Improve your Sporting Performance with Hypnotherapy

What do you think it takes to be good at sport? When asked, people would normally say the following things: equipment, sound knowledge of your sport, natural ability. I'm going to surprise you now. All those things are great, but they probably only account for twenty per cent of your actual sporting performance.

So what is the single most important factor behind eighty per cent of your sporting performance? It's the gap between your ears. Seriously, it's your mind. If you don't get your mind-set right, you will never become the sort of sportsman or -woman that you want to be. Your mind is your single strongest tool in improving your sporting performance - and that is where hypnotherapy comes in.

Your mind can be up-graded for a better model, just as your equipment and trained just as your body can. Hypnotherapy is great for improving your sporting performance. Almost all top professional sports figures are working with or have benefited from sessions with a professional sports hypnotherapist. Hypnotherapists have contributed to World Cup victories (yes, OK, not many British ones there!), and British champions - in fact, any major sporting title you can think of. Hypnotherapists have helped people at all stages of their chosen sport from amateur to top professional.

If you want to benefit most from what hypnotherapy can do for your game, get yourself in an open frame of mind. Go on - ask yourself: "Can I play better than I do already?" Yes, you can. I believe you can and you should too.

Before we go on, let's just address a common thing people mistakenly think about hypnotherapy. It's not some kind of zombie-like trance. Hypnotherapy is natural and we all enter this state at least every day, at least; we are in a hypnotic state just before we fall asleep, and at certain other times too when we ‘zone out'. You never needed a hypnotherapist to do that did you?

You don't believe me? Well think of a familiar journey - your ride to work, perhaps. Can you always remember every detail of the journey or do you sometimes get there and wonder how you did it because you can't remember anything about the journey? That's because you drove unconsciously whilst your conscious mind shut down for a while. That's what happens in hypnotherapy.

The difference is that in this kind of half-awake state, the hypnotherapist will introduce suggestions to you that the two of you have agreed beforehand. That is the time when your conscious mind is having a break from being the boss of your subconscious mind, so suggestions can get through to it more easily. This works because you can give your subconscious mind, for instance, ‘you can be a great footballer', without your conscious mind being around to rain on your parade with statements like "no you can't - remember that penalty you missed on Saturday? It was a sitter!"

Hypnotherapists suggest the correct ways of thinking that help you to perform much better at your sport than you do now. That way you can get over bad games or bad shots and forget about them; you won't ruin the rest of your game with pondering on them. They can help you to ignore distractions and concentrate on your game.

All this can be achieved through visualization. A hypnotherapist will assist you to see yourself as successful in your chosen sport, performing the actions just as you should. This kind of practice is far more invaluable than many hours of physical practice, believe it or not. This is because your unconscious mind doesn't know what is imagined and what is real. So when you are hypnotized you will be guided to play through a shot or some important aspect of your sport. You will feel bright and alert and you will experience this on a multi-sensory level.

Then when it comes to an actual game, you will be able to unlock all the power of your subconscious mind and put it all into your play.