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Alan, 100 metre Sprinter - case study 1.

Alan was an amateur one hundred metre sprinter, already quite accomplished in his field and a bit of a celebrity in his own right. Charismatic and well liked in the athletics circuit. He was relaxed and had a nice level of dedication to his sport but lacked abilities to understand his own style faults and motivations.
Alan was sent to me by his athletic coach who was well aware of Alan's performance faults. He had been unable to correct them to the degree that was required. Alan's coach had tried everything but to no avail, Alan had kept on trying harder and harder increasing his practice times until he had come to this point where he was unable to give any more time to the pursuit.
I discovered from our initial discussion with Alan's coach that he had a good sprint style and trained hard, but it was clear that his performance would dramatically elevate if only he reacted more quickly to the starting gun. Alan had a habit of either 'jumping' the gun or under reacting and losing vital seconds. A quick start is essential to the short distance runner.
The ability of hypnosis to work upon the subconscious mind gives the possibility of programming unconscious behaviour traits quickly. I was aware that if I worked with Alan to develop unconscious 'triggers' it would enable him to react much more rapidly to given stimuli, in this case the starter gun.
The reaction to a starter gun is gradually developed into an unconscious behaviour through repetition of conscious activity that the athlete partakes in. In theory any task practised continuously will eventually become an unconscious behaviour, this is called learning! The problem arises when practice is not perfect. If the athlete makes mistakes in practice he develops more than one pathway to his desired result, therefore more than one outcome is possible. In competition the athlete opens up the possibility of using his winning formula, or the behaviour that creates a non-satisfactory result.
This is one reason why coaches recommend visualisation as an important training aid. There is the option of always getting it right when rehearsing in the mind therefore reinforcing the winning formula rather than the poor performance. Visualisations ability to communicate desires to the nervous system is almost as effective as completing the task in the real world. The results of visualisation at a cellular level are dramatically similar, muscle fibres contract, enhanced healing occurs and cells duplicate when directed to.
Our work began in my consultation room. Using visualisation aided by hypnosis, and including all the sounds, smells emotions and feelings Alan would have experienced at race day. I gave suggestions that he would almost foresee the sound of the starter gun before it reached his ears, giving him acute hearing and lightening quick reactions. Although Alan had the perception that he was able to foresee the sound of the gun, we made sure he 'waited' for the sound to leave the gun, it was important that he did not practice false starts.
Further suggestions were made that Alan was able to switch on his senses to the starting gun. This would mean hearing the trigger, feeling the vibrations of the noise, even the smell of ignition. Other sensory experiences were less important in his attention, I didn't want Alan to start a heightened awareness to noises in the crowd for instance.
Heightened awareness of the senses, as we will discover later, is indeed a phenomenon of hypnosis. These suggestions were received willingly and belief was heightened because under hypnosis, Alan did experience these sensations as I mentioned them.
An aspect that I focused upon, but in a somewhat smaller degree was Alan's tendency to slow down very slightly at the end of the one hundred metres mark. You will notice this to be a common trait amongst track athletes; they over excel and begin to slow down within of a few feet of the finishing line. This can mean the difference between winning or losing or the attainment of a record or not.
The combination of these two key elements in Alan's performance were phenomenal. Alan managed to shave off nearly half a second in his 100 hundred metres time, for a track athlete at his level this was remarkable. The main aspects of our work together was to set a 'trigger' (the gun) to a level of arousal and a behaviour (out of the blocks).
Now our work together has finished Alan still uses the techniques that I taught him to increase his focus and visualise the performance results and style that he wants to achieve