Practice makes perfect, that is what my old Gran always used to claim.  What she did not mention, is the significance of practicing things going how you would like them to go, rather than considering what to do if it does go bad.

How often do you ask what is the worst that might happen?! For athletes though, it is crucial that they concentrate on achieving, on being the winner, first time, each time. Being a bit off form at the vital moment is just not a choice.

So the very first thing I tell athletes who come to see me in Berkeley for help in improving their performance is to practice success. From an attraction standpoint, we all know that you are going to attract more of what you are targeting, so it is important to focus in success. Scientists at first assumed the neural nets existed only in the brain, but we now know that they are definitely a network thru your complete body.

This mean that if as an example, you concentrate on running, as you are laying in your bed, you’ll be turning on and accessing the muscles in your legs. It is sort of likely that they’ll twitch unconsciously as you consider moving them. This was famously observed by Milton Erickson, the person principally in charge of bringing hypnosis to the clinical arena.

When Milton was a kid he was struck with polio and left paralyse.  As he sat in a chair, aching to be outside playing with his brothers, imagining running in the long grass and kicking the soccer, he spotted that his legs had started to swing in the chair! NLP uses a systems called anchoring.

In this, the mind creates a link between a strong feeling and an external trigger. This could have negative and positive implications for our athletes. For instance, there could be negative anchors (triggers that make a bad feeling) associated to past failures which are set off whenever the athlete is performing or due to perform.

If the trigger for the bad feeling can be established, then the negative anchor can simply be removed. If an athlete needs to connect into resourceful feelings, for example calm, focus or power, an anchor can be made with a trigger of, squeezing their fingers for instance.

An easy way to become the best at what you do, is to find some other person who is the best at it, and learn how they do it.

If you suspect that Tom Brady is the best passer the world has ever seen, it is feasible to model the way that he looks, feels and behaves to make the results he achieve. When the method has been removed, it can be installed in some other person using walk thru, metaphors or hypnosis.

Hypnosis offers a deep state of relaxation which can be prolonged to maintain calm and ease uneasiness, as well as installing positive enabling ideas ,eg having the ability to focus and concentrate without effort.

At a deeper level of understanding, NLP can be employed to uncover an athletes values and reveal and resolve any conflicts here. This implies that their focus is on defeat, making it likely this is the thing that’s achieved. In fact, if sports or athletics is your life, it is not the taking part which counts, but the winning.