The utility of muscle relaxation in sport

The energy of an athlete is as much psychic as physical. Knowing how to use conscience favorably means having additional reserves in competition. Sophrology offers a wide spectrum of intervention in the conditioning of athletes. It is based on fundamentals such as breathing, awareness of the body diagram and the objective reality (1) of the sophrologist. Once this framework has been set, the competitor will gradually develop adaptive capacities in line with his needs. He will avoid thinking in a magical way that it will be enough to close your eyes and make a positive speech to improve. Imagination is a precious tool. Before using it, to regulate pre-competitive stress, for example, it is better to have trained the body to relax. When the body is not sufficiently taken into account, the use of visualization will only serve to fuel the expectations of the athlete or the illusions of the mental trainer.

PROGRESSIVE RELAXATION

Edmund JACOBSON (1888-1983) was an American doctor. He has successfully demonstrated that muscle relaxation leads to mental relaxation. He developed his differential relaxation method to combat stress. According to him, it was the century’s evil! It was in his clinical physiology laboratory in Chicago that he developed his techniques. He was one of the first to encourage his patients to experiment exercising on a daily basis. For this, he provided training guides and later audio cassettes.

He partially validates his method based on the measurement of blood pressure to observe the progress of his patients. In his book “Know how to relax”, he puts forward the case of a surgeon who could no longer work. The man had a systolic pressure of 175 and a diastolic pressure of 113. Rest, leisure or physical activity were not enough to lower his blood pressure. In a few months of muscle relaxation practice, the measurements returned to standard (2) and the patient was able to resume his career. The interest of this relaxation method for athletes is the development of body awareness. In this context, he benefits from much more subtle internal and external perceptions which lead him to differentiate the sensations experienced and his emotions.

FROM RELAXATION TO VISUALIZATION

From an emotional point of view, awareness and identification of all information that comes from outside are determining factors in performance. This information stimulates the body surface through the skin and the sense organs. The body and the conscience of the individual must be able to contain all the stimuli to distinguish what will be useful, even when the affects caused by these stimuli are unpleasant or unfavorable. He thus has the capacity to be himself while having a real awareness of what surrounds him. Once the connection between body and mind has been consolidated, the individual will accept his emotions in such proportions that he will not allow himself to be parasitized by the issue of actions to be taken to “perform”.

From there, the sophrologist can propose the exploration of three-dimensionality (past, present and future). It seeks the memory of the person so that it brings back to the present the confidence acquired during past experiences. He can also work on technical skills. In sophrology, this is called “gestural sophro-correction”. It is also interesting to take as a pillar the athlete’s imagination so that he projects himself within realistic limits on a goal. In this way, he will be able to optimize his behavior in competition.

Sports sophrology is a relatively recent specialty. Rather than being interested in the result, it offers athletes the opportunity to refocus on what makes them unique, even outside of the events. She encourages him to get out of the famous “I must or I must” so that he adopts a dynamic posture, without being overwhelmed by his emotions. Its generalization in high-level sport dates from 1967. Raymond Abrezol is a dentist of Swiss nationality trained in Jungian psychoanalysis. He is a privileged collaborator of Alfonso Caycedo, the founder of sophrology. It is with him that the Rossignol ski factory finances the mental preparation of certain skiers of the Swiss national team without the federation having been informed. He began clandestine work, constrained by the positioning of the director of the ski teams. It was on the sly that he imposed the merits of the method with exceptional results, notably at the Olympic Games in Grenoble in 1968. He knew how to share his work and demonstrate the correlation between the emotional balance of a competitor and his results.

Laurent Favarel, Sophrologist

(1) Bracketing the sophrologist’s prejudices.

(2) Systolic pressure of 135 and diastolic pressure of 90.

Bibliography:

Didier Anzieu, The Self-Skin, Bordas 1985;

Raymond Abrezol, Sophrology and sports, Chiron 1992;

Edmund Jacobson, Know how to relax, Man’s editions 1980;

Pascal Gautier, Discover sophrology, Dunod 2008.