Soccer Brain

Soccer Brain - from Dan Abrahams - teaches coaches to train players to compete with confidence, with commitment, with intelligence, and as part of a team.

From the FIFA World Cup to pick-up games at your local park, soccer is the closest thing in our world to a universal entertainment. Many writers use this global popularity to describe the game’s winners and losers, but what happens when we use social science to explore how soccer intersects with culture, society, and the self? This book provides a thinking fan’s guide to the world’s most popular game, proposing a way of engaging soccer that sparks intellectual curiosity and employs critical consciousness. Using stories and data, along with ideas from sociology, psychology, and across the social sciences, it provides readers with new ways of understanding fanaticism, peak performance, talent development, and more. Drawing on concepts ranging from cognitive bias to globalization, it illuminates meanings of the game for players and fans while investigating impacts on our lives and communities. While it considers soccer cultures across the globe, the book also analyzes what makes U.S. soccer culture special, including its embrace of the women’s game. As a scholar, former minor league player and coach, and fan, Andrew Guest offers a distinctive perspective on soccer in society. Whatever name you call it, and whatever your interest in it, Soccer in Mind will enrich your own view of the one truly global game.

To explore whether soccer playing puts youths at risk for lasting brain damage, the Institute of Medicine brought together experts in head injury, sports medicine, pediatrics, and bioengineering. In a workshop entitled "Youth Soccer: Neuropsychological Consequences of Head Impact in Sports," that was held in Washington D.C. on October 12, 2001, these experts presented the scientific evidence for long-term consequences of head injury from youth sports, especially soccer, possible approaches to reduce the risks, and policy issues raised by the subject. Some of the findings presented by the speakers raised concerns, such as the high concussion rate of high school soccer players, the frequent persistence of impaired brain functions even after other symptoms of a concussion disappear, and the need for a better understanding of when it is safe for players to resume playing after they have had a concussion. But other findings were reassuring, such as studies that suggest that with the type of soccer balls used in the United States, heading is not likely to cause brain injury in youths, nor is playing soccer likely to cause permanent brain damage. This is a summary of the reports from these experts in the field, and the lively discussions that followed them. Topics covered include: causes of head injuries in soccer; how to detect a concussion; the biology of concussion; studies of soccer and football players; the role of protective headgear; and policy implications, such as how to decide when a concussed player should be allowed to return to the playing field.

A complete guide to developing every aspect of conditioning for soccer players. Europe's top soccer conditioning experts contributed the following chapters: Soccer Strength Training, Soccer Specific Endurance Training, Speed Training for Soccer, Pre-Season Conditioning, Goalkeeper Training, Fitness Testing and Injury Prevention.

Aimed primarily at intermediate-to-advanced youth soccer players (but also coaches and parents who want to understand the game more deeply) "Play With Your Brain" presents eight key soccer concepts in illuminating detail, giving you the knowledge you need to become a smarter -- and therefore better -- player, coach, or fan.

Laureano Ruiz is the guru of Spanish soccer. He has mentored several top professionals, including Ivan de la Pena, Tente Sanchez and Hristo Stoichkov. In this excellent book, he gives his insights into the game and offers his thoughts on what makes a great player. Includes sections on fitness, nutrition, how young players learn and motivation as well as several educational and entertaining anecdotes from this soccer `maestro`, with over 40 years of experience at every level.

Close soccer matches and tight title fights are rarely decided by players' technical skills or their coaches' tactical measures. The most significant impetus comes from an area that is often mentioned but difficult to grasp: mental strength, personality, and team cohesion after special victories. Using current scientific knowledge and illustrated by many examples, this book describes the mental and cognitive processes that determine victory and defeat in soccer. Several interviews with well-known soccer coaches, managers and former players complement these findings from psychology and sport science. It deals with phenomena such as the home field advantage, creativity on the field, extreme emotional situations, the limits of visual perception, group dynamics and modern leadership. Well-known myths (e.g. Don't let the player who has been fouled shoot the penalty) will be discussed and debunked. Every soccer enthusiast should read this book in order to understand which phenomena can genuinely be game-changing and which ones cannot.

Holbourne’s theory that rotational head movement and shear strains were limiting factors in producing acute parenchymal brain damage was a watershed moment in understanding traumatic brain injury (TBI). Long term effects, and in particular neurodegenerative proteinopathy subsequent to TBI, remain theoretical, notwithstanding the poorly understood ‘punch drunk’ syndrome of the early and mid-20th century, and the 21st century concept of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This book, the Handbook of Traumatic Brain Injury and Neurodegeneration, has as its theme the marriage between neurodegenerative disease and neurotrauma through TBI surrogates such as sport, military service, and experimental models, and the legitimacy of that marriage. In the 32 contributions included here, this handbook not only explores the deleterious effects of genuine TBI, but also, and more importantly, the relationship between TBI and neurodegeneration. Controversy notwithstanding, there is much to be learned about the biological effects of TBI, substrates for long-term sequelae, the relationship between TBI and diverse neuropsychiatric disorders, and targets for therapy. The overall message to the neuroscience community from these papers may be a cautionary tale. The null hypothesis, that there is no causal relationship between TBI and progressive neurodegenerative disease, appears to be very much in play, and the book will be of interest to all those working in the field.