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Mind/Body Performance Training
Posted on Sep 22 2011
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How to achieve Peak Performance through a combined mind/body training programme.
 


Hi my name is Mike Bell & I am a qualified & experienced Hypnotherapist, Sports Massage Therapist & Corrective exercise specialist. I am writing this article to stress the importance of an integrated training program involving the mind and body in order to achieve whole body performance results.
I would like to give you an insight into how important the mind is in improving sporting performance. I am assuming that in reading this article that you are interested in improving performance, whether you are an athlete, coach, mentor etc. You may simply be a keen sportsperson who would like to improve their overall performance: whether the subject is squash, tennis, football or golf I can help you to improve your performance.
I have 2 questions for you:
 1. How much of your success do you think should be down to mental conditioning?
 2. What percentage of your time do you currently spend in training your mind?
My guess is that your percentages on question 1 and 2 were high/low respectively.

So what does this mean?
If you are aware of the importance of mental conditioning in gaining optimum performance, then why are you not spending more time on mental training?
 I think that part of the answer to this is education, or should I say lack of, with respect of how do you actually train your mind for success?
So let’s go back to basics in order to explain the importance of the mind in sporting excellence.

The 2 main functions of the mind
The 2 main functions of the mind are the ‘conscious’ part, and the ‘unconscious’ (or subconscious) part. 
Your conscious mind is your current everyday awareness in terms of what you are consciously focusing on right now. Perhaps it may be the words on the page, the sounds around you, or the feeling of your foot on the floor. You see, before I mentioned it, you were probably not aware of your feet on the floor, and that is because it was out of your awareness, ie it was unconscious.
Your unconscious mind is everything you are not aware of right now. This includes all automatic behaviours, the beating of your heart, your digestive system, habits, memories, emotions.
Now, the problem with most (not all) sports performance coaching and psychological methods of coaching is that the communication is mainly at the conscious level. By the time you have to consciously think about something it is already too late to prevent that course of action. The unconscious runs a lot faster than the conscious mind.....we are talking high speed broadband as opposed to dial-up. Benjamin Libbet, a prominent psychologist and researcher, spent over 15 years proving that unconscious processing preceeds conscious awareness by approx 500ms ie half a second, ie it takes half a second for impulse/information to pass through your nervous system. Therefore, by the time you are aware of it, it is too late.
Consider a top tennis player and the speed they have to react. Add to that you normally process a few thoughts per second, and add to that the conscious awareness lags half a second behind automatic unconscious processing. It is impossible to play well at the conscious level. The unconscious mind has to have a roadmap for the body to follow, and that roadmap has to be one of high performance and strategies of excellence for that person. The unconscious drives behaviour. The majority of sports psychology methods have missed this important point.
The question is ‘how do you program the unconscious so that it has an automatic blueprint for the body to follow, especially in high performance activities where speed, concentration, focus are vital?
The answer here lies with a combination of Hypnosis and HNLP (Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Psychology).

Key Principles Of A High-Performance Mindset

1. Visual Skills.
Where attention goes, energy flows. What distinguishes high performers is where they put their attention. The ability to observe and shift attention at high levels is a key component of success.
2. Biomechanical Skills.
I am referring here to the sequence and practice of physical skills relevant to your sport. Key is to de-construct the key components of relevant skills so that they can be assembled in a way which will produce the most optimum performance.
Repetition of skill sequence is important so much so that success is dependent upon the roadmap the unconscious has for the body to follow.
3. Mental Skills/State based training.
State (i.e.the emotions you are feeling) drives decision making and behaviour. The main ingredient here is how can you consistently be in the right frame of mind for the particular action/activity that is about to occur? Also, how do you train your mind to recover from setbacks in the moment?
 4. Motivation.
The athlete must have a good, positive, resonating answer to the ‘Why’ question, ie ‘Why is succeeding in this important to me?’

Last changed: Sep 22 2011 at 9:57 AM

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