The Super Mental Training Book (16 page)

Pre-game Self-hypnosis Session

(Bob Stafford; Darrell Griffith; Jay Robinson; Al Thompson)

''Instant Replay"

(Bill Russell graded himself after each game, replaying the contest in his mind through visualization)

PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES:

HOW SELF~HYPNGSIS ? IMAGERY, AND OTHER MENTAL TECHNIQUES HELP

The pressures to perform well are felt the most by professional athletes. This is because the professional athlete makes his living from his sport and, therefore, must produce. Should he do otherwise, he will no longer make it in the pros; management releases him or his winnings tail off. If that situation arises, the athlete knows full well he has no alternative but to find another occupation. Perhaps it is this concern that has led so many professional athletes to obtain a competitive edge available from hypnosis, imagery, and other mental disciplines. There are surely those too who practice these techniques for reasons similar to those of the amateur athletes: 1) the techniques bring on a general feeling of well-being, and 2) the techniques help the athlete perform up to his potential. Such results are satisfying regardless of the money at stake. Whatever the case, there are professional athletes in virtually every sport who are avid practitioners of one or more mental training strategies.

I once arrived early for a professional volleyball game, and met Bob Stafford, a self-hypnosis and yoga practitioner. At the time he was a starting front row player for the Orange County Stars of the International Volleyball Association. This was in July, 1977, the year Stafford helped lead his team to the league championship. He had an excellent story to tell. It was particularly interesting to learn that the college he attended had, and perhaps still does have, an active self-hypnosis group—the San Diego State University Self-hypnosis Society. This organization can be said to have done a tremendous job helping students master their coursework. It did for Bob Stafford, as he pointed out:

There was a course on self-hypnosis at San Diego State University sponsored by the San Diego State Self-hypnosis Society. I got involved with it. It wasn't so much for sports; it was more just training your mind for academic and all-around life. I took the course for about a year, and used self-hypnosis mostly for studying for my classes. I wanted to just study for a short time and get everything wired, instead of going over everything all the time. I ended up getting B's, without pushing.

As for my volleyball, there are ways of getting ready for games. I practice yoga during the off-season. During volleyball season I won't so much do the mental part of yoga, but just the stretching out. I take yoga classes, though, during the off-season; because that's really an important part of volleyball—being relaxed and loose.

There's another thing I do. It's sort of self-hypnosis or meditation. I clear my mind before a game, chase away all the cluttered thoughts in my brain. Then I concentrate on what I want to do in the volleyball game. In a way I'm giving myself hypnotic suggestions, because I'm going over what I want to do. I get myself in a state of mind where I'm concentrating. Then I go over what I want to do in a certain situation. So, it's like a suggestion, although I don't do it in a real formal way.

As Stafford related these experiences, many questions came to mind. I wanted first of all to know more about the self-hypnosis procedure Stafford employed for his studies. He explained that everyone belonging to the San Diego State Self-hypnosis Society was given a little card which contained a series of instructions to be followed. Continued Stafford, "We were to go through the sequence every time, so it would build up into a real concentration type of situation. I always had my books in the same place and stuff like that. Then, in the end I would tell myself what my goals

were for that study period." I wondered if Stafford gave himself specific hypnotic suggestions, such as "I will remember everything I study." Not quite that, he replied: "I would just get myself to where my study and test attitude would be the same. There was also a sequence; like if I had a hard time with one question, I'd do this technique of getting everything out of my mind, and then concentrate on a star. With that, hopefully, the right answer would come into my mind. Usually it did."

Stafford used self-hypnosis during the whole time he attended San Diego State; it wasn't just a one-shot deal. Through constant use of the technique, he only required a few seconds to enter the hypnotic state, as is generally the case with regular practitioners of self-hypnosis. Responding to the question, "How do you know when you're in the hypnotic state?" Stafford answered that, after first completely relaxing his entire body when initiating self-hypnosis, he'd then experience "this kind of tingling sensation," which signalled to him that he was under. Now, however, Stafford doesn't go through a complete body relaxation procedure when he uses self-hypnosis. "It's more just pure mental thought," he says.

