The Super Mental Training Book (25 page)

I wanted to follow up on the Servite High story, because I was especially interested in learning if a self-hypnosis tradition had developed in the school's swimming and water polo program. In 1982 I talked with Steve Larkin, a varsity water polo player for Servite. He was a freshman at the school in 1979, and did not recall the seniors using self-hypnosis; apparently neither the seniors nor the new coach taught the technique to the underclassmen. So, once Coach McCall left, it was only a matter of a year or two before the use of self-hypnosis died out completely from the Servite swimming and water polo program. This development shows why it is important for Athletic Directors to establish some sort of policy stipulating that athletes out for sports be exposed to mental training strategies. This type of policy-making has been done with weight training, which, after proving its value, has become the newest "must" in many sports (baseball and tennis most noticeably being the latest sports to adopt it). By making it & policy to introduce athletes to mental rehearsal techniques, a coaching change will not drastically affect the mental preparation portion of the athlete's training regimen. So, just as continuity is insisted upon for the physical and technical preparation portions of sports programs, so must continuity be provided for the mental preparation portion as well.

We have seen how self-hypnosis and hypnosis can help high school swimmers and water polo players. College swimmers can also take advantage of the techniques. Richard Schleicher, former head swim coach for the men's team at the University of Oregon, brought hypnosis into the lives of his swimmers. We read this account which appeared in the Winter, 1979 issue of Old Oregon magazine:

"Concentrate on goals," a man is saying in the steamy gloom. "Every day, every day will be an excellent day, an absolutely outstanding performance. You'll be good each time, getting better and better and better. . ."

The speaker is Richard Schleicher, the University's head men's swimming coach. His audience—stretched out on mats before him, breathing slowly, deeply, regularly— is this year's team.

And they are hypnotized.

Schleicher continues, droning, repeating, urging, bolstering. His tone is compelling, and his voice, echoing, seems to come from all around the hallway.

"You'll be good each time, if not excellent, getting better and better and better. . ." Words like "strength" are used, "stamina" and "power, power, power."

Each team member is visualizing an upcoming race, seeing himself in the water, confident, ahead of his competitors, his body transformed into a powerful, thinking, efficient, unrelenting, swimming machine, pulling, stroking, driving through the water.

"At the clap of my hands, we'll be through. You'll be totally relaxed, totally re-

laxed, refreshed, relaxed. . ."

The handclap reverberates through the hallway.

The team members begin to stir and sit up, some looking a little dazed, others like they've just awakened from a short nap. Uniformly, they seem pleased with the experience, relaxed and confident.

"Awright!" says one swimmer, stretching. "Better than eight hours sleep."

"It takes me about 15 minutes to come out of it totally," says another. "It's fantastic, like waking up to a brand new day. If you had any hassles before, they just don't seem to matter. I can go ahead and practice away from any other concern."[2]

Judging by this account, Coach Schleicher hypnotized the team, rather than each member of the team hypnotizing himself. This top-down approach possesses certain drawbacks, such as: 1) the coach might not be a good hypnotist, 2) the coach might not be available to hypnotize the team when the swimmers could really benefit from a hypnosis session, 3) hypnotic suggestions from a coach generally have less impact than autosuggestions the athlete, skilled in self-hypnosis, chooses to give himself. In the story, one swimmer, while enthusiastic about how hypnosis helped him get through the day, admitted that "it takes me about 15 minutes to come out of it totally." It should not take so long for one to return to normal consciousness; a minute at most is sufficient. This points out the difficulty that any coach may encounter as a hypnotist, particularly the suitability of the instructions he gives his athletes as he dehypnotizes them; in the case of the Oregon swimmers the instructions were "you'll be totally relaxed, totally relaxed, refreshed, relaxed. . ." The heavy emphasis on being "totally relaxed" may be the reason why the one swimmer took "about 15 minutes to come out of it totally," while some of the other swimmers emerged from the hypnotic state "looking a little dazed." An emphasis on feeling "refreshed" would be more appropriate, probably, than a "totally relaxed" state.

