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Specializing in Sport Psychology

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Specializing in Sport PsychologyDefining Sport and Exercise Psychology

Sport psychology applies to a broad population base. Although some professionals use sport psychology to help elite athletes achieve peak performance, many other sport psychologists are concerned more with children, people who have physical or mental disabilities, seniors, and recreational participants.

More and more sport psychologists have focused on the psychological factors involved in exercise and health, developing strategies for encouraging sedentary people to exercise or assessing the effectiveness of exercise as a treatment for depression. To reflect this broadening of interests, the field is now called sport and exercise psychology. Some individuals focus only on the exercise- and health-related aspects of the field.

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Benefits of Antioxidants and Minerals for Your Clients

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Benefits of Antioxidants and Minerals for Your ClientsAntioxidants

Antioxidants are substances or nutrients in our foods which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body cells use oxygen, they naturally produce free radicals (by-products) which can cause damage. Antioxidants act as “free radical scavengers” and prevent and repair the damage done by these free radicals.

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Quickly Improve Your Quality of Sleep

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Sleep quality, unlike sleep quantity, refers to how well you sleep. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to sleep.A good night’s sleep is just as important as regular exercise and a healthy diet. Research shows that poor sleep has immediate negative effects on your hormones, exercise performance and brain function

Sleep quality, unlike sleep quantity, refers to how well you sleep. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to sleep. You’re better off getting six hours of high-quality sleep than a longer period of low-quality sleep.

If you want to optimize your health or lose weight, then getting a good night’s sleep is one of the most important things you can do.

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Prime Directives of Unconscious Mind

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Prime Directives of Unconscious MindUnderstanding these three basic prime directives is not enough.  You must also implement these concepts into your practice in order to increase your client’s chance of enhanced performance.  Most hypnotherapists understand these concepts; sadly, few of them actually implement them.  When you choose to utilize these concepts in your hypnosis and or guided imagery, you will achieve a class of success that few professional sports psychology coaches even experience.

1.   Preserves the Body

All suggestions should lead toward the preservation of the body.  This is why hypnotherapists or mental toughness experts have traditionally succeeded so much in smoking and weight loss.  Preservation is a logical assumption in these therapies.  However, most hypnotherapists do not realize that they should be linking preservation up to all of their client’s goals.  In sports hypnosis, you will have a higher degree of success if you can link up preservation of the body to their intended outcome.  For example:

“… Imagine if you will now, winning the gold medal.  Beyond the feeling of winning, you realize the potential that now awaits you: from product endorsements to media coverage.  All of these effects from winning are within your grasp.  And by taking these opportunities, your income will grow and provide for you the ability to buy healthier foods, higher quality supplements, and receive the best healthcare possible.  Who would have ever thought that by winning a gold medal you could actually become a healthier human, but like a pebble in a pond creating a ripple effect, everything affects everything in life…”

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What is Hypnosis? | Sport Psychology Coaching

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Hypnosis IS…

Hypnosis — or hypnotherapy — uses guided relaxation, intense concentration, and focused attention to achieve a heightened state of awareness that is sometimes called a trance. The person’s attention is so focused while in this state that anything going on around the person is temporarily blocked out or ignored. In this naturally occurring state, a person may focus his or her attention — with the help of a trained therapist — on specific thoughts or tasks.

1. An awake state

Hypnosis requires the active participation of both conscious and unconscious processes.  So you must remain awake in order for it to be considered hypnosis.  Yes, it is possible to fall asleep during hypnosis, but then it becomes sleep and stops being hypnosis.

During hypnosis, the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind are still present.  The only thing that is missing is the critical faculty.  The term, critical faculty has many different names depending upon what school of psychology you come from.  It’s been referred to as the analytical filter, the subjective reality filter, critical mind, and so on.  It doesn’t matter what term you use, but it’s important to understand its function.  The critical faculty has been incorrectly defined by many as the part of you that distinguishes between reality and fantasy.  This is not true, for if it was, that would mean during hypnosis you would not be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.  This, of course, is not what happens.  By modifying the traditional definition slightly, it makes much more sense.  It’s the part of you that cares to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

During hypnosis, you know what is real and what is not, but you don’t care to define any difference.  It’s exactly like watching a movie or reading a novel.  You realize that what you are watching or reading isn’t real, but you don’t care to acknowledge that while you are being entertained.  As a result, your body goes through many different biochemical changes as if it were really experiencing the event in the movie or in the book.

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Maximizing Sleep Hygiene for Optimal Health

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Sleep hygiene is a practice or habit which follows a proper schedule for sleep which is necessary for the daytime alertness.Sleep hygiene

Every person wants to live a healthy and happy life, but most of us are careless in many useful things which helps us to improve our health and daily life. Apart from healthy eating habits, proper sleep is one of the most important things to be healthy, fresh and happy.

