eBooks - Games - Sports - Stefan Fatsis - A Few Seconds of Panic
A Few Seconds of Panic eBooks
by Stefan Fatsis
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Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $31.14
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Platforms
Windows PC, Windows Mobile 5.0-6.0, Pocket PC 2003 Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $31.14
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Platforms
Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod Touch Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $31.14
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A Few Seconds of Panic Summary
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Drawing on rare access to an NFL team's players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills, he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges-physical, psychological, and intellectual-that pro athletes must master In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of competitive ScrabbleĞ players, ultimately achieving "expert" status (comparable to a grandmaster ranking in chess). Now he infiltrates a strikingly different subculture-pro football. After more than a year spent working out with a strength coach and polishing his craft with a gurulike kicking coach, Fatsis molded his fortyish body into one that could stand up-barely-to the rigors of NFL training. And over three months in 2006, he became a Denver Bronco. He trained with the team and lived with the players. He was given a locker and uniforms emblazoned with #9. He was expected to perform all the drills and regimens required of other kickers. He was unlike his teammates in some ways-most notably, his livelihood was not on the line as theirs was. But he became remarkably like them in many ways: He risked crippling injury just as they did, he endured the hazing that befalls all rookies, he gorged on 4,000 daily calories, he slogged through two-a-day practices in blistering heat. Not since George Plimpton's stint as a Detroit Lion more than forty years ago has a writer tunneled so deeply into the NFL. At first, the players tolerated Fatsis, or treated him like a mascot, but over time they began to think of him as one of them. And he began to think like one of them. Like the other Broncos-like all elite athletes-he learned to perfect a motion through thousands of repetitions, to play through pain, to silence the crowd's roar, to banish self-doubt. While Fatsis honed his mind and drove his body past exhaustion, he communed with every... |
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eBooks - Titles - Authors - Games - Sports - Stefan Fatsis - A Few Seconds of Panic