Self-Hypnosis to Empower Your Sport
The zone is basically a heightened state of awareness, where concentration is total and is uninhibited by internal or external distraction. In the zone, a feeling of time distortion can occur in the mind, slowing down reality enough to anticipate what's coming next, helping you to plan your moves ahead of time. The boxer will see gaps in his opponent’s defenses where he can get through, and the goalkeeper can jump in the right direction as the player is striking the ball. When the mind has grown accustomed to being in the zone, it will then seek and manifest the same experience every time you play your game, providing you want, believe and expect it to happen.
With hypnosis, performance preparation can be done in the home as well as on the field. But there's more to sports psychology than just using guided imagery and relaxation techniques. The overall psychological wellbeing of the athlete must also be considered. Family, social life, work and relationships all can work with or against an athlete. So all aspects of living must be addressed in therapy if you wish to gain insight into what is required to reach your true potential.
Many athletes dedicate a lot of time to improving their physical condition without paying enough attention to their mental needs. They often spend hours on end putting their body through rigorous training, without setting aside fifteen minutes a day to strengthen and focus their mind. This is why some find it harder to move into the zone than others. Mental conditioning is what moves you into the zone. But this alteration in perception can only occur when mental interference and distraction have been made practically non-existent. Even if the athlete is surrounded by people and distraction, self-hypnosis can be used to minimize noise, while at the same time increasing focus. The one who uses trance regularly to experience the feeling of being in the zone, can trigger the same response when required, by means of post-hypnotic suggestion, cues, breathing and so on.
Trying too Hard Often Produces Less
Being too effortful is one of the main reasons some athletes can't improve their game. Many wonder why they can't go the extra distance and this is often on account of pushing themselves too hard. In an effort to be the best, force can sometimes replace finesse, resulting in an over-exertion of energy, when all that may be required is a smooth delivery. The tennis player may learn that by loosening their grip a little, power in the wrist can increase while it rests. This way energy can be unleashed at the precise moment it's needed and not a second sooner. This conserving and utilizing of energy is what helps the athlete push harder and go for longer. Getting into the zone via breath, suggestion and imagination, reduces effort while increasing stamina. Slowing down the speed at which the external environment is being perceived in your mind comes about through concentration and controlled breathing. Breathing slowly while fixing your eyes upon objects in the external environment is what helps move you into the zone. By concentrating your attention for moments of engrossed inner focus, you minimize distraction in the mind by narrowing mental and sensory attention to one thing only, the point which you are focusing on. Concentrating intently also helps to prevent your senses from becoming too bombarded by distraction. A suitable place to focus on would be where you wish to go, or where you would you like your javelin or snooker ball to end up. The process needed in order to bring about the end result should be visualized in the imagination during this period of intense concentration. When the subconscious is shown repeated images of how the desired result looks and feels, it can then go about making the body carry out all the necessary actions to make these images real.
Self Confidence: the Vital Necessity
Self-confidence is vital for making sport successful. If you do not believe that you have the ability, then you won't be able to use that ability, no matter how technically skilled you are. Many athletes have the physical strength and capability to go far in their sport, but lack the self-belief that's essential for success. Self-belief often beats technical skill, but when the two are combined, the ultimate athlete is created. The problem with confidence is that when it gets knocked, it is sometimes hard to recover. This is because confidence takes a good while to build up, but can be taken away in seconds. Self-hypnosis is a great confidence builder and can be used daily to instill images of confidence, intensity, motivation and relaxation. To be the best of the best, you must first imagine that you already are and that success has already been achieved. Confidence is what helps you view your opponent as a challenge to be pursued. When you are confident, you do not view competition as difficult. This is because you have many ways to keep your confidence strong, even when faced with tough opposition or physical injury. Emotional control is what helps successful athletes see with clarity.
Intensity: Using it Wisely
In many sports, how the athlete controls their mental and physical levels of intensity is crucial in learning how to optimize performance. Positive intensity results in confidence, motivation, brain and muscular stimulation, strength and endurance. Negative intensity can result from a lack in confidence and motivation, poor brain and muscular stimulation, fatigue, difficulty breathing, etc. Intensity ranges from being very calm and relaxed while engaged in sport, to breaking the pain barrier through extreme mental, physical and environmental conditions.
By noticing the times you are short of breath, or when you experience tightness in your muscles, you can identify what is causing over-intensity and make the necessary changes to stop it. Over-intensity has a negative effect upon health and sport, but by learning to control intensity, stamina is accelerated, helping the athlete to break through mental and physical barriers.
The Emotional Athlete
The emotional wellbeing of the athlete is of paramount importance. Not enough emphasis is placed on the role that emotions play in sport, but in order for you to be on top of your game, you must be in charge of your emotions. In the same way you switch off from your critical conscious mind in hypnosis, so too can you by-pass the distraction of thought and emotion by using hypnosis to get into the zone. Learning to put your emotions aside takes time to master. But a good way to start is by first taking charge of your emotional needs. The more you are in control of your emotions, the less you have to distract yourself from them while performing. The process of removing psychological and emotional barriers involves identifying them, understanding their meaning and then making the necessary changes to minimize their impact on your sport. Emotions when used productively can improve your game. An example of this would be an athlete winning a competition shortly after hearing his wife has just giving birth. Such a life changing experience would inspire and motivate a person to win, in the same way a death in the family could have the same or opposite effect.
