Build It, Use It and It Will Come

As children we reveal considerable imagery capabilities but are quickly taught to neglect this form of thinking so that we can develop our analytic and language capabilities. Fortunately, although we are taught not to have imaginary friends and dream, we can still utilize that area of our brain. It’s a human capacity that few athletes have developed to its potential and most people have chose not to even though there are numerous benefits.

Imagery part II-building it

1. Recreate a past personal experience: think back to a time when you were in your zone during practice or competition. Recreate that experience by writing down as much as you can remember, using as many of your senses as possible.
2. Create a positive experience. How would you like the situation to look? What would you like the outcome to be (versus what usually happens)? Write it like you are writing a story using as many of your senses as possible.
3. Create a positive experience you have not had: if you can’t remember having your own past positive experience, you can use someone else’s. Most of us know someone in our sport we think of as a role model or if not a role model, we know of someone who is an icon in the sport. Think about what makes that person a role model or an icon. If you have a DVD or can find one of this person participating in the sport, watch it and think about what makes this person a role model or an icon. Write all of those elements down on a piece of paper again including as many of the senses as possible.

Write a story about your own past, positive experience, the experience you want to have or the person you see as a role model or icon. As you think about the situation or experience include as much about it as you can. Include all of the senses to make your imagine as vivid as possible.

When to use imagery

1. Use snippets during your day whenever you have a moment, particularly in times when you are thinking about your practice or competition, more particularly when you are having anxiety or thinking negatively about your tennis practice or competition.
2. Incorporate imagery into your dreams. Think about your imagery piece prior to going to sleep. This will help it to remain fresh in your mind and allow your sub consciousness to carry it over into your dream state.
3. Use imagery as part of a pre-practice/pre-performance routine. A pre-practice/pre-performance routine is a way of positively structuring your experience before training and competition to keep you focused on the task at hand.

The benefits of imagery

As an athlete, imagery can be beneficial in a variety of ways.

1. Imagery can improve concentration. If you are focused on what you want to do and how you want to do it, then you won’t be focused on unrelated elements of your performance that detract or distract from your performance.
2. Imagery can build confidence. Although your coach might be yelling at you because your volley was not what he wanted it to be, you can still feel good about your performance by visualizing yourself taking control and maintaining confidence about your volley and the rest of your game.
3. Imagery can help control emotional responses. If you are feeling lethargic before practice or games, imagery can get you pumped up. On the other hand if you are feeling uptight or anxious imagery can help reduce those symptoms.
4. Imagery can help you acquire or practice sports skills. You can practice skills to fine tune them or realize weaknesses and then visualize correcting them. Research clearly concludes that combined with physical practice imagery can produce superior skill learning.
5. Imagery can help you cope with pain or injury. Imagining the healing of an injured area can speed recovery. Using imagery to practice drills help keep skills from deteriorating during injury.
6. Imagery can help solve problems. When an athlete is not performing at expected levels of performance, imagery can help that athlete imagine current performance and compare that to more successful past performances to find out where the problem is.

 Imagery takes practice

Everything we do in life takes development, support, and refinement. None of what we do is (really) automatic. Imagery takes practice. You need to develop your piece of imagery. You need to support it by giving it the time it deserves through patience and practice. This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of imagery because you will have to train yourself to stay focused enough to use it. You will also need to work on refining your piece of imagery by providing more vividness (using more senses) and better controllability (learning to manipulate your images so they do what you want them to).

Beginning tennis player

We had already worked on her focus. In the next step my tennis player built some imagery around her experience of watching others play. She wrote it in her own words and we refined it so that it made sense to her. We broke it down into bits and pieces of various parts of her game where she struggled and made it very specific and very clear. For example, she had struggled with her serve for several years but when she started imagining a great serve and practiced it in the same way the combination improved her serve so much that her first serve percentage went from 60% to 72% in a matter of 6 months.

I hope you are having a great week!

Dr. Michelle