Review of "Stillpower" by Garret Kramer
I was able to obtain an advance copy of the book. Stillpower: excellence with ease in sports and life for Garret kramer, and I have to say I enjoyed it. It was not my favorite book, but I think it is worth reading for athletes and coaches for the possibility that they can get an idea or two from the book that will really help them.
The book talks about recognizing that motivation is internal, whether in sports or in life, and we cannot look for external motivations. If we do that, it will be fleeting and we will soon find ourselves underperforming. If we consider that things that happen to us depress us or uplift us, we do not trust the internal factors of performance enough.
Kramer gives many examples of parents, coaches, and athletes who came to him with problems, and some of the ways he helped solve them and the advice he gave them. These were some of my favorite parts of the books, because they helped see how the things Kramer was writing about could really be applied to real life. Sometimes I felt that Kramer was just talking about things that had no practical application in life, or at least, that there was no way to try to make it applicable to my own life, and this helped to understand.
One thing I didn’t like about the book was that sometimes the advice given was very general and didn’t seem very practical. For example, you say that if a win or loss is affecting your mood, you simply aren’t seeing it right away, and because your motivation must be internal, those kinds of things shouldn’t affect your life or your state of mind. cheer up. While that’s true, it seemed like there was no real practical way to do that in your own life. He gave the advice on how I should see things, but not how to get from point A to point B.
It is Stillpower is it worth reading? Depends. If you are an athlete or a coach, I think you could get something out of this, because obviously even an idea that improves your performance will make it worth your while. Plus, it’s a quick and easy read, which should make it a relatively easy book to read. Overall, I liked Stillpower and would recommend it. But I didn’t love it.