Imagery In Sports

Imagery is a powerful tool in the psychologist’s repertoire of skills to teach to their client. It can be especially useful to an athlete that is working with a sports psychologist. Imagery can reduce anxiety, prepare the athlete for competition, improve concentration, enhance motivation, build confidence, cope with pain and adversity, improve problem solving skills, give an athlete mental strategies to handle different situations that could come up during a high pressure competition. (Weinberg & Gould, 2015) Imagery can be used to reach a state of flow during game play, and enhance performance once flow is achieved. Imagery can also be used to manipulate the physiological and psychological state of a player. There are occasions a player needs

(Pineschi & Di Pietro, 2013) Once the level of arousal necessary for the sport has been determined, the athlete will need to identify their natural state of anxiety to and determine their Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning – IZOF. If they have high trait anxiety, meaning they feel anxiety easily and often, they will need to use relaxation techniques especially if they play a sport that requires fine motor control. If they are a naturally relaxed person they will need to use psyching up techniques especially if they play a very physically powerful sport, or need a lot of strength such as a power lifter. The relaxation techniques described in the article are ones that put the control in the hands of the athlete, they can use these methods to reduce tension in their muscles and psychological anxiety at their own will. Common principles focused on include lowering muscle tone, focusing on the present moment and being mindful, and relaxed breathing techniques. Breathing is the only physiological function that can be directly controlled. For relaxation purposes it is most effective to use

This study was done by Stefan Koehn of Liverpool Hope University, Tony Morris of Victoria University, and Anthony P. Watt of Victoria University. They worked with four junior tennis players in Australia. All players were nationally ranked before their six week study, and all showed improvements in their game and ranking after using imagery. Nine dimensions of flow have been identified and are experienced when an athlete is performing at their highest level. Flow occurs when there is a challenge-skill balance, action awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, time transformation, and autotelic experience. In this particular study, they used imagery to enhance certain dimensions, the players were provided an imagery script that focused on challenge-skill balance, clear goals, concentration on task, and sense of control. (Koehn, Morris, & Watt, 2014) The athletes completed at least twelve imagery sessions over the course of the six week study, and each session lasted between ten to sixteen minutes. The more they used the imagery, the more vivid and effective it became. Imagery increased the confidence of the participants and aided them in their