An excellent tool for integrating faith with sports. The Handbook will show you how to have the right attitudes and behavior in competition. This book is a classic on how a Christian should compete.

The Handbook on Athletic Perfection teaches how to have the right attitudes and behavior in competition to glorify God in sports. Wes Neal introduced his systematic approach based on his study of the Bible in 1974, which revolutionized how athletes and coaches competed. Now, 50 years later, this playbook for doing sports God's way has been updated for the next generation! "For many years, The Handbook on Athletic Perfection has been a staple in the Nebraska FCA curriculum for huddles and camps. Wes himself has helped our staff not only teach the principles, but also learn to create practical applications on the field of play. I wholeheartedly encourage everyone who wants to compete for Christ to read this book!" - Chris Bubak, FCA Midwest Region Vice President Wes Neal has been consulting with sport coaches and business leaders for over fifty years. He is considered the pioneer in implementing biblical principles into the competitive sports world, all based on the life and teachings of Jesus. He is a seminary graduate, was the field director for Athletes in Action, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, is a featured speaker for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and taught for 12 years at Kanakuk Kamp in Branson, Missouri. He currently lives with his wife, Peggy, in central Ohio. They have two grown daughters, and six grandchildren.

Displays of religious faith have become commonplace on America's baseball diamonds, basketball courts, football fields, and beyond. How did religion become so entwined with big-time sports in America? The Spirit of the Game provides the answer to this question by offering a sweeping history of the Christian athlete movement in the United States--and its impact on American religion and the religion of sports.

Master Teruyuki Okazaki, Chairman and Chief Instructor of the International Shotokan Karate Federation, is revered as one of the greatest karate masters of our time. At 75 years of age, he moves with the speed and grace of an athletic man in his twenties. He smiles broadly and laughs easily, defying the somber stereotype of a martial arts master. His warmth, humility, and understanding of the human condition are obvious to all who encounter him. "Karate practitioners and other martial artists must know that the martial arts are about more than physical development, self-defense, and competition; most importantly, they are about continually striving to perfect one's character," Master Okazaki explains. This is the message that Master Okazaki's own teacher, Master Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern karate, most wanted to emphasize as well. To this end, Master Funakoshi articulated two sets of principles, the Dojo Kun, and the Niju Kun. The Dojo Kun are the five guiding, general principles of karate; and the Niju Kun are the twenty specific and subordinate principles of karate, which encompass morality, technique, and proper mindset. In this book, Master Okazaki draws out the deep and hidden wisdom from these seemingly simple principles in a light and lucid fashion, and emphasizes that the principles of karate are principles for living a peaceful, fulfilling, and happy life. This profound book is not just for karate practitioners and martial artists; it is a book for all who genuinely seek to become the best person they can be.

When sports ministry first emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, its founders imagined male celebrity athletes as powerful salespeople who could deliver a message of Christian strength: “If athletes can endorse shaving cream, razor blades, and cigarettes, surely they can endorse the Lord, too,” reasoned Fellowship of Christian Athletes founder Don McClanen. But combining evangelicalism and sport did much more than serve as an advertisement for religion: it gave athletes the opportunity to think about the embodied experiences of sport as a way to experience intimate connection with the divine. As sports ministry developed, it focused on individual religious experiences and downplayed celebrity sales power, opening the door for female Christian athletes to join and eventually dominate sports ministry. Today, women are the majority of participants in sports ministry in the United States. In Playing for God, Annie Blazer offers an exploration of the history and religious lives of Christian athletes, showing that evangelical engagement with popular culture can carry unintended consequences. When sport became an avenue for embodied worship, it forced a reckoning with evangelical teachings about the body. Female Christian athletes increasingly turned to their own bodies to understand their religious identity, and in so doing, came to question evangelical mainstays on gender and sexuality. What was once a male-dominated masculinist project of sports engagement became a female-dominated movement that challenged evangelical ideas on femininity, marriage hierarchy, and the sinfulness of homosexuality. Though evangelicalism has not changed sporting culture, for those involved in sports ministry, sport has changed evangelicalism.

A coaching legend shares techniques, philosophies, and team-building exercises applicable beyond the playing field In 1979, when Bob Ladouceur took over the head football coaching job at De La Salle high school, the program had never once had a winning season. By the time he stepped down in 2013 and after posting an unprecedented 399–25–3 record, De La Salle was regarded as one of the great dynasties in the history of high school football. In When the Game Stands Tall: Coaches' Playbook, Ladouceur shares, for the first time, the coaching philosophies he employed at De La Salle. Far more than a book on the Xs and Os of football, this resource focuses on how Ladouceur created a culture based on accountability, work ethic, humility, and commitment that made his teams greater than the sum of their parts. This book not only include details on the nuances of the game and the techniques that made the Spartans the most celebrated high school football team in history, it also has chapters on creating what Ladouceur calls an "authentic team experience," which include lessons as valuable in a board room as in a locker room.

An Unholy Alliance offers a dissenting view to the claim by a growing number of scholars that Sports are a new religion. The last few years have seen a spate of books that might be classified by a genre called "Sports Apologetics," that is, arguments defending or celebrating in one way or another the familiar and ongoing alliance in America between sports and religion. Recently, claims have been made by scholars that sports are an authentic religion in and of themselves. They make this startling assertion not by showing connections with the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, or Moses, but by parallels between the rites of modern games and those of preliterate man that were "religious" in nature because they were designed to propitiate powers and to ward off evil for the tribes employing them. In this evocative book, Higgs and Braswell suggest that while sports may often be good things, they are not inherently divine. They do not focus on wide-spread abuse in sports as evidence for their counterargument. Rather, they question the use of mythological parallels from prehistory as justification for viewing sports as a religion.

Praise for Mind Gym "Believing in yourself is paramount to success for any athlete. Gary's lessons and David's writing provide examples of the importance of the mental game." --Ben Crenshaw, two-time Masters champion and former Ryder Cup captain "Mind Gym hits a home run. If you want to build mental muscle for the major leagues, read this book." --Ken Griffey Jr., Major League Baseball MVP "I read Mind Gym on my way to the Sydney Olympics and really got a lot out of it. Gary has important lessons to teach, and you'll find the exercises fun and beneficial." --Jason Kidd, NBA All-Star and Olympic gold-medal winner In Mind Gym, noted sports psychology consultant Gary Mack explains how your mind influences your performance on the field or on the court as much as your physical skill does, if not more so. Through forty accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes from prominent athletes--many of whom he has worked with--you will learn the same techniques and exercises Mack uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." Mind Gym will give you the "head edge" over the competition.