The other concern this account raises—the swimmers being hypnotized rather than taught self-hypnosis—is dispelled later in the article. The team members, it turns out, were able to learn self-hypnosis from Coach Schleicher, and hypnosis was not imposed upon the team. Old Oregon reporter John Thomas informs us:

Then, as now, Schleicher introduced hypnotism to the team on a voluntary basis— the swimmers could take it or leave it. And he stressed that the swimmers would only train and prepare with hypnosis and never compete while in a trance state. Many of the team members were interested but skeptical, others just skeptical.

One skeptic, senior Paul Buvick, learned to put himself under by taking three deep breaths and counting slowly backward from 10. Using hypnosis to prevent himself from having sleeping problems and "choking" during competition, Buvick made the transition from Van Rossen's (the previous coach) team to Schleicher's, working himself up to a more prominent position on the team.[3]

Another swimmer, Jay Evans, learned that taking deep breaths and relaxing the mind work best for him when he wishes to enter the hypnotic state. Thomas reported that Evans "uses hypnosis in training to overcome the ache of muscular fatigue and labored breathing. He begins the relaxation in his mind and lets it trickle into his body. Self-hypnosis, he says, can be useful any time you get frustrated. 'What you have to do is take a few deep breaths. The deep breaths are important.'"

In the Introduction chapter, I pointed out that if you use self-hypnosis during a time out or break in the competition, there is the chance that your opponent or the spectators might talk to you, thereby disturbing or ruining your chain of thought. The solution, of course, is to prepare

yourself ahead of time; give yourself autosuggestions before the competition, and do so in a place where there are no distractions. Comments made by one swimmer on the Oregon team, George Koch, point to the wisdom of this precautionary strategy. As related by Thomas, Koch "regards a hypnotic 'set' as very private. C I don't like any kind of disruption or invasion while I'm in a set. I'm likely to haul off and slug someone who breaks in.'"

One concludes, after reading all the testimonials contained in Thomas's article, that the Oregon swimmers obtained substantial benefits from practicing self-hypnosis and from participating in Coach Schleicher's hypnosis sessions. But, how did the hypnosis affect the Oregon swim team's won/loss record? This is difficult to determine, but a strong case can be made for hypnosis providing a positive contribution to Oregon's swimming program. In Schleicher's first year as coach (1977), the team finished the season with 6 wins, 5 losses; in Schleicher's second year (1978), the swim team won 9, lost 2, placing first in their conference (NorPac—Northern Pacific Athletic Conference). Also, as reported by Thomas, "six varsity records, 11 freshman records, and six NorPac records were set, along with 72 lifetime-best swims for team members."

Coach Schleicher's effort was remarkable, especially in that he exposed his swimmers to hypnosis on a voluntary basis. The slowness in which some of his swimmers came out of the hypnotic state does not seem to have negatively affected their performance. The swimmers are also to be commended, of course, for giving self-hypnosis a try. Their experience with self-hypnosis reconfirms the incisiveness of the observation made by Dr. James Esdaile, the great 19th Century surgeon who used hypnosis to anesthetize his patients: "Riches await the men of clear sense who know how to turn new truths to practical purposes."

Schleicher no longer coaches the Oregon swim team, and one wonders if any mental rehearsal training is being done anymore by the Oregon swimmers. Again, a policy which calls for all participants in a university's intercollegiate sports program to be exposed to mental training strategies would minimize the impact of coaching personnel changes, at least in the area of the athletes' mental preparation. Such a policy should not make it mandatory for the athlete to try out any particular technique, such as hypnosis; however, the policy should require that the athlete be thoroughly informed about the value of such mental disciplines. After being so informed, the interested athlete should then be provided necessary materials and assistance to learn and apply whatever mental rehearsal technique he thinks might help him. The athlete not interested in investigating mental training strategies should not be hassled or pressured into using them. In short, 1) use of mental rehearsal techniques is voluntary; 2) exposure to the benefits the techniques provide is mandatory; 3) materials, sports psychologists, etc. to help the athlete with his mental preparation are always available. These are the three key elements of a policy which colleges wishing to upgrade their sports program should adopt.

