P Gopichand launches book on mastering pressure and mental strength

Renowned badminton coach P Gopichand launched The Glyder Advantage – Beat the Pressure. Perform at Your Best, a book by Dr Sandy Gordon, Gopinathan C P and Ritu Vinayak that explains practical mental skills to help people perform consistently under pressure

Hyderabad: “The Glyder Advantage – Beat the Pressure. Perform at Your Best”, a book launched by renowned badminton coach P Gopichand, presents twelve proven mental skills used by champions across sports and adapts them to the pressures of everyday life, including at work, in exams, in sport and in business.

The book, co-authored by globally renowned sports psychologist Dr Sandy Gordon, along with behavioural science practitioners and learning science experts Gopinathan C P (Gopi) and Ritu Vinayak, essentially brings practical, evidence-based mental skills used by elite athletes for consistent performance under pressure.

The authors’ central argument is that underperformance under pressure, despite having talent, is common and inevitable. The solution, they say, lies in mental skills that can be learnt by anybody.

Actor, presenter and writer Anu Hasan moderated the conversation, with Dr Gordon joining virtually from Australia.

“The game is won between the ears. I’ve spent thirty years on the field with elite athletes across Cricket World Cups, Olympic programmes and more sports than I can count, and the mental tools that help a champion recover from a crushing loss are the same tools a student needs after a bad exam result, or an employee needs after a failed pitch,” said Dr Sandy Gordon, co-author and performance coach for three ICC World Cup finalist teams.

“Most of the conversations around mental strength in India still borrow from Western books that need mental translation to make sense here. We wanted the opposite: stories our readers immediately recognise, so the science connects without any distance between the page and their own life,” said Gopinathan C P (Gopi), co-author.

Ritu Vinayak, co-author, also said, “Our goal was never to hand readers another list of things to reflect on. Every chapter ends with something you can actually use that same night – a technique, not a slogan. Pressure isn’t going away for any of us, so the least we can do is lay out a structured, learnable and applicable way to meet it.”