The Super Mental Training Book (31 page)

Now, imagine the sequence coming alive, moving. Close your eyes, if that will help, and watch the figure move down the page. Imagine it in full color if you like. Let the sequence come to life.

Next, imagine that the skier in the sequence is you. Picture yourself doing the movement. Allow yourself to become really confident. See yourself doing the movement from beginning to end.

Pick up the book again a day later and repeat the entire exercise. [4]

If the reader succeeds so far in his efforts, Fowler and Smith tell him to wait a few days, and then imagine the entire movement without looking at the book. If successful now in recreating the scene, the authors proclaim that "you're ready for the snow." This proclamation, though, implies that one is not ready for the snow if he cannot visualize as proficiently as the authors desire. I believe most skiers would take issue with Fowler and Smith on this, and would not cancel or postpone their long-awaited ski vacation just because they have not met the authors' visualization

standards. Remember, Fowler and Smith have already advised one to visualize while "waiting for the bus or riding a chairlift;" so, the skier still has plenty of opportunity to work on his mental training while at the resort. Also, skiing, like other sports, is comprised of physical conditioning and technical elements. One needs to work on these, too. Therefore less than 100% mastery of one element—whether it be physical, technical, or mental—should not constitute grounds for discouraging the participant from practicing the other elements of his sport.

Mentally bringing to life a book's illustrations is reminiscent of basketball great Bill Russell's "mental camera" visualization technique (see Professional Athletes chapter). Russell replayed games in his mind, stating that "the movies I saw in my head seemed to have their own projector." Developing this ability to self-create mental movies is what The Hidden Skier authors are aiming at when they: 1) tell the reader to "imagine the sequence coming alive, moving" (the still picture now becomes a movie) and 2) guide the reader to being able to mentally see himself ski the entire sequence at any time, without relying on the book. Whereas Russell spent hours upon hours practicing visualization, especially when familiarizing himself with the technique at first, Fowler and Smith do not call upon the reader to make such a great sacrifice in time. Despite this difference, both Russell and The Hidden Skier authors emphasize developing a "mental camera" for oneself. This can be accomplished, they both indicate, through regular practice.

Leonard Loudis, Charles Lobitz, and Kenneth Singer, authors of Skiing Out of Your Mind (1986), a very thorough mental training book for skiers, suggest that you develop your "mental camera" by watching your sports model (i.e., your favorite skier, for example) on television, keeping the sound turned off. They tell you to relax while viewing the performance, and to "experience the whole person, the whole action." In this case, you are trying to ingrain a moving picture into your subconscious, rather than trying to bring to life in your mind a still picture.

For this procedure to work one's favorite skier needs to appear on television, but this does not happen too often, unfortunately. The best solution to this problem is to obtain a videotape recorder plus a tape of one's favorite skier or of a skier known to possess excellent form. Loudis et at mention that Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland watched videotapes of his own races to help prepare himself for the 1985 Alpine world championships in Italy. Zurbriggen did this partly out of necessity, because a knee injury suffered 18 days before the championships, for which he immediately underwent arthroscopic surgery, limited his physical training. This misfortune turned into good fortune, though, as the Swiss skier ended up winning both the downhill and combined.[5] Explaining his victories in the world championships, Zurbriggen stated, "I raced while I was in bed, and that's why I didn't lose the feel for it." As the Swiss ski champion's experience shows, the suggestion of Loudis et at to watch while in a relaxed, receptive state videotapes of one's sports model merits serious consideration.

More work in the area of training skiers to use visualization has been done by sports psychologist Richard Suinn. Dr. Suinn related his efforts in an excellent article, "Body Thinking: Psychology for Olympic Champs," appearing in the July, 1976 issue of Psychology Today. In this article Dr. Suinn gives the names of most of the athletes he worked with, as well as when he worked with them. By providing this information, Dr. Suinn adds credibility to his stories, and makes it easier for us to verify the accuracy of them, should we feel inclined to do so.