Regular practitioners of self-hypnosis tend to dispense with the step of completely relaxing the body. This is not because such practitioners are lazy, but rather because, thanks to their proficiency, they are able to attain the hypnotic state with "pure mental thought" alone. As a long-time practitioner of self-hypnosis myself, I can go in and out of the hypnotic state as fast as I want, without having to relax or lie down. For me it's as simple as focusing my thoughts on but one thing—what I'm telling myself in my mind to do. This is admittedly a quick way to perform self-hypnosis, but it works for adepts.

While Bob Stafford was still an amateur, he had a coach, Dick Montgomery, who once hypnotized all the players on his team. This occurred in 1976 during the United States Volleyball Association nationals in Schenectady, New York. According to Stafford, "Montgomery did it mostly to relax us, and he talked for a long time. He gave some suggestions, but I can't recall them." Coach Montgomery hypnotized the team before the finals. Naturally, I wondered how Stafford and his teammates played in this important game. "I did good," Bob replied, "but a lot of guys that hadn't done any hypnosis before, just all they did was get tired and sleepy. It was hard for them to regain their consciousness. They were still under it almost. Because they were really slow, still kind of in a daze."

Because I did not have the occasion to interview Coach Montgomery, let us treat Stafford's story as a hypothetical case. Hypothetically, we will assume that what Stafford reports is true. This being the case, we must question the actions of Coach Montgomery. If you are going to be heavy-handed and hypnotize the team you coach, you at least should be proficient in the administration of hypnosis. But, Montgomery's hypnosis job came out very sloppy, according to Stafford's testimony, since many of the players were "still kind of in a daze" and "were really slow" during the game. No doubt Coach Montgomery's intentions were good, but good intentions alone do not make one an effective hypnotist. Perhaps this realization hit Montgomery during the game, as he could not help but see many of his players float around the floor. As for those players still in a daze, it is unlikely any of them were sold on hypnosis after this experience—which is too bad, because hypnosis can help you out in so many ways. Why Montgomery could not restore these players to normal consciousness is hard to understand; for it is really easier to do this—to "awaken" a person—than it is to hypnotize one. We can only conclude that Stafford's recollection of the incident is perhaps inaccurate (since Coach Montgomery's version of what happened might contradict Stafford's testimony), or that Coach Montgomery was, in fact, either sloppy or did not know what he was doing. Obviously, a coach who wants to use hypnosis on his players would be wise to: 1) know what he is doing, 2) do a thorough job of hypnotizing and dehypnotizing his players, and 3) not wait until just before an important game to spring hypnosis on the players (in case the hypnosis session backfires).

According to Bob Stafford, a lot of professional volleyball players like to meditate. "Meditation is more prevalent" than self-hypnosis, he noted. In fact, professional volleyball players on another team, the Seattle Smashers, investigated mental techniques at one time. James G. Bennett, co-author of The Miracle of Sports Psychology (1982), says that he "served as Mental Dynamics consultant to the Seattle Smashers Professional Volleyball team." The Mental Dynamics refers to a series of mental rehearsal techniques, relaxation exercises, goal-setting recommendations, etc. which Bennett presents throughout his book, these serving to help the athlete achieve his potential. How many of these techniques and exercises Bennett got the Smashers to use he does not say; nor does he say what year(s) he worked with the players or how the Smashers responded to his assistance, except to say that "the players were sometimes unsure of what to call him or how to refer to him."

