Drawing on his work with some of the top teams in professional sports, noted sport psychology consultant Gary Mack shares with you the same techniques and exercises he uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." These 40 accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes will help you gain the "head edge" over the competition.

Develop explosive acceleration, speed, and agility and dominate the ice! Laura Stamm's Power Skating presents the skating system used by thousands of the sport's top players and teams to move with maximum efficiency on the ice. From starts and stops to turns and transitions, Laura Stamm's Power Skating covers all of the critical components of explosive skating. Through top-level instruction, practice drills, and coaching tips, you'll learn these skills: -Increase on-ice acceleration. -Improve balance while changing directions on the ice. -Increase speed and agility to disrupt aggressive defensemen. -Explode from a stationary position and stop more rapidly. -Increase puck protection without sacrificing speed. -Use speed and agility to create more scoring chances for yourself and teammates.The great hockey players skate powerfully and are able to get in position to make the key plays. Laura Stamm's Power Skating will give you that explosive edge on the competition.

“Zero regrets. It’s a philosophy not just about sport but about life. School, business, academics, love—anything and everything. It’s complicated and yet not. You have to figure out who it is you want to be. Not what you want to be—who. There has to be a vision, a dream, a plan. Then you chase that with everything you’ve got.” Over three consecutive Olympic games, Apolo Ohno has come to symbolize the very best of the competitive spirit—remaining equally gracious in victory and defeat, always striving to improve his performance, and appreciating the value of the hard work of training as much as any reward it might bring. In Zero Regrets, Apolo shares the inspiring personal story behind his remarkable success, as well as the hard-won truths and strategies he has discovered in good times and bad. Raised by his single father, an immigrant from Japan who often worked twelve-hour days, the young Apolo found it difficult to balance his enormous natural gifts as an athlete with an admittedly wild, rebellious streak. After making a name for himself as a promising young speed skater, his career was almost over before it began when his lack of preparation caused him to finish last at the U.S. Olympic trials in 1998. A life-changing week of solitary soul-searching at the age of fifteen led him to recommit himself to his training, and at the 1999 world junior championships he won first place overall—one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports history. From that moment on, the world of speed skating had a new champion and Apolo was on his way to legendary status. Much more than an account of races won and lost, Zero Regrets is a compelling portrait of a father-and-son relationship that deepened over time and was based on respect, love, and unshakable faith in each other. For the first time, Apolo reveals what he knows about his long-absent mother; he makes us feel what it is like to face the best competitors on the planet with the eyes of millions of fans upon you; and he shares his secrets for achieving total focus and mental toughness, secrets that can be applied in situations well beyond sports. We learn the details of the unbelievably intense workout and diet that he endured while training for the 2010 Winter Olympics, a regime that literally reshaped his body and led to some of his most thrilling victories. In this deeply personal and entertaining book, Apolo shows how we can all come closer to living with zero regrets. While Apolo’s own journey may be unique, the insights he has gleaned along the way have the power to help us all feel like champions every day. ***   Nine days after dropping me off, Dad came to pick me up. In that call from the pay phone, I hadn’t said anything to him about what decision I had made. On the car ride back home, I told him. “I want to try this,” I said. “Are you willing,” he asked, “to really put forth a true effort? From the bone?” I told my father: “I want to skate.” With clarity of purpose, everything suddenly seemed different. I didn’t just want to skate—I loved it. I realized, too, that while I had to want to buy into the training, the discipline, the self-sacrifice, I needed direction and guidance, too. You truly can’t get there by yourself. I needed not only to truly and profoundly depend upon Dad for help but also to welcome those—coaches, trainers, others—who could help me along the way. . . . I was also making promises to myself and writing them in my journal: I’m not going to mess it up this time. When I go home, I really am going to be the different person I decided in Iron Springs I would be. I know what I want to do. I want to be the best in the world. I didn’t know quite yet how I would get there. But I was clear, and I had no doubt— that’s what I was after. —From Zero Regrets

"Frozen Teardrop" is the autobiographical account of one of the most beloved and controversial personalities in the history of figure skating. In this straight-forward memoir, Lucinda Ruh takes her readers through the harsh and painful realities of the figure-skating world while exposing the never-before-released details of her own private pain and suffering which would ultimately turn this Guinness-listed international icon into a bed-ridden, suicidal, starved, agoraphobic and terrified young woman. "Frozen Teardrop" is a true-life tale of beauty, refinement, genius, and skill contrasted against the cut-throat starkness of world figure-skating competition in its bleakest, most tortuous, most mind-warping moments--as seen through the eyes of a developing young prodigy whose personal life would harbor its own menagerie of horrors, secrets, and personal violations.

