The Power of NLP In Delivering Optimum Sports Mindset
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a proven method for achieving success in sports. The power of NLP in sports mindset lies in changing how athletes think and feel about their sport. We create a positive and successful mental representation that can push them to reach their goals. Discover how NLP is used to help improve your performance, achieve consistent results, and ultimately become an even better athlete.
Whether you’re an athlete, sports coach, or team leader, you can use NLP in a sports mindset to move forward after a loss, expedite healing after an injury, develop consistency, and excel in your performance.
7 Ways To Use NLP In Sports Mindset Coaching
Coaches, athletes, and managers use NLP In Sports Mindset in several different ways. The key benefit is the ability to design a personalised performance development plan to assess where they are now and how they’re going to get where they want to go.
NLP Sports Mindset Coaching creates an individual approach based on the current motivation factors and mindset of the athlete and then identifies how to shift perspective and work towards delivering optimum performance.
- Values Assessment – Understanding Motivation
- Identifying Limiting Beliefs & Reframing Them
- Managing Focus Under Pressure & Finding The Flow State
- Supporting Healing From Injury & Managing Pain
- Identifying resources, Needs, Goals & Small Steps
- Increasing Mental & Physical Resilience
- Team Values Alignment – Bringing Teams To Optimum Performance
Using Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) In Sports Mindset
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a powerful way to help athletes improve their performance by changing their thoughts and feelings associated with performance.
Based on the concept that a person’s thoughts shape their behaviour. NLP helps athletes create more positive associations with their talents and performance, and teaches them to focus on what they can achieve instead of worrying about mistakes or failure.
The real power of using NLP in Sports Mindset optimisation is understanding the mental conditioning and habits of the athlete currently in play. Specifically, is the athlete focusing on what they want to achieve, or are they moving away from what they don’t want? Finding the balance between using towards and away from an athlete’s focus, differentiates a sportsperson who can deliver consistent high performance, and one that cracks under pressure.
Specifically, practicing NLP techniques can help athletes become more confident, focused, and motivated. This ultimately leads to improved mental performance during practice and in competitions.
Build Self-Awareness and Identify Your Challenges.
Developing self-awareness is the key to using NLP for sports. We aren’t so much playing the opponent or the other team, as our mindset.
When you can identify the challenges that are blocking your best performance or that create unconscious errors when you’re under pressure, you can address them.
As your awareness develops, you begin to notice what emotions you feel and the self-talk travelling through your mind at critical moments of performance. Do they serve you or hinder you? Moreover, you begin to appreciate the impact certain emotions have on your physical body. You’ll notice that some emotions create tension or limitation in your movement. Conversely, others allow for stretch, flexibility, and a feeling of lightness.
Ask yourself questions such as “What am I afraid of? and What has been my most difficult experience playing sports?” Then, look objectively at the answers and take time to reflect on how they may be affecting your performance both mentally and physically. This will help you determine what techniques are going to work best for you and become aware of any mental blocks that need to be addressed.
Acquire New Habits and Techniques for Mental Reloading or Reframing
Mental reloading (or reframing) is an NLP-based technique that creates new, healthy habits. This process supports you in achieving your goals—both on and off the field of play. By assessing how you usually handle certain situations, you can use this technique to practice different ways of responding and ultimately acquire new skills. More importantly, as you begin to learn your unique behavioural style you can identify the most powerful mindset for you to achieve the results you want.
For example, if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed when playing sports in competitive environments, mental reloading can help you stay calm and focused by practicing visualisation techniques or deep breathing exercises before you start playing.
Mental Rehearsal or Visualisation is one of the most impactful ways of stabilising and enhancing performance under pressure. I work with the PETTLEP approach, a specific visualisation and imagery technique. It’s highly effective and very popular, especially in tennis. The acronym represents physical, environment, test or task, timing, learning, emotional, and perspective.
Develop Optimal Pre-Performance Routines to Enter Flows States Quickly
Have you ever heard someone describe a time when their performance excelled and they were “in the zone”? This term equates with an experience of flow. Flow occurs when your skill level and the challenge at hand are equal.
The field of NLP draws on the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, often called ‘the Father of flow’. He researched how we excel in our performance, create happiness and achieve the stretch in execution we want.
For his research, Csikszentmihalyi interviewed athletes, musicians, and artists to understand how and when they experienced optimal performance.
Csikszentmihalyi developed the term flow state after he interviewed different types of performers. These high-performing individuals described their optimal states as times when their creation flowed out of them with minimal thought or effort.
Csikszentmihalyi said ‘Flow is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it’.
The Balance Between Tension & Relaxation
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Before any sport you play, it is important to develop a pre-performance routine that allows you to get into flow states quickly. Focus on a few key routines that ensure you can enter the right state of mind before any match or game. This may include stretching exercises, visualisation techniques like guided imagery, meditating, specific warm up drills, music listening/dancing or even positive affirmations.
Find out which methods work best for you and make sure they are included in your pre-performance routine!
Find an Integrated System to Enhance Performance with Visualisation, Goal Setting and Relaxation Switches
It can be helpful to find an integrated system that covers aspects of visualisation, goal setting, relaxation switches, and other mental strategies. Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) is a great tool for this.
By embracing NLP you can learn how your mind works and how to develop the beliefs and anchors that will help you get into the right state of mind for achieving peak performance before playing or training. NLP also includes tools such as challenge phrases that help to conquer any psychological barriers so you can remain focused and motivated during your sport.
Team Values Alignment - Unity Wins Every Time
If you’re playing an individual sport at a high level, it’s critical that you identify the reason that you’re doing it for yourself. The punishing training schedules and mindset resilience needed to get to the top requires you to know that all the effort is for you, and you only. We work with your values to achieve this focus.
When you’re playing a team sport, performance becomes a little more complicated and athletes can feel even more pressure to perform well, in case of disappointing other team members.
Team Values Alignment is a powerful way to unite teams in mission, values, and performance. This specific NLP is used to identify the values of individual team members and then discover how to align them as a team, and the performance plan.
When you’re motivated by your individual purpose AND the team purpose, you can create a paradigm shift in your success. The power of many playing in unison can always supersede the power of one.
When mindsets align, anything can be achieved.
Find Out More About NLP In Sports Mindset With Coaching Or Training
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