Hypnosis
To Achieve Top Athletic Performance
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Olympic athletes use
self-hypnosis to help them achieve top
performance. United States teams and those of other nations recognize
that the power of mental rehearsal is equally as important as physical
practice. Russian teams are taught mental conditioning from the outset
of training.
For the average person, hypnotherapy cannot turn a golfing duffer into
an international champion. Factors, skills and abilities other than
mental are involved. But hypnosis can be used to enable a player to
achieve his or her personal best!
Time magazine reported, in a cover story on the 1984 Olympics that on
the night before the finals in women’s gymnastics Mary Lou Retton, then
age 16, lay in bed at Olympic Village mentally rehearsing her
performance ritual. She had done the same on hundreds of previous
nights, visualizing herself performing all her routines
perfectly--imaging in her mind all the moves and rehearsing them again
and again. The result, of course, was a performance of perfection,
presented with charm, poise and confidence, culminating in a gold
medal.
“What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve!” Proof of that
statement has been provided countless times. Mary Lou pictured a
perfect performance in her mind. Her body produced it. The same
capability is available to any sports enthusiast. If the skills and
coordination abilities do not equal Olympic levels, they can carry the
players to the heights of personal best, providing new levels of
achievement and satisfaction.
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To train the
body to the limits of its capabilities without
simultaneously training the mind is to invite, at best, mediocrity.
Sports psychologists have claimed that for Olympic teams 80 percent of
an athlete’s performance is in the mind. This belief has been echoed by
championship players in virtually every form of competition.
Mental rehearsal, also termed visualization, can create and reaffirm
the confidence necessary to achieve top performance. The picture
visualized in the mind can convince the subconscious that achievement
is possible. The automatic nervous system performs in exactly the same
manner follower during a physical rehearsal. Neuromuscular coordination
improves. What your mind can conceive, you can achieve. If you can
think it and see it in your mind, you can do it!
What can be accomplished through the powers of the mind? Perhaps most
important is the development of positive attitudes. Negative thoughts
pertaining to performance skills can be changed or eliminated.
Enjoyment of the sport will be enhanced to a major degree as skills
improve to the point where intermittent incidents of poor performance
no longer arouse irritation, anger, discouragement or detrimental
emotional reaction. Concentration, coordination, technique all can
improve as well as awareness of proper form and posture.
Sports enthusiasts face the same stumbling blocks that people have to
deal with in other areas of life--business, personal relationships,
Achievement of goals and ambitions. The biggest of all is fear, and
fear comes in many forms. Fear of failure is always restrictive and is
very common in sports, as is its hidden partner, fear of success--an
apprehension that success can create the expectation (among others) of
further improvement. Fear of humiliation can be strong. Many golfers
experience near terror on the first tee where people may be watching
the first drives. Competition can produce sensations of intimidation
resulting in deterioration of skills.
Hypnotherapy, or properly learned and applied self-hypnosis, can work
to reduce or eliminate the mental obstacles to peak performance in
sport activities. This is an area in which the truth of the phrase
“what the mind can conceive, the body can achieve” becomes highly
evident.
THE STEPS TO
ACHIEVEMENT
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The
goal of hypnosis in its applications is not the learning or
acquisition of the basic skills involved, though these could be helped
through hypnosis as used in enhancing learning skills. The goal is to
enable the athlete to achieve the best personal level, performing at
peak. As with virtually all hypnosis, the first step must be
relaxation. Relaxation to a level appropriate for the implanting of
hypnotic suggestion is not really resting. It is deep, and can be
brought about through a hypnotherapist. Or it can be learned from a
teaching hypnotherapist or even through study and practice using any of
several excellent books on the subject.
Goal-setting is essential. Without having an objective, it is pointless
to begin a task, project or trip. Goals may be set by athletes, coaches
or therapists or a combination thereof. It is important for goals to be
specific, focused on the area in which improvement is desired. Playing
better tennis is not a valid goal. Goals must be short-term achievable
and step by step, so that both success and completion are experienced.
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Concentration
is vitally important, and sometimes difficult to
develop. Hypnotherapy has long been an effective means of improving
concentration capabilities. Distractions must be eliminated.
Post-hypnotic sues may prove useful in stimulating both concentration
and specific skills. Visualization, not just in mental rehearsing, but
at the moment of performance can produce dramatic results.
Finally, mental rehearsal is the ultimate key to superlative
performance. It can prove more productive than physical practice.
Imagery is not merely visual in nature; it can include all the senses.
In a diving competition, the form of the dive is visual; the smell of
the chlorine water is olfactory; the wetness of the entry is sensory,
the cheers of the crowd are auditory. Perfection requires the use of
all senses.
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