There is nothing so disheartening as competing and knowing that you are being beaten by a player who isn’t as good as you are, or who trains less seriously than you do. Every sportsperson has participated in games where the worse player has somehow managed to win. This was particularly galling when I was the player being defeated and I could do seemingly nothing as my opponent, lacking technique and finesse, doggedly took my game to pieces and came out the bloody victor at the end. Most sportspeople know of this experience and have often experienced it both ways, taking satisfaction at knowing that they have beaten someone who is better than they are. So how does it happen?

A couple of years ago I ran a half marathon. At the time I had a bad knee injury and doubted whether I would be able to finish the run, nonetheless, I had committed to it and had no intention of letting an injury hold me. I was aware that how we communicate with ourselves affects performance and wanting to protect my knee started the race repeating to myself the words ‘slow and easy.’ This was demoralizing. People kept overtaking me and I do dislike loosing. In the end I decided that my running commentary could be changed to ‘fast and easy’.

Immediately people stopped overtaking me, and shortly after the change of my commentary, I started overtaking other people. Not only did I complete the half marathon, but out of 90 runners I came sixth.

This is a clear demonstration of how what we do with our minds affects how we perform and who we are. As human beings we have a huge amount of control over what our bodies do and how they behave and react. Since we are complicated beings, the majority of these tasks are assigned to the subconscious mind (and a good thing too, imagine what would happen if we absent mindedly forgot to breath) and since the subconscious usually operates beneath our conscious awareness we lose control of this vast and complicated system which runs our bodies for us. With NLP techniques we can take back control of some of these functions and reset the system so it operates more efficiently and towards the outcomes which we set. This is extremely useful in sport when often we have to force our bodies to operate at a peak level the logical and sensible option is simply to take a break, eat some food and relax until we have some more energy and can focus more easily on the game. Sport just doesn’t let you do that, so instead we have to force our bodies and if the subconscious is unwilling, we literally have to fight against ourselves, which distracts us from the important task of focusing on the game or the race and putting all our resources behind winning.

I used to know a talented fencer, one of the best in New Zealand, he would come off the piste after losing a bout in a national level tournament and hadn’t even raised a sweat. He thought he wanted to win, but he hadn’t tried. NLP can be used in cases like this to focus an athlete on an outcome and motivate the athlete to really try to achieve.

In other cases it is a matter of self belief. Steve Gurney expected to lose his last Coast to Coast because the running leg of the competition had been increased and he had short legs. Dr. Richard Bolstad, who was working with Steve Gurney, took him through some processes which altered the belief that he couldn’t win. For the first time ever Steve won the running section of the Coast to Coast. He attributes his success entirely to NLP and the work that Richard Bolstad did with him (see Lucky Legs, Steve Gurney).

Another problem, which you often see in tennis, is athletes getting flustered by an unexpected event that puts them off their game. This indicates that the mental preparation before the game has not been sufficient, for which we have several excellent techniques. However, it can also be dealt with on and off the field by the appropriate use of anchoring techniques to ensure the athletes stay in a positive and resourceful state throughout the competition. Often something will go wrong while an athlete is competing and they will start to blame that problem for their failures. This is destructive as it has the effect of creating a reason to do badly during the competition and this has flow on effects on performance.

By using NLP we can prepare athletes to put their best foot forwards in every competition and to develop and maintain a winning mindset that can keep you at the top of your game so you can achieve the results that you have been dreaming for.

For more information about how NLP and hypnosis can improve your sporting performance book a consultation with Peter today, or purchase his book The Champion from Amazon.com.

© Peter Campbell, NLP Master Practitioner, www.cogniscientNLP.com