Kirjahaku

An exploration of how the world's greatest athletes have yet to utilize the last frontier of performance-enhancing technology--the mental mapping and engineering of their own brains--and what this means for the future of sports, athleticism, and the rest of us.For years, common wisdom has held that athletic performance is rooted in genetics and peak physical enhancement of the body. But journalist Brandon Sneed has another idea: that mental engineering -- training the cognitive process of the brain -- presents yet a new level of sports performance, and that athletes, despite already being at the top of the genetic pool, can actually become better. This is a watershed idea -- the conscious alteration of our brains can have drastic effects, so much so that elite athletes around the world are already seeing incredible results: stars like Steph Curry, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Russell Wilson, and dozens others are experimenting with this concept. They are hooking their brains to computers and using other cutting-edge technology that seems like stuff out of sci-fi movies to get at the root of their respective performance. What they are finding helps them is eye-opening, powerful, and, in their words, "life-changing."In Head in the Game, Sneed takes on a mesmerizing tour of what seems to be a new frontier in performance enhancement, from neuroscience labs at Duke, to the Super Bowl, to the mountains of Patagonia, to the Taj Mahal of virtual reality, to the jungles of Peru, and beyond. Anchoring all of this is a dynamic cast of characters, from the director of human performance at Red Bull, to the former Nike higher-up who left to start his own cognitive engineering company, to the drug addict who built sensory deprivation chambers in a fit of near-madness only to find them in high demand by the world's best athletes, to paradigm-shattering neuroscientists who have created technology that allows athletes to look at their brains using a headset and a smartphone, and many more.What does all of this add up to? Not only is it dramatically altering the gazillion-dollar and ever-expanding landscape of sports business, and revolutionizing how teams and owners analyze athletes -- it is changing the way we think about how athletes do what they do, and what we might learn from them. Most of all, this is not going away. In turns comical and revelatory, shocking and thrilling, thoughtful and moving, Head in the Game brings a new level of understanding to what is possible for our world's elite athletes -- and what is possible for all of us.

"Brandon Sneed has pulled off something extraordinary...Head in The Game is a graceful story about a revolution in sports and, ultimately, what it means to be a human being. A stunning work of narrative non-fiction."

Sooner tells the remarkable rise of Lincoln Riley, formerly America's youngest college football head coach and the "quarterback whisperer" of the University of Oklahoma.Legendary University of Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops shook the college football world in 2017 when he handpicked Lincoln Riley to be his successor at the perennial powerhouse. At age thirty-three. In his first three seasons at Oklahoma, Riley's teams dominated the Big 12 to reach the national semifinals each year, and two of his quarterbacks--Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray--won the Heisman Trophy and were No. 1 overall picks by the Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft. In Sooner, Brandon Sneed charts Riley's remarkable ascent from small-town star quarterback in West Texas, to walk-on turned assistant coach at Texas Tech, where he learned the revolutionary Air Raid system from Mike Leach, to offensive coordinator at East Carolina, to football titan Oklahoma. It takes more than sheer talent to go toe to toe with the brilliant strategists of the modern game--like The University of Alabama's Nick Saban, University of Texas's Tom Herman, and Ohio State's Urban Meyer--and Sneed shows how this wunderkind's commitment, grit, relationships, pain, brains, and passion have empowered him to compete. And win. More important than the zealous fans, the intense rivalries, and the multimillion-dollar contracts, are the human connections that lie at the heart of Lincoln Riley's triumphs as a coach. Sooner is not only the story of a mastermind in the making, but also a reminder of the many people who make each of us who we are.