Athlete's Mental Gym
Mental Skill: Preview Performance To Prepare For the Unexpected
When competing, some athletes feel unprepared, as if they are experiencing the situation for the first time. While they know how to execute basic skills, they have difficulty reading situations in competition which can make them feel stressed and worried. One solution is to make sure everything about a competition feels very familiar. One technique you can use to totally prepare your mind and body for competition is call previewing.
Previewing can be a powerful method to prepare for games by imagining the ideal performance you want to create. You can also imagine yourself in a game situation you fear and visualize yourself effectively responding to that situation. In short, you need to imagine all of the details of the performance you want to create so, when you are in competition, everything seems familiar.
Guide To Good Previewing
- Get your body into a relaxed position with only soft music playing
- First, start focusing on your breathing
- Breath slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth
- Breath deeply a few times to fill up your lungs, and fully exhale
- Start visualizing the performance you want to create for a game or match
- Visualize the full game experience from the time you are getting dressed for competition to the time you arrive back home
- Use all of your senses when you visualize the performance: What do you see, hear, touch, smell and taste?
- By visualizing with all of your senses, you totally immerse yourself into every aspect of the performance you want to create
- You can visualize the perfect performance on one occasion during a week, and visualize yourself successfully responding to an error or difficult situation during another previewing session that same week
- Visualize before games and practices
- Visualize your ideal performance at least three times a week and on the day of a competition
