The Winning Weekend Warrior aspires to enhance the participation, enjoyment, and success of the reader in all sports. It focuses on strategy, tactics and the "mental game." As it turns out, many of the strategies, tactics and techniques for the psychology of sports are similar regardless of the sport. In fact, many of these same techniques are useful in business and other aspects of life as well. This book is valuable for several reasons. First when it comes to winning, there is much in common among all sports. In terms of the mental game, the commonalities outweigh the differences. In terms of the physical game, there are also great similarities in terms of preparation. Obviously, different sports require specific skills but these are largely improved due to correct practice in the specific sport. You can practice a sport such as golf or tennis for many years and hardly improve at all. Time alone is not enough. You need correct practice and this book can help you make sure you practice correctly. A second reason to read this book is that even if you concentrate on one or two sports, chances are that you will participate occasionally in others. You may be a scratch golfer or a tennis star but occasionally find yourself in a basketball or baseball game. Even if your own days of playing hockey, tackle football and soccer are over, you might volunteer to coach these sports for kids, neighbors, or grandkids. In such cases, this book will help you translate the skills you already have in your main sports into these other domains. As you may have noticed, this is not always easy to do. Perhaps you managed to watch the basketball player, Charles Barkley (career average 22.1 points per game) struggle mightily to become a so-so golfer. You can also apply much of the advice in this book to business and other aspects of life far beyond sports. A third reason to read this book is that thinking about what it takes to win in sports in general, will reveal additional insights helpful in your particular sport or sports. This is because I will ask you to look at sports through a different lens. Rather than look at baseball through a "baseball lens" and tennis through a "tennis lens" I will ask you to look at these sports through a more general lens. The fourth reason is that reading this book provides an excellent foundation for understanding and using the information you may find in sports-specific books including future books in this series. By learning a general framework for thinking about all sports, other advice and tips will make more sense and be easier to remember and apply. Fifth and finally, this is one of the few sports books written by a winning weekend warrior. I love competing in sports, but I have never been a professional athlete. Of course, you are tempted to read a book written by a world expert in a sport. Aren't we all? There are several problems trying to improve your performance based solely on books written by world class athletes. 1) There is probably no way you can keep your day job and keep to the kind of training schedule they have. 2) Most professional athletes are in their 20's and 30's. As you age, even if you keep fit, you may have to play differently compared to a professional athlete. 3) Most professional athletes have so much skill in their sport that they no longer consciously remember what the real issues are for beginners and intermediates. Many of these same limitations apply when we listen to athletes being interviewed by the press after an important victory (or defeat).
About the Author: John Charles Thomas graduated summa cum laude from Case-Western Reserve, majoring in psychology, minoring in mathematics and drama. He received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Michigan and managed a research project at Harvard Med School on the Psychology of Aging. He then joined IBM Research where he worked in Human Computer Interaction for the next dozen years including a two year stint at IBM CHQ where he spearheaded efforts to improve IBM's user experience. He left IBM to start the Artificial Intelligence Lab at NYNEX where he served as Executive Director for another dozen years. In 1998, he rejoined IBM Research to work in knowledge management and human computer interaction. For several years, he managed a group on the business uses of stories and storytelling. John was instrumental in the formation of ACM's Special Interest Group in Human Computer Interaction and has served on numerous organizing committees and program committees over the last 35 years. Most recently, he was on the program committee for ACM's Turing Centenary Celebration and currently is Adjunct Chair for Mentoring on the SIGCHI Executive Committee. He has over 250 invited presentations and publications in the fields of AI, HCI, and psychology. He is also inventor or co-inventor of patents in the areas of business process, mobile interfaces, creativity aids, software as a service, and information retrieval. He has worked on the user experience for tools/services for consultants, software developers, and consumers. John has taught courses and led workshops in such diverse topics as creativity, storytelling, the psychology of aging, statistics, cognitive psychology and human computer interaction. John has two active blogs: johncharlesthomas.sportsblog.com and petersironwood.wordpress.com John has enjoyed many sports including (in rough chronological order) baseball, badminton, soccer, table tennis, basketball, football, tennis, running, body building, golf, triathlon. The Winning Weekend Warrior is constructed on the intersection of personal experience in a wide variety of sports, a long career in research and management, and an understanding of cognitive psychology. Links to some of his professional writing can be found at http: //www.truthtable.com