A good example of how such a policy might work in practice is provided by the University of Iowa sports program. Dr. Eugene Gauron, a professor of psychiatry at the university, has served as a "mental coach" for many of the school's sports, most noticeably swimming. Dr. Gauron describes his work with the University of Iowa men's swimming team in his excellent book, Mental Training for Peak Performance (1984). The swimming coach, Glenn Patton, invited Dr. Gauron in 1979 to work with the team; a multi-year working relationship between Dr. Gauron and the swimmers ensued.

During his first five years of work with the swimmers, as well as with other U. of Iowa athletes, Dr. Gauron developed a comprehensive mental training program, the details of which he presents in his book. Based on his experience, he believes that seven elements comprise the ideal mental preparation package for athletes:

1. Well-practiced relaxation exercises to calm the body at will.

2. Rehearsed techniques to generate and expand energy.

3. An awareness of your own body's stress profile.

4. Specific focusing exercises to quiet the conscious mind and focus awareness.

5. Extensive practice with mental imagery and facility at the applications of visualization, especially mental rehearsal.

6. Skill at using specific techniques, such as repeating personal affirmation statements or calling to mind previous success experiences, to keep self-confidence at high levels and to overcome self-doubt.

7. Knowing how to reframe, to change thoughts, to stop thoughts, to recognize areas of irrationality and perhaps most importantly of all—the ability not to think at all. [4]

Throughout his book Dr. Gauron explains how the athlete can learn and apply each of these skills and self-awareness tools. In actual practice this meant that Dr. Gauron helped teach the athletes various mental rehearsal techniques, and worked with them for the entire season. He also, though, recognized that he could not always be around whenever athletes wanted to work on their mastery and application of mental preparation skills. So, he developed material on the subject, which he gave to the athletes. "I have discovered," notes Dr. Gauron, "that handouts are invaluable as part of a mental training program. Athletes accumulate them as part of a mental training handbook and refer to them during the season." Dr. Gauron's giving the athletes handouts to put in a mental training handbook qualifies as an excellent service, because an athlete's forgetting details is not limited to just the physical and technical aspects of his particular sport. The Iowa athletes, thanks to their possessing a mental training handbook, could always brush up on what they had to do to properly carry out their mental preparation, and could do so without having to track down Dr. Gauron. If Dr. Gauron became ill or unavailable for some reason, the athletes still had the mental training material to guide them.

Dr. Gauron's philosophy is that you assist the athlete in his mental preparation as much as possible, but that providing such assistance is not the same thing as assuming responsibility. Speaking to the athlete Dr. Gauron remarks, "It is your responsibility to get mentally ready for anything you intend to do. No one else can do it for you." As for which mental discipline the athlete should use, Dr. Gauron says to "try out the exercises;" then, "judge for yourself what works and what does not work based on your own experiencing." It can be seen that Dr. Gauron's approach is to expose athletes to various mental preparation tools, but he does not force them to use visualization, self-hypnosis or any other particular technique.

How did the University of Iowa swimmers respond to Dr. Gauron's assistance? Based on individual testimonials and the team's overall performance, one would have to say extremely well. In a five-year period from 1981 the team finished first twice, second twice, and third once in the Big 10 Conference. However, it is the individual swimmers' testimonials and experiences which reveal the most about Dr. Gauron's work. Matt Wood, the Big 10 50-yard freestyle champion in 1982 and 1983, and 100-yard freestyle champion in 1983, had a lot of positive things to say:

I must start by saying that I feel fortunate to have been exposed to all of the material and techniques that Dr. Gauron has presented to the swim team during the four years I have known him. I have assembled my personal mental training book with over 200 pages of different handouts and techniques.

Before I came to Iowa, I was made aware of what simple visualization could do for a person during my senior year in high school. I did not realize how I as a student and athlete could use it until I met Dr. Gauron.