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Does imagery in sport help? We tested it!


You may say I am a dreamer but using imagery in sport can be very useful for all kinds of situations relating to your sporting performance.


Athlete imagery involves developing a mental picture that imitates a real life sporting experience, using one or more of the senses.


Visual - what we see

Kinesthetic - the feeling of our body movement

Auditory - what we hear

Tactile - what we touch

Olfactory - what we smell


When you create an image, it can have a similar effect on our nervous system as the real event. If you have ever used a virtual reality headset, you will appreciate the power virtual images can have on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. It is difficult for our brains to disassociate what is fake and what is real when dealing with images - see an example in the video below.



Imagery in sport can be used to help regulate your emotions (e.g. reduce anxiety or increase confidence), or perhaps to rehearse a skill. The research into the effect of imagery in sport has highlighted a number of interesting observations, including:


- If there are two groups doing no physical practise, the group who does mental practise will outperform a group that does no practise at all. *this would be an effective strategy for an injured athlete.


- Imagery in sport has shown to help close the gap between differences in ones performance from practise to competition. *E.g. an athlete may have a drop in performance in competition compared to practice due to negative effects of anxiety.


- It is suggested that a mixture of physical and mental practise will produce the best results.


My Experiment

When looking at sport psychology concepts it's always fun to investigate these concepts within a practical environment. Therefore, to introduce a group of 24 golfers to imagery in sport, I staged a golf putting experiment.


Initial Test

All golfers completed an initial test where they had 5 attempts each to hole a putt from 5 feet with a left-handed putter (all students were right handed).


The golfers were then split randomly into 3 even groups and told to spend the next 20 minutes doing the following:


Practise Group: physically practised holing putts from 5 feet with the left handed putter.


Imagery Group: imagining the action of holing putts from 5 feet with a left handed putter.


Control Group: practising with their normal right hand putters.


After the 20 minutes, the golfers were re-tested, again having 5 attempts each to hole a putt from 5 feet with a left handed putter.


Results

Putts Holed

Discussion

This exercise was merely to introduce athletes to the concept of imagery in sport, and not intended to be anything like the kind of robust research that is completed within the field of psychology.


The practise group improved the most which you would expect (even with the little amount of practise conducted). The imagery group also improved but the control group did not. These results would support the notion that the use of imagery in sport may have a positive effect on improving performance. Something to think about!


With such small margins between success and failure in sport, all athletes should be interested in any potential marginal gains. There will be individual differences in your imagery ability and also its impact on your performance, but if there is a gain to be had - grab it. Use the Sport Imagery Ability Questionnaire to check your imagery capability.


The more you practice your imagery skills the easier and better you become. We would recommend starting off from as little as 2 minutes a time, and work your way up to a maximum of 10-15 minutes.

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