Athletes

The Value Of Hypnotherapy For Athletes

There are many different reasons why an athlete of any status or level may want to improve his or her performance. This is true for professional athletes as well as those that like to play on local leagues or on community teams for fun and exercise. Regardless of your level of competition, if you want to improve your game you may want to consider hypnotherapy for sports improvement.

What Is Sports Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy for athletes is sometimes known as visualisation or guided imagery, but it is still a form of hypnosis. Professional teams, Olympic athletes and amateur players in all types of sports and all over the world have used this technique for over 60 years for entire teams, as well as with individuals.

The goal of sports hypnotherapy or guided imagery is to allow the athlete, and the coaches, to develop the ability to relax and focus the mind both on and off the playing field. When the mind and body are relaxed, the hypnotherapist, and later the coach or athlete on their own, can visualise and practice actions in their mind to improve their performance when they are actually engaging in the activity.

Sports hypnotherapy is also essential to help reduce performance types of anxiety including stress, fear of failure or losing, fear of injury orlack of self-confidence in their own abilities. The hypnotherapist works to create positive suggestions that the athlete or coach visualises, creating powerful images of success to overcome whatever blocks or obstacles the individual may be creating in their mind that are limiting their abilities.

What Can Hypnotherapy Do For An Athlete?

Hypnotherapy can mentally prepare an athlete or a coach to deal with stressors, fears and performance issues that are not related to physical injuries or limitations. A good example is overcoming anxiety after a significant loss. The next sporting event, regardless of the type of sport, is going to immediately trigger memories of that humiliating, embarrassing and stressful loss. If this is what is in the mind of the athletes they are not able to focus on what they have to do to create the win in this particular event.

Hypnotherapy will allow each athlete to think back over their successes in their career and see these images in place of the images of the loss. Since the athlete is now focused on the positive and what they did to be successful, they are able to let go of the negativity and fear and play the game.

Hypnosis has also been used relaxation and concentration development leading up to and during a sporting event. This includes being able to block out distractions such as crowd noise or activities that are going on around the playing field. The individual athlete will work with the hypnotherapist in setting the particular goals they want to achieve during the sessions.

By having the ability to visualise success, including the mechanics of the motion of kicking the ball, a golf or tennis swing, body movement during running or any other physical movement, the athlete, after completing hypnosis, is primed to do their very best without the mental images and issues that may have plagued them in the past.

Posted by: Philippe Jacquet