Many peak performance athletes use techniques like visualization, imagery, and self-hypnotism to improve their game performance. These techniques refer to the ability to recall information in physical forms and images, instead of words. Since the brain thinks in pictures, an athlete can utilize the mind's image processing capability to create positive and desired activities by imagining an events actions and engaging all five senses. In this way, an athlete can increase the amount of time their mind and body are "on the field" without incurring the additional stress of physically practicing. Over the next couple of weeks, I plan on writing a series of posts that discuss: why athlete's are increasingly using visualization, how they do it, what they do, and finally, when. Let's start with the why.
Why Visualize
In the field of sports psychology, visualization, guided imagery, mental rehearsal, meditation, and self-hypnosis use different techniques to accomplish positive mental reprogramming, but the underlying principals and concepts are the same. The fundamental concept is the process of creating a mental image with the intention to make a specific action happen and prepare the athlete to feel comfortable in the situation. Throughout the next couple of posts I am going to lump them together and use them interchangeably as techniques to improve an athletes performance through mental, as oppose to physical, practicing.
Visualization is creating a mental picture of something so that it can make a future event become clearer and provide the athlete with confidence to succeed. Seeing yourself already achieving your goal makes your brain believe that attaining that goal is possible. Focusing consistently on any given goal will enable you to manifest it far sooner than if you did not focus on it at all. Mental focus and preparation can bring the goal closer to you.
Visualization works because your brain stores images of your past experiences with instantaneous recall. An individual can "write" a new image into their memory that is indistinguishable to the brain whether it actually happened or is a desired behavior. Then when you are in a similar situation, the "implanted" image is recalled reinforcing the desired behavior.
Your Brain Thinks in Pictures
The brain thinks in pictures. The human eye captures an incredible amount of information with just one glance and relays it all to the brain that then translates that information into a form we 'see'. It would be more accurate to say we see with our brains than with our eyes. In a previous post, titled watch your thoughts, I described using mental pictures are used to improve your memory recall. In another post, titled confidence, I described how self-doubt could be cause by the fear of the unknown. By picturing yourself in a stressful situation, your mind removes the fear of the unknown and failure by recalling a successful similar event, and enables an athlete to approach the situation with confidence.
Let us try an experiment here to emphasize the point of mental pictures. I want you to remember the last time you say a cow standing behind a wooden fence grazing in a pasture. Is the cow's head up looking at you or down getting another bite of grass? Is the air still or a gentle breeze blowing? Take a quick pause and close your eyes. Do you see it?
Here is another example. Remember the last time you saw a ink pen on a table. What color was it? Red, blue, gold, ...? Is the point facing toward or away from you? Can you reach out an pick it up? Take a quick pause and close your eyes again. Got an image, right?
Okay, here is what is so interesting about the questions above. I asked "remember the last time ..." The correct answer is: you saw the words on this page. Yep, I can absolutely guarantee the last time you "saw a cow standing behind a wooden fence grazing in a pasture" or " saw a ink pen on a table" is in the words written in preceding paragraphs, but yet when you were asked to recall it from memory, your mind went to an image stored in your brain, not the words on this page.
Your brain is a big image storing device with a very quick recall. The key to influencing an athlete's performance is to use this image recall capability to drive your desired behaviors.
Your Subconscious Mind Drives Your Behavior
When something is embedded into your mind in clear detail, it becomes part of your reality. A mental image becomes clearer when more of your five senses are involved and activated. I will describe this in more detail in the how to visualize post.
In the remembering experiment above, the images that were recalled were stored somewhere in your long-term memory. Your subconscious memory knew where those images were stored and when your active memory (or conscious memory) requested the images, they were quickly recalled.
Interestingly, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between something that is real and something that was vividly imagined. Whatever picture (or goal) you consistently think about will drive your actions to create that exact picture. When you continually see yourself in possession of your goal, your subconscious mind will move you into actions that align with the mental image you hold.
For example, after a poor at-bat, the player reviews what he did and what he wants to do next time he comes to the plate. The player then "sees" himself making that adjustment in his mind's eye. He is storing the proper image (or better yet, overwriting the poor image in his mind with the positive image). If the player is practiced at visualization and has enough time to mentally review the image with the proper technique before their next at-bat, then the subconscious memory can recall the proper technique. This is how a player can quickly make adjustments from at-bat to at-bat and not continue to make the same mistake throughout a game. Clearly, the batter does not have time to visit the batting cage for tee practice. To make the adjustment, it must be practiced in the mind.
Summary
Visualizing is one of the most important techniques you will ever learn and one that is utilized by high performance athletes. When mental and physical practices are used together and the physical practice is done with the proper mechanics, the combined practices reinforce each other. They implant in your brain more self-consistent images that utilize more combined sensory input to create high definition images that are quickly and easily recalled.
A great advantage of visualization is that it can be used away from the competitive environment. In a way, your mind becomes the practice arena and it is always accessible. When done correctly, you can experience a perfect practice with no mistakes, mishandled balls, and in perfect form.
This leads to the question: how do I learn to visualize? This will be the topic of the next post.
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