Dr. Suinn conducted an experiment with the Colorado State University ski team in 1972. The team was split up into two equal-ability groups. One group received training in imagery (visualization); the other group acted as the control. The imagery training was divided into three steps:

1. The athletes practiced progressive relaxation. This involved tensing and relaxing muscles for 20 minutes. Two sessions were devoted to this.

2. At the end of the relaxation part, the athletes were told to mentally rehearse their

ski runs. The nice thing about this, as Suinn notes, is that "the imagery rehearsal is subject to conscious control."

3. The athletes then mentally practiced specific skills, such as racing techniques; also, they went over in their minds the layout of the course and what maneuvers they needed to implement at certain points.

The experiment, according to Dr. Suinn, "worked so well that the research study itself flopped. The team's head coach, impressed by the improvement in the [imagery] group, raced them but not the skiers from the matched control group."[6] As a result, Suinn could not demonstrate in a way acceptable to the scientific community that the skiers who used imagery performed better than those who just trained regularly. The sports psychologist, fortunately, did not consider his research study's ruination a great loss (which it was not). To himself he proved his point, stating:

I can say, however, that the coach was highly impressed, and that the team won the league's overall trophy as well as the men and women's trophies. By the standards of common sense and observation, at least, the three-stage technique worked wonders. [7]

The important phrase in Dr. Suinn's remark is "by the standards of common sense." Too often athletes insist on "proof that mental training works before they give it try. While such athletes wait for ultimate "proof," some of their competitors are regularly practicing self-hypnosis, visualization, and other mental disciplines—and regularly winning. The haphazard approach to "psyching up" for competition is a thing of the past; yet many athletes still follow this discredited route, despite all the books, tapes, and articles demonstrating the wisdom of doing otherwise. What such athletes need is not "proof that mental training works, but a dose of common sense.

Building from his experience with the Colorado State skiers, Dr. Suinn next worked with members of the 1976 U.S. Winter Olympics team, and accompanied them to Innsbruck, Austria, the site of the '76 Games.[8] Working extensively with one cross-country skier, Tim Caldwell, Suinn had "him race—in his imagination—against Olympic competitors." Besides the visualization, the sports psychologist also had Caldwell practice various physical and technical aspects of his event. This was done because, according to Suinn, Caldwell "was performing inconsistently as the Games approached. The harder he tried, the worse he performed." The end result of all this training was that "Caldwell skied the relay event in the third fastest time for his lap of the relay, thereby moving the U.S. team from 12th to eighth place."[9]

In general, what Dr. Suinn did was have the athletes he worked with practice imagery for 30-40 minutes, doing this on three separate occasions. If possible, they were also to perform imagery on the day of their event. Sometimes the race-day imagery session, due to various reasons, lasted much less than 30-40 minutes. Suinn notes that "I spent only 20 minutes in a refresher course for Lyle Nelson on the morning of the Biathlon relay event." Even so, Nelson surprised everyone with his showing in the 30 Kilometer Biathlon relay. Recalls Suinn:

Nelson, a strong skier, had relative difficulty in shooting accurately. This time, he fired two perfect rounds, shattering five targets each time, and put the U.S. in second place at the end of his tour over the Biathlon course. He far exceeded his own previous performances. . .[10]

Cross-country skier Bill Koch spent even less time practicing imagery before his event. Suinn tells us that "Koch visualized his forthcoming race in less than a minute, while waiting near the starting gate."[11] Koch went on to capture the silver medal in the 30 Kilometer Nordic skiing event, the best showing ever for an American in this race.

Dr. Suinn brought up these incidents to highlight the value of "even the briefest psychological intervention." The last-minute imagery "refresher courses" cannot be placed in the haphazard psych-up category because they had been preceded by lengthy, well-conducted mental training

sessions; therefore they were valuable to the athlete, despite their relative brevity.

