Sport Excellence

This is not an exhaustive list of issues we address to improve performance for athletes:

1.    Speed up learning new skills

2.    More effective and efficient practice (less repetition and less time for the same outcome)

3.    Motivation

4.    Dealing with performance anxiety, or any emotional issue to achieve pick performance

5.    Confidence

6.    Team work

7.    Relationship with coaches

8.    Stress Management

9.    Handling criticism resourcefully

Sport psychologists have been researching the use of visualization in the learning and performing of motor skills since late 1970’s. According to the psychoneuromuscular theory vividly imagined events produce the same changes in the brain and send the same signals through nerves in your muscles as it would  occur when you physically executing the movement. The brain does not distinguish between imagined movement and actual physical movement and body and muscle memory can be improved through mental practice and rehearsal.

Studies demonstrate that mental training (also known as mental imagery or mental practice or mental rehearsal or visualization) result in significant sports improvements: it speeds up learning new skills (mental and physical), make practice effective, shorten noticeably time required to master a physical skill and measurably improve performance for athletes and not only. It is suggested that combination of physical and mental practice is the optimal training program. Moreover, when mental practice is combined with Time Distortion Technique it makes learning and practice very efficient. Depending on motor skills learning and mastering skills could be speed up to several times.

It is not surprising that John Yandell in his book Visual Tennis mentions that “various surveys of Olympic and other elite athletes, coaches, and sport psychologists have found that 85 to 95 percent incorporate some form of imagery into their overall training routine.”

What to Expect

After an initial short phone or e-mail consultation we schedule an in-person (or via Skype) assessment session. But before the assessment session I send you a simple intake form to fill out and send me back by e-mail or post mail. Or, if you prefer, we fill it out together during the assessment session. However, when I have it before the assessment session it saves us a lot of time.

The assessment session is free of charge. During that session we have a chance to get to know each other. Then I gather information about the issue and your conscious and unconscious reactions to it. Finally, I use couple of techniques to find out if I can help you or not. The assessment also highlights how many sessions you would need. Most of the times, we need only two-three sessions to get results for an issue. If I can help you, I describe how the process goes, how many sessions it might take and what is your investment. Then you receive answers on all your questions and make your decision.

We start with understanding what you want. If there are negative emotions involved (for example performance anxiety, frustration, motivation, confidence, stress and so on) we carefully work with feelings/emotions to understand and preserve all positive functions they might have. If they are too intense we bring them down to a manageable level then I explain, teach and then guide you through simple, easy to do and fast working techniques to control them and even eliminate. You will be equipped with techniques to deal with similar challenges if they occur in the future all by yourself.

If motivation is an issue then there are a special set of techniques to learn and practice to motivate yourself in a way that in balance to preserve you emotional and physical health.

Effective communication with yourself, team mates, coaches, parents and anybody else involved in your sport activity is another area that you can benefit tremendously. You learn to understand yourself and your body’s reactions, manage emotions, understand other people and influence them.

You learn how to take criticism in a way that you benefit from the positive side of that and stay neutral to what you do not agree with. Moreover, you can make your new resourceful reaction to criticism your automatic behavior.

The special set of techniques is designed to educate you how to recognize when stress is useful, when it is a bad habit and when it is just a body reaction. You also learn how to manage it either by manipulating its intensity, or breaking when it is a bad habit and elimination by relaxation techniques of self-hypnosis.

After resolving emotional or other issues that prevent flawless practice and performance I guide you through and you learn new fast learning and effective and efficient practicing set of techniques. These technique aims to make learning new skills and practice faster by strengthening muscle memory of skills to make them automatic and help the whole performance sink into unconscious to become again mostly automatic. You learn special set of visualization techniques. I compound mental training with time distortion techniques to make learning and mastering skills many times faster. I guide you through that special set of techniques designed to help your body/mind learn, practice and perform much better than you used to do before. Then you receive that set of techniques in a written way for you to practice for a while to make new learning, practicing and performing skills your automatic behavior.

After the sessions you are equipped with techniques and strategies to go through your emotional, sport and relating to others challenges and events in a way you want. It takes in average three to four weeks to repeatedly practice techniques and make new specific behavior (for instance being calm and confident during a performance or new learning and practicing skills, get motivated and so on) as an automatic default behavior.