Sleep hygiene is a practice or habit which follows a proper schedule for sleep which is necessary for the daytime alertness. It also includes the behaviors and rituals towards the sleep or in a simple way it is your approach towards the sleep.

In modern day life sleep, hygiene education must be given to the students, not at school levels but also at college and university levels as sleep education is the important section in the cognitive-behavioral therapy used to treat insomnia.

Effect of environment on sleeping hygiene:

Role of the environment is very important in every person’s life as a person feels comfortable in a stable and friendly environment so in the same sleeping environment is also very important for the peaceful and sound sleep. Soo you should develop such a comfortable environment which improves your sleeping time and sleeping hygiene.  

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Your Brain Does Not Process Negatives

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If your clients are more focused on what they don’t want, instead of what they do want, they will most likely be getting exactly what they don’t want.You can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it.  Think about it; better yet, don’t think about it, and you’ll get my point.

If your clients are more focused on what they don’t want, instead of what they do want, they will most likely be getting just that – exactly what they don’t want.

The Athlete who is constantly focusing on ‘not losing’ will typically lose more than the athlete who consistently focuses on ‘always winning’.

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Common Sleep Disorders and Treatment

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Issues with sleep may be as a result of an undiagnosed medical disorder. It is important that as a coach you are able to recognize the common disorders.Issues with sleep may be as a result of an undiagnosed medical disorder. It is important that as a certified sleep science coach you are able to recognize the common disorders.  Unless qualified, we do not diagnose or treat these disorders, however.

Insomnia

The most common sleep disorder is insomnia (22). This is described as insufficient sleep due to problems falling asleep, waking up often throughout the night, getting up too early, or feeling tired after waking. Insomnia is more common in women than men and tends to increase with age (22).

Acute insomnia can occur as a result of emotional or physical discomfort, stress, environmental noise, temperature extremes, jet lag or due perhaps to medication side effects (22). Chronic insomnia can happen from a mixture of physical or mental disorders, undiagnosed or uncontrolled sleep disorders and can even be due to taking certain medications.

Treatments

If you suspect or know your client has insomnia, treatment is normally tailored based on personal needs. If it is due to a medication, they may need to see their doctor for more advice. If it is due to any psychological issues, then that must be addressed.  This will include the need to always observe professional coaching boundaries and skills. Some behavioral modification may be needed, like developing better sleeping habits, as outlined in previous sections.

Avoid alcohol as a treatment as it inhibits REM sleep, affects sleep during the early morning hours and is believed to prevent restorative, quality sleep (22). [Read more…]

The Benefits of Self-Hypnosis

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If you truly want to be effective as a sport psychology coach or hypnotist for the athletes that you work with, there is one fundamental principle that is an absolute must…

You must be skilled in the process of self-hypnosis, and you must practice it on a consistent basis.

Why is this?  Because you will become invincible when working with your client’s excuses for why they can’t use hypnosis on a regular basis.  Think about it this way.  One of the reasons you are most likely effective as a personal trainer is that you believe in investing time each day or on a regular basis to sculpt your own body and maintain a healthy body.  In doing so, the traditional pathetic excuses that the mainstream public uses for not working out has no effect on you.  You refuse to buy into their excuses.  The same can be said for the mental workouts in the day.  If you want to truly inspire your clients, and be congruent when you ask of them to practice the mental aspect of their sports, then you must be willing to do this yourself.  But the benefits of self-hypnosis go much deeper:

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The Brain and It’s Connection to Sleep

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The brain serves as the command center that tells us when to feel sleepy and when to be alert and awake. Brain cells are in charge of making us fall asleep.The brain serves as the command center that tells us when to feel sleepy and when to be alert and awake. Tiny amounts of brain cells are in charge of making us stay awake or fall asleep. Some of them encourage alertness and others encourage sleep; some cells promote stages of wakefulness and others promote levels of sleep (9). The brain cells (neurons) that encourage alertness also work to prevent actions that encourage sleep, and vice versa. Maintaining a balance usually results in either a reasonably constant phase of alertness or a reasonably constant period of sleep. This is how the brain is believed to regulate sleep.

The intricacies regarding exactly how the brain controls sleep is not fully understood. Certain areas of the brain, such as in the hypothalamus, and the brainstem support mental alertness and wakefulness by releasing neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine (9). These chemicals stimulate the cerebral cortex, which when activated causes us to stay awake. This is what happens when a person takes caffeine. It stimulates the cerebral cortex, which covers the thought process, and it also stimulates the medulla (9). The latter results in decidedly negative effects, such as an increase in heart/respiratory rate and poor muscular coordination (9).

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