Goal-Setting to Enhance Your Game
Setting goals to be achieved in lifestyle, diet, training, competition, etc. can be implanted each day in hypnosis. If you are using a coach or sports consultant, they too must understand how the goal-setting process works and how best to apply goals that suit your individual needs. Setting goals not only involves achieving outcomes within your sport; it also includes setting and achieving goals within your personal life. It could be difficult for an athlete to win gold in the Olympics if their marriage was in a crisis. This is because life and sport do not work in isolation. It is why goal-setting should always be geared towards achieving harmony both on and off the field.
Using Imagery to Enhance Your Game
As you have already learned, imagery (also called visualization or mental rehearsal) is a technique for programming your subconscious to respond in a certain way. It involves using the five senses to create the desired experience in your imagination before it has actually happened. It is a mental workout that approximates reality, because all that is missing from the picture is the motor response of the muscles. By imagining a previous experience of winning, you can program your mind to expect the same by focusing on these images in hypnosis. Imagery can be used before and during rehearsal and competition. The tennis player may spend fifteen minutes in mental rehearsal before a big match, visualizing a perfect performance, set by set. Just before they serve, imagery can again be used to pin-point exactly where the ball is going to land.
Imagery is where you think in images instead of words. By allowing perception to become more visual, you are less distracted by thoughts that often interfere in the form of words. Paying close attention to detail in your imaginings helps increase the likelihood of your subconscious carrying out your intentions in reality, as does adding rich color or feeling the cricket bat in your hand. Some athletes get nervous purely on account of the crowd capacity where they are performing. By imagining the crowd supporting you, and what these people will look and sound like, unrealistic fear can be significantly reduced on the day of the big event through self-hypnosis. When imagining, it's important to see events unfolding as if you are looking through your own eyes, rather than observing yourself from a distance. Feel the feelings that come with being in the zone, even if this means imagining sweat on your body. See yourself in full flight, exerting just the right amount of intensity, at just the right time. See the end result, hear the crowd erupting and feel the trophy in your hand. The more senses you involve, the more instilled these images become in your subconscious. Repeating the same images daily in hypnosis will keep your program positive and up-to date.
The Benefits of Using Self-Hypnosis in Sport
Improved confidence, motivation, stamina, mind-body connection, focus, perception, intensity, energy, self-control, self-discipline, self-awareness, physical strength, time management, balance between work, family, social and sport life.
Faster recuperation and recovery time.
Ability to control pain.
The ability to get into the zone quickly and easily.
By mentally rehearsing training and competition in hypnosis, you significantly increase the likelihood of achieving your goals in reality.
In the same way breath, suggestion, imagination, concentration, belief and expectancy are central to hypnosis, so too are they central to sport. It's all about preparation, and what better way to prepare than to relax in trance each day.
Hypnosis can be used to generate desire and interest, where the incentive to train or compete may be lacking.
By looking after your emotional needs, you are looking after your sporting needs.
Hypnosis provides such a platform for emotional healing to take place, where anxiety, worry, and stress can be reduced or removed.
Hypnosis keeps the digestive system relaxed and stress-free. This is important to the athlete whose diet can sometimes be very strict.
Certain protein enriched foods can irritate the bowel, but stress will almost certainly aggravate an existing problem.
Hypnosis brings all the appropriate muscles into play, so that outbursts of energy are channeled into the right areas of the body.
When you visualize making a perfect movement or action, the muscles needed to accomplish that action begin moving in the correct way. With practice, these mentally rehearsed movements are easily transferred to the tennis court, golf course, swimming pool and so on.
When concentration and relaxation are total, the mind naturally slips into a heightened state of awareness. This is what gives certain athletes the edge over others. While many people use concentration and relaxation techniques to improve their game, few use their mental abilities to quite the same degree as those practicing self-hypnosis.
Mental Training for Mental Toughness
Mental training should cover a wide variety of skills and not be restricted to performance preparation and competition. Conditioning the mind involves getting the most out of training sessions, dealing with setbacks, recovering from injury, combating fatigue and coping with sickness and frustration. A strong mind can help the body recover quicker, so by staying mental fit, you stay physically fit also.
For the athlete approaching a big event they are not yet mentally prepared for, a lack in self-belief could give rise to psychosomatic symptoms, such as poor concentration, cramps or injury. The subconscious must be convinced that there's nothing to fear and that competition is a challenge to be pursued and won. If it has not been convinced, it may then attempt to sabotage the athlete’s plans by creating barriers in an effort to keep them away from the event. This act of sabotage happens at a subconscious level, and so, must be rectified there too. Hypnosis has been proven a useful tool for overcoming such mental obstacles, because it paints a clear picture in the subconscious of what success looks and feels like, and how it should be replicated into reality. By removing unrealistic fear and bolstering your belief system, you automatically begin increasing self-confidence, possibly the most essential component for achieving success in sport.
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