What mattered in these instances was the quality of the "psychological intervention;" if the quality is there, Suinn essentially tells us, the time spent practicing the mental rehearsal technique is not such a critical factor.

While still on the subject of winter sports, we should note the experience of David Santee, one of the world's top figure skaters of the early 1980s. Santee employed a simple mental trick, akin to self-hypnosis. As reported by LA. Times correspondent Chris Cobbs, "Santee, a believer in positive reinforcement who has seen 'Rocky' movies a dozen times, talks to himself encouragingly as he takes the ice. 'You've trained hard, you've skated your rear off, it's your time now,' he tells himself."[12] When Santee told himself "it's your time now," etc. as he took the ice, he basically was giving, himself a last second autosuggestion.[13] In the '81 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Santee's positive thinking definitely worked. He finished second, and skated magnificently, as did the 1st and 3rd place finishers, Scott Hamilton and Robert Wagenhoffer. Cobbs reported at the time, "Observers agreed that rarely if ever had three men skated to the standard of Hamilton, David Santee, and Robert Wagenhoffer;" also, that Santee and Wagenhoffer "skated to the peak of their abilities." The goal for any athlete is to perform up to his potential; utilizing proper mental preparation techniques helps one accomplish this. Santee certainly skated up to his potential in the Championships; his success with positive reinforcement shows how valuable practicing even the simplest mental training strategies can be for athletes.

Jack Heise, in his book How You Can Play Better Golf Using Self-Hypnosis (1961), told a story about Woodrow Auge, a middle-aged Seattle businessman. One day Heise played a round of golf with Auge, who was having real problems with his game; Auge scored a 126 on a par 72 course. This dreadful golf gave Heise an idea:

I asked Auge if he would mind being a guinea pig for an experiment. A number of other players I knew were using self-hypnosis, but they were experienced in the mechanical movements of the game. He would be the first who might be classified as a beginner to put the theory to a test.

"I have nothing to lose," Auge said gamely. "I'll string along with whatever you say if you think I can get to play well enough to make the game interesting."

In exactly three months, Auge broke 80!

Auge credits the instruction he received on self-hypnosis, which explained the mental side of golf to him, for his rapid improvement.

"I don't care whether it is in business or golf," he said, "a fellow isn't going anywhere until he knows what he is doing. Once I got it through my head about controlling the golf swing with the subconscious mind, the rest came easy."

Auge, it should be pointed out, practiced a lot during the three months he improved so much. He spent many evenings at the driving range. If Auge had not done this, it is doubtful the self-hypnosis would have helped him as much as it did. To repeat an old song, even though the mental side of your particular sport is important, you still have to be adept at the physical and technical aspects. No matter how mentally tough you are, you are in for a long day if you "lose form" or "gas out" early during competition.

Heise's book on self-hypnosis for golfers is a path breaker. It was written in 1961, the dark ages of hypnosis. In those days if you used self-hypnosis, people considered you weird. Heise's effort therefore deserves considerable praise. There are many sections of the book which get you thinking, and that's the name of the game for any such work.

One section of Heise's book which really got me thinking was where he related this amazing tale:

Dr. Huber Grimm, team physician of the Seattle University basketball team, recently related the results when Dave Mills, a six-foot five-inch, junior forward, asked for his help because he "froze" during competition. He had been benched on the eve of the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament in San Francisco. Spectators made Mills so fearful that he was afraid he would make mistakes—and in this frame of mind, of course, he did. Under hypnosis, Dr. Grimm suggested to Dave that he would be unaware of the spectators, completely relaxed and would play exceedingly well. Dr. Grimm asked Coach Vince Cazzeta to allow Dave to play and the result was astounding. Mills scored 60 points and cleared 63 rebounds in a single game, and his brilliant play led to his selection on the all-tournament team.

