Making Champions - How South Africa's sporting heroes are made


Book Description

This is a journey into the histories, hearts and homes of some of South Africa's greatest sporting heroes. Featuring the varied and very human stories of 13 icons of our time, including AB de Villiers, Ryan Sandes, 'Beast' Mtawarira, and Bridgitte Hartley, the book shows that it takes far more than natural talent to transform an athlete into the best that sport has to offer. Making Champions is an answer to the question: what goes into achieving champion status? It tells of the battles these sports stars have lost and won in their desire to set themselves apart from others just as gifted and aspiring for success. In the process, it equips all South Africans aiming to achieve in whatever field with the knowledge of the decisions and sacrifices these athletes have made, and the habits they have adopted on their way to the top.




Quest for Glory


Book Description

‘This book carries a powerful message about the important role sport plays in the development of a nation and what it takes to achieve success on the world stage.’ - John Smit South Africa’s sportsmen and women have achieved huge success. World champions and record-breakers, they have dominated sport internationally in the fields of rugby, cricket, swimming and soccer, to name a few. Quest for Glory examines sporting success through the eyes of numerous South African sports personalities, including Gary Player, Bruce Fordyce, Penny Heyns, Ryk Neethling, Baby Jake Matlala, Naas Botha, François Pienaar, Gary Teichmann, Bob Skinstad, John Smit, Paul Treu, Shaun Pollock, Oscar Pistorius, Clive Barker and Tim Noakes. The book investigates questions such as: What defines success? What makes a good team great? How important is the role of mental application? What makes a team lose when they are expected to win, or win when they are expected to lose? How do successful teams and individuals plan and prepare effectively? In doing so, it considers a range of fascinating topics, including big-match temperament, the pyramid of success, mental toughness, self-confidence and self-belief. Insightful, entertaining and inspiring, Quest for Glory uncovers the key to sporting success.




Raising Talent - How to Fast-Track Potential into Performance


Book Description

High performance in general, and in sport in particular, is becoming more and more competitive. Today's parents and the coaches of talented youngsters face many challenges. They know intuitively that they need to do something to help their children achieve their full potential - but what is that something? Executive coaches Tim Goodenough and Michael Cooper are highly experienced at working with people who want to develop that elusive balance between work and life, while at the same time trying to develop their potential to get the most out of both. They also work in the world of high performance sport. In Raising Talent they set about discovering, understanding and learning what the key dynamics and challenges are for developing talent, especially that of children. As their thinking became sharper and their principles better defined, several models and techniques emerged and this book explains their context and how they may apply in your home. They provide an accessible and quality self-coaching programme and a solid foundation of high performance theory for fast-tracking development. This unique system of accelerating performance means that the hard-working individual now has access to many of the mental coaching techniques and benefits that normally only a highly skilled professional would be able to provide. Although aimed at parents more than any other group, the principles and techniques in Raising Talent can be applied to the development of performance, regardless of the level of talent, at any age. In fact, these same models and principles have been successfully used to accelerate the performance of Olympians, executives, international athletes and performers in multiple sports and contexts - as well as to develop Tim's karaoke singing ...




Team Coaching: Artists at Work


Book Description

No company has ever succeeded simply because it has brilliant individuals in its ranks - in fact many have failed because they have not succeeded in getting great talent to work together as a team. Every single South African business lives or dies by its ability to get its people to work together, in constantly changing teams, towards achieving the common goals of the company. Team Coaching: Artists at Work shows how the right coaching interventions can build skills in individuals so that they can become effective team players in a variety of work situations. The book is, not surprisingly, a team effort. A group of top South African coaches got together to share everything they had used individually when coaching teams. This pooling of best practice was so exciting, the outcome so much more than anticipated, that they decided to write this book together. This is not a DIY manual, nor is it a bible. Corporate teams are often temporary and shifting in nature with continuous restructuring, promotions, new people moving in, others resigning. Flexibility and creativity are critical. That's precisely where team coaching interventions come in, to increase individual self-awareness, enhance people's ability to adapt to the styles of others, and create cohesion and commitment of how to work together. That's when the real people power of an organisation starts to make itself felt, when talented individuals become effective team members. Coaches are artists, who bring their facilitation talents and tools to the team to make this happen. This is a book for business and team leaders who would like to turn a collection of outstanding individuals into an unbeatable team. Coaching is one of the fastest growing professions and this book contributes to wider understanding of what potential coaching offers not only for business teams but also for societal transformation.




Game Changers


Book Description

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Great Britain ranked thirty-sixth in the medals table, finishing below countries like Algeria, Belgium and Kazakhstan. It was their worst ever record, a dismal performance labelled a national disgrace. But then something happened. In Sydney in 2000 and then Athens in 2004, Team GB achieved a much more respectable tenth place. By 2016, in Rio, they finished second, above China and Russia, with sixty-seven medals. How have they so convincingly reversed their fortunes? In Game Changers we meet the coaches and sports scientists who rethink how sport is analysed and understood, how athletes train and perform under pressure. In Liverpool in the 1980s, a motley group - a mathematician, a physiologist, a psychologist and a former Olympic basketball player - began to pioneer new ways of tracking performance. Over the decades that followed, performance analysis came of age, becoming an essential component of any elite team, from English Premier League title winners Manchester City to America's Cup high-performance sailing teams. Using a hybrid of scientific method and trial-and-error, scientists have uncovered the tenets of accelerated learning, the mechanics of physiological adaptation, the organisational principles behind elite teams, the understanding of how hormones and environment affect performance. These discoveries are not confined to athletic endeavours - they are universal and reveal what it takes to win not only in sports, but are applicable across a wide range of disciplines, including business, leadership and education.







Innovations in NLP


Book Description

This long awaited book brings together some of the most recent innovations and applications of the traditional NLP model. Each chapter describes a new model or application and contains step by step instructions or a case study on how and when to apply it. For NLP Practitioners it provides an outstanding collection of new tools and ideas to take their practice forward.




South Africa Yearbook


Book Description




The Hero in Us All


Book Description

Students discuss sports heroes, community heroes, emigrant heroes, and unsung heroes as they deliver the message that "we can all be heroes" in this moving presentation. A simple setting with theatrical crates or boxes and a "school clothes" wardrobe will allow directors and students to focus on the meaning of the play. Contains five original songs, two energized raps, and famous pop hit "The Wind Beneath My Wings." Inspire the next generation of heroes with The Hero in Us All.