On July 10, 1999, the Rose Bowl hosted a pivotal event in the history of women’s sports. Over 90,000 fans crowded into the Rose Bowl to see the U.S. Women’s National Team play China for the World Cup. It was a very tough match that the United States eventually won by penalty kicks after a scoreless game and overtime.

As my family and I sat in the Rose Bowl that day enjoying this spectacular event, I noticed another game within a game. I focused a lot on Michelle Akers. My eyes kept focusing on her: 1) because of her stature as a soccer player; 2) because I knew her story of enduring chronic fatigue syndrome while playing world class soccer and 3) because I met her in person at an NSCAA meeting several years ago.

Akers dominated the midfield. She was simply everywhere. She was a physical presence. But one had to wonder how long she could go on. How long would her body allow her to play with such intensity? You could see her fight through exhaustion and keep going. You could see she was fighting the mental and physical battle of her athletic life.

In the Sports Illustrated article in which the entire team was named “Sportswomen of the Year,” part of Akers’ mental battle is chronicled:

For the entire second half Akers was delirious. She was oblivious to the crowd noise. The only thing she was aware of was the pounding in her head and the words going through it with every step she took: Only 20 more minutes. Don’t quit. Only 19 more minutes. Track that ball. Don’t look at the clock. Win this head ball. Only 16 more minutes. Only 15 more minutes. Win this tackle. Get lost in the game. Don’t quit. Don’t quit. Do not quit.

This is one of the most incredible examples of a world-class athlete who created such mental toughness through her personal and professional crisis that she was able to will her body to play world-class soccer on a day when the chronic fatigue syndrome had zapped her body of strength. Yet Akers believed her mental toughness would allow her to play, and play very well, in the most important American women’s soccer game in history.

Her example leads us to the question: How do the rest of us build belief and confidence in our mental skills?

We may not face the challenges of Michelle Akers, but each of us faces the possibility of caving in and collapsing under pressure. We want to believe our mental skills will pull us through a difficult athletic challenge. But often we face the reality that we have not prepared our mental toughness skills to the level we need for success under duress.

Most soccer players have known the heartbreak of choking when their team was counting on them. They put the ball right at the goalkeeper during a penalty kick even though they had perfectly executed 100 penalty kicks in practice the week before. Or they may have made a silly mental error that caused a turnover and gave the opposite team an open shot at the goal.

The biggest factor in choking during a game is when a player is not relaxed under pressure. All coaches know that soccer players perform best when they are relaxed and the muscles are not working against themselves due to undue anxiety or tension. Bill Beswick, a sport psychologist from England, believes this is one of the most important skills soccer players need to learn and master. Often a soccer coach will yell to the players to relax but this is as ineffective as yelling to the player, “Jump higher.”

Dynamic relaxation

Performance hypnosis is one of the most effective ways of teaching soccer players how to relax under pressure. Hypnosis is often defined as an altered state of consciousness, a trance. In a trance state a person is focused and is able to block out distractions and stay relaxed. Most often hypnosis takes place in a clinician’s office where the goal is to provide relaxation as a counter skill to debilitating anxiety. Medically, hypnosis can help a person become absorbed (focused); it can also help to dissociate away from pain. This is very helpful in dealing with the pain of a chronic illness such as cancer or even the intense pain of childbirth.

Usually hypnosis is learned in a clinical setting. The typical scenario is that of a patient lying on a couch with the lights dimmed, learning to block out distractions. This form of clinical hypnosis is difficult to transfer to something as active as sport performance. One can’t take the couch and light dimmer switch out to the soccer pitch.

To denote a more active style of hypnosis, this author has coined the phrase performance hypnosis. Performance hypnosis uses the category of hypnosis known as alert trance. Performance hypnosis utilizes the properties of clinical hypnosis but makes the power of focus available while one is in an active state. Learning performance hypnosis can help provide one of the keys to entering the zone of optimal performance. Performance hypnosis can help the soccer player maintain dynamic relaxation during an entire soccer match.

