The Super Mental Training Book (10 page)

(Bob Stevenson photo)

Ken Norton, former world heavyweight boxing champion, often gave himself hypnotic suggestions while shadow boxing or skipping rope. A self-hypnosis adept, Norton says he did not have to lie down or sit down to give himself suggestions.

suggestions, but he also employed some brilliant pre-fight psychology on his opponent. Says Norton:

I used kind of a suggestive system against him. We had a press conference four days before the fight. I'm not one to say a lot. So, when they asked what I was going to do to Bobick, I said, "Bobick, I'm going to kick his ass. I'm going to tear his head off." And then I stopped right there. I didn't elaborate at all. And what this does, it gets into his mind, right? Right then he doesn't think about it; but, when he's sleeping at night, just before he goes to sleep it's going to filter out. So, I used hypnosis on him also.

Sometimes a little psychological guerrilla warfare against your opponent can go a long way, and is something to consider, especially if you feel secure about your own mental preparation. Norton ended up by knocking out Bobick in only 56 seconds, and clearly had it all together for this fight.

There were two other fights, however, where Norton seemingly had attained peak physical and mental condition, only for disaster to occur. The first reverse happened against George Foreman in a 1974 heavyweight championship bout. Before the scrap Norton explained how he was using self-hypnosis to get ready for Foreman:

Many times a day I repeat instructions to myself, and after a while they become conditioned reflex. Say Foreman pins me in a corner: I throw a hook or a right hand and spin out. Or say I get knocked down; I tell myself I won't rush right back in. I keep repeating these things, to get them embedded in my subconscious mind so when the time comes I won't have to think.[5]

Norton also claimed that Foreman would panic once he was hit on the chin, leaving Norton free to "hit him again, and again and again." As his comments indicate, Norton was certainly well prepared mentally for the fight. The only problem was that he was fighting George Foreman, who was then in top form and acclaimed as the hardest puncher in boxing history. Sometimes there are things which all the hypnosis in the world cannot overcome. Foreman provided convincing evidence why this is so, decking the challenger three times. Norton was counted out in Round 2. When I asked Ken what happened in the Foreman fight, he answered, "I lost it. He dropped me. No excuses." Nothing more need be added.

Norton's other debacle occurred against hard-hitting Ernie Shavers on March 23, 1979. The winner of the fight was promised a shot at Larry Holmes for the WBC heavyweight title. With those stakes on line it figured to be quite a battle. Once again, however, boxing fans were in for a disappointment. Shavers finished off Norton in 1:58 of the first round.

A few days after the fight Scott Ostler of the L. A. Times reported Norton's manager, Jack Cohen, as saying, "I could have sworn on a stack of Bibles his mental attitude was better than I'd ever seen."[6] In fact, before the fight Norton had called in Arthur Ellen to his training camp. Ellen hypnotized Norton, no doubt giving him hypnotic suggestions more useful than not. According to Ellen, the plan was for Norton to defeat Shavers and then Holmes for the title. After doing so, Norton would publicly announce he had been helped by hypnotist Arthur Ellen. This nice gesture would have given Ellen the recognition he deserved; it also would have enhanced the public image of hypnosis.

In any case, Shavers took care of the plan with a left hook to Norton's temple. Responding to my question about the Norton-Shavers fight, Ellen explained, "Hypnosis is not a panacea. It can give a guy an emotional advantage. You can get killed, too! You see, there are so many misconceptions about hypnosis that it's almost like 'Hey, he was hypnotized! How come he didn't win?' Like it's a panacea. What do people expect from the hypnotist? It's as if he's a spooky guy."

Norton talked to reporters about his loss to Shavers. His explanation touched on two areas.

First, Norton stated that he was in condition for the fight, but that Shavers "caught me with a high hook on the temple. I was surprised by his power."[7] Just as significantly, though, Norton indicated that possibly he was not so mentally prepared as the evidence led one to believe. Related Norton, "I was getting to the point to where it was hard to get motivated, hard to train, hard to run, hard to stay in camp, hard to abstain from doing what I shouldn't be doing. My conception is that if you really aren't into it mentally, if you don't train right and sacrifice, you take a chance on getting hurt."[8] Norton also said that boxing had made him financially secure, which was "basically what I wanted." As a result, he found himself developing other interests besides boxing.

