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 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 player to the heights of personal best, providing new levels of
achievement and satisfaction.
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. Such belief has been echoed by championship
players in virtually every form of competition.
What The Mind Can Do
Mental rehearsal, also termed visualization, can create an 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 followed
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 improvements. 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
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, focussed on the area in which
improvement is desired. Playing better tennis is not a valid goal.
Improving a serve or backhand is a goal. Goals must be short-term
achievable and step by step, so that both success and completion are
experienced.
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
cues 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.
