Strong, by Kara Goucher

Kara Goucher's book Strong: A Runner's Guide to Boosting Confidence and Becoming the Best Version of You was published by Blue Star Press in 2018. In the name of full disclosure, Blue Star Press was kind enough to provide us a free copy to review. Kara Goucher is one of the USA's most decorated, and most recognizable female runners. She has a long list of accomplishments both on the track and on the road and has been on the US Olympic team in 2012 and 2016. Her book aims to help other athletes boost their self-confidence using the same sports psychology techniques that she used during her career. Kara doesn't claim to BE a sports psychologist, but rather she recognizes that many runners deal with confidence issues, and wants to share techniques that were helpful for her.

The techniques Kara provides in the book are:

·         Positive self-talk

·         Mantra

·         Setting goals

·         Enclothed cognition

·         Power pose

·         Visualization

·         Power words

·         Social connection

This book has limited theoretical backgrounds about each individual technique, but this is not the goal of the book anyway. It provides questions and exercises to guide the reader in applying the technique and provides examples from Kara Goucher's own confidence journal as examples. 

Kara also has other female athletes (Molly Huddle and Emma Coburn, to name a couple) contribute their own struggles and ideas about confidence, and it really shows how the elites struggle with the same demons as we do. Kara tells us how she used to feel like she didn't belong when she would line up to run high caliber races. 

If you are interested in getting a copy of this book, and also helping out the podcast, you can get the book through this Amazon.ca affiliate link: Strong: A Runner's Guide to Being the Best Version of You