Sports performance hypnosis will help you achieve your goals!

Sports psychology has been around for many, many years, even as long ago as the 1950's, Soviet Olympic teams were employing the services of hypnotists to greatly enhance their athletes performances, and in the modern day, sports hypnosis is a rapidly expanding area of interest the world over.

Without any doubt, it is the mind that holds the determining factors over just about all of our performances and behavior, and so it is in mastering the mind, that the sports-person has the greatest chance of performing at their personal best.

We have all heard statements like....."His mind's just not on the game today"....Or perhaps, we might have known someone who excels at their sport when training, yet crumples under the pressure of competition. Just like those people who drive perfectly with their tutor, yet get so nervous with the test examiner, that they fail miserably.

In snooker, and American eight ball pool for example, there's a classic phrase, 'black ball pressure', which refers to how the last, and most important shot of the game, can often cause the player to play a wild shot. Even though that player will be amazed afterwards that he could have missed something that was ordinarily so easy for him.

So hypnosis can play a major role in helping the sports-person prepare themselves mentally, and that preparation will typically include a whole package of approaches, naturally tailored to the sports-persons requirements, and will nearly always include methods designed to:

Overcome self-doubt, mental rehearsal, positive visualization, encourage rapid healing from any injury, increase confidence, increase motivation, perspective changes, develop single mindedness, increased concentration and focus, eliminate negativity, promote positive expectation, reduce performance anxiety, increase self belief, etc.etc!

(To discover how hypnosis/visualisation can even make you stronger, please read the Mental Gymnastics article).

Before I finish this article, I would like to give two examples of how hypnosis has successfully been used to enhance sports performance.... so I'd like to begin by mentioning an American basketball coach who called upon a hypnotist to see if his teams skill could be enhanced in any way. The hypnotist sat half of the team down, relaxed them, and instructed them to visualize throwing shot after successful shot, at the basket. Meanwhile....the other half of the team, were practicing throwing their basket shots for real.

The coach noticed that the players who were simply visualizing throwing successful baskets, were displaying tiny micro-muscular movements in their arm and leg muscles, even though they were apparently relaxing. These tiny muscular movements were taking place because the players were actually establishing new neural pathways in their brains, encoding the mental/physical information needed to produce successful basket shots, directly into their muscles!

After they had experienced this process several times over several days, the team had improved their actual basket shots by nearly 50%, while the players who'd simply practiced shots at the basket, had barely improved.

Perhaps one of the most famous examples of hypnosis assisting a sportsman, is the story of Rod Carew, one of American baseballs finest. Carew had suffered an injury, which while technically had healed, left him nonetheless with some pain (perhaps psychosomatic, but real enough to him), and an elevated sense of self doubt. A hypnotist was consulted, and he was instructed in mastering self hypnosis.

Carew then came back to the best season of his entire career, with a batting score of almost .400, and went on to win 'The most valuable player award'!

I always like to stress though, that hypnosis is not a magic bullet, it will not, and can not, turn a talent-less athlete into a superstar......hypnosis will however, amplify the athlete's inherent talent and abilities, providing a means whereby the athlete can access as much of their own talent as can be possible.

Finally, all sports, even not-so-physical pursuits like darts, snooker, and bowling, will require mental factors of strategy and concentration, which naturally involve the mind, and as hypnosis is a mind oriented approach, it can quite literally assist anyone, and everyone, to get the best out of themselves and their individual activities!

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