In order to create the power of performance hypnosis, the soccer player must first learn how to obtain the state of dynamic relaxation. This is best done in the traditional way of learning to use and reinforce the following steps:

• Using relaxation induction.
• Using fractionation as a deepening procedure.
• Moving down the path to the performance relaxation zone.
• Using visualization to experience a place of total relaxation (beaches or mountain scenes are the most popular).
• Using autogenics to build belief that one can change how the body feels (creating the feeling of heaviness and lightness).
• Using post hypnotic suggestion to teach rapid induction procedures so one can return to the performance relaxation zone (eye roll and rhythmic breathing).

Distractions minimized

First, the performance hypnosis intervention must be something that is quick and powerful to refocus the athlete. For the soccer player who is selected to take a PK either in the flow of the game or in a shootout, performance hypnosis can help the player be prepared to be relaxed and ready to take a confident penalty kick. She can do a quick “eye roll induction,” a technique for entering into a hypnotic state and take herself into the Performance Relaxation Zone. She can spend 15-30 seconds there and experience herself returning to the state of dynamic relaxation. When she is ready to take the PK she can physically feel the difference in her body. It is relaxed and the mind is sharp and she is ready to perform at the level she has practiced for this important PK.

This technique can be used throughout the game during the natural stoppages of the game. The more players work at staying focused and playing at optimal intensity level, the less likely they are to be negatively affected by distractions of the game. These could be external distractions like trash talking of players, parents’ comments or a questionable call by the referee. The ongoing refocusing will also help the player not to get distracted internally where she may be thinking too hard about the play ahead.

Performance hypnosis works on the field in a quick way to contain internal and external distractions because the player has established a foundation of dynamic relaxation by her practice and mastery of the skill off the field. Performance hypnosis is first learned in the office or classroom and then practiced with an audio tape every day to become very comfortable in the performance relaxation zone.

Second, the player works on several quick inductions so that they are natural tools to select from when the situation calls for mental refocusing. The soccer player is confident she can use a quick induction to get to a relaxed state because she has done it thousands of times and knows it works. She has built a powerful belief that he can relax under intense pressure. She has been able to feel the physical difference of being in the state of dynamic relaxation thousands of times in practice and game situations. Consequently, she believes she can do it under the pressure of performance.

The second important hypnotic principle at work is called fractionation. Fractionation is the hypnotic principle that states if a person is in a heightened state of trance (absorption) and is interrupted, but then allowed to return to the trance state, the depth of the trance will be even more powerful. This is a great principle to understand in athletic performance because there are so many challenges in the game which will try to pull the athlete out of the zone of optimal performance.

If the athlete knows what to do to continually return to a higher level of focus then she is more likely to stay in the more efficient state of high-level absorption. Understanding this principle can help the player be mentally sharper at the end of the contest than she was at the beginning. This may be part of the principle at work when a player continues to get better and better as the game moves into the later stages of the match. This is a great advantage when the player is fending off physical exhaustion and game pressure in the 85th minute of the match.

Contact a professional

The danger with this type of trainer is they know some techniques but are not well versed in the intricacies of human behavior. Consequently, their performance interventions will be very shallow and you may even end up barking like a dog! Needless to say, players would not benefit from such training and could be harmed.

The recommended choice is a professional who is certified in clinical hypnosis by a professional organization like the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis . In order to reach the certification level, the practitioner must be at least a master’s level health care provider and complete required annual continuing education. The training received by ASCH is focused on integrating hypnosis into their professional, clinical practice.

The athlete also would want a professional who is experienced in sport psychology. One way to affirm this is to check if the professional is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology. This would provide the best of all worlds, as the athlete would learn performance hypnosis from a professional who knows the power of the mind as well as the intricacies of the sports world.

Performance hypnosis is a powerful tool. When performance hypnosis is learned well, the soccer player learns to contain anxiety and mental distractions even during extreme levels of pressure. Performance hypnosis can indeed enable the player to perform at the highest level she has trained.

Editor’s note: Keith Wilson is a performance consultant and psychotherapist in El Paso, Texas. He can be reached at Wilson@TheWinningMind.com