You can’t win if you don’t begin.
Anonymous
How to improve my mental game in sports?
Mental trainers have been used for sports, business coaching, education, and health; an important part of it is the application of hypnosis as an aspect of mental training
Most sports involve a physical and a mental part and any person playing sports (professional or amateur) will benefit from training the mental part of their performance as well.
Sports hypnosis is being used to improve the performance in many different types of Sports, mainly Golf, Track and Field Athletics ( Sprinters, Distance Runners, and High Jumpers ), Gymnastics, Equestrians: Show Jumping, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Tennis, Volleyball, Olympic Shooting, Cycling, and Rugby
Some of the sports performance issues I face when working with my clients are related to performance anxiety, lack of concentration, pain,…
Anxiety is a basic emotion where people feel uneasy about any kind of future performance and is unable to take control over the thoughts or feelings they want in a specific situation. As the result they are unable to perform as they know they can; sometimes they are locking their motor skills as the body or part of the body freezes and fails to react.
Lack of concentration and focus can also hindered their sports performance; when they are able to stay focused on the game, the ball, etc without been distracted by what happens around them, are able to make decisions about what is important in the present moment and are able to react quickly and spontaneously.
Sports hypnosis can help you with reflex optimisation that is the actions you perform without first having consciously thought of performing them.
In most sports, athletes train their motor skills repeatedly to store them in the subconscious, enabling the athlete to perform them automatically – as a reflex. Reflexes are thus stored in the body via repetition or training of certain behavioural patterns or reactions. With hypnosis it is possible to train and optimise reflexes more efficiently than with any other method. I can help the athlete both with storing new behavioural patterns and building faster reflexes.
With regard to reflex optimisation, I know of no other method that is as quick and effective as sports hypnosis.
Most professional athletes know the concept mental training. Mental training is about “programming” oneself via a targeted physical process or emotional process. Mental training methods can for most people lead to an improvement of the results the person wanted to improve.
I always teach my clients self-hypnosis or self-suggestion; this, like any other skill, takes practice to become proficient. Look at it as mental training you have to do in order to maintain your basic form or fitness. This involves visualization and positive thoughts about the training, the exercises, the performance, competition, etc
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Elinor Smith
