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Win the Inside Game is Out Now!!

Today is the day that I, Steve—with plenty of help from Brad—have been working toward for the past few years: the release of my new book, Win the Inside Game.

Today is the LAST day to get your exclusive bonus items when you buy the book.

Order now and receive a 100+ page e-book on the Principles of Coaching, an online masterclass, guides to striving in your career and sport, and much more. If you are going to get the book, now is the time.
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PLUS, just today I decided to throw in a masterclass on endurance training, which covers health, longevity, and performance. It's 20+ hours of content for free, so if you're an athlete, consider it an extra bonus.

1. Order from any retailer: including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.org,

2. Fill out this form to receive your bonuses and book today.​
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You could say that this project started ten years ago...

We write the books we need. When I started Win the Inside Game, it was during a moment of reflection and change. It was at the tail end of my whistleblowing experience against Nike coaches and doctors. We were going through the final appeals, and I was reliving experiences that occurred nearly a decade prior. At the same time, I’d stepped away from college coaching, a job I’d had for nine years, to take a risk and focus on my writing. Shortly after that, our first child was born into the world. A lot was going on. It was a mixture of relief at the biggest stressor in my life being over, joy of becoming a dad, and angst over seeing if I could make this writing thing stick.

And at that moment, I needed to look both back and forward. And what that came down to is looking at a number of big concepts that dominate our view of performance. I want to briefly go through three of them:

1. Failure. Everyone tells us to learn and grow from failure, but how do we do that?

2. Talent. How do we translate our talent into performance?

3. Courage. Why do so many people stand down when they should stand up?

Let’s go through them.

1. Failure

I’m world-class at failing. It’s my gift. But not just failing -- a special kind, one where I get agonizingly close and still fall short. It’s so bad that at The Growth Equation, we sometimes refer to it as “the curse.” Consider a few facts:

• In high school track, I never made it to the regional, let alone state meet until my senior year when I won it. What happened? The first three years I kept missing it by one spot.
• In high school cross-country, I missed making the national meet by one place. I was less than 2 seconds away from being one of only 32 kids who made nationals.
• In college, I missed making the NCAA national championships by 0.07 seconds in cross-country. Yes, I missed nationals by less than a snap of a finger in a race that takes 30 minutes to run.
• My lifetime mile best ended up at 4:01.02, agonizingly close to one of the few barriers that matters in track.
• In my high school coaching career, I helped a team get 2^nd at the state championships, missing the win by a few points. Then they missed making nationals as a team by one spot.
• In my college track coaching career, we got 3^rd, 2^nd, and 3^rd at NCAA championships. Close, but never quite winning the whole shebang.
• In my writing career, I’ve had multiple books sell over 250k copies and continue to fall agonizingly short of making the NY Times bestseller list (Hint: You can help us break the curse with this one…)

I could go on. But you get the point. That’s why section 2 of the book covers failure. Everyone says “fail fast,” “learn and grow from your losses,” but let me tell you something. After coming so damn close so many times, those trite sayings don’t help very much. So I unpack it. Looking at how our biology and psychology interact. We’ll explore how our brain ingrains loss as a pain point that pushes us towards protection if we handle a loss poorly. And how hanging out with friends, and using a variety of techniques to make sense of what occurred, can help us bounce back quicker.

2. Talent.

My freshman year of high school I ran a 4:21 mile. I was the third fastest freshman in the country. My senior year of high school, I ran 4:01. I was the fastest in the country, ahead of future Olympic medalists and legends in the sport. Then, I never got faster.

My experience isn’t unique. We often do a terrible job of talent development. In sport, parents obsess over early promise, paying thousands for the best trainers for their 13 year old phenom. In school, bulldozer and helicopter parents do the same thing. Expensive tutors, the perfect extracurricular activities, all in the name of helping little Johnny or Suzy get into a prestigious university.

We live in an achievement-obsessed world. And somewhat ironically, it often makes us perform worse.

In section one, I look at everything from musical prodigies to artists and athletes who go on hot streaks to understand what helps us develop our underlying talent and why we so often leave it unfulfilled. I cover everything from motivation, our environment, early specialization, and the one hit wonder phenomenon. Weaving in deep science and personal experience, I go on a mission to see why so many of us have so much to give, yet never quite fulfill that potential.

