In mental conditioning, mental imagery is used to enhance performance preparation. It is a technique employed to exercise the mind by mentally creating the environment of performance competition while performing the competitive tasks required in your sport. Mentally, you rehearse how you want to feel and how you want to perform while imagining the integration of your physical and mental conditioning within your mind. This is called head rehearsal. This technique is key for any athlete and I believe everyone employs this without realizing it. We all have dreamed about hitting that three as the time runs down or pitching in the world series with the bases loaded. These are examples of head rehearsal. The more we apply this technique, the higher our success rate is likely to be.
The Mind-Body Connection
Mental imagery is defined as physiologically creating neural patterns in your brain in the same manner as the performance of a physical action. Essentially, if you are lying in bed at night before competition and you practice mental imagery, you are imprinting the blueprint of your performance in your mind, further embedding those pathways and enhancing your capacity to achieve performance excellence. This is involved in the repetition of movements or actions. Mental thoughts act as a direct connection to performance.If you imagine yourself failing, you most likely will fail on the field. If you dominate with your mental imagery, you give yourself a chance to rehearse and will more than likely become a whole lot more successful.
We must remember that our actions speak louder than our words. If we know how to do this and know it will make us better but we don’t do it we are no better off. Knowledge- Action= nothing.
References
Cain, B. (2012). The mental conditioning manual: Your blueprint for excellence. United States: Peak Performance Publishing.
Cain, B. M., Simon, T., Sorge, J., & Penfeld-Cyr, J. (n.d.). So What, Next Pitch!: How To Play Your Best When It Means The Most.
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