Hypnotherapy for sports performance
Perhaps you are preparing for a triathlon, perhaps you are entering a golf competition or want to take your football skills to the next level. Hypnotherapy can help you to do this. Visualisation techniques are popular amongst elite athletes. This involves seeing yourself performing well and achieving your goals under trance.
Famous sports men and women including Tiger Woods and David Beckham are reported to have used hypnotherapy to enhance their skills. Glenn Catley, a World Champion boxer, credits his success to his hypnotherapy sessions….so much so that he took his hypnotherapist with him all over the world to help him before his matches! While you may not be a professional athlete hypnotherapy can still help you to improve your focus and technique, leading to better performance levels.
How can I improve my sporting abilities?
Lifestyle changes, even small ones, can have a significant impact on athletic performance. Top football clubs and Olympians have large teams to support them in monitoring and supporting their lifestyles so that they can perform at their best. Dieticians, psychologists and sleep coaches are common.
If you want to improve your sporting abilities there is much to focus on outside training. Your diet and sleep patterns are important but mindset can be the key to it all. If you have the right mindset you feel confident without feeling complacent. You can bounce back from inevitable setbacks easier and you can focus on your (clearly defined and positive) goals.
How does hypnotherapy for sports performance work?
Hypnotherapy for sports performance can help you build this resilient, focused mindset. General hypnotherapy sessions can help reduce your stress, improve your sleep and feel more confident and clarify your goals, identifying exactly what you need to do to make improvements. Specific visualisations around your sport can also be very powerful. While under trance I deliver a personalised script so that you see yourself in your sport, noticing small details and using all your senses as you imagine being there and achieving your goals. This image stays in your mind afterwards helping you to be positive and get yourself in the zone you need to be in.
Using visualisation is a well known technique in the sporting world. Steve Backley, the javelin thrower who won silver in the 1996 Olympics despite being unable to train in the run up due to an injury, practised seeing himself throwing perfectly and in detail in the run up to his event. The use of MRI scanners has shown that most parts of the brain that are used in the actual sport are active during visualisation. Imagining yourself performing is actually helping to strengthen the neural pathways you use in your sport.
There are other techniques that can also help such as anchoring which involves seeing yourself as confident and successful and using a simple gesture to remind you of this feeling (such as rubbing your ear or pressing your thumb and another finger together.) Some of these actions can help you focus before an event. Rafael Nadal uses the same rituals before he goes on the tennis court before a match as he says ‘what I battle hardest to do in a tennis match is to quiet the voices in my head.’ * Calming down the negative chatter you may be prone to is important, and hypnotherapy can also help with this. As Gareth Southgate has said ‘you want all players to be free of overthinking. That’s when they’re in a good place and a good flow.’
Hypnotherapy for sports performance online
I see clients face to face in Hayfield, Derbyshire but also online. I have found this a very successful way of working. Clients are able to relax in their home environment which helps them feel safe and comfortable for the therapy work.
Hypnosis works well over Zoom and is safe. (For more information about how hypnotherapy works online please click here.)
*Quoted in ‘Chatter- the voice in our head and how to harness it’ by Ethan Kross which is a great guide to calming down your inner voice