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Think your way to better basketball !
As a Hypnotherapist and NLP Trainer
one of the most common clients I get coming into my office is that
of the athlete. Normally he or she is a semi-pro or amateur athlete
who is looking to take their game to the next level. These are people
who have been looking for ways to improve their game and have finally
realized the ultimate sports truth:
Performance is more in your head than it
is in your body!
Nowhere is this truer,
than in the sport of basketball. Especially when you realize all
the aspects of rules and strategies that must be automatic to the
player. You may be wondering what sort of secrets a Hypnotherapist
can bring to your game. Whether you are a professional or a backyard
heart-attack league shooter I always start by focusing on three
main fundamentals: which are finding your happy place, hallucinating
and slowing down time. These skills build upon one another so it?s
important to start from the beginning? finding your happy
place.
In the movie Happy
Gilmore, a comedy starring Adam Sandler, Happy is a down and out
golfer who is trying to make it to the masters. When Happy really
needs to perform he envisions a place with beautiful women carrying
beer to put him in the right mindset Although this vision would
put a smile on your face it may not make you perform your best.
The outcome of this mirage of paradise was getting Happy to focus
on his performance by placing him in a comfortable relaxed place.
How do you find your happy place? All you have to do is remember
a time when you felt you played the best basketball of your life.
Now, close your eyes and remember specifically how that felt and
really focus on that feeling. Name this feeling and imagine each
time you say it in your head that the feeling is getting stronger.
The feeling is your happy place and your subconscious mind already
associates a higher level of basketball performance with this state.
Enter this state and your game will elevate.
If this exercise was the only thing you learned, you could still
expect to improve your open shot percentage by at least 50%!
One more note on the happy place you will quickly realize. You
will actually enjoy playing more since you will be coming from such
a positive and focused place. Now that you have now identified your
happy place it is now time to begin to hallucinate your way to success.
Hallucinating Success
Second thing to do to really improve your game is to start hallucinating.
Yes, you heard me correctly I am telling you to start hallucinating.
Your wonderful new state of mind is going to facilitate in some
powerful little visualizations that will greatly improve your game.
To start with, next time you are staring at the rim, about to shoot,
take a moment and imagine or visualize the rim getting bigger.
I?m sure that you already know that
the hoop can actually fit two balls at the same time, at least consciously,
but subconsciously you may still be seeing the hoop as smaller than
it really is.
Now being factual is great, but what
you want to do is to send a clear message to the subconscious mind
that whenever you send that ball into the air that it is going in!
The way to send that message is to imagine that the hoop is much
bigger than it actually is (I recommend approximately four feet
across but go with what feels best to you). I highly suggest that
you try this when you have the court to yourself sometime. After
you notice how different the big hoop feels then (just for the sake
of comparison) imagine the hoop smaller. Unless you are way out
of touch you will notice a distinct difference in the feeling of
shooting at the smaller hoop compared to the bigger hoop.
And the third skill to
use to improve your game is to master the art of fast time and slow
time. As a person who enjoys the outdoors I often find myself appreciating
the beauty of the distant landscape when I should be paying attention
the things right in front of me, sometimes to my detriment. The
other day as I fell off my bike, I had the opportunity to unleash
obscenities, in my mind, 30 times on the way down. That my friend
is what we call slow time. It is where your mind interprets the
world around you faster than you do normally. It is also your new
best friend. To do this correctly you have to recall a time when
this happened for you. This can be a traumatic event, or waiting
in the line at the bank. Anywhere it seems that time is going extremely
slow (i.e. DMV, or waiting for the light to turn green while sitting
in traffic).When you have your example go through it for the feelings
associated.Now we want to add this experience to your happy place
so as you experience these feelings bring them into your imagination
of you on the court. Imagine what it would be like to experience
extreme slow time.
Imagine gliding through the defense, in
slow time, as you adjust to take the shot, before the oppostion
even has time to be aware of your presence.
One word of caution, if you use this in certain other aspects
of your life you may experience greater pleasure than you could
ever conceive of...but that is really for another article. |
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