Sport Psychology Blog

Although different from the typical mental exercises such as meditation and imagery, I still consider goal setting as a mental exercise. This is because goal setting is an activity where you sit down and think or write about your goals and how to achieve them. During this activity called goal setting, you are gaining motivation as well as guidance and clarity about your future. These are the benefits of goal setting, which is why I consider it a mental exercise. Not only do you gain these benefits each time you practice goal setting, but you also improve at goal setting itself. Let me tell you more about goal setting. Reaching any destination in life requires you to have both the directions and motivation. Goals are meant to motivate and guide you along your journey. Like most things, there is an art to goal setting that helps maximize the motivation and guidance provided by goals. Having goals without sufficient motivation gets you nowhere. Having motivation without guidance als

Mental exercises such as meditation , imagery , progressive muscle relaxation , and self-hypnosis can be enhanced with the use of biofeedback. Biofeedback uses equipment such as sensors and monitors to record physiological processes such as heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate in real time. This information is important. Your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate are markers of your arousal level . One of the goals of mental exercises is to lower your arousal level to become more calm and relaxed. Having constant feedback while meditating can be very helpful. For example, you may think you are relaxed, but the monitor may say that your heart rate or breathing rate is high. This feedback tells you that you can relax even more. Once you see your heart rate or breathing rate decrease on the monitor, this helps you feel what it's like to be in a true meditative state. You will have a better understanding of what it means to be relaxed and how to get there. It is al

Imagery , meditation , progressive muscle relaxation , and self-hypnosis are all very similar mental exercises . They all involve finding a comfortable, quiet place, relaxing and using your mind to focus on certain things. So why not do all of them in one session? That’s what script recordings are for. Basically, scripts are instructions that guide you through imagery, meditation, PMR, and self-hypnosis. Listening to a recording is beneficial because it takes less mental effort than trying to remember instructions and saying them to yourself. It helps keep you relaxed also. Scripts don’t have to include all of these mental exercises. You can have one for each exercise if you want. But together, you can get the benefits of all of them in just about 15-20 minutes. Scripts are great for the night before big games. They can get your mind right before you go to bed and help you sleep better. This is how you make your own script: You can start with instructions for meditation. Say “r

Hypnotism is becoming a more popular mental exercise among professional athletes. Tiger Woods has been known to seek help from hypnotists. There are a lot of myths about hypnotism. It is not like how you see it in the movies. It does not magically force people to do crazy things. This is how it actually works: The subconscious mind is very susceptible to suggestions. If your subconscious mind is fed certain messages, it will start to believe in them. The purpose of hypnosis is to get your mind in a state where it is susceptible to suggestions. A calm, relaxed mind is best for this. Once a hypnotist quiets your rational mind, and gets you in a relaxed state of mind, he may start saying positive affirmations such as “You are unstoppable when you trust your instincts,” or "Your fastball is accurate anywhere in the strike zone." If done well, these suggestions will be “planted” in your subconscious mind. Because of this, you will have a deeper conviction in these affirmatio