What drives people to improve their sports performance?
Every athlete has their own reasons for wanting to improve their sports performance. You could want to reach a personal milestone, compete at your best, or build a long and successful career in your sport. Improving your sports performance can also be about the desire to push your physical limits or boost your confidence.
You might have a specific goal, like a marathon, or you might have experienced a plateau in your training. For some, recovering their sports performance after setbacks, injuries or illness can be both a physical and mental challenge.
It’s incredibly common for amateur and professional athletes to seek professional support. The drive to improve isn’t just about pushing harder; a large part of it is about becoming mentally resilient. Hypnotherapy for sports performance can help you overcome mental barriers. Combined with physical training and refining strategies, you can use it to become the best version of yourself both on and off the field.
9 in 10 athletes would greatly benefit from increased access to mental health resources, tools, and sessions for daily wellbeing
Competitive sports are 85-90% a mental game
63.55 of over 16z regularly participate in sport
2/3 of athletes feel their sporting performance has been the main cause of anxiety in their day-to-day lives
What causes problems with sports performance?
Understanding what’s affecting your sports performance can help you to progress. However, sometimes it can be a combination of factors, making it hard to identify them on your own.
A past failure might be weighing on your mind, causing you to hesitate. As a result, stress, anxiety or a dip in confidence can undermine your performance. Increased stress and anxiety also disrupts sleep, affecting recovery and focus.
You may be experiencing prolonged stress in other areas of your life. You may have tried to compensate for this by throwing yourself into more training. However, this could lead to overtraining, exhaustion and an increased risk of injury.
Physical setbacks like fatigue and illness, or recovering from an injury, can reduce your ability to achieve your peak performance. An injury can also affect your confidence, causing anxiety around activities.
Younger athletes can feel greater pressure to meet high expectations, especially if they have the chance of an athletic career. Older athletes may face physical challenges as their bodies change over the years. Sometimes these can be overcome, and sometimes they need to adapt their approach to sports and training.
Women in sports sometimes encounter unique psychological pressures that require tailored support.
Why do people struggle to improve their performance?
Improving in sport can be difficult, especially when mental health challenges like stress, anxiety, or depression interfere with progress. Athletes often face pressure to perform perfectly, which can lead to mental strain and hinder sports performance. Addressing both physical and mental health challenges is key to improving and succeeding.
Life gets in the way
Work and family stressors can interrupt routines and make it hard to be consistent. You may feel guilty about being inconsistent, leading to further stress.
Hitting a plateau
Experiencing a plateau in sports performance is common, especially after making some initial progress. But it can be disheartening and stressful as you struggle to overcome it.
Fear of failure
Stressing about failure can cause you to avoid participation. For instance, you might run or cycle the same routes instead of pushing yourself onto more challenging ones. Over time though, this can limit motivation and progress.
Anxiety following an injury
After an injury, you might be unsure about your body’s capabilities. You could be cautious about pushing yourself too far. You might worry about injuring yourself again but also feel anxious about performing as well as you did before. These concerns can increase if you take part in a contact sport like rugby or martial arts. If you play a team sport, you could stress about not wanting to let your teammates down.
Adapting to change
You may have experienced a serious injury or medical diagnosis that affects your ability to take part in sports. This can mean you’ve had to change the type of sport you do, or the way you train. Overcoming the mental challenge of this can be tough.
If you’re an older adult, you may have experienced a change in your recovery and fitness levels. This impact on your sports performance can be frustrating. It can be hard to accept that our abilities may not keep improving in the same way as we get older.
How can you improve your sports performance?
Achieving peak performance requires more than just physical training. Athletes often rely on a range of strategies to strengthen both their mental and physical abilities.
Set Clear Goals
Define specific, achievable targets to stay motivated and focused. Make sure you mark your achievements and whenever you reach milestones. Celebrating your sports performance improvements will help you to build self-confidence. It could be sharing them on social media or treating yourself to new training kit.
Professional Training Support
A coach or personal trainer can ensure you set realistic goals and recommend the right training strategies to achieve them. They can help you focus on types of skills training specific to your sport. Checking in with them enables you to revisit your goals and stay on track.
Rest and Recovery
Incorporate rest days, sports massages and other recovery techniques to prevent burnout. Accept that you will have ‘off’ days and that you can’t be at your best every single day.
Learn To Relax
Use relaxation techniques to manage stress during high-pressure moments. Practising these regularly is an important part of sports psychology. Health relaxation can grow your mental skills, help to reduce distractions and improve your concentration.
Nutrition and Hydration
Fuel your body with proper nutrition to maintain energy levels and mental sharpness. Focus on balanced eating and hydration.
Talking Therapies
Professional support like sports hypnotherapy can help when you need to address deeper mental blocks or enhance physical recovery. A therapist can teach you how to control anxiety and reframe negative thoughts. You can transform negative self-talk into encouragement to improve self-esteem and reduce performance anxiety.
How can hypnotherapy improve sports performance?
Solution focused hypnotherapy offers a powerful way for athletes to unlock their potential by addressing mental barriers. By tapping into the subconscious mind, sports hypnotherapy helps you reshape negative habits and develop a mindset that supports your athletic performance goals.
Hypnotherapy for sports performance enables you to enter a state of deep relaxation through techniques like guided visualisations. These help induce a deep calm, an intensified focus and a fading awareness of your surroundings. These brief clinical sports hypnosis sessions offer mental conditioning to increase your confidence and control.
Hypnotherapy helps replace negative thoughts with positive, performance-enhancing beliefs. It builds your self-belief so you can approach challenges with a calm and clear mind. You’ll develop your ability to bounce back from setbacks more quickly and achieve heightened concentration during crucial moments.
Sports performance hypnotherapy helps you to manage stress and anxiety in all areas of your life. Our hypnotherapists equip you with the mental tools to thrive both in your sport and in daily life.
Our Sports Performance Specialists
Benn Baker-Pollard
Sittingbourne
Caroline Prout
Thrapston
Claire Noyelle
Maidstone
Dawn Ibbetson
Chelmsford
Emma Bancroft
Rainham, Kent
Emma Treby
Mid Devon
Gary Johannes
Peterborough
Jill Whitehouse
Newcastle upon Tyne
Keeley Smith
Southend-on-Sea
Kerry Seymour
Weston-super-Mare
Marina Love
Aylesbury Vale
Samantha Morson
Canvey Island
Victoria Anderson
County Durham
Why Choose Inspired To Change
Our solution focused hypnotherapists empower you to better understand your brain, helping to guide you towards solutions and achieve the outcomes you want. We have a team of fully trained hypnotherapists, giving you the choice of who to work with and how you want to work with them. Solution focused hypnotherapy is just as effective in-person or online in the comfort of your own home, so you can find the ideal therapist to help you reach your goals.
Every one of our hypnotherapists is recognised by governing bodies like the National Council for Hypnotherapy, the UK’s leading not-for-profit hypnotherapy professional association. They have all trained with Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy Training, one of the leading hypnotherapy schools in the UK.
