SPORTS PERFORMANCE HYPNOSIS

The Mental Side of Physical Fitness

Sports psychologists have long believed that the ability of elite athletes to consistently achieve peak performance is more a function of their ability to operate in an advanced mental state rather than their mastery of technical athletic skills.

Stanford University sports psychologist Jeffrey Wildfogel, whose course on The Psychology of Peak Performance attracts as many business types as jocks says, "With athletes who have gotten so close to the physical limits, the mental part is even more important." The key, Wildfogel says, is "If you can get so focused on the process of what you’re doing, so involved in the activity and get into the rhythm of the activity, that blanks out all the garbage."

Experiments at the University of Maryland suggest that, during peak performance, the mind relaxes its analytical left side of the brain. This allows the more intuitive, pattern–oriented right side to control the body. The result is a trance–like "flow" state that athletes call playing in "The Zone."

The idea that thoughts affect muscle movement was once scoffed at by coaches who figured all athletes had to do was train harder to perfect their skills. Now this idea is behind the increasing acceptance of self–hypnosis and other techniques to achieve peak performance.

Hypnosis can effectively be utilized to attain self–confidence, a positive mental attitude, and motivation in your training program. Hypnosis works with the subconscious. The subconscious controls both voluntary as well as involuntary muscles. In addition, all habits, patterns and experiences are contained in your subconscious mind.

Yogi Berra once said, "Ninety percent of sports is mental. The other half is in your head."

One of the seemingly magical applications of hypnosis is more control both in focused attention and increased energy, when needed. Equally as important is relaxation on command. If physical tension or psychological blocks are present these can translate into muscle tightness which can affect sports performance.

Some of the benefits of learning self-hypnosis:

• PHYSICAL CONTROL
• POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
• PAIN CONTROL
• SELF CONFIDENCE
• DOUBLE YOUR ENERGY
• ELIMINATE FEAR, PROCRASTINATION AND ANXIETY
• INCREASE YOUR EFFECTIVENESS, MEMORY AND ENDURANCE

Here are some examples:

PROCESSING INFORMATION

What if you are primarily an "auditory" person or perhaps you’re more "visually" inclined? Learning self–hypnosis allows you to receive and retain information into your subconscious via all your sensory inputs—AUDITORY, VISUAL and KINESTHETIC! for more information on this topic, see NLP.

TRAINING

Sometimes it’s tough to drag yourself to workouts even when you want to go! Why do we procrastinate? By understanding how our subconscious mind works, we see that skipping class may be a "defense" that we’re using. Perhaps we’re afraid of not "living up to" the instructor’s expectations, or even our own!

COMPETING

Any competitive situation might trigger memories of failure or embarrassment. Example: Being the last one picked or not having homework done.

PARENTAL ATTITUDES

Inappropriate messages in our subconscious may be holding us back from achieving our fullest potential, even though our conscious mind is doing all it can.

• Can you access that decisive, confident feeling whenever you need to?
• Are you motivated in your training or do you tend to procrastinate and daydream?
• How about getting "butterflies" before competitions?

Overcome those subconscious fears by learning self–hypnosis.

For years, world class athletes from the U.S. Olympic Teams to the NFL have developed winning strategies by having their subconscious minds work for them!

In fact, quoting from Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The New Dynamics of Winning, "While most individuals have the talent and intelligence to accomplish virtually any goal, skill and knowledge alone are not sufficient to achieve championship level performance. For too long, the emphasis in sports, business and education has been on physical and technical prowess, rather than on mental skills," says Waitley, former chairman of psychology for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Council.

"We now know, however, that outstanding accomplishment depends upon effective self–management and total self–mastery. In short, no one is born into The Zone. But like any other skill, it can be learned and practiced. Success depends on the ability to combine physical or technical skill with mental process in a stressful environment. At the world class level in any field, it’s truly mind over muscle, mind over competition, mind over everything."

Also see Case Histories

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