Imagery is a powerful tool for sports |07 September 2019

What is imagery?

Imagery is using your senses in sports to re-create or create an experience in the mind.

Research indicates that when an individual engages in vivid imagery his/her brain interprets these images as identical to the actual situation he/she wants to see in his/her mind. Every individual has the ability to see anything in his/her mind – good performance or bad. The power of imagery allows athletes to practice sports skills, strategies, and mental skills without physically being in training or competition environment.

Imagery can help to recover from an injury. An athlete can use imagery to visualise himself healing from his specific injury; and to visualise performing specific skills in their sport to stay “fresh”.

After reading these exercises below, try to practice them.

Practice makes perfect. Imagery is a skill, and, just like any skill that you perform in your sport, you will need to practice in order to be perfect.

Exercise one

Think back and choose a past performance in which you performed very well. Using all your senses, re-create that situation in your mind. See yourself as you were succeeding, hear the sounds involved, feel your body as you perform the movements and re-experience the positive emotions. Try to pick out the characteristics that make you perform so well (e.g. intense concentration, feelings of confidence, optimal arousal). After identifying these characteristics, try to determine why they were present in this situation. Think about the things you did in preparation for this particular event. What are the things that may have caused this great performance?

Repeat this exercise, imagining a situation in which you performed very poorly. Make sure you are very relaxed before practicing this image, as your mind will subconsciously resist your imagery attempts to re-create unpleasant thoughts, images and feelings.

Attempts to be more self-aware of how you reacted to different stimuli (e.g. coaches, opponents, officials, fear of failure, and needing approval from others) and how these thoughts and feelings may have interfered with your performance.

Exercise two

Choose a sport skill that you have trouble performing. Begin practicing the skill over and over. See yourself doing this from inside your body. If you make a mistake or perform the skill incorrectly, stop the image and repeat it, attempting to perform it perfectly every time. Re-create past experience in which you have not performed the skill well. Take careful notice of what you are doing wrong. Now imagine yourself performing the skill correctly. Focus on how your body feels as you go through different positions in performing the skill correctly. Build a perfect machine.

Imagery only works for athletes if they believe in it. It is a simple mental training technique that has shown to improve sport performance.

Any athlete who needs a little help to understand the above, please call this number 2512485.

Maurice Denys (Mr)                                                                                                              

Certified Mental Coach (CMC)

S.N.H.S.Dip (Sports Psychology)                                                  

S.N.H.S. Dip (Life coaching}