| At
Hypnotic Energy we have many clients visit to
improve their sports performance, golf being the
most popular but there are many other sports,
both individual and teams including Football,
Hockey, Baseball, Running, ETC. Hypnosis and sports
are a very effective combination for many reasons.
Greg
Louganis and Tiger Woods hail from different generations
and from different sports. However they are both
widely considered to the best ever exponents of
those sports and they both use mental imagery
in order to achieve results. Louganis would visualize
somebody else performing a dive and when he could
see it carried out perfectly, he would imagine
himself performing the same dive. Tiger Woods
imagines himself producing the perfect swing and
playing the perfect shot immediately before doing
exactly that. He doesn't hit bunkers or obstacles
because in his mental images they don't exist.
It's
no secret that sports men and women often incorporate
imagery and mental rehearsal into their practice
routines. What is less well known is how effective
hypnosis can be in this process. When hypnotized
you will be able to imagine yourself rehearsing
and refining the perfect swing, the perfect goal
or running the perfect mile.
Hypnotherapy
can profoundly increase our inner beliefs and,
in sport, belief is everything.
Which
is more surprising? The fact that Roger Bannister
ran a sub four-minute mile (a feat which the experts
said could never be done) or the fact that in
the following eighteen months, forty-five other
runners did the same.
I
am equally happy working with individuals and
teams, using hypnosis or general mental coaching
strategies.
How
can hypnosis help Sports Performance?
-
Sport
Psychology often includes techniques
such as mental imagery to focus on
future achievement. NLP is very effective
with both future rehearsal and anchoring
states.
-
Anchoring
states involves using hypnosis to
recall a time of sporting excellence
such as winning a race, scoring a
goal or playing the perfect round
of golf (this can be real or imagined).
At the moment, these feelings of success
reach their peak; the emotion is anchored,
helping to create what is sometimes
known as muscle memory.
-
Focusing.
This can be on such things as success,
strategy and other outcomes.
-
Overcoming
mental blocks to success.
-
Reinforcing
self-belief and motivation.
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There
are many other ways that hypnosis can help in
sport improvement. For instance the concept of
modeling has been used successfully in golf and
other sports. In other words take a top golfer
and model what he or she does both physically
and mentally. |