Reading List

Here is Simon’s recommended reading list related to teaching, coaching, learning and performance. Simon references these works during instructor training and talks.

  • Bounce: Matthew Syed
    • Outstanding and accessible introduction to success in sport
    • Ex-british number 1 table tennis player debunks the myth of talent
    • Champions the power of purposeful practice
    • Shows how 10,000 hours or 10 years of purposeful and dedicated practice are required to be world-class
  • The Art of Resilience (strategies for an unbreakable mind and body): Ross Edgley
    • Brilliantly written book about The Great British Swim where Ross swam 1780 miles around the UK coastline in 157 days
    • Discusses resilience, stoicism, strength and stamina
    • Advocates controlling the controllables and accepting the uncontrollables
  • Mindset: Dr Carol S. Dweck
    • The seminal guide to discovering the mindset for achieving success
    • Encourages growth mindsets over fixed mindsets
    • Explains why spending time learning is better than spending time ‘proving you are smart’
    • Unlocks success, failure, change and growth

  • Practice Perfect (42 rules for getting better at getting better): Doug Lemnov, Erica Woolway & Katie Yezzi
    • 3 educational experts show how practice makes ‘permanent’, not ‘perfect’
    • Describes how practice should be designed and how we should focus on solutions, not problems
    • Shows how aiming at creative goals is better than remaining in a comfort zone
  • Black Box Thinking (the surprising truth about success): Matthew Syed
    • Inspiring book showing how significant learning and progress can be derived from failure
    • Highlights differences in attitudes and responses to failure in medicine and the airline industry
    • Illuminates how failure drives innovation and gains in performance
  • #NOW (the surprising truth about the power of now): Dr Max McKeown
    • How to nurture a nowist mindset
    • Shows how there is little need to get every smallest part worked out: ‘computations may know the sums of everything and the meaning of nothing’
    • Highlights how you can only directly think, do or change anything at the point of now
    • References Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a theory of psychological motivation
    • Suggests how feeling confident and powerful makes you more likely to take positive action

  • The Chimp Paradox: Prof Steve Peters
    • Explains how your limbic brain (‘Chimp’) interprets info with feelings and impressions, then uses emotional thinking to put things together and form a plan of action
    • Compares this to your human (frontal brain) and how it interprets info searching for facts and establishing truths then uses logical thinking to put things together and form a plan of action
    • The Chimp (like a voice in your head) can draw on your valuable energy resources by drawing you into negativity, anger, disappointment, anxiety and failure
    • It can also give you a chance to succeed by positively interpreting failure
  • The Natural Health Service (what the great outdoors can do for your mind): Isabel Hardman
    • A warm and clear look at how being outdoors and participating in outdoor pursuits can be good for general and mental health and provide useful benefits against anxiety and depression
    • Champions the restorative power of the great outdoors including being in and around water

Masts Article WSUK

A big article all about windsurfing masts! Click the image to access the free 12-page PDF. Click here to check out WSUK.