"A paradigm shift in sports has begun and it is explained in this book! Adapt and thrive ... or perish!
Support for this book is coming in fast from everywhere!
Steve Sabol
NFL Films
Doug Blevins
NFL Kicking Coach
for Many Teams and Kicking Coordinator for NFL Europe Writes:
As a professional kicking coach who has spent my entire career working with professional athletes,
I feel that John has done a brilliant job of demonstrating the importance of mental toughness, and intelligent play in professional football!
should be required reading for all football coaches at every level of the game. His book, The Mental Performance Index is masterfully done, and clearly outlines that mental preparedness, and intelligence on the playing field, is equally as important as physical ability and athletic talent ... John, I truly believe you have created a masterpiece and I am very excited about what you have done!"
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NEW: ENJOY MONTHLY EXCERPTS FROM THIS RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOK!
THIS MONTH: parts of both Tom Flores' Foreword and the author's Preface (scroll down!) |
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Selected Excerpts from the Foreword Written by Super Bowl Winning Coach Tom Flores
Sports have gone through many evolutions. Players have improved in strength, size, abilities and most of all intellectual maturity ... That individual prepares long before his or her performance by training physically and mentally.
Dr. Murray has developed an approach toward preparation that has probably been around for years in some form but never defined. He has perfected a system of self evaluation and taken it to a new and modern level. His approach is an introspective system of grading performance levels that separate winning teams from the others.
I have been a member off four winning Super Bowl teams. In 1969, I was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. In 1976, I was an assistant coach with the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XI. In 1980 and 1983, I was the Head Coach of the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders in Super Bowls XV and XVIII.
The reason I mention my accomplishments is not to pound my chest but to emphasize one thing. Every one of those teams had one thing in common, other than excellent players. They were very smart players,prepared intellectually and performed at a high level of intelligence. They did not make mistakes.
Dr. Murray has developed a system that is part of the evolution of football: The ability to identify, quantify and utilize a grading system that will aid coaches and players. It is a method of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of every aspect of a team and or individual. It is a system that can point out the direction needed for improvement.
Sports have come a long way in the past century. The future,compared to the past, is vast. Innovation was frowned upon for years but not any longer. Teams, coaches and players are always looking for an edgeand a way to stay ahead of the field. Dr. Murray's Mental Performance Index can be and will be the next part of sports evolution in the 21stCentury.
—Tom Flores |
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Excerpts from the
Author's Note by
John F Murray
Something was astonishingly missing in the measurement of team performance and I had to do something about it. While the product of the mind in competition (e.g., smarts, intelligent play) was vital to
performing and winning, it was rarely, if ever, professionally quantified. Smarter and more disciplined athletes consistently outfoxed their more careless opponents. Yet as influential as smart play was to success, it was overlooked in team performance statistics resulting in less precision. The result was that coaches, media and fans received a limited understanding of team performance.
This book corrects this historical omission by introducing the Mental Performance Index (MPI), a new rating system for performance in football that includes the mental game. Like our first a view of stars from the Hubble telescope, the MPI illuminates football and the Super Bowl as never before. The organ of the mind is the brain, and it is such a smart computer that it invented the computer. It monitors and controls actions, makes rapid and accurate decisions, creates and interprets emotions, and causes both smart sports play and its opposite in carelessness and mental mistakes. Like any computer needing regular updates, the brain requires proper training and maintenance too in order to perform flawlessly.
Smart football teams commit fewer mental mistakes and operate more efficiently than careless teams, but mental mistakes still occur. Perfection is almost impossible for a team of 11 football players over approximately 150 plays in a game. That would require 1,650 perfectly executed assignments (11 players times 150 plays), and just never happens with fatigue, distractions, opponents, snap counts, and so much more. Consider how one player’s mental mistake on one small part of one
play may sabotage an entire team and lead to defeat. The winning team is often the one that made just one or two fewer mental errors over a three hour contest.
Given this fragility of victory, and benefits of solid mental performance, isn’t it amazing that this factor has been disregarded in quantifying sports performance? It is almost as if for every baseball team that played nine innings, only the first seven innings counted in their team statistics, ignoring what happened in the final two innings. It is almost as if yards gained in the first quarter of a football game were not counted in total yards gained. What good is a last second touchdown if a player commits a careless personal foul that negates the score and his team loses? Think of how much better the analysis of any game would be if mental performance, or smart play, were computed too.
The Mental Performance Index (MPI), which captures both mental and physical team performance in a simple statistic developed over eight years, puts the mind and body back together. The products of mind and body always contribute to a team’s performance, so mental performance cannot be excluded any longer among the statistics if you want a complete understanding of how a team played.
Truth speaks more eloquently than words, so it is truly exciting, if not surprising, that MPI statistics correlate with winning better than any other football statistic yet created, even points scored or given up! This suggests that while teams obviously need scoreboard points to win, scoring high on the MPI, which is another way to say performing well mentally and physically in every possible moment, may win even more games.
The MPI gets its power by more fully, and accurately, representing what happens in a game by respecting the influences of both mind and body, and reversing years of ignorance. Sports will never be the
same and the mental game gains new respect with this book. Call it a revolution in sports … or just evolution.
—John F Murray, Palm Beach
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