Recently I was contacted by someone looking for some help for his son using sports psychology. His son James (name changed for confidentiality reasons) was a 12 year old moto cross rider, who was in the top 10 in England. Last year he was at the top of his age group, and was very much full of confidence and enjoying his riding.
However at the end of the year it was time for James move up to the next category, the 12 – 16 year old age group, where he was now riding against older, more experienced, bigger and stronger riders. Even taking all this into account, James’ lap times in practice and training were quicker than most of these other riders, so he should have been brimming with confidence, and in practice he was!
However, come race day there was a huge shift in James’ mindset. He became nervous, anxious, worrying that all the other riders were quicker and faster (even though consciously he knew they weren’t), and seemed to resign himself to losing against a select few, even to the point where he would let the bigger names ride off in front of him and just stick himself in with the safer group, where he would be able to beat some people.
So how did I help? Well, to start with I focused on getting him into his training mindset, where he excelled and was confident in his own ability, and where he ALWAYS enjoyed riding his bike. I then used lots of anchoring techniques so that we could reprogram how his mind saw race days, and that would allow him to take this confident training mindset into race days.
There was also lots of generating new behaviours, finding ways for James to instantly change his state, into a state of confidence and relaxation.
So how did it help? I spoke with James’ father the week after who said the change was immense. Even on the way down to the venue for the weekend James seemed so much more relaxed. He slept better the night before, and when walking the track before qualifying James was seen laughing with his friends. During the second race, James had a problem with his bike that made is go slow and lose power, something that beforehand would have made him give up. This time however, he took it all in his stride, focused and just got on with the job in hand.
To find out how easy it can be for you to make changes so easily, why not contact us now for a FREE initial consultation at Cambridge Hypnotherapy. We also have a specific page dedicated to Sports Improvement using Hypnosis on our website.