In short, powerfully!
The statements below can be validated with independent research, which I encourage you to do, and examples of evidence found here on my site: https://mental-game.co.uk/sports-hypnosis-evidence/
Any further evidence is freely available on a simple web search using Google Scholar.
The effect of Sports Peformance Hypnosis and Mental Game Coaching are both psychological and physical, which in turn improve an athletes physical. performance in both the immediate and long term.
– As with any practiced skill the effects are cumulative –
Hypnosis can:
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- Lower performance anxiety
- Reduce the experience of physical discomfort
- Increase precision and accuracy in sports
- Speed up skill acquisition
- Increase the amount of work repetitions in training and competition
- Help to embed performance psychological triggers
- Develop and enhance the state of “Flow”
- Increase point-specific focus of attention
- Develop the big picture overview
- Enhance the feeling of self-efficacy
- Develop access to improved event confidence
- Boost stamina
- Alter the perception of effort
Head for Heights - Develop pre-event relaxation
- Check and clarify goal-setting
- Augment mental imagery
- Reinforce self-belief
- Manage intrusive thoughts
- Shape an athlete’s internal dialogue
- Speed up recovery from injury
- Increase muscular strength
- Lower pain
- Alter heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen intake and blood flow
- Transform habits and aid technique
- Condition in athletes responses to stimuli
- Engage strength on command
- Mobilise effort
What is actually happening in hypnosis?
Symbolic Learning Theory
A theory on how one’s imagination can improve one’s achievement. This theory states that imagination can improve systems of behaviour and action. What one believes and imagines will affect our ability to reach the goal.
Symbolic Learning Theory: means that a person will imagine in the head what will he do do to paint a great landscape before actually taking the brush and colours”
N., Pam M.S., “SYMBOLIC LEARNING THEORY,” in PsychologyDictionary.org, April 13, 2013, (accessed April 4, 2020).
Psycho-Neuromuscular theory
The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine (3 ed.)
A theory postulated to explain the positive effects of motor imagery. It suggests that vivid, imagined events produce neuromuscular responses similar to those of an actual experience. That is, the images produced in the brain transmit impulses to the muscles for the execution of the imagined skill, although these impulses may be so minor that they do not actually produce movement or the movement may be undetectable. Support for this theory comes from a number of sources. Flow (psychology), to be in flow-state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterised by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.Often used interchangeably with other concepts such as peak performance and/or peak experience.
What do Flow State and Hypnosis have in common?
Flow states and hypnosis are similar as well in that they are both psychological skills
Privette (1983); Flow State and Hypnosis, shared attributes:
– Absorption in the activity.
– Joy
– A valuing of the experience.
– Spontaneity.
– A sense of power.
– An increased Perception of Effort Hypnosis considered to be phenomenologically similar/same to ‘flow”. Creating an increased sense of personal identity and involvement. Highly hypnotisable people tend to also be predisposed for flow like states.