Best Books About Kicking and Sports Psychology for Specialists

Most kickers would rather take fifty more reps than read one chapter. I understand the instinct — the field is where the work feels real. But the kickers who figure out their mental game faster always seem to have read something the rest of us had not gotten to yet, and it shows up on game days.

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. If you order a book through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you — that support keeps Kickers of Earth going, and I only point you at books worth your shelf space.

Start With the Obvious One (Mine)

Yes, I am putting my own book first. Not because it is clever marketing, but because it was written for exactly the reader on this page: a kicker or punter who wants the swing and the mind explained in plain coach language.

The Art of Kicking covers the whole motion — steps, plant, contact, follow-through — and then goes where most technique books stop: how you think during a kick. Get the book on Amazon here, or grab the ebook version on Gumroad — and if you do, use code KOE for 10% off. If you want a sample of the thinking first, I made a full guide to it in this post on the best book for kickers and punters.

The Sports Psychology Shelf

These are the titles I would assign if I were running a specialist meeting room. Each one solves a different problem, so pick by your current weakness — not by cover design.

Book	The problem it solves	Link
The Inner Game of Tennis — W. Timothy Gallwey	Overthinking your motion mid-swing. The original book on quieting Self 1 so Self 2 can move.	Find it on Amazon
Mindset — Carol Dweck	Handling a bad chart day. Growth-mindset framing applied to skill, backed by real research.	Find it on Amazon
The Talent Code — Daniel Coyle	Understanding why slow, deliberate reps beat volume. Explains myelin and deep practice without the jargon.	Find it on Amazon
Zen Golf — Joseph Parent	Between-shot resets. Golf specialists live the same three-second window we do.	Find it on Amazon
Relentless — Tim Grover	The competitive edge — read it when your training needs a shove, not when you need comfort.	Find it on Amazon

Fair warning on ordering: read The Inner Game of Tennis before the others. Nearly every later book on the mental side borrows from it, and you will spot the ideas the way you spot a borrowed drill in a young kicker’s session.

The Physical Side of the Shelf

Technique reading is trickier for our position than mental work, because kicking has almost no good mainstream literature — you have to be pickier. Two titles earn a place, and both are about skill-building more than kicking itself.

Book	Why it helps a specialist	Link
Peak — Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool	The science behind deliberate practice — the framework every serious training plan is secretly built on.	Find it on Amazon
Atomic Habits — James Clear	The routine book. If your pre-kick script keeps collapsing, this explains why systems beat motivation.	Find it on Amazon

Between those two and the sports psych list above, you have a complete education: how skills are built, how they fail under pressure, and how the daily system holds them together. That is more than most kickers ever read — and it shows at the field.

One warning about technique books outside this list: a golf swing book will not transfer cleanly to a ball on a tee, and a generic “kicking” manual may be aimed at soccer players whose contact geometry is nothing like ours. Before you absorb any drill from a book, hold it against your own film. If the drill does not map to your steps, your plant, and your strike, it is a curiosity, not training.

Why Golf Books Belong on a Kicker’s Shelf

Golf is the closest sport to ours. A single discrete skill, a pause before it, an audience, and a scorecard that remembers everything. When a golfer talks about a pre-shot routine and committing to the target, he is describing what we do between the snap and the swing. That is why the mental posts on this site lean on the same ideas — the best mindset for kicking field goals draws from the same well.

How to Actually Read as an Athlete

Reading list failures are usually a system failure, not a motivation failure. Three fixes:

1. One book at a time. Three half-finished books teach you nothing. Finish one, log one takeaway, then move on.
2. Read the chapter the night before the skill. A chapter on routines lands harder the week you are rebuilding yours.
3. Turn each chapter into a cue word. If a chapter cannot shrink to a two-word cue you can use on the field, you read it for entertainment, not training.

That is also how I treat film — a chapter of your own kicks is the best reading there is, which is exactly why what you think about during a kick matters as much as any technique detail.

Where to Start This Week

If you only buy one, take The Art of Kicking — the paperback is on Amazon and the ebook is on Gumroad with code KOE for 10% off. Then pick the one sports psych title that names your current problem and read it slowly, one chapter per practice week, testing each idea at the field before you accept it. That loop — read it, try it, log it — is how a book actually changes a swing.