Benefits of Visualization
Using Visualization to Improve Physical Performance
I used to be a competitive dancer when I was little. From the ages of 7 to 17 I would spend more time at the dance studio than in school or at home with my family. As I got older, it became harder to navigate all of my responsibilities - I simply didn’t have the time to do all of my schoolwork, my chores, practice my dance routines, and have some fun and relaxation with family and friends.
In order to fit everything in, I started imagining myself doing my dances while laying in bed at night. I found that if I just thought about the choreography, I could show up to class the next week and dance them all perfectly.
For a long time I was wildly impressed with myself. I patted myself on the back thinking that without any practice, I could perfect a dance routine. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school for sport and health psychology that I realized I was actually practicing a really important and incredible mental skill: visualization.
Visualization, otherwise known as mental imagery, is the process of creating a mental image or intention of what you want to happen or feel. Visualization impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. That means when using visualization, both your mind and your body become trained to actually perform the skill imagined.
When should you utilize visualization? When you want to:
Build on your strengths and reduce your weaknesses
Improve performance anxiety
Increase confidence, motivation, and focus
Set and achieve short-term and long-term goals
Maintain your skills/abilities when not practicing often, such as in between sports seasons or when injured
Heal from an injury or improve chronic pain/illness symptoms
Research has found that both physical and psychological reactions in certain situations can be improved with visualization. Such repeated imagery can build both experience and confidence in an individual’s ability to perform certain skills under pressure, or in a variety of possible situations.
Need some proof? Here it is:
One sport study in particular proved that the volleyball players that visualized making a perfect pass before entering a serve receive drill actually performed better than the group that didn’t visualize. Another showed that novices that visualized the new skill they had been taught improved at that skill faster than those who did not. Finally, elite athletes like Jack Nicklaus, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Misty May-Trainor and Kerry Walsh have all reported using visualization regularly to improve their skills.
So, how do I practice visualization?
When practicing visualization, it’s important to consider using the PETTLEP model. PETTLEP stands for physical, environmental, task, timing, learning, emotion, and perspective:
Physical – imagine all the relevant physical characteristics you can, including anything you see, hear, feel, taste, or smell.
Environment – to the best of your ability, imagine as much detail about the environment where the performance or task will take place.
Task – try to imagine as many details as you can about doing the task or performance. If you’re using visualization to practice a new skill, make sure that skill isn’t too advanced or too easy for you.
Timing – if possible, imagine doing the task or performance in ‘real time.’ If that’s not possible, try ‘slow motion’ imagery to perfect more difficult aspects of a skill or speed up the imagery if the task or performance requires a lot of time commitment (i.e. I don’t expect you to visualize yourself running an entire multi-hour long marathon!)
Learning – Make sure that whatever you are visualizing changes as your experience level changes.
Emotion – feel whatever emotions that would be felt in the physical situation. However, try to avoid debilitative emotions (e.g. fear, panic) and instead focus on feelings of confidence, empowerment, pride, and joy.
Perspective – choose whether you will see yourself in the first person (through your own eyes) or third person (like watching yourself on video). Either way works, it is just helpful to be consistent when practicing a task through visualization over and over again.
Once you have all of these pieces thought out, or written out, it’s time to close your eyes and start imagining! As with any skill, practice makes perfect so don’t expect to nail your visualization the first time around, and don’t expect to visualize something one time and have it drastically improve. Give yourself enough time before a task or performance to consistently mentally practice.
I’m guessing you might have some questions, so feel free to reach out via our contact us page to learn how to incorporate visualization into your mental skills toolkit!