Tip 12/03

Visualization to Success

What is Visualization?

Visualizing is the process whereby you imagine yourself in a specific environment or performing a specific activity. The images should have you performing these items very well and successfully. You should see yourself enjoying the activity and feeling satisfied with your performance. You should attempt to enter fully into the image with all your senses. See, hear, feel, touch, smell and perform as you would like to perform in real life.

What can Visualization be used for?

• To see success. Many practitioners “see” themselves achieving their goals on a regular basis, both performing skills at a high level and seeing the desired performance outcomes.
  
• To motivate. Before or during training sessions, calling up images of your goals for that session can serve a motivational purpose. It can vividly remind you of your objective, which can result in increased intensity in training.
  
• To perfect skills. Visualization is often used to facilitate the learning and refinement or skills or skill sequences. The best athletes “see” and “feel” themselves performing perfect skills, programs, routines, or plays on a very regular basis.
  
• To familiarize. Visualization can be effectively used to familiarize yourself with all kinds of things, such as a competition site, a military obstacle course, a complex play pattern or routine, a pre-competition plan, an event focus plan, a media interview plan, a refocusing plan, or the strategy you plan to follow.
  
• To set the stage for performance. Visualization is often an integral part of the pre-activity plan, which helps set the mental stage for a good performance. Athletes do a complete mental run through of the key elements of their performance. This helps draw out their desired pre-competition feelings and focus. It also helps keep negative thoughts from interfering with a positive pre-game focus.
  
• To refocus. Mental imagery can be useful in helping you to refocus when the need arises. For example, if a warm-up is feeling sluggish, imagery of a previous best performance or previous best event focus can help get things back on track. You can also use imagery as a means of refocusing within the event, by imagining what you should focus on and feeling that focus.

How do I Apply Visualization?

Golfing great Jack Nicklaus used mental imagery, In describing how he images his performance, he wrote:

“I never hit a shot even in practice without having a sharp in-focus picture of it in my head. It's like a color movie. First, I “see” the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I “see” the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there's a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality. Only at the end of this short private Hollywood spectacular do I select a club and step up to the ball”.

When should it be used?

To become highly proficient at the constructive use of imagery, you have to use it everyday, on your way to training, during training, after training, and in the evenings before sleeping. In every training session, before you execute any skill or combination of skills, first do it in imagery as perfectly and precisely as soon as possible. See, feel, and experience yourself moving through the actions in your mind as you would like them actually to unfold. In competitions, before the event starts, mentally recall the event focus plan, significant plays, skills, movements, reactions, or feelings that you want to carry into the event.

Who uses Visualization?

Some of the best Army/military elite forces, Olympic athletes, top businessmen, etc. use it as an inter-woven part of their daily training routine. It's results have been proven consistantly over time, within different training environments.