the aspiring high performer, an over-arching theme is how we can help kids to stay on the path and prevent them falling through the cracks along the way. To that end, we delve into the different facets of talent development to better understand the underlying processes. As well as providing deeper insights into the trials that kids face as the journey unfolds, the reader will come to understand how their role is likely to evolve so that they are equipped to handle the major transitions as they occur. In doing so, the reader will find new common ground and gain a shared understanding that will enable them to work collaboratively with sport coaches and the supporting cast of practitioners, teachers and others. Sports Parenting presents a guide to help parents and young performers navigate the youth sports journey. Informed by the relevant research literature and infused with wisdom gained from two decades overseeing within talent development pathways and working with young athletes on the ground, each section methodically walks the reader through the respective parts of the process and stages on the journey. Each chapter elucidates the key principles that parents can apply in different scenarios and closes with practical tips.

The pursuit of human performance goes beyond sport. Whilst we might most readily associate sport with the quest to perform at the highest levels of competition, this is not exclusive to sports teams and athletes. Striving for excellence and dedication to continual improvement are hallmarks of high performing organisations, teams, and individuals across all realms. Following this logic, forward thinking individuals have started to explore processes and principles from elite sport and coaching, with the aim of applying high performance practices within their own domain. Just as there are traits that unite high performers across sectors, there are common themes and challenges shared by all those who aspire to excellence in performance. With Prepared we use the lens of elite sport to illuminate universal truths and illustrate the key lessons that we can apply to our chosen domain (including sport): the critical ingredients for a performance environment, the dynamics of performance management at the level of the organisation, team and individual, the essentials of navigating the complexity of coaching humans, the key principles and critical lessons from the process of preparing athletes for the crucible of competition, and finally, the meta-abilities that will allow us to sustain the highest levels of performance, manage ourselves, and navigate the challenges we will inevitably face along the way.This is a book for all those who have an interest or involvement in human performance in the widest sense. Whilst the content remains highly relevant to those in sport, within the text we explore the parallels to other domains, and thereby derive unique insights for leaders, teams, and professionals in all sectors. Throughout the journey the reader is prompted to reflect and connect the dots at the culmination of each chapter to help relate the information presented to their own context.