Visualization

[Jake Di Vita]

Learn about visualization and how it can improve your performance in any sport that you participate in. Some examples given here are in basketball. Learn more...

[ Q ] Kelly, is visualization a useful addition to a training program?

A: Yes, I am a big believer in visualization but I am not a big believer in over complication of the process. You don't need to do anything fancy to visualize. This means a hypnotherapist, fancy hats, music, headsets, and all that other stuff isn't necessary.

Visualization

Honestly, people visualize all the time if you let them. For example, take a typical teenage sport addict and take him away from his sport for 2 weeks and he'll sit around daydreaming of it. That's visualization!

Football players spend the majority of the year sitting around visualizing getting out there and hitting somebody. It's not like you can go find a tackle football game every day of the year like with basketball.

Is It Effective?

POW Golfer:

As for effectiveness, there was a good ol' boy who got shipped off to Vietnam and he was an avid golfer. He got captured, became a POW and stayed in captivity in a small cell for something like 10 years. When he was eventually saved and released, the first thing he did when he got home was go out and play a round of golf.

Despite not touching a club in 10 years he played his best round of golf ever! People asked him how he did it. He replied that one way he dealt with the negatives of his situation during those 10 years was by sitting in his cell and playing the game of golf in his mind every day. He'd go through every course he ever played and play out every detail.

The results became obvious when he was finally able to tee it up for real. All his body had to do was carry out what the mind already knew how to do.

Free Throw Experiment:

There was another experiment where 2 groups of basketball players shot free throws. At the beginning of the experiment both groups had equal free throw shooting ability.

One group shot free throws something like 3 days per week for an hour and the other group did no actual shooting but were required to get together and "think" about shooting free throws three times a week for an hour.

At the end of the study the group who sat around thinking about shooting free throws were able to shoot better than the ones who actually did the practice.

Bottom line: Visualization works.

How To Incorporate Visualization

All you need to do is sit back and relax and "daydream" while you imagine yourself, in first person perspective, playing your sport or executing your moves or doing whatever it is that you do or need to improve upon. The key thing is to do everything perfectly as you play the game in your mind.

Repeat this whenever you feel like it. Initially, there will be a tendency to view things from 3rd person perspective, like a movie. You want to eliminate the movie and visualize things through your own eyes.

If You Can See It, You Can Do It:

The benefit of visualization or mental imagery is the same learning processes that are activated when you actually play your sport are activated when you visualize yourself playing your sport so there really is no difference. If you can "see it", you can "do it". However, the more of your senses that you engage when you visualize, the deeper the process becomes implanted in your subconscious mind.

The main difference between actually engaging in an activity and visualizing the activity is in the intensity of the stimulation, which is why it's important to engage multiple senses when you visualize.

The key things to focus in on are:

1. Feel

2. Sight

3. Sound

4. Appearance

How do things feel? What do you see? And what do you hear?

Improving Bad Habits

One thing that visualization can do very well is alter ingrained behaviors. Let's say you have a bad habit in your game that you want to change and you're having trouble getting around certain roadblocks. As with any repetitive pattern neural pathways are created in your brain; changing these pathways can be difficult.

For example, whenever you get in your car and drive somewhere "one" time you have to pay attention. Drive the same path again and you're able to do it with greater ease until it becomes unconscious or becomes a well worn path or new habit. That's why you can often drive from point A to point b and say "Oh my god, we're here!".

You've trained your subconscious on how to drive to this destination without thought. Once this is permanently engaged in your subconscious, you no longer have to give your brain the instructions - your subconscious takes it over automatically.

Now, when you're trying to change bad habits or improve skills you actually have to make a new neural pathway to erase the old one - a new habit or a new way of carrying out your skills. You have to establish the new pattern. The way you do that is by creating psychological intensity and/or freshness so that you over-ride the old action in your mind (not as easy as you might think).

Lots of practice would seem like a logical cure but the problem with that is two-fold. First, the mind and body both tend to get lazy when the same movements are done again and again and again in the same fashion and in the same mental and physiological states.

Practicing all the time makes you automatic at your competent skills, however, physiologically it isn't he same when you're in a competitive situation, so you're really not duplicating the intensity of the neural pathways that you use when you compete.

If you always make the same mistakes or do the same things in a competitive situation regardless of how much you practice, you've just identified your default status for that particular set of skills. To change them requires something else.

What I just described is why someone like Shaq can consistently hit 19 out of 20 in practice but can't hit the broad side of a barn during the game.

Try To Duplicate Competitive Situations:

One thing you can do to improve skills or change bad habits would be practicing the skills under the same physiological and mental conditions as in a game. I used to know a basketball coach who utilized what he called "pressure" basketball.

He'd stand behind his players with a big thick wooden paddle and one by one he'd have his players go up to the line and shoot 3 free throws. They'd have to make 2 out of 3 or they'd get a very hard swat on the rear. If they only made 1 out of 3 that was 2 hard swats on the rear.

The swats were hard enough to leave bruises and hurt enough to bring people to tears. I'm sure there are better alternatives than that, but I guarantee you it was more effective than running laps or whatever flavor of the month drill is popular nowadays.

This is because the pressure of the situation creates the same physiological conditions (sweaty palms, rapid heart rate etc.) as game type conditions. The threat of running laps or doing pushups does piss people off but it's more boring then anything and doesn't invoke the same stress response.

Same Old Boring Drag:

Before I talk about another alternative