Hypnosis at the Olympics

Below is part of an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about using hypnosis to make a winner at the Olympics. There are many ways we can improve our lives with hypnosis


Coach targets mental game in high-pressure sport

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Vincent Hancock is a nervous person, who by his own admission simply cannot keep still.

But when everything was on the line Saturday and he had to hit two final shots to win the skeet shooting Olympic gold medal, he stepped up and calmly blew the whizzing disks out of the sky

That's where Daniel Vitchoff steps in. sports psychologist hired to work with the U.S. shooting team.

"I specialize in hypnosis," said Vitchoff, a performance coach and sports psychologist hired to work with the U.S. shooting team. "When you are shooting in the Olympics, it comes down to who can best perform under extreme pressure. Out there, everybody is as good as the next person. It's not a physical thing anymore. The difference between the best and the rest is the mental game

Shooters must control their emotions yet still maintain their intensity and concentration.

"There are guys who shoot perfect scores in practice and then they fall apart in the competition, " Vitchoff said. "It's like having a phobia. It gets into their head and tears them apart. A lot of what I do is teach them to let it go."

That's where the hypnosis comes in. The idea, Vitchoff said, is to put the athletes into a meditative state by lowering their blood pressure and heart rate. Vitchoff then uses what is essentially the power of suggestion to reinforce positive thoughts. He said he goes over the relaxation techniques repeatedly until his subjects are able to reach what he calls the "zone."

"Look at Michael Jordon. When he played, his tongue was out, his jaw was relaxed. He was in a zone," Vitchoff said.

Another technique is called modeling, in which he takes something the athlete is struggling with and has him or her watch video over and over of that particular thing being done successfully.

http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi f=/c/a/2008/ 08/17/SP0912CI1E .DTL