Hypnotherapy for Sport

Many professional sports people have used hypnotherapy to take their performance to another level, to name just a few: Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Ken Norton, Greg Runedski. And it can be just as effective for amateurs too. Training your mind can help you perform better and gain more enjoyment from your chosen sport, even if you only do it for fun. 

Hypnotherapy has a multitude of uses in performance enhancement, from perfecting a particular skill, for example helping someone to improve their golf swing, to improving confidence, reducing anxiety, removing mental blockers etc.
Whether it’s for a hobby, for a specific event, or the person’s career, or a life achievement, the same principles can be applied, and with the specific techniques & suggestions being tailored to each individual’s specific requirements & circumstances.

If you play any sport, you can use hypnotherapy to improve your performance.

Hypnotherapy For Sports Performance

Hypnotherapy brings the unconscious mind to the forefront and encourages relaxation, and in this state we’re at our most suggestable, and we can use this to introduce more appropriate thoughts, habits and behaviours that we’d like to see and we know will improve our sports performance. In short we can re-wire our brain. 

Hypnotherapy can be powerful for:

• Increasing confidence in your ability, improve self-belief & positive thinking 
• Helping to deal with an injury, and support returning to sport after an injury
• Building and maintaining a stronger focus, being able to shut out outside noise and distractions
• Increasing & maintaining motivation and drive (to train & compete)
• Staying composed under pressure – whether during a competition, during training, with the run up to a match or even after a match
• Being in the zone, Being in the flow, improving focus & concentration
• Overcoming negative thoughts and removing mental blocks and negative beliefs
• Setting and getting your goals 
• Improving specific (physical) skills such as putting or chipping, jab, cross, striking
• Reducing anxiety & stress (whether it’s related to the sport & performance, or it’s something personal eg family, relationship, money worries that impact your sporting performance)
• Avoiding ‘freezing’ or ‘choking’ when under pressure, remaining calm & focused when under pressure
• Enhance concentration, reduce anxiety & develop a winning mindset
• Improve the mind-body connection
• Dealing with negative feedback, comments, opinions rather others

Hypnotherapy can provide you with tools and techniques to overcome problems that are holding you back so you can perform at a higher level. By bringing your subconscious mind to the forefront, we can encourage new ways of thinking and behaving and replace the patterns that aren’t currently enhancing your performance. 

Mental Rehearsal

Rehearsing situations in your mind is another way that hypnotherapy can improve sports performance. Elites athletes tend to do this. The brain can’t tell the difference between imagination & reality, between visualising and performing. Seeing yourself making putts or chips that you’ve never previously had success with can have the same impact as doing it for real. Likewise, you can visualise yourself running on one of your favourite routes (or a brand new one you haven’t had the confidence to try), or visualise yourself taking that goal shot, or punching to win your fight etc.  

Michael Phelps is well know for visualising his swimming competitions. And during one particular competition his goggles leaked so he couldn’t actually see where he was going, he swam the whole event without seeing, and won his event. Because he’d spent so much time visualising his performance and how the competition would go, he was able to keep going and win.  

It creates new neural pathways in the brain and the more you do it, the stronger they get. And because these neural pathways are exactly the same as the ones you build as you perform the action in real life, it’s just like going out on the green or the road and training repeatedly. 

And as our bodies can only take so much physical training, it’s a great tool. We can still keep our regular training in place, but also add in the visualisation, and this will vastly improve performance. 

Small adjustments can make a big difference to your game. Making small continuous gains in your performance feels realistic to achieve and brings momentum you can continue to build on. And it can all start from hypnotherapy.

Strong Focus

Having a strong focus is a huge advantage too. Your focus can be trained, just like any other skill. Hypnotherapy can allow the subconscious mind to focus on a specific scenario. It can also train you to stay in the flow state during training / competition so you don’t get distracted by the outside noise.

I’m really passionate about helping sports people (professional & amateurs) reach their full potential. Feel free to get in touch to find out more how I can help you, or help your team.