A more detailed report exists about a professional soccer team working with a psychologist. The Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the North American Soccer League ran into a cold streak during the 1979 season. Andy Furman, the Strikers' Public Relations Director, called upon Dr. Richard Gerson of Hollywood, Florida to help the team. Dr. Gerson seemed uniquely qualified for the assignment; not only was he a psychologist, but he also was a former college basketball star. Gerson met with all the Strikers and concluded that "the players were victims of stress. They were a team of stars who weren't winning and the players became too anxious."[1] Supposedly, a lot of negativism was being generated by the fans, media, and team owners, and the players allowed the negativism to affect them. Dr. Gerson told the athletes, "Fear of failure and losing will produce exactly that, in life and on the field."[2]

What the psychologist did to combat the Strikers' fear of failure was to work on an individual and private basis with several of the players, employing hypnosis. As reported in the Bulletin of the Association to Advance Ethical Hypnosis, Dr. Gerson "suggested they concentrate on what they do well, switch their mindset from negative to positive."[3] The Strikers seemed to respond to the psychologist's efforts because they began winning again, and finished in 2nd place in the Eastern Division of the American Conference. The following year, 1980, the team made it all the way to the league championship, losing to the New York Cosmos.

Many sports psychologists are of the belief that teams should not call in hypnotists, sports psychologists, and similar "mental coach" types only when a problem arises; sports psychologists, they assert, are not like doctors or firemen, who one generally contacts only if absolutely necessary. Rather, the expertise of the sports psychologist should be tapped in good times as well as in bad. Basically, I support this position. I would also contend that if a sports psychologist can help turn things around for a team or individual athlete when things look bleak, as Dr. Gerson apparently did with the Strikers, then he will probably be doubly effective for the team or individual when everything is going smoothly. Sports psychologists and team hypnotists always appear to be subjected to a trial by fire, asked to correct severe problems (not of their own making, of course); and, if they fail, they and/or the mental training strategies employed are often censured. This is quite an unfair and undeserved indictment. A better test of a sports psychologist's effectiveness would be to let him work with athletes who are not experiencing some crisis, but instead simply desire to improve their performance. We will look at some examples of this later on in the chapter. For now it is instructive to keep in mind all the times when sports psychologists have helped transform a losing team or athlete into a winner—a feat neither the coach nor the athlete seemed able to accomplish.

We have emphasized in the Introduction that self-hypnosis and meditation are closely related, both producing similar physiological effects. The same can also be said of yoga, a discipline whose practice brings on, among other things, peace of mind and assorted health improvements. The fact that yoga and self-hypnosis are similar is important to understand because many professional and Olympic athletes practice yoga, and you may wish to follow their lead. Dr. William

Kroger, in his Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, elucidates on this similarity; he notes the comments of H. Gastaut who, "after studying the EEG patterns of Yoga and Zen disciples, concluded that the observed alterations in awareness were autohypnotic states."[4] Dr. Kroger himself considers yoga and self-hypnosis but variations of the same theme. He draws many parallels between the two disciplines. For example, "the goal of ultimate reality or nirvana—the state of complete liberation—is strikingly similar to depersonalization and to other dissociated states characteristic of hypnosis."

Yoga is not a religion. Rather, it is used, mainly in India in conjunction with religion, to facilitate the quest for union with God. As Dr. Kroger points out, "Yoga is not considered a religion, but rather a 'science' to achieve the mastery of the mind and cure physical and emotional sickness."

There are many forms of yoga, perhaps the most popular with athletes being hatha-yoga. Hatha-yoga teaches various breathing techniques and body postures, with better health as the main goal. An athlete who says he practices yoga most likely means hatha-yoga, because of its outstanding job in stretching muscles and enhancing body flexibility; of course, staying limber is important for any athlete because tight muscles and inflexibility invite injury.

Jim Chones, former Cleveland Cavaliers center and Los Angeles Lakers forward, regularly practiced yoga during his professional basketball career. He credited yoga for helping to make him a leading "ironman" of the National Basketball Association. Related Chones in 1979, "For the last 4 1/2 years I've been doing yoga, about 20 minutes a day, and I've never had a muscle pull."[5] Later that year staff writer Scott Ostler of the L. A. Times reported in greater detail on Chones' use of yoga:

Chones became interested in Eastern philosophy in college. Four years ago he incorporated yoga into his daily routine, and he reads constantly, especially books like "Metaphysical Meditations."