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Coach targets mental game in high-pressure sport
Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Vincent Hancock is a nervous person, who by his own admission simply
cannot keep still.
But when everything was on the line Saturday and he had to hit two
final shots to win the skeet shooting Olympic gold medal, he stepped
up and calmly blew the whizzing disks out of the sky.
How does a jittery 19-year-old kid from Georgia keep cool under the
intense pressure of an Olympic final when everyone around him is
sweating bricks?
That's where Daniel Vitchoff steps in.
"I specialize in hypnosis," said Vitchoff, a performance coach and
sports psychologist hired to work with the U.S. shooting team. "When
you are shooting in the Olympics, it comes down to who can best
perform under extreme pressure. Out there, everybody is as good as
the next person. It's not a physical thing anymore. The difference
between the best and the rest is the mental game."
Shooters must control their emotions yet still maintain their
intensity and concentration. It is especially hard because there is
no physical outlet for all the adrenaline that is building. It is a
recipe for the yips.
"There are guys who shoot perfect scores in practice and then they
fall apart in the competition, " Vitchoff said. "It's like having a
phobia. It gets into their head and tears them apart. A lot of what I
do is teach them to let it go."
That's where the hypnosis comes in. The idea, Vitchoff said, is to
put the athletes into a meditative state by lowering their blood
pressure and heart rate, sometimes with music. Vitchoff then uses
what is essentially the power of suggestion to reinforce positive
thoughts. He said he goes over the relaxation techniques repeatedly
until his subjects are able to reach what he calls the "zone."
"Look at Michael Jordon. When he played, his tongue was out, his jaw
was relaxed. He was in a zone," Vitchoff said.
Another technique is called modeling, in which he takes something the
athlete is struggling with and has him or her watch video over and
over of that particular thing being done successfully.
"In our business, we always say success has a structure," Vitchoff
said. "If you watch success, you can duplicate it."
Eating right and proper exercise are crucial parts of such a regimen,
Vitchoff said. For shooters, he recommends more protein - because
carbohydrates hype you up and then make you crash - and repetitive
exercise like running and biking.
"The stronger your heart, the slower it beats, so if I have to pull
the trigger between heartbeats, I want to work on slowing it down,"
Vitchoff said.
This article appeared on page C - 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Hypnosis in the Oympics
Sunday, August 17, 2008, 03:40 PM PST [General]
FYI
http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?
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I'm happy to see you've posted this online SD - Dan Vitchoff is a close friend of mine. He is actually working with 5 American Olympic Athletes - one won a Bronze Medal and another is close for a medal. He has been texting me from China to keep me updated.
Tom NicoliI'm really proud of Dan's work and am glad to see him getting recognized for it. He's one of the professional and ethical people in our profession. His practice is in PA - www.pahypnosiscenter.com/
Tom
05:10 PM PST