What percentage of your athletic performance depends on what is going through your mind? What percentage of your training do you dedicate to the mental aspect of your game?
Elite amateur and professional athletes are always looking for ways to give them that extra edge. They know that the discipline required to go faster, higher and higher, to be more precise, more powerful or more agile requires mental stamina, confidence, commitment and courage. Every minute of performance is backed by hours of practice, gym sessions, careful nutrition monitoring, and demanding rest and exercise schedules. And the discipline required to sustain the rigorous program required to be an elite athlete begins in the mind.
After preparation comes performance on the sports field, and again the ability to perform perfectly under pressure, build on achievement and overcome disappointment requires highly developed mental skills.
Since the unconscious mind is really the driving force behind most of our beliefs and behaviors, it makes sense that a technique that causes changes at the unconscious level can be very effective.
Recently, top athletes have turned to visualization techniques and hypnosis to prepare their minds for the discipline of practice and the rigors of competition.
Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton used sports hypnosis to help win many medals in gymnastics.
Tiger Woods has been a disciple of sports hypnosis since he was 13 years old. Use sports hypnosis to calm your mind before golf games.
The Russian gymnastics team has used hypnotherapists at the Olympics for years.
Others who have used hypnosis to improve their performance include former England cricket captain Mike Brearley, Mr. Olympia Lee Haney and heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. Tennis star Andre Agassi worked extensively with Anthony Robbins, using NLP and hypnosis. Phil Jackson, basketball coach for the Chicago Bulls, says they practiced self-hypnosis daily when he coached Michael Jordon and the Bulls to their six NBA championships.
Despite the enormous success that hypnosis has brought to top athletes, and its apparent efficacy, some still view hypnosis with suspicion, mainly due to the “mythology” that surrounds it.
Most people are first exposed to hypnosis through a theatrical performance or through references to it in movies and television shows. In these contexts, hypnosis is often shown as a magical ability that allows the practitioner to take control of other people and force them to do his bidding. While highly entertaining, it also raises fears in most people about what happens when they “undergo hypnosis” and what might happen if they allow themselves to be controlled by someone who “messes with their mind.”
Of course, on stage or in movies, the seemingly mysterious aspects of hypnosis are exploited for their entertainment value. The fact is that you are not “under hypnosis” as you would be “under anesthesia”, but you are very alert and focused. And the hypnotist cannot control it, but requires that you accept and follow through on the suggestions every step of the way. You can only be hypnotized if you want to be hypnotized, and the suggestions only work if you agree with them.
Another problem with the general understanding of hypnosis is that it offers instant success. Having seen in the entertainment how the hypnotist apparently instantly causes a change in behavior in the subject, the belief arises that in hypnotherapy the practitioner can activate a mental change and the negative behaviors of the past are instantly transformed into positive ones. Not surprisingly, with these high expectations and impossible claims that have entered the “hypnosis tradition,” the less credulous and more scientific person responds with some skepticism.
The truth about hypnosis is much more mundane, rooted in the natural operations of the mind. And yet, while working within the realm of the ordinary and natural, hypnosis delivers remarkable results effectively and relatively quickly. But it’s not possible to take a kid from school on the under 15C cricket team and send him out of therapy session acting like Jacques Kallis!
The element of surprise in hypnosis is that it works with the natural powers of the mind. And because most people don’t realize how powerful the mind can be, when they see it being demonstrated, they are intimidated and respond in the same way as they would to a magic demonstration.
So hypnosis produces remarkable results using the spectacular power of the mind. But the way it is done is very ordinary, natural and, in some cases, quite boring.
Hypnosis is based on the fact that when the mind relaxes from the Beta state of around 20 cycles per second to the Alpha state of 7-14 cycles per second, it is more open to suggestion. This, by the way, is something that everyone routinely experiences on a daily basis as they slip into and out of sleep. A very natural process.
In this state, the critical faculty is suspended (have you ever had strange dreams?) And suggestions can be more easily received by the subconscious mind.
These suggestions can be verbal affirmations, but generally, especially with sports hypnosis, they are visual suggestions that invite the person to see themselves performing at the level they want to perform. Because the imagination increases in the hypnotic state, the person actually experiences the action in his mind, going through the same mental process that he would experience if he were doing it on the sports field.
Therefore, the power of hypnosis is that the mind believes that it is performing the action and therefore enjoys the same mental aspect of the training that it would have in real life. The advantage of this process is that the mental rehearsal can occur hundreds of times in a single hypnosis session without the accompanying physical exhaustion. The mind learns and adapts to the required behavior while the body rests.
Since all physical behavior begins in the mind, when it comes to performing on the athletic field, the mind is well rehearsed for controlling physical behavior. As long as the physical body has been trained to perform the skills and cope with the physical requirements of the sport, the results are usually exceptional.
More recently, advances in our ability to observe the brain through technology, such as MRIs, have shown us how the brain changes according to what it experiences and learns. Discoveries in neuroscience, especially in the area of neuroplasticity, show that the mind actually “reconnects” itself as it gains experiences. The more the experience, such as a thought or an action, is repeated, the stronger the wiring becomes. These discoveries shed some light on how hypnosis really works. By introducing an idea or concept into the mind in a very focused way, and by repeating that thought in the absence of all other distractions when the mind is open to suggestions, hypnosis is likely to help develop the neural pathways necessary for the new desired process. behaviour. And because the mental rehearsal required for “rewiring” can take place repeatedly in short periods of time without physical exhaustion, it becomes a highly effective technique for improving performance, motivation, confidence, commitment, and focus.
Hypnosis is neither magical nor unnatural. It is not a strange experience, as it uses a state of mind that most of us enter twice a day, and it is not a high speed cure. But if used correctly and within reasonable expectations, it can and does produce exceptional results and has been shown to change performance, behavior and attitudes where other methods have failed.