Hypnosis Basketball

In Basketball, just like every sport, the mental game is just as important and possibly even more important as you get to the college and pro levels. The higher the level of play, the more the mental game separates out the good from the great.

90% of basketball coaches coach the way they were coached when they played and lack flexibility and creativity in bringing out the best in players. Phil Jackson was a master at doing this and was well-known for using hypnosis techniques with his players to get them to play to their potential. He’s not the only one but you can’t count on having such a great coach, you have to be your own coach!

So, what’s the difference in a player between one day when they can’t make a shot to save their life and the next day, they have the hot hand and everything they put in the air goes in?

In one word: Confidence

I’ve worked with many basketball players over the years and the common theme problem I hear is not having confidence or “swagger” as it’s sometimes called.

Well, how do you get confidence when you aren’t making any shots and how do you make shots when you’re not confident? Either way, a player can have a tough time pulling themselves out of it.

The answer is found in what confidence really is and where it is found…the unconscious mind. Confidence is an emotion. Emotions are the domain of the unconscious. You can tell yourself all day that you’re confident but the feelings will always override your weak affirmations. You’ve got to go to the cellular intelligence of the body and make the program changes there in order to create confidence.

That’s where hypnosis comes in.

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Sure, you’ll feel confident after sinking a few 3-pointers in a row or playing a great game. But, if the basketball player has a voice or program inside that says something like: “you aren’t good enough” or “you don’t belong out here” then guess what, your unconscious mind will create feelings of no-confidence and that ruins the fine touch you need to make baskets.

You know that the difference between making and missing a 20-footer is next to nothing. You can’t even measure it as it’s governed by thousands of micro-muscles in your whole body, not just your arms, hands and fingers.

When we do hypnosis, we are communicating with that intelligence. You see, whether you know it or not, you as a basketball player have already been doing hypnosis your whole life. Every time you missed a shot in a crucial situation and experienced disappointment, letdown, embarrassment, frustration, etc. that’s a natural form of hypnosis. All of those “failures” get stored in the muscles just like “muscle memory” gets stored from repetitive drills and practice.

A basketball player needs to clear the unconscious mind of failures, mistakes and chokes in order
eliminate the interference preventing those micro-muscles from working together.

The other big problem is not being able to bring your practice game over to heavy pressure competition. What causes that?

Fear

Primarily, fear of failure. This is the kiss of death for a basketball player and it’s so easy to slip into being a “timid” shooter when you’ve just missed 3 in a row. Of course, the standard coaching teaches you to “just keep shooting” until you get it back but this can actually doom a team when a player is dealing with overwhelming fear.

How do we get rid of that fear?

Basketball players must get back to playing their natural way and to their strengths. They can bypass that fear by developing focus and turning it toward their particular athletic playing style. They can also go back to a time when they played this way successfully. This all can be effectively installed in hypnosis and what happens is the athlete stops trying to play someone else’s game and that fluid, fearless game they play in pickup games shows up in competition.

You can have all the talent in the world as a basketball player but it won’t hold up under pressure if you’ve got mental interference patterns and can’t control your destructive thinking habits.

Basketball players that work with my hypnosis protocol learn though control, emotional mastery, self-hypnosis and clear the mental baggage.

This can be done in my office or via webcam (Skype) very effectively.

Call or email to get started. 425-205-0024

craig@sportshypnosiswest.com