On Saturday, May 30, 2026, Simon Ehammer flew 8.51 meters in Götzis. Swiss national record. World record within a decathlon. The best long jump anywhere in the world this year, indoors or outdoors. And he did it inside a decathlon, after the 100 meters, on tired legs, with only three attempts instead of the usual six. His coach and mental trainer Adrian Brüngger stood at the edge of the runway and said into the camera: „There is a story behind this.” That story is a sports hypnosis story.
What really happened in Götzis on May 30
The Hypo Meeting in Götzis has been the most important combined events meet in the world for decades. Win there, and you sit in the international decathlon Olymp. Ehammer, 26 years old, from Appenzell, was already leading after the first four disciplines with 4,762 points. He won the long jump with a leap 6 centimeters further than his previous Swiss record from 2022. Sounds like a small step. It is everything. Ehammer is now the 30th athlete in history to break 8.50 meters, and the 6th European ever. The jump scored 1,194 decathlon points, the highest score ever recorded for a single discipline within a decathlon.
The interesting part: from exploit to plan
In the on-field interview with Swiss broadcaster SRF, Ehammer said the sentence that is the real long jump for the sports hypnosis world: „Four years ago, my 8.45 jump came as an exploit, the kind that overwhelms you. This time I could picture the 8.51, I have visualized a jump like this several times.” Read that sentence again. The day before the competition, Simon held a sports hypnosis session with Adrian on site in Götzis. In his final training, Simon and his coach had marked 8.50 in the sand. Beating that mark was the goal. Over the past years, Simon has not only mastered visualization in hypnosis, he has also learned to deliberately enter the emotional state that makes his top performances possible in the first place. Six centimeters separate the 2022 mark from the 2026 one. But four years of mental work separate „an exploit that overwhelms you” from „a jump I have visualized several times.” An exploit has turned into a predictable result. That is exactly what sports hypnosis at the elite level is. Not magic, but method. Reproducibility, not chance.
What Adrian Brüngger does with elite athletes
Adrian Brüngger, CEO of OMNI Hypnosis International and since 2007 head coach of Pfadi Winterthur Handball, also works with top wrestler Samuel Giger and has coached more than 500 athletes over recent years, including the Swiss ice hockey national team at the 2024 World Championship in Prague. With Ehammer, as the athlete has shared publicly with Swiss media, he holds a sports hypnosis session every six to eight weeks. Topics include technique visualization, building self-confidence, sharpening focus, recovery, pain management, releasing the negative associations linked to negative emotions, and anchoring positive emotions in their place. In spring 2021 Ehammer hit a wall in the pole vault. His coach sent him to Brüngger. One session later the block was gone and Ehammer was back in competition mode. About the work, Ehammer told a Swiss newspaper: „It feels good and gives me mental relief.”
This mix of regular mental architecture and targeted crisis intervention is what makes the difference at the top of the sport. Not the one spectacular session before the big event, but the quiet, continuous work over years. That work materialized in Götzis as 8.51 meters.
What the science says about visualization
Mentally rehearsing a movement activates the same motor regions in the brain as actually performing it. Research from the University of Zurich (de Matos and colleagues, 2023, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; 2024, Scientific Reports) further shows that standardized hypnotic states produce measurable changes in functional brain networks and even in neurochemistry. In deep hypnosis, subjects report deep relaxation combined with high alertness and focus. That state is the training camp for elite-level visualization. The EEG study by Niedernhuber and colleagues (2024, Cortex) identifies a frontoparietal network that supports hypnotic states and is linked to attention control. If you have done the perfect jump several times in your mind, you have, in a measurable sense, already trained it.
What sets the OMNI Method apart
The roots of the OMNI Method trace back through Gerald F. Kein (who founded OMNI in 1979 in DeLand, Florida) to Dave Elman. Since 2015, OMNI Hypnosis International has been led from Switzerland by Hansruedi Wipf as President and Adrian Brüngger as CEO. OMNI has been ISO 9001 certified since 2015 and is widely seen as the gold standard for clinical hypnosis training in Europe. More than 20,000 certified graduates, more than 50 locations across 20 countries. What Adrian does with Ehammer, he teaches in the HypnoSport® program to therapists, coaches, and sports psychologists. Method instead of magic. Repeatability instead of secrecy.
What you can do next
For athletes and coaches, the lesson is simple. Sports hypnosis is not a one-off trick before the event. It is a practice spread over weeks and months. If you are looking for a therapist, you will find certified OMNI hypnotherapists across Europe and beyond through the directory at hypnosis.info. For daily life, one anchor that works: three minutes before sleep, mentally rehearse the next day in detail, with image, breath, and body sense. Start small. Stay with it.
If you want to learn hypnosis rather than only experience it, the next step is OMNI hypnotherapy training. The program welcomes physicians, psychologists, coaches, sports psychologists, and serious career-changers. And from June 20 to 22, 2026, the International Hypnosis Congress in Switzerland opens its doors at the AXA Arena in Winterthur. Two days of live demos, workshops, and talks with Adrian Brüngger, Hansruedi Wipf, and the global OMNI community. If you want to hear Ehammer’s story first-hand, that may be the place to sit in the front row.
The takeaway
8.51 meters is a number. Years of mental work are a method. Sports hypnosis is the quiet, unspectacular tool that turns a lucky jump into a plan. If you want to understand the tool, OMNI shows you the way.
Sources
- SRF Sport (May 30, 2026): 8.51 meters, Ehammer’s standout jump in Götzis
- Tages-Anzeiger (May 30, 2026): Simon Ehammer sets long jump record within a decathlon
- Swiss Athletics (March 2026): Ehammer wins world indoor heptathlon gold with world record (Toruń, 6,670 points)
- Aargauer Zeitung: How hypnosis is conquering Swiss elite sports (Ehammer and Brüngger)
- de Matos, N. M. P. et al. (2023). Functional brain connectivity patterns associated with two hypnotic states. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17, 1286336. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1286336
- de Matos, N. M. P. et al. (2024). Neurochemical dynamics during two hypnotic states. Scientific Reports, 14, 80795. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80795-3
- Niedernhuber, M. et al. (2024). An interhemispheric frontoparietal network supports hypnotic states. Cortex, 177, 180-193.
- International Hypnosis Congress 2026, Winterthur, June 20-22
