Sports Performance and Working with Fear

This is about my hypnosis client who we could call Sam.  He's an ultra-marathon runner having completed many races over 50k long.  He loves the training he does, and loves the purpose it gives him, loves the feeling, gets huge energy from his team mates -  loves EVERYTHING about the sport except the experience of FEAR before a race to the point where it IS debilitating and he doesn’t feel like racing any more.

Before coming in to see me for a group of sessions, Sam had almost made a decision -  Sam felt like quitting the sport all together.

Here's the advice I gave him which made all the difference – he now races again.  I see athletes dealing with fear on one of four different levels.  

Which type of fear do you relate to?

One, you fight fear.

You try to overcome fear, try to destroy fear, and conquer fear, manage it and punish yourself for it.

Two, you use relaxation to shake fear.  Maybe you take deep breaths, meditate, shake it off or rationalize it away through positive thinking.

Three, you train so hard, you can just go robot like on race days, and this works for.  You feel less fear.  This is called disassociation.

Most sports coaches teach one of these three versions in training, but I would suggest that there are less benefits doing things this way than you would imagine.

Some of the negatives are that it's a lot of work to block out fear.

You basically have to declare war on a primary and valuable part of yourself when you block out or deny fear.  You may feel that you're winning the war on some level.   But the war on the unconscious mind on for many years can be so exhausting.

And things start to happen like

-       burnout,

-       more and injuries that won't heal,

-       depression,

-       lack of motivation and excessive stress until you many people walk away from their sport like Sam wanted to do.

This is the most common level I see athletes operating from with regard to fear.  Probably most sports people do this.  

For a while it works fighting fear, but then they often see injuries and lack of satisfaction in their sport see them cutting their sports career short.

A  shift in perspective.

This is what Sam experienced after we talked for a short while followed by hypnotherapy and it kept him in the sport by helping him put into context his race days.

He used his cognitive mind not to rationalize fear away this time, but to have a perspective shift whereby he recognizes fear as an emotion to be felt in his body.

It is natural to feel fear before a race, of course. Everyone who does a sport feels it. No exceptions.

A much healthier way to deal with fear is to let it run its course the way nature intended.  Scientists have even proven the emotion of fear and all that goes along with it the adrenaline and the cortisol, adrenaline will enter your system.   

And if you're willing to feel it instead of ignore it, it will run its course then be gone in about 10 to 90 seconds and you will be free of it in no time, especially once your race begins.

You need to intellectually recognize fear as being only temporary.

How to enjoy the feeling of fear and anxiety, and use it as a creativity and power resource to help us become better. 

This is a giant leap.  You start this process by allowing yourself to feel fear like a gardener feels the moisture level of the soil, or a swimmer feels the water.  It gets you somewhere rather than hinders you.

Start by asking yourself can I feel the sensation of fear in my body?   Rather than in my mind?

Here's where you switch from thinking about fear to instead “feeling” it with a final step being to breathe into it.   

Breathe into the fear.

Then this magical thing happens where you are not in your head anymore, but rather you’re in your body where these fear sensations are felt.

From this place of feeling fear in your body, keep noticing the sensation in your body.  Can you sense how the fear is making you excited? Now amp it up.

Fear plus breathing = excitement.

What we eventually want is no separation between you and the feeling. 

It’s about merging with the fear and utilising it to perform even better.

Become intimate with it. Now look at that word intimacy. With lovers. What does it mean to be intimate? It's where you become each other.

And that sensation becomes something where there is no separation.

What does this offer you in practical terms?

Well consider an animal eating grass in a field - it hears some rustling in the bushes.  Fear shows up and suddenly she comes alive with fear.

Together she and fear search the horizon and suddenly her hearing is better her eyesight sharper, and there is a predator there.  So, the animal starts running.  The animal is merged with fear – and those two things the animal and the fear is a being that is stronger and faster together than apart.

The animal by merging with fear, outruns the predator.

Of course, then 10 minutes later, he's back in the field eating grass again. And there's no repercussions. There's no lingering fear, stress or anxiety and a need for an animal psychologist, because the fear was fully expressed in the run.  The animal is now calm again, not paranoid, not exhausted. 

Can you see by merging or being intimate with fear and anxiety it can propel you forward?  That's the same process that occurs when a man lifts a bus off another person. It's you plus fear equals sharper, more focused and superhuman.

Now Sam of course isn't there yet. But he's starting to embrace fear rather than relax away from it.

Fear isn't going to be with him every step of the race.  But when it does show up, especially at the beginning of a race, he is learning to have an intimate experience with this uncomfortable feeling.

So to summarize, here are your choices.

One, try to control fear and eventually it ends up controlling you and that process will wear you down over time.

Two, rationalize that fear is natural and best to let it run its course which is a step in the right direction. But you stay in your head whenever fear shows up.

Three, be willing to feel fear as a way to be more in your body where innate physical intelligence lies, which is a much better place from which to perform than your head.   Become intimate with the fear and use it as a focus for drive and creativity, to propel you forward in races and sports performance.

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