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Fletcher Agency
Melissa Chinchillo
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English
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HEAD IN THE GAME

Brandon Sneed

The Mental Engineering of the World's Greatest Athletes

The next frontier of sports training doesn't rest with the body, but with the mind.
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: elite athletes are hooking their brains to computers and using other cutting-edge technology 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.
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 is features writer for B/R Mag at Bleacher Report and CNN. His work has appeared in Outside, SB Nation Longform, CNN, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Pacific Standard, and other places. Sneed lives in eastern North Carolina with his wife, toddler son, and two dogs, a Jack Russell Terrier and a half-Jack Russell Terrier half-pit bull.
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Published 2017-02-28 by Dey Street Books

Comments

Sneed has shared insights that are not only often revelatory, but potentially life-changing, for any -- or all -- of us. No matter whether you come at Sneed’s work as a sports freak or a student of neuroscience, this is a goddamned jewel.

Brandon Sneed offers a deep dive into the cranial lobes of elite athletes. You’ll marvel at what he uncovers.

Brandon Sneed has written a thrilling manifesto that reveals the many ways we can enhance the efficiency of our brains to improve our games and our lives.

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.