Sports Performance Problems

The increasing use of hypnotic principles in sport must testify to the power of this technique .Hypnotic suggestions can be specifically tailored for problems with technique, problems with concentration problems with timing, it can be used to effect the quality of training. It can be used to generate magnetic images of high level performance and create a very integrated focus to back up those images.

Some successful sports people freely acknowledge that mental picturing is as important to their performance as the actual training that they put in. Specific research has indicated that mental preparation can make a significant difference to performance.The fact is that, in a trance state, even a light trance state, the imagery and feeling states connected to being " in the zone" are experienced in a heightened way and will impress on the sub- conscious more profoundly. The relaxed arousal state that you naturally enter into when you are performing at your best, can be linked very strongly to a simple trigger, something like touching your forehead. A strong connection between that optimal state and that gesture can be made in trance and then built up through repetition and self hypnosis. Eventually it becomes part of your repertoire of automatic responses.

Suggestions can also be brought in to enhance your concentration so that when you actually step up to compete, your awareness begins to detach from everything that is irrelevant to your performance. You naturally become completely focused in your concentration, in your timing and responding.

Sports variously require strength, speed, agility, timing. In, most sports, however, sustained muscular tension actually inhibits the overall performance .Even in weight lifting the muscular tension has to be delivered with complete accuracy and is only sustained for a limited period of time. In most sports, a background of sustained muscular tension will actually inhibit performance. Even in contact sports like boxing, muscular tension will slow down a fighters responses and put him less in touch with his opponent than he needs to be. Strength and power have to be on tap for immediate delivery, but they are ideally part of a fluid relaxed state in which the mind and body can respond immediately to the opponents movements.

Any athlete can identify that characteristic feeling of being totally absorbed in a certain relaxed but dynamic energy in which the mind and body merge with the game. It is, in effect, a type of trance state and has many of the characteristics of an actual hypnotic trance. In fact, in the hypnotic state, that fluid mindset can be generated in a heightened way and linked to positive suggestions that it be triggered by the sub conscious in training and in events.

In order that the triggers for this flow state become very powerful in the athlete's mind, we get him or her to make the use of self -hypnosis a part of their daily training program. Everyone can induce some level of trance using the simple technique of self - hypnosis. In self - hypnosis we are able to reinforce the triggers for moving into that relaxed, alert condition by actually rehearsing it using vivid imagery and letting ourselves experience that state on cue as we transfer the racquet from one hand to the other, or as we roll the shoulder muscles to loosen up.We developed different cues to focus in on the immediate situation , letting go of all distractions; to drop into that relaxed, dynamic energy, to begin to open the valve on that stamina. Used as part of actual training self -hypnosis begins to enhance performance.