It appears that for various reasons Norton was not up for the Shavers fight as much as he could have been. As Arthur Ellen speculated, "Maybe Norton used hypnosis to decide 'Let's get to hell out of it [boxing].'" Regardless of the degree Norton was prepared mentally and physically, let us not forget to give credit to Shavers, who was obviously ready and wanted to win.

If there is a lesson to Norton's experience with hypnosis, perhaps it is this: hypnosis and other mental disciplines can help you perform up to your potential. How your opponent performs depends mainly upon his own mental and physical preparation. Sometimes your opponent will be strongly influenced by your performance, doing well because you are doing well. Quite often, though, he will perform even worse than usual because of a good effort on your part. In athletics many variables enter into the picture, making predictions about outcomes difficult. It is best, therefore, for you to concentrate on your own preparation, trying to maximize your own physical and mental potential. That way, if your opponent wins, it is because he is simply better or lucky— not because of any omission of yours.

The value of adopting this approach was brilliantly demonstrated by Rocky Marciano, the great undefeated heavyweight boxing champion from 1952 to 1956, who scored a record 49 straight victories in his division. In training for a fight Marciano went into a form of isolation, which resulted in the blocking out of all distractions and negative influences. Comments by Rocky's opponents or others that might have unnerved him or created self-doubt in his mind never made it to his eyes or ears. Meanwhile, Marciano injected a positive element into his mental preparation; throughout training camp he used visualization, a close cousin to self-hypnosis. He constantly pictured in his mind: 1) his opponent; and 2) the tactics he needed to employ to defeat the other boxer. This intense use of visualization during training led to Marciano's focus of attention come fight time being fixated on one thing only—winning. Rocky described his pre-fight mental preparation procedure this way:

The last month before a fight I don't even write a letter. The last ten days I see no mail and get no telephone calls and meet no new acquaintances. The week before the fight I'm not allowed to shake hands or go for a ride in a car. Nobody can get into the kitchen, and no new foods are introduced. Even the conversation is watched. By that I mean that the fellas keep it pleasant, with not too much fight talk. My opponent's name is never mentioned, and I don't read the write-ups because somebody might write one idea that might stick in my mind... For two or three months, then, every minute of my life is planned for one purpose. I don't even think about what I'm going to do the day after the fight, because that's going to be like an adventure and exciting. Everything on my part and on the part of everybody else in camp is directed toward one goal—to lick the other man. I see him in front of me when I'm punching the bag. When I run on the road I've got him in my mind, and always I'm working on certain moves and punches that I hope will lick him. . . When you work and work like that with only one purpose in mind for weeks on end there's only one thing you want to do—and that's get out there and try it in a fight. [9]

The way Marciano went about preparing mentally for competition can hardly be improved

upon. By going into isolation while training, he prevented his opponent and others from psyching him out. For example, if he had fought Ken Norton, and Norton, at a press conference a few days before the fight, had boasted that he would "tear Marciano's head off," the comment never would have reached Rocky's attention. In fact, it is doubtful that Marciano would attend the pre-fight press conferences that are so commonly held nowadays before big fights; this is simply because he never wanted to give his opponents any opportunity to get an upper hand psychologically. The other thing that was so good about Marciano's mental preparation routine was the way he used visualization to practice the fight in his mind beforehand. The old saying, "Practice makes perfect," is true. Dr. Maxwell Maltz in Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) says psychologists have "found that if rats were permitted to learn and practice under non-crisis conditions, they later performed well in a crisis... People react the same way. Persons who have to learn how to get out of a burning building will normally require two or three times as long to learn the proper escape route as they would if no fire were present." According to Dr. Maltz, people who have not practiced what to do in a crisis situation try too hard; "the automatic reaction mechanism is jammed by too much conscious effort," he says, resulting in poor performance. Marciano avoided this fate. Under non-crisis conditions (training camp), Rocky endlessly practiced what he had to do to beat his opponent. He practiced this mentally—using the visualization—as well as physically and technically, against sparring partners. So, when the actual crisis (the fight) occurred, Marciano was able to think clearly and act correctly, because he had essentially been through it all before.

