The Super Mental Training Book (18 page)

Jerry Krause, Chicago Bulls vice president, came right to the point in describing concerns held by NBA management. He told Greenberg:

What's happening in the league this year is that teams are spending more time with their potential draft picks, checking out psychological profiles. Nobody wants to have what happened to Boston, Golden State and Phoenix last year.

Whether the administration of psychological tests can screen out potential or actual drug users remains to be seen. Clearly, though, management is justified in its attempts to obtain necessary insights about prospects as well as current team members; for rendering important personnel decisions in a knowledge vacuum makes little sense.

The main function of sports psychologists involved in basketball, of course, is not to help management make personnel decisions (though such input might prove useful), but rather to assist individual players. Darrell Griffith, former star guard for the University of Louisville, benefitted from such individualized attention. During the halftime of one of the 1979 NCAA post-season basketball tournament games (Indiana State vs. Arkansas), Griffith appeared on national TV and talked about his use of self-hypnosis. It was a filmed segment—one of those human interest stories. He and his coach, Denny Crum, discussed how self-hypnosis had allowed Griffith to better tap the terrific potential everyone knew he possessed. Dr. Stanley Frager, the psychologist who taught the Louisville guard self-hypnosis, also appeared on the segment. He mainly presented facts about hypnosis, what exactly it is and what it does.

After the film segment, sports commentator Bryant Gumbel informed viewers that Griffith scored 12 points two nights before against Arkansas, as Louisville lost, 73-62. Griffith, it turned out, shot 5 for 14 from the field—36%, normally not a good performance. It made one curious

about how the Louisville guard mentally prepared for this game. If he used self-hypnosis, then here is another instance where hypnosis proved to be no panacea. When we say that hypnosis is no panacea, we mean that there are certain factors over which hypnosis has no control.

Griffith, for example, may have been double-teamed throughout the game by Arkansas. Obviously, it is hard to score when there are two men defending you all the time. Whatever was the case that night, Griffith led Louisville to the National Championship the following year, and earned the John Wooden Award as the most outstanding college basketball player for 1980. He carried over his excellent play into the pros, being named the NBA's Rookie of the Year in 1981. As for Dr. Frager, it appears that he continued to regularly work with the Louisville basketball squad; for Coach Denny Crum was reported in 1984 as calling Dr. Frager "the concentration coach" for the team. [16]

In the late '60s Jim Barnett of the old San Diego Rockets attended a stage hypnosis show put on by Dr. Michael Dean (the hypnotist who worked with boxer Ken Norton). Barnett ended up on stage, no doubt with others from the audience, hypnotized by Dean. The hypnosis Dean performed on Barnett was merely a demonstration, yet in the following days Barnett noticed a gratifying improvement in his basketball play and attitude. Recalls Barnett: "I never felt like I was under, but when it was finished, I was in a very positive mental state. I felt that I could do much more than I had been doing. For the next three weeks, I averaged about 20 points per game, and during that stretch I scored my career high of 26.1 definitely believe that the experience helped me."[17]

Some basketball players have adopted or developed on their own certain mental concentration techniques, not waiting for management to bring in a sports psychologist (or bothering to visit one themselves). Bob Pettit, the St. Louis Hawks forward who was named to the All-NBA team 10 years in a row, employed a simple breathing exercise just before shooting a free throw. In his book, Bob Pettit (1966), he states that before each foul shot he took "a deep breath, then slowly let the air out of my lungs," which helped him relax, making him a highly accurate free throw shooter (he is the fourth-leading free throw scorer in NBA history). If you ever saw Pettit play, you know for a fact he did this; his taking a deep breath at the free throw line was quite noticeable.

