Mental preparation : Imagery

This article is the second one of a series on mental preparation. Allow me a brief come back on the introduction of the last article. My goal is to write an approach allowing the coach to improve some aspects of the mental preparation.

Here are a series of techniques that are part of the mental preparation:

The first article of this series focused on mental rehearsal. In this article, I write on IMAGERY. The goal of imagery is to improve, find back or maintain self confidence. This technique, as for mental rehearsal, sonsists in visualizing images of oneself in action. While mental rehearsal consists in visualising images of oneself at present time, imagery is composed of images of oneself that happened in the past. The curler selects a series of successful throws recently made and visualise these successful throws as often as possible.

When imagery consists in seeing throws and moreover the result of the successful throws; mental rehearsal care about execution of throws not on results.

Imagery technique is simple: as for mental rehearsal, imagery start by relaxing (take a few deep breaths for example) and visualise the selected throws one after the other, success after success,.

Imagery is very effective for a curler who has lost self confidence or who is beginning to doubt about oneself capacities. However, we have to be careful when using this technique. Believe my experience, the higher is the confidence, the bigger is the risk to fall apart when error occur.

I therefore suggest to utilise imagery when doubt comes in rather than keep on doing these exercises on a regular basis. Take note that imagery and mental rehearsal apply to every sports as well as in life in general.

Find a chart comparing the two mental preparation techniques describe in the two last articles:

IMAGERY

MENTAL REHEARSAL

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