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What percentage of your sports performance depends on what goes through your mind? What percentage of your training do you dedicate to the mental aspect of your game?

Elite professional and amateur athletes are always looking for ways to give them that extra edge. They know that the discipline required to go faster, further and higher, to be more precise, more powerful or more agile requires mental toughness, confidence, commitment and courage. Every minute of performance is backed by hours of practice, gym sessions, careful nutrition monitoring, and rigorous rest and exercise programs. And the discipline required to sustain the rigorous program required to be an elite athlete begins in the mind.

After preparation comes performance on the sports field, and again, the ability to perform perfectly under pressure, build on achievements and overcome disappointments requires highly developed mental skills.

Since the unconscious mind is really the driving force behind most of our beliefs and behaviors, it makes sense that a technique that brings about changes at the unconscious level could be highly effective.

Recently, top athletes have turned to visualization techniques and hypnosis to prepare their minds for the discipline of practice and the rigors of competition.

Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton used sports hypnosis to help her win many medals in gymnastics.

Tiger Woods has been a disciple of sports hypnosis since he was 13 years old. He uses sports hypnosis to calm his mind before golf matches.

The Russian gymnastics team has used hypnotherapists at the Olympics for years.

Others who have used hypnosis to improve their performance include former England cricket captain Mike Brearley, Mr Olympia Lee Haney and heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. Tennis star Andre Agassi worked extensively with Anthony Robbins, using NLP and hypnosis. Phil Jackson, basketball coach for the Chicago Bulls, says they practiced self-hypnosis daily when he coached Michael Jordon and the Bulls to their six NBA championships.

Despite the enormous success that hypnosis has brought to top athletes, and its obvious effectiveness, it is still viewed with suspicion by some, mainly due to the “mythology” that surrounds it.

Most people are first exposed to hypnosis, either through a theatrical performance or through references to it in movies and television shows. In these contexts, hypnosis is usually portrayed as a magical ability that allows the practitioner to take control of other people and force them to do her bidding. While highly entertaining, it also raises fears in most people about what happens when they “go under hypnosis” and what might happen if they allow themselves to be controlled by someone who “plays with their minds.”

Of course, on stage or in the movies, the seemingly mysterious aspects of hypnosis are exploited for their entertainment value. The fact is that you are not “under hypnosis” as you would be “under anesthesia”, but you are very alert and focused. And the hypnotist cannot control you, but requires you to accept and comply with suggestions every step of the way. You can only be hypnotized if you want to be hypnotized, and the hints only work if you agree to follow them.

Another problem with the general understanding of hypnosis is that it offers instant success. Having seen in entertainment how the hypnotist seemingly instantly causes a behavioral change in the subject, the belief arises that in hypnotherapy the practitioner can flip a mental switch and negative behaviors from the past are instantly transformed into positive behaviors. Not surprisingly, with these high expectations and impossible claims that have entered the “hypnosis tradition,” the least credulous and most scientific person responds with some skepticism.

The truth about hypnosis is much more mundane, rooted in the natural operations of the mind. And yet, while working within the realm of the ordinary and natural, hypnosis delivers remarkable results effectively and comparatively quickly. But it is not possible to take a boy from school on the under 15C cricket team and out of therapy session acting like Jacques Kallis!

The surprising element of hypnosis is that it works with the natural powers of the mind. And because most people don’t realize how powerful the mind can be, when they see it demonstrated, they are overwhelmed and respond the same way they would to a demonstration of magic.

So hypnosis produces remarkable results using the spectacular power of the mind. But the way to do it is very common, natural and, in some cases, quite boring.

Hypnosis is based on the fact that when the mind relaxes from the Beta state of around 20 cycles per second to the Alpha state of 7-14 cycles per second, it is more open to suggestion. This, by the way, is something that everyone normally experiences on a daily basis as they drift in and out of sleep. A very natural process.

In this state, the critical faculty is suspended (have you ever had strange dreams?) and the subconscious mind can more easily receive suggestions.

These suggestions can be verbal statements, but generally, especially with sports hypnosis, they are visual suggestions that invite the person to see themselves performing at the level they want. Because the imagination is intensified in the hypnotic state, the person actually experiences the action in his mind, going through the same mental process that he would experience if he were doing it on the sports field.

Therefore, the power of hypnosis is that the mind believes that it is doing the action and therefore enjoys the same mental aspect of the training that it would enjoy in real life. The advantage of this process is that mental rehearsal can occur hundreds of times in a single hypnosis session without the accompanying physical exhaustion. The mind learns and adapts to the required behavior while the body rests.

Since all physical behavior begins in the mind, when it comes to performing on the sports field, the mind is well rehearsed to control physical behavior. As long as the physical body has been trained to perform the skills and cope with the physical requirements of the sport, the results are often exceptional.

More recently, advances in our ability to look at the brain through technology like MRIs have shown us how the brain changes based on what it experiences and learns. Discoveries in neuroscience, especially in the area of ​​neuroplasticity, show that the mind actually “rewires” itself as it gains experiences. The more the experience is repeated, such as a thought or an action, the stronger the wiring becomes. These discoveries shed some light on how hypnosis actually works. By bringing an idea or concept into the mind in a highly focused way, and by repeating that thought in the absence of other distractions when the mind is open to suggestions, hypnosis is likely to help develop the neural pathways necessary for the new desire. . behaviour. And because the mental rehearsal required for “rewiring” can be done repeatedly in short periods of time without physical exhaustion, it becomes a highly effective technique for improving performance, motivation, confidence, commitment, and focus.

Hypnosis is not magical or unnatural. It’s not a strange experience as it uses a state of mind that most of us go into twice a day, and it’s not a high-speed cure. But if used correctly and within reasonable expectations, it can and does produce exceptional results and has been shown to change performance, behavior and attitudes where other methods have failed.