AIM TO IMPROVE SPORTS PERFORMANCE
The difference between winning and losing begins with your mind!
When it comes to sporting performance, studies show that between 70% and 85% of an athletes’ success can be predicted and determined by psychological factor. This means that while athletes invest significant time and effort in their physical training and nutrition to reach their goals, a key component that may be overlooked is the importance of training the mind for success.
The Challenge
The challenge many Athletes experience is succeeding to a particular point and having trouble moving further, reaching a plateau in their performance or experience a set back that can be hard to shake mentally and emotionally. Although it’s obvious to continue training the body during these setbacks, what may be less obvious but just as important is focusing on the mind.
Despite being physically ready there are times, when for whatever reason, an athlete becomes plagued by inklings of self-doubt, worry or fear of injury. Anyone who has experienced this or known someone going through this can understand how challenging and frustrating the experience of being ‘stuck’ can feel. This can be an especially difficult prospect for those who have put much effort and care into their game, only to feel discouraged by an inability to move past negative self-talk or fear of failure.
OUR APPROACH TO IMPROVING SPORTS PERFORMANCE
At Aim we work with athletes of all ages in improving skills, increasing confidence and helping to meet and exceed their performance goals. At aim every session is tailored to each individuals needs. Our approach is to understand barriers and to utilize tried and trusted hypnotic techniques to help clear anything that may be preventing our clients from reaching their full potential.
Hypnosis helps athletes fine-tune techniques, increase their focus and confidence, enabling them to excel beyond previously held expectations. Although each case is unique, many of of our clients report either overthinking, dissecting physical movements, becoming overwhelmed by negative self-talk, performance anxiety, pre-game anxiety or loss of confidence as the main problems in their game.
The good news is that Hypnosis can help overcome subconscious blocks and be a great tool for any Athlete looking to move to the next level! (Baker, Jones & Greenless, 2013). Although some Athlethes use visualization to improve their game, you can think of hypnosis as taking that approach one step further on the road to meeting performance goals. In fact scientific research supports the positive effects of hypnosis interventions compared to other interventions in enhancing basketball, golf, soccer, cycling, racket sports, weight lifting and archery skills. (Baker, Jones & Greenless, 2013)
In addition to helping accuracy and improving concentration and skills, empirical research suggests hypnotherapy also improves also helps with concentration and performance anxiety, both of which can be detrimental to sports performance (Jalene & Wolf, 2014; Cummings & Maynard, 2002)
In order to tackle the underlying reasons for performance blocks, the first step in our approach involves a pre-talk that explores the past events and learned behaviours that may have contributed to present problems. By taking the time to understand your situation and life experiences, we can create a hypnosis session that is personalized and highly effective.
Following the pre-talk, the second step in our approach involves providing a comfortable, safe and empowering hypnosis session. The word hypnosis is actually derived from the Greek word Hypnos - which means to sleep. Similar to the experience of daydreaming, our clients often describe hypnosis as a'highly relaxed and focused state of calm' that provides them with an opportunity to increase their ability to focus on their performance or specific skills and visualize their ultimate goals.
At Aim Hypnotherapy, our two-step approach to increasing sports performance has delivered results for hundreds of clients. If you are ready to push your game to the next level, contact us for a free phone consultation.
References
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- Milling, L. S., & Randazzo, E. S. (2015, May 25). Enhancing Sports Performance With Hypnosis: An Ode for Tiger Woods. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000055
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- Pates, J. (2013). The effects of hypnosis on an elite senior European tour golfer: A single-subject design. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 61, 193–204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2013.753831