In her forties, Erica Rand bought a pair of figure skates to vary her workout routine. Within a few years, the college professor was immersed in adult figure skating. Here, in short, incisive essays, she describes the pleasures to be found in the rink, as well as the exclusionary practices that make those pleasures less accessible to some than to others. Throughout the book, Rand situates herself as a queer femme, describing her mixed feelings about participating in a sport with heterosexual story lines and rigid standards for gender-appropriate costumes and moves. She chronicles her experiences competing in the Gay Games and at the annual U.S. Adult National Figure Skating Championship, or "Adult Nationals." Aided by her comparative study of roller derby and women's hockey, including a brief attempt to play hockey herself, she addresses matters such as skate color conventions, judging systems, racial and sexual norms, transgender issues in sports, and the economics of athletic participation and risk taking. Mixing sharp critique with genuine appreciation and delight, Rand suggests ways to make figure skating more inclusive, while portraying the unlikely friendships facilitated by sports and the sheer elation of gliding on ice.

"Kristi Yamaguchi knows skating.... Her experience and passion for the sport come through on each page." ?Dick Button, Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist"Kristi truly explains it all ... from sit spins to death drops, from the kiss-and-cry area to center ice." ? Mark McDonald, Senior Olympic Correspondent, Dallas Morning NewsCovers Everything from Competitions to the Olympics and Beyond!Olympic Gold Medalist Kristi Yamaguchi Takes You for a Spin Through the World of Figure Skating!Distinguish a toe loop from a Lutz, an Axel, or a SalchowDiscover how skaters select their music, choreography, and costumesUnderstand the judging and scoring of the short and long programsSelect the best boots and skates ? for every budgetLocate a practice rink and coach to fit your needsGet into skating shape with tips from Kristi's Olympic training regimenUnderstand the differences between amateur and professional skatersKeep score at home or rinkside with the Figure Skating For Dummies Scoring System

From starvation diets and debilitating injuries to the brutal tactics of tyrannical gymnastics guru Bela Karolyi, "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes" portrays the horrors endured by girls at the hands of their coaches and sometimes their own families. An acclaimed expose that has already helped reform Olympic sports -- now updated to reflect the latest developments in women's gymnastics and figure skating -- it continues to plead for sanity, safety, and an end to our national obsession: winning at any cost.

There is no shortage of books that describe how participating in a particular sporting activity strengthens bonds between people. Falla's book accomplishes this feat through a collection of essays on backyard skating rinks and frozen ponds and how these local skating venues allow their participants to get in touch with the game of hockey in addition to building relationships with family and friends. The author, a sportswriter and author of Sports Illustrated Hockey, is the architect and CEO of his full-scale backyard rink, the Bacon Street Omni, around which neighborhood life seems to revolve during the long, cold months. Each essay is short and provides for excellent recreational reading for people interested in skating in general and hockey in particular. Throughout, the author's love for winter sports is clear, especially as a link between his New England childhood and his current life, but readers who have never put on a pair of skates may have trouble connecting with this well written book. --Library Journal

On February 15, 1961, all 18 members of the U.S. World Figure Skating Team were killed in a plane crash, along with 16 coaches, officials, and family members. Frozen in Time takes readers inside the lives of the young skaters who died in the crash, revealing their friendships, romances, rivalries, sacrifices, and triumphs. The dramatic focus lingers on two families of powerful women: the Owens and the Westerfelds. Maribel Owen, the most famous woman in figure skating at the time, relentlessly drives her two young daughters—pairs champion Mara and the spectacular Laurence, who graced the cover of Sports Illustrated on the day she died. Myra Westerfeld, meanwhile, loses her marriage while guiding her daughters Sherri and Steffi to the pinnacle of the sport. Along with the bittersweet personal stories, author Nikki Nichols recounts the U.S. skating program’s lengthy struggle to rebuild after this devastating accident.