Triathlete and N.E.T.

For most triathletes, the secret to increased performance probably isn’t more swimming, biking, running, or lifting. It probably isn’t better eating and drinking or sleeping either.  It’s thinking.

The psychological component of training, probably the one aspect that can benefit triathletes most, is surely the most overlooked. According to several experts, if you train your brain a fraction as much as your braun, you’ll not only find this rigorous sport much more enjoyable and rewarding, but probably even end up with faster times.

The panelists here, including a former top-level competitor, a holistic medicine practitioner who has helped Olympic gold medalists, and a coach of topname triathletes, all agree that triathletes can reap great benefits by understanding their own motivations for making this sport a significant part of their lives.

The N.E.T.: Shedding Hangups

In early 1992, chiropractor Mike Greenberg positioned the hand of world-class hurdler Kevin Young straight out from the chest and told him to hold it tight. Then he pushed down on it as if it was the handle of a water pump and simultaneously peppered him with a rapid-fire sequence of questions.  “Can you be the greatest hurdler in the world?”  “Are you a winner?”  “Are you afraid of losing?”  With that last one, unlike the others, the arm collapsed as Greenberg pushed down. That was proof, said the doctor, that Young’s problem was in his head, not in his aching back. 

At the Barcelona Olympic Games that summer, even though Young hadn’t finished any better than fourth place in any major international track meet in four years, he ran the 400m intermediate hurdles in 46.78 seconds.  Not only did that time break the thought-to-be unassailable world record of the great Edwin Moses and establish Young as the greatest hurdler in the world, but it was a fulll second better than his previous PR, a quantum leap which made jaws hang open in awe throughout the track and field world.

Young credits it all to that day in Greenberg’s West Los Angeles office, when he was the subject of a holistic-medicine method known as NeuroEmotional Technique, or N.E.T.

N.E.T. promises to quickly identify and eliminate hang-ups standing in the way of an individual’s potential.  “N.E.T. works via a simple principle: the body doesn’t lie,” said Greenberg, one of 2,000 practioners (call 800-888-4NET for a list) of the technique invented by Scott Walker, a chiropractor in Encinitas, Callif.  “You experience a temporary moment of weakness when the subconcious is not congruent with the conscious.  In other words, you short-circuit your body to moment you unconsciously lie to yourself.”
The lying isn’t deliberate.  “The body doesn’t always completely process the traumas that happen to it,” said Greenberg.  “And over time these unresolved emotions get triggered (expressed) later in appropriate situations.  When this conditioned response happens again and again, it stops you from improving.  You get stuck.”

Young got stuck, Greenberg discovered, when he was traumatized by a disappointing fourth place finish at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.  After that, the hurdler so feard finishing no better than fourth he became too nervious to run a good race, much less win.  Bottom line: It seems that fear in general – and the common athletic fear of losing in particular – is a poor and even regressive motivator.

Greenberg first spotted Young’s fear in casual conversation when the latter’s eyes would shift downward when the subject of losing came up.  The arm-test protocol confirmed the psychological block.

“Kevin was sabatoging himself – dreaming of being number one, but inside feeling he was no better than fourth,” Greenberg said.  “I cleared him when I made him look me straight in the eyes and repeat, over and over until I couldn’t push his arm down, ‘I’m OK with losing.’”  The logic, he explained, is akin to being able to truly experience happiness only after you have experienced sadness.

Greenberg has used N.E.T. to discover that an obese woman couldn’t lose weight because she was subconsciously afraid she’d ruin her marriage by getting too much attention from men – something that had happened to her years earlier as a slim teenager.  He’s used it to cure “blocked” screenwriters who are somehow unable to finish scripts, authors who can’t get started on their books, and actors who are hamstrung by audition rejections.

His most satisfying contribution, however, has been setting up an N.E.T. protocol for people who performance gain can be quantified: athletes like sprinter Quincy Watts, who openly claims it helped him run the fastest unofficial quarter-mile leg in history – 43 flat – at the ’92 Olympic mile relay race.  No results are available yet for Brad Kearns, the N.E.T. grad from the triathlon world; Greenberg theorized last winter that the frequent Triathlete contributor had a fear of undertraining which has porbably led to the pro’s year of chronic overtraining, fatigue and sub-potential race finishes.

The principles underlying N.E.T. are simple enough, Greenberg said, that you could conceivably stand in front of the mirror and diagnose yourself by saying your goal out loud and checking whether you can do so without flinching.  He admitted that hypnosis might achieve the same effect, although it simply “papers over” the subconscious, rather than helping you face yoru problems directly.

Even if done by a trained pro, however, N.E.T. won’t work miracles.  “There’s no substitue for training,” Greenberg warned.  “You still have to do the work.  I can just clear you, but I can’t give you the skills.  If a 200-pounder who runs 10 miles a week comes in here and says he wants to run the marathon in 2:20, well, that’s not going to happen.  Subconsciously, he certainly won’t believe in himself – an dhis arm would weaken immediately when he’d say so.”

Whether it be in business, relationships or athletics, Greenberg believes N.E.T. can be beneficial not only to obvious underachievers, but also to anyone interested in going to a higher level.  “But common sense rules,” he concluded.  “If [five-time Ironman winner] Mark Allen came in, I’d have to ask, ‘If it’s not broke, why fix it?’”

This article was taken from pages 59-61 of the June 1995 edition of Triathlete Magazine