Bill Walton, who led the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA Championship in 1977 and was voted the league's Most Valuable Player in 1978, indicated that he coped with the stress professional basketball players experience by using meditation. Said Walton:

I try to do some form of meditation every day. . . The nicest thing about meditation is that it puts your body in harmony with your surroundings. And that can be real helpful, because when you're a professional athlete, your surroundings can get pretty un-harmonious.[18]

Bill Russell, who led the Boston Celtics to eleven championships in thirteen years, and was voted the Most Valuable Player in the NBA five times, used throughout his long career a visualization technique which he called his "mental camera." While a senior in high school, Russell went on a tour of the Pacific Northwest as a member of an All-Star team. Sitting in the bus, he played basketball in his mind. In his book, Second Wind (1979), Russell describes his visualization technique:

... I was sitting there with my eyes closed, watching plays in my head. I was in my own private basketball laboratory, making mental blueprints for myself. It was effortless; the movies I saw in my head seemed to have their own projector, and whenever I closed my eyes it would run. . . With only a little mental discipline I could keep myself focused on plays I had actually seen, and so many of them were new that I never felt bored. If I had a play in my mind but muffed it on the court, I'd go over it repeatedly in my head, searching for details I missed. I'd goofed because I'd overlooked a critical detail in my mind, so I'd go back to check my model.

During the tour Russell's defensive play in particular made huge progress. Noted Russell, "I blocked so many shots after a couple of weeks on the tour that my teammates began referring to them as 'Russell moves."' This improved play Russell largely attributed to his unique visualization technique, a mental training strategy he was to use the rest of his career:

I was awed by the mental camera I'd discovered... As our tour went farther north into Canada, the roads stretched for hundreds of miles between stops, which sometimes gave me twelve straight hours of mental basketball on the Greyhound. When we got off the bus I couldn't wait to get on the court, and after a game I couldn't wait to get back to the Greyhound so I could review, compare, expand and dream up new material.

While Russell was a pro, he would grade his performance after each game, never giving himself a grade higher than a 65 on a scale of 100. He graded himself by replaying the game in his mind, using his visualization technique. Recalls Russell:

The grading process never took me long. I could do it in less than a minute in front of my locker, in the shower or in the car driving home. Although I usually forgot the score of a game before I'd even left the locker room, the plays themselves would stay in my mind until I made a conscious effort to forget them. I could grade myself by watching the game again in my head, using that mental camera I'd discovered back in high school on my trip to the Northwest.

What Russell did after each game is advocated by John Syer and Christopher Connolly, authors of Sporting Body Sporting Mind (1984). They attach a name to Russell's "mental camera" grading process, calling it instant replay. In their book Syer and Connolly define instant replay to be "a visualized review of an action you have just performed. It is generally used to imprint a perfect action more deeply in your sensory memory." Athletes who use visualization normally do it before the competition begins, but visualization, as Russell demonstrated, can be done after competition as well. If you ever do something really well during competition, Syer and Connolly suggest you go over that performance in your mind immediately afterwards. By doing so, you hopefully embed into your subconscious those steps which led to your success, allowing you to call them forth on some future occasion.

Doing the instant replay technique makes sense. After a workout, game, or other form of competition, coaches urge athletes to "cool down" by doing stretching exercises, jogging a lap, etc. If a physical cool-down is recommended, a mental cool-down should be equally advisable. In fact, separate time need not be allocated to each. While the athlete is stretching, jogging a lap, etc., he can be going over in his mind his just-completed performance.

Bill Russell, without encouragement from others, performed a mental cool-down after each game; he used "instant replay" to reinforce good plays he had made and correct mistakes he might have produced (and he did this instant replay technique in front of his locker, in the shower, or driving home in his car). Because he was never satisfied with less than perfection, and felt he never played the perfect game, Russell kept using his "mental camera" visualization process during all his playing days. The result the Celtics center obtained was not perfection, but it was unparalleled excellence.