"All I did was free his spirit," Dr. Grimm reported. "He was in need of confidence, and I gave it to him through hypnosis."[14]

After you read dozens of stories of athletes who, after using various mental training strategies, perform wonderfully, setting world records, etc., you begin to believe anything. But, look closely at the above story. Do you know of any college or professional basketball player who has ever scored 60 points and cleared 63 rebounds in a single game? No one, including Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, has ever performed this feat. And we are supposed to believe that a Seattle University forward accomplished this miracle, thanks to hypnosis. This was too much for me to swallow. I tracked down the true story.[15] It turns out that Dave Mills scored 60 points and cleared 63 rebounds in three games. This occurred in late-December, 1959, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle (see "Hypnotized Cager Almost Beat Gaels," San Francisco Chronicle, December 31, 1959; refer also to the box scores of the three games Seattle played in the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament, appearing in the Chronicle, December 29, 30, and 31, 1959). Mills scored 21 points in the first game, in which St. Mary's defeated Seattle, 65-60. The second game saw Seattle beating Pepperdine, 67-66, with Mills scoring 21 points again. In the third game, where Seattle topped Pacific, 83-63, Mills totalled 18 points—giving him 60 points for the three games.

All of this is important to bring up—and not mere nitpicking—because some sports psychologists make fantastic claims about their work with athletes. They will boast about their successes, and never mention all the times when the athletes they work with "bomb out" or do not win. This is why I believe sports psychologists, when reporting about their work with athletes, should answer the 5 W's: who, what, when, where, why. In other words, they should say who they worked with, what type of mental training was done and what the outcome was, when and where their work with the athlete took place, and why the mental training was performed. By providing this information, others can check up on the accuracy of the claims made by the sports psychologist. Also, a sports psychologist providing such full disclosure is less likely to exaggerate the results of his work in the first place because he realizes how easily misrepresentations can be uncovered.

Aside from Mills scoring 60 points and hauling down 63 rebounds in three games, rather than in a single game, the rest of the story is accurate. He was voted to the all-tournament team, etc. In the Chronicle article, Dr. Grimm recounts the specific hypnotic suggestions he gave Mills, and the reasons for doing so:

Grimm said that Mills was a tremendous rebounder in practice, but during a regular game he could hardly get off the floor. His shooting wasn't up to par, either. During a game he would get only seven or eight rebounds and about 10 points.

"About six hours before Monday's game with St. Mary's I put him under hypnosis," Grimm said.

"I told him, Tonight you will go out on the floor oblivious to the crowd about you. No other things will be on your mind but to play the most terrific basketball you ever

played. You'll rebound better than ever. When you shoot, instead of there being an indefinable feeling that the ball will not go through the hoop, you will have the feeling that you will score. When you see an opening on the floor, you'll go through when the instant presents itself.'"[16]

After giving Mills all these suggestions, Dr. Grimm brought the eager out of the hypnotic trance. "I feel wonderful, more relaxed than in a long time," stated Mills, who then proceeded to play three straight excellent games. Dr. Grimm cautioned that use of hypnosis cannot turn "a kid who doesn't know anything about basketball and make a star of him."[17] But, what it can do, he said, is help an athlete perform up to his full potential. This is what happened with Dave Mills, and it can happen with you, too.

Dr. Grimm, though perhaps one of the first, is certainly not the only person to have hypnotized a college basketball player for performance improvement purposes. In 1964 Arthur Ellen hypnotized the entire University of Houston basketball team, a team which at the time was in a slump. Coach Guy Uewis called Ellen, wanting him to work with his players. A big rematch against Texas A & M was approaching; Houston lost the first time, and Uewis obviously wanted a win this time. Ellen agreed to help, and hypnotized seven members of the squad, working individually with each. Each player possessed a certain weakness, anxiety, or injury which was unduly affecting his play. Just as Dr. McCall did with the Servile High School water polo players (see Swimming chapter), Ellen addressed the specific problem of each player. He stated in his book, The Intimate Casebook of a Hypnotist, that each player came out of the session with a "positive attitude about his problem." There is no disputing the result: Houston upset Texas A & M, 73-65.