Why Do Athletes Use Imagery In Sport?

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Athletes, especially those competing at high levels, have indicated that their involvement in sport is both physically and mentally demanding, and the acquisition of performance skills alone is insufficient for them to advance in their respective sports. Important attributes that can discriminate champion or world record holding athletes from other elite athletes include their psychological characteristics and mental skills. One of the prevalent mental techniques, and essential pre-requisites of outstanding performance in the domain of sport, is imagery. Weinberg described in 2008 that imagery is the ability to use all the senses in order to create or recreate an experience in the mind.
Many well-known athletes such as Lebron James and Tiger …show more content…

Holmes and Collins’ PETTLEP model of imagery (2001) is based on theory and research findings from sport psychology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and aims to provide athletes with a set of guidelines to use imagery in a positive way.
PETTLEP model is a combination of seven components including, Physical, Environment, Task, Timing, Learning, Emotion and Perspective. Each letter in PETTLEP model is important for athletes to realize that visualizing physical activity in a comfortable situation, with special focus on a task to be achieved may bring positive change in the perspective and feelings of an athlete who is preparing for a competition.
Recently, the efficacy of this model has been supported in various sports, including long jump (Potter, Devonport, & Lane, 2005), golf (Smith et al., 2008), and strength tasks (Wakefield & Smith, 2011; Wright & Smith, 2009). Researchers have suggested that neglecting certain elements may affect performance facilitation (Ramsey, Cumming, Edwards, Williams, & running, 2010). Motor Imagery Integrative Model in Sport (MIIMS) is one of the recent imagery models introduced by Guillot and Collet in 2008. They underlined 11 key components, which need to be controlled by athletes to ensure the effectiveness of motor imagery including duration …show more content…

Although ignoring certain elements may impact performance facilitation (Ramsey et al., 2010), introducing all seven components of the PETTLEP model at one time may be impractical and can cause an overload for all the athletes (Wakefield & Smith, 2012). It is also important to note that new athletes may find it difficult to participate in imagery interventions during training. Therefore, the question of how athletes should include these components within an imagery training program remains

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