Sports Improvement for the Whole Family
Posted By admin on February 25, 2009
Natural Awakenings Magazine
February 2009 Issue
SPORTS IMPROVEMENT FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
People such as Tiger Woods, Deepak Chopra, U.S. Olympic teams, Seattle Sea Hawks and countless others who implement visualization and imagery in sports have found that they can enhance their performance by practicing the desired ideal performance in the “Mind’s Eye” prior to the event.
A study at the University of Ohio used visualization with amazing results. Ten top basketball players were divided into two teams of equal ability. One team warmed up by shooting ten foul shots. The other team set with their eyes closed and imagined themselves throwing ten perfect foul shots. The two teams competed and the group visualizing foul shots out scored the team that warmed up.
In Los Angeles a high school football coach hired a hypnotist to help his team learn to visualize. The most dramatic results were with the place kicker who was discouraged that he had missed his last five field goals. He practiced imaging successful field goals five minutes a day and before each kick. He became a believer in creative visualization when he went on to kick 32 successful field goals in a row.
More and more professional athletes are becoming adept at communicating to their body through imagery. In the past two Olympics most of our successful athletes included visualization along with their physical training to prepare themselves for competition. They visualized themselves lifting weights, high jumping, and racing 100 meters.
As sports psychologist, Shane Murphy, director of sports science for the U.S. Olympic Team, noted in U,S, News and World Report, August 1992,” At the level of the Olympics nowadays, there’s not a whole lot of difference among the athletes in terms of physical talent and training. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to what’s between their ears.”
As Brad Hatfield reports in the U.S. News and World Report, “The implications go way beyond sports……….everyone’s goal is achieving peak performance.” All this is enhanced through the use of the brain’s capacities, especially mental imagery.. There are many examples of the phenomenal impact of “what you see is what you get”.
It appears that visualization techniques work even better with children. Scientists are not clear yet whether it is merely their commitment to their mental imaging or the content of the visualizations themselves. Most coaches do not care, they just know it works and so are using visual processing techniques more and more.
Sports enhancement through visualization can be taught to anyone with a desire to learn.
Exerpted from the New Frontier Issue and Date Unknown
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