Contact: barbara.burgess@rocketmail.com or Tel: 01626 210330
Hypnosis in sports performance is focussed on enhancing the mental state of the sportsperson. This is what gives the edge in competition to one contestant over another. And hypnosis is the edge that many top sportspeople use to take there game from ‘also ran’ to Winner.
Many sportspeople (and commentators) talk about ‘The Zone’ that place where you are entirely focused on the moment, where you can ignore distractions, where your emotions are balanced and you are centred – this is in fact a level of trance. So, clearly, hypnosis will help you find the Zone when you most need it. You will set up a trigger to take you to the Zone – if you have seen Jonny Wilkinson taking a kick after placing the ball down and taking a few steps back, he takes a single step to the side. Then standing with his feet a shoulder width apart, he clasps his hands in front of himself, staring at them for what seems like an age. Then looking towards the posts and slightly upwards he focuses up in to the crowd, where he imagines in one particular seat at the right row and at the right place in the middle of the posts, a lady he calls Doris. Then he feels the Zone and knows that he is ready.
Sports Performance
Perhaps the most famous of today’s sportsmen known to use hypnosis is Tiger Woods whose mental coach, Jay Brunza, hypnotizes him to block out distractions and focus on the golf course.
In the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Russian Olympic Team took no less than 11 hypnotists to develop mental clarity and help the athletes with visualisation.
Tennis player, Jimmy Connors, used hypnosis in winning the U.S. Open Championship.
Jack Nicklaus claims that his success is entirely owed to practicing concentration and visualisation.
The 2009 Twenty20 Cricket cup winners Pakistan had been hypnotised to 'bring back' the cup and to forget past failures.
Boxer Ken Norton used hypnosis training before his famous victory over Mohammed Ali in 1973.
Nigel Benn, WBC Super Middleweight Champion and Frank Bruno, WBC Heavyweight Champion both used hypnosis for boxing performance enhancement.
In 1996 Steve Collins beat Chris Eubank for the World Boxing Organisations Super-middleweight title. Much of his sports success being attributed to the focusing of attention created by hypnosis administered by Dr Tony Quinn, himself a former Champion bodybuilder. Collins was programmed to deliver two punches to Eubank’s one. In the fight Eubank threw 300 punches, Collins threw over 600
Indian golfer, Gaganjeet Bhullar qualified for the 2009 British Open by using a hypnotherapist to program a winning mind set.
In Football Ipswich Town and Swindon Town have enjoyed successes following sessions with a hypnotherapist.
In 1983 the entire Chicago White Sox team used hypnosis to help win their division and reach the playoffs that year.
On a tour of Australia, England cricket captain Mike Brearley consulted a hypnotherapist to improve his game.
The list of benefits for using hypnosis to improve your sports performance is long but some of them include:
· eliminating the memory of a disastrous performance that is currently holding you back
· ignoring distractions and focusing on the upcoming performance
· remaining calm under pressure
· speeding healing from an injury
· improving your self talk after a poor performance
· revisit a previous good performance and set up anchors to trigger that resourceful state again when required
· refining your skills
· improving your motivation and your attitude and self image
· uncovering limiting decisions or beliefs that may be holding you back like fear of success, fear of failure, fear that you are not good enough, fear that you do not deserve to be the best, and fear of competition
· increase an athlete’s speed by slowing down their perception of time, hence they will run faster, punch quicker etc.
· develop a new technique through in-trance visualisation without the intervention of gravity. Useful for sports where gravity prevents an athlete from practicing techniques in slow motion (eg. Diving, Gymnastics.)
· programme endurance to help you break through ‘The Wall’
· remove hesitations or freezing during competition
· increase strength - Weight lifters have been known to increase bench press by 30% through hypnosis
· change to fitness attitudes and behaviours encouraging the enjoyment of nutritional food as a source of fuel for the body
· install complex behaviours subconsciously reducing over consciousness of complex movements which can have an adverse effect on sporting abilities.
Studies have shown that visualisation is as effective as reality in improving sports performance (sorry, this doesn’t mean you can go to bed and imagine being an Olympic sportsman and win gold without any real training) – what this does mean is that if a gymnast can visualise their routine, and really experience every muscle movement to carry it out, then those muscle groups will fire, the brain can fix these perfect movements, and you can create a memory, both mental and physical (body memory). The stronger the emotion experienced when producing a memory the more chemicals released into the brain, the more the memory will fix. Visualisation is in fact a form of self-hypnosis resulting in a light waking trance. With deeper hypnosis it is easier to become completely immersed in that experience, and the emotion of winning, so fixing the body memory. This body memory is one of the things we are trying to achieve with constant repetition of training, unfortunately unless you are able to get the movement right everytime in training you may actually be fixing some faults into your performance, especially if emotions run high when you make a mistake, in hypnosis you can make every experience a winning performance.
Hypnosis has been shown to be able to speed recovery after an injury. So instead of worrying that you are dropping behind your contemporaries whilst you are recovering from injury you can be using hypnosis to speed your recovery and improve your performance.
Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision.
Muhammad Ali
Visualization lets you concentrate on all the positive aspects of your game.
Curtis Strange