—
Many people want to improve their athletic skills and know that mental preparation is the way to do it. The newest improvement technique is sport visualization where athletes practice mental imagery to rehearse a perfect performance of their athletic skills and game. Countless sports champions have used visualization practice on a regular basis to reach the elite levels of championship success. Examples include Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Ted Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Phelps, Launi Meili, Gustav Weder, Muhammad Ali, Pele, Ronaldinho and countless Olympic champions. “If you practice this in the right way,” says Bodri, “eventually your body will start to conform to the pictures of perfection you rehearse in your mind.”
The reason mental imagery rehearsal works is that intensely visualizing mental images of sports activities and actually doing them activates similar neural pathways in the brain. Because the brain doesn’t distinguish between doing something and just thinking about doing it, mentally rehearsing an athletic skill can activate similar brain regions and neural pathways just as well as physical practice does. Refreshing that mental imagery over and over again is like carving a groove into the nervous system, enabling actions to become more automatic. Done consistently, visualizing perfect athletic actions in vivid detail can help anyone reliably “hard-wire” the mental blueprints of a great performance in the brain.
Athletes practice visualization because they want to condition their mind in such a way that the body automatically behaves the way they want it to without effort, which can take their performance to the next level of excellence. Among other things, athletes commonly use visualization efforts to improve specific skills such as timing an appropriate response of some type, hitting or catching a ball, making a turn, jumping better or running faster, or moving their hands, legs or other parts of their body in a certain ideal way particular to their sport. Mental imagery practice can also be used to master emotional issues such as boosting motivation, enhancing confidence, and reducing performance anxiety.
Many professional athletes now practice visualization to improve their game because it creates an advantage that adds an edge. If they did not think mental imagery worked then most elite athletes would not use it. Visualization practice helps prepare athletes for real competition and is a routine exercise that high school and college athletes should start using now in order to improve their sports performance.
It can and should constitute an active mental rehearsal of how people want things to be in terms of their real performance. By regularly creating certain vivid scenarios in their mind, which the brain interprets as a real situation, anyone can skillfully prepare themselves with the appropriate expert response when it comes time to make those experiences happen. The magic is that sports visualization practice can therefore take any athlete to the next level of competition because forming mental images in the mind will help construct mental and physiological schema that can be reproduced, almost automatically, in actual life.
Here are five of Bodri’s tips for sport visualization practice:
Tip #1 Practice in 20 minute sessions three days a week
Tip #2 Always vividly engage all senses in the visualization and include emotions to make it as real as possible
Tip #3 Practice both internal imagery and external imagery to see a perfect performance from inside looking outwards, and as if an external spectator was watching a video of the performance
Tip #4 During real time practice try to do things perfectly just as envisioned, to synchronize the body and the brain’s mental images
Tip #5 Don’t forget to mentally rehearse the desired response in case of adverse conditions
The book, “Sport Visualization for the Elite Athlete: Build Mental Imagery Skills to Enhance Athletic Performance” is available for purchase on Amazon in either print or e-book format.
About the author
A former Wall Street analyst, Bill Bodri is an author of several books on self-improvement, including how to manage your finances. He developed his special interest in mental imagery practice after reading about prisoners of war or other captives who would practice playing such sports as golf, a musical instrument or chess in their head, and upon return to the regular world would surpass their previous skills before incarceration.
Bill Bodri’s other books are available on Amazon and also at https://www.bookdepository.com/author/Bill-Bodri
Bill Bodri Availability: New York City, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone
Contact: Bill Bodri, (718) 539-2811
Release ID: 363748