3. Courage

As many of you know, early on in my career I was a whistleblower on some anti-doping violations that occurred in a Nike pro track group. It took 10 years to resolve that case. It was the most stressful experience of my life. But as I reflect on that, I was struck by one question: Why do so few people stand up and say something? And that includes myself. Yes, ultimately, I did the right thing, but it took time to get to that point. There were many warning signs I rationalized and justified. And I watched many good, decent people do the same. Rationalize and justify, even when it was staring them in the face.

Chapters 9 and 10 answer what courage is from a psychological and biological standpoint? What allows people to stand up? I found that the same things that cause us to stay quiet are the items that cause us to choke in sports, that keep us from shying away from the productive risk in our work. It’s not just some inner fortitude or our values that matter, it’s our world around us. When everything is pushing us to stand down, even the toughest among us will stay quiet. If we want courage, if we want to come through in the clutch, we need to make sure that our environment around us, and our inner values and sense of self, are all pushing in the same direction. You’ll hear about how I found my way and navigated everything from the FBI showing up at my home to withstanding threats to my livelihood.

I could go on, but you should just read the book! If I could summarize Win the Inside Game it would be: it’s the book that wrestles with the tough stuff we so often shove into a corner of our minds and try to forget about: Learning how to lose, dealing with our insecurities, striving for greatness while not losing our minds trying to win at all costs, and navigating a chaotic world where we don’t quite know how to make progress or where to fit in. But it’s precisely these items that allow us to show up when it matters most. We need to deal with the messiness of striving, instead of simplifying it into catchy hollow slogans about grinding.

This book is about dealing with that messiness so that you can show up at your best when it matters. Whether that’s in business, sport, or life.

The book isn’t about me. Whistleblowing just sets the stage.

It's about coming through in the clutch.

It’s finding the courage to do the right thing.

It’s rising to the occasion when the pressure is on.

It’s also about choking, when our body seemingly betrays us when it matters most. It’s about underperformance, not being able to fulfill our potential when we know there’s more there. It’s about fear of failure, perfectionism, and burnout.

All of these things come from similar underlying psychology and biology.

Does our brain default to survival and protection? Or does it free us up to explore our potential?

​Win the Inside Game shows us the way.

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I hope you take a look. And if you do, please e-mail me what you think…

And just remember… you have the power to finally break the curse and get me from just missing to making that bestseller list! (Just kidding…kind of…)
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-- Steve

LAST CHANCE TO GET BONUSES:

If you order the book today you get the following bonuses. This offer will expire. So place your order now.

Order Today you'll get access to exclusive bonuses, including:

• Bonus Book: 100+ page ebook: The Principles of Coaching and Training.
• Online Course: 40+ hours of content on how to perform under pressure.
• Free Guides on: The science of winning and losing, motivation, and more.
• Bonus Chapters: "Lessons From a Failed Phenom" and "How Whistle-Blowing Redefined Courage."
• Free 2 week Trial of The Growth Equation's Academy for Human Performance.
• The Magness Method, Steve's running guide, including a video walk through of training programs and how to adjust them.

How to Get Your Bonuses

1. Order from any retailer: including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.org,

2. Fill out this form to receive your bonuses and book today.​
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Note: if you order directly from your indie bookshop, that's great too! You'll be able to indicate that in the form. These offers are valid from wherever books are sold.

What Others are Saying:

"A propulsive tour of how modern life — from credit reports to TikTok — has left us in a perpetual state of defensiveness. Magness deftly guides the reader in how to break out of the rut of feeling threatened and chase their biggest goals with vigor."

-David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range and The Sports Gene

"A wise, entertaining book that makes the excellent case that winning is more about unshackling ourselves from our expectations and knee-jerk defensiveness than it is finding minuscule competitive edges and flavor-of-the-month performance hacks. Highly recommend!"

-Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Anatomy of a Breakthrough

"If you feel like you're constantly chasing success without ever getting anywhere, you need this book."

-Liz Fosslien and Mollie Duffy, Co-authors of the bestsellers No Hard Feelings and Big Feelings

"Win the Inside Game is a breath of fresh air that teaches how to shift the focus from external achievements to inner fulfillment. It’s an essential read for anyone interested in self-discovery and meaningful success."

-Amy Morin, Author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do

"The principles Steve outlines in the book aren’t just a foundation for winning — they’re a formula for living a more balanced, satisfying life in every realm. "

-Christie Aschwanden, Author of the New York Times bestseller, GOOD TO GO.

“Nobody distills the hidden principles of high performance better than Steve Magness. But WIN THE INSIDE GAME isn’t just about achieving success; it’s about finding happiness along the way, which is far more important.”

—Alex Hutchinson, Author of ENDURE

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