Hypnosis for
Professional Athletes
What Are the Benefits of Hypnosis in Competitive Sports?
Hypnosis has established itself in professional sports as an effective method for enhancing performance. Through targeted hypnosis techniques, athletes can improve their mental strength and concentration, reduce anxiety and stress, and recover from injuries more quickly. During trance states, positive visualizations and suggestions are used to boost self-confidence and optimize movement patterns. Many elite athletes and teams incorporate hypnosis into their training plans to gain a decisive advantage in competition and achieve their goals.
Applied Hypnosis for Athletes
Illustration: Sophie Elschner
I work with Nina Hoffmann. She is the vice world champion in downhill mountain biking and conducted a hypnosis study with me and Prof. Dr. Jana Strahler from the University of Freiburg. As part of the study, we accompanied 19 professional downhill athletes at two official professional races. Between the two races, they received a hypnosis session designed to put them in the optimal mental state for the start of the next race.
We found that, following the hypnosis intervention, competition anxiety was significantly reduced, and heart rate variability also indicated a significant increase in stress resilience.
The results are published here:
www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1334288/full
In August 2023, I was invited to the Freiburg Black Forest Olympic Training Center to work with Germany’s top biathletes. I developed personalized hypnosis interventions for biathletes and identified which suggestions proved particularly effective.
I had the athletes imagine that, just like in the game Super Mario Kart, they were activating the star that makes them invincible and gives them superpowers. Immediately, they had the corresponding images in their minds, along with the characteristic melody that plays during that moment. I tested this suggestion—which taps into additional reserves of strength during a grueling race—in a scientific study together with two graduate students.
We measured physical strength using a handgrip strength meter and subjective strength on a scale of 0–100. As a control intervention for hypnosis, the participants in our study read from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography.
We showed that the participants felt significantly stronger immediately after the strength suggestion and that, one week later, their grip strength was also significantly greater when they activated the strength suggestion.
The results are published here:
www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-4287773/v1
Illustration: Sophie Elschner
Can I try that out?
- Mental Training
Are you a coach who wants to provide mental training for your athletes to help them perform at their best in competitive situations? - Optimize Your Performance
Are you an athlete who wants to reconnect with those positive feelings that motivate you and help you perform at your best? - Personalized Hypnotherapy
I’m happy to come to your facility and work with athletes in one-on-one sessions, in close collaboration with coaches and other support staff.
How can I help you?
“During my master’s program, I had the opportunity to gain very hands-on experience with hypnosis in a seminar taught by Barbara Schmidt. I was immediately fascinated and saw how it could be applied to my sport. After all, when elite athletes perform at their peak, they are, so to speak, in a kind of trance-like state and find it easy to access hypnosis techniques. Over the years, I, too, have learned to use hypnosis for myself. On the one hand, to relax the night before a competition and visualize the course one more time. On the other hand, to reach an optimal state of activation right before the race. And finally, to better control my fears during challenging sections or after serious crashes—and even to turn them to my advantage.”
"The hypnosis session was different than I expected. I expected that I would lose control, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, it was a relaxing hypnosis session during which I always felt fully present while at the same time feeling distant and relaxed. After the session, I felt very refreshed, balanced, and focused."
