Improving Sports Performance

Increasingly, hypnotherapy is being used by many people to improve their performance in sports. Golf is probably the most popular sport which people use applied hypnosis techniques to help with, but it can also be used with many other individual and team sports, such as:

It has been shown that repeatedly and vividly imagining a task such as hitting a golf ball perfectly is more effective than repeated physical practice of these skills. For that reason, professional athletes have long used hypnosis to “get into the zone” and to maintain peak levels of performance. You can attain comparable levels of excellence by combining your personal effort with hypnotically enhanced focus, calmness, and coordination.

Tiger Woods Case

Earl Woods, an ex-Green Beret, used techniques derived from interrogation tactics to toughen his son. And at age 13, Tiger began mental training with Dr. Jay Brunza, a family friend and psychologist. “His creative imagination and his trust in himself are off the charts,” says Brunza. “You’re working with a Leonardo, and you let the eagle sore.” Among the techniques Brunza used were subliminal tapes and hypnosis. “The first time Jay hypnotized Tiger, he had him stick his arm straight out and told him that it couldn’t be moved,” Earl says. “I tried, but I couldn’t pull it down.” 

Woods says he no longer uses tapes or formal hypnosis. “But I think I used it enough then that it’s inherent in what I do now,” he says. “Everyone had always told me to visualize shots, but I could never see the ball. We worked on a way to look at the target and pull it back into my hands and body, and let my subconscious react. That’s what works best for me.”

How Can Hypnosis Help Sports Performance?

• Goal Setting. Set Goals and engrave them in your subconscious mind

• Visualization. Create a mental movie of perfect performance and re-play it over and over

• Focusing.

• Overcoming mental blocks to success.

• Reinforcing self belief and motivation.

• Mental Flow. Mental flow means being “in the Zone”, being engrossed in an event to an almost spiritual level. Have you ever know you were going to score a goal before you even made contact with the ball? Have you ever felt invincible as if it was your day and nothing could possibly go wrong?