Visualization, as I mentioned, is usually performed just before competition. Larry Mahan, six-time Pro Rodeo All Around Champion, used visualization in this manner while on the circuit, explaining: "I try to picture a ride in my mind before I get on the bull. Then I try to go by the picture." [19]

An article by Dick Douce on hypnosis for bodybuilders provides further evidence that athletes in virtually every sport can benefit from the use of mental disciplines. The article, appearing in Joe Weider's Muscle magazine, contains pictures of two champion professional bodybuilders, Bill

Grant and Roy Callender. The captions for the pictures read: 1) "Bill Grant can use hypnosis as a way to relax and build confidence before a contest," and 2) —"Roy Callender is now keen on using hypnosis as a means of breaking down pre-workout inhibitions."[20] Regrettably, Douce provides no additional details in the article about their utilization of hypnosis. It is likely, however, that many other professional bodybuilders regularly employ hypnosis and related mental training strategies. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest bodybuilder of the 1970s, told Michael Murphy and Rhea White, authors of The Psychic Side of Sports (1978), that he used visualization to speed the development of his muscles. "A pump when I see the muscle I want," contended Schwarzenegger, "is worth ten with my mind drifting." Frank Zane, a three-time Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe, echoes Schwarzenegger's sentiments. In an Esquire magazine article, Zane noted that "it works to practice visualization," and went on to describe how he incorporates the technique into his training program:

Take time during the day, preferably when you're relaxing, and visualize your body the way you want it to be. And there are also other times to visualize. After workouts, I experience soreness, so I direct my mind to the area that's sore and I do a whole visualization practice on that particular area. [21]

Jack Heise of self-hypnosis for golfers fame (see Amateur Athletes chapter) also wrote a book on self-hypnosis for bowlers, titled, How You Can Bowl Better Using Self-Hypnosis, In the back of this book (the 1976 edition) Heise republishes an article which appeared in The Cleveland Kegler (October 23, 1962)—"Thompson Romps to City Match Title." It turns out that Al Thompson, a local pro bowler, had read Heise's book on self-hypnosis for bowlers (first edition). He applied Heise's ideas, and proceeded to win an important Cleveland tournament. Stated Thompson about Heise's book, "I'll tell you one thing, it helped me and it helped me plenty. Self-hypnosis helps me relax. I am no longer tense or nervous. I am at ease and feel peaceful all over." It is not surprising that principles of self-hypnosis brought Thompson success, as they tend to do this in any other activity requiring concentration. (I loaned my copy of Heise's book to a neighbor, Mrs. Faye Acton, an active bowler in league play. She read the book, tried out some of the things in it, and sure enough, her concentration improved, along with her score.)

Jay Robinson used self-hypnosis to win the $100,000 AMF Grand Prix of Bowling championship. This occurred in December, 1977, and was reported in the Bulletin of the Association to Advance Ethical Hypnosis (1978, No. 79). As stated in the Bulletin, Robinson "used self-hypnosis prior to the start of the final round in the nationally-televised championship game," in which he upset top-seeded Mark Roth. Said Robinson, "About two hours before bowling, I put myself in a trance to put good thoughts in my mind. It definitely helped me today. I was able to block out everything but my bowling. My concentration was never better. Without using self-hypnosis, I doubt that I would have won." We can assume that Robinson had practiced self-hypnosis on other occasions, given his remark that "it definitely helped me today," and it's easy to imagine that the Grand Prix victory encouraged him to continue using the mental training strategy for his bowling.

Many professional golfers, due to the intense level of concentration their sport demands, have turned to hypnosis and imagery for assistance. Arthur Ellen relates in his book, The Intimate Casebook of a Hypnotist, that he hypnotized the late Tony Lema several times. After these sessions with Ellen, Lema started winning more tournaments than ever before. Ellen also states that a substantial number of professional golfers use hypnosis—apparently they have come to Ellen for help—but that he is not free to reveal their identities. Along this vein, Dr. Kroger, in his Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, reports the case history of "a leading professional golfer" to whom he taught self-hypnosis. Dr. Kroger withholds the identity of this golfer, although he does not hesitate to mention that the golfer: 1) "tied the course record in the National Open," 2) "several months later, he won a coveted championship," and 3) "he attributed a good measure of his success to the hypnotic conditioning." One appreciates Dr. Kroger's desire to preserve the confiden-

tiality of the doctor-client relationship. Verification, of course, is not possible. The same situation that applied to the "free pistol champion," described by Naruse in his scientific paper (see Introduction), applies here. Lacking such critical information as the golfer's name, we simply assume, without much enthusiasm, that the story is true, and move on to more tangible reports.