Keeping Your Head in the Game

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Elite athletes play out their lives in the most public of arenas. Everything they do is analysed in real time and then picked apart in the pub and in the press afterwards. 'Why did they miss that penalty?', 'What made them fall at the first jump?', 'That press conference was a bit weird.' We can all speculate, but what's really going on?

Gary Bloom is a sports psychotherapist. He works with footballers, cricketers, rugby players, jockeys, Olympians and many other athletes besides. They might seem like superheroes on the pitch, but in the dressing room they're just like anybody else, subject to the same emotional pressures that affect us all.

In Keeping Your Head in the Game we peer into this highly confidential world. We follow the journeys of ten athletes in their therapy sessions with Gary, from a rugby player arrested for a drunken brawl, through a homesick cricketer on tour, to a snooker player struggling with his feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Structured around the emotions we all experience on a daily basis - shame, anger, fear, jealousy and envy, love -chapter by chapter, the inner traumas that have an impact on the performance of these sports personalities are revealed, explained and resolved.Seeing how they overcome their demons is a powerful way of tackling your own and, as Gary says, happier players play better - in sport and in life.

© Gary Bloom 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

  • Love this book. It’s about time someone wrote about the emotional life of athletes and Gary really does this justice. These are some cracking tales and it’s a great read

    Nigel Owens MBE, rugby union referee

  • The only psychotherapist to work within a professional football club . . . It is not just extremes of behaviour that trouble him. The more he peers inside sport – with up to 40 footballers, plus leading rugby players, cricketers and jockeys among his clients – he sees forbidding cultures . . . This is beyond patching up athletes with an encouraging word to get through a Saturday afternoon, or the odd team talk from a sports psychologist . . . He is selling the best of all worlds; a balanced athlete who is more self-aware and, therefore, more productive . . . “Happier players play better . . .” he concludes. He will find no argument here

    The Times

  • the first book of its kind, which peers into the confidential world of athletes’ therapy sessions – and offers insights into boosting or treating mental health

    inews.co.uk

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