Dr. Maltz reports that Gene Tunney, heavyweight boxing champ from 1926 to 1928, used a visualization process over an extended period of time in preparing to fight Jack Dempsey, who had preceded Tunney as heavyweight champion:

Years before he actually fought Jack Dempsey in the ring, he had fought an imaginary Dempsey more than a hundred times in the privacy of his own room. He secured all the films of old Dempsey fights. He watched them until he knew every one of Dempsey's moves. Then he shadow-boxed. He would imagine that Dempsey was standing before him. When the imaginary Dempsey would make a certain move, he would practice his counter-move.

Tunney constantly visualized how he would fight Dempsey, but he did much more than that. Consciously or not, he often put himself into a trance-like state, generating seething, aggressive feelings towards Dempsey. In his book, The Tumult and the Shouting (1954), Grantland Rice relates how in 1925 Tunney was totally preoccupied with defeating Dempsey:

That winter in Florida I played golf with Tommy Armour and Tunney. Gene would hit his drive, toss aside his club and run down the fairway throwing phantom punches—left and right hooks—and muttering, "Dempsey... Dempsey... Dempsey."

"He's obsessed," observed Armour. "His brain knows nothing but Dempsey. I believe Jack could hit him with an ax and Gene wouldn't feel it. I don't know if Dempsey has slipped, but I'll have a good chunk down on Tunney when that fight arrives."

Despite Tunney's use of visualization and self-hypnosis, he almost lost the mental war to outside negative influences. Comments made in the press to the effect that Dempsey would win hands down worked their way into Tunney's subconscious. Tunney recalled how this happened, the comments' insidious effect on him, and what he did to correct the situation:

Dempsey was an overwhelming favorite to knock me out. The newspaper talk was that he would murder me. Being human I read the papers to find out what they were saying about me. One night, at the beginning of my long training period, I awakened suddenly and felt my bed shaking. It seemed fantastic. Ghosts or what? Then I understood. It was I who was shaking, trembling so hard that I made the bed tremble. I was that much afraid. . . afraid of what the great Dempsey would do to me. The fear was

lurking in the back of my mind and had set me quaking in my sleep. I pictured myself being mauled and bloodied by Dempsey's shattering punches; helpless, sinking to the canvas and being counted out. I couldn't stop trembling. Sure, the newspaper gossip was getting to me. Right there I had already lost the Dempsey fight before it was even fought. . . I got up and took stock of myself. What could I do about this terror inside me?

I could guess the cause. I had been thinking about the fight the wrong way. I had been reading the newspapers, and all they had said was how Tunney would lose. I was losing the battle in my own mind. Part of the solution was obvious. Stop reading the newspapers. Stop thinking of the Dempsey menace... his killing punch and ferocious attack. I simply had to close the doors of my mind to destructive thoughts and direct my thinking to other things. It took discipline. [10]

Like Marciano, Tunney ended up: 1) using visualization and related mental rehearsal techniques, programming himself to perform at his best, and 2) avoiding negative psychological influences from his opponent and other outside sources. Both of these should be done by all serious athletes. Failure to do the latter—avoiding outside negative psychological influences—can jeopardize all the good that visualization and self-hypnosis might accomplish. Remember, as an athlete interested in achieving your potential and defeating your competitors, you want only positive thoughts entering your mind. If possible, you'd like to see negative thoughts directed into your opponent's mind; however, it may not be worthwhile to attempt to psych-out your opponent if in the process you leave yourself open to being subjected to negative influences. So, the wisest approach is likely the one Marciano employed: isolate yourself before competition, and shoot positive thoughts through your mind via self-hypnosis, visualization, etc.

Muhammad Ali, perhaps boxing's greatest heavyweight champion ever, is yet another fighter we can mention in connection with hypnosis. Supposedly, Ali used hypnosis to prepare for his heavyweight championship rematch against Leon Spinks in September, 1978. This is the story at least which Bill Burt of the National Enquirer reported. [11] The Enquirer is known for its sensationalism; but, Burt's story contains credibility for many reasons, a main one being that the hypnotist involved was none other than Jimmy Grippo. Grippo, as we recall, served as Melio Bet-tina's manager, and was on the losing end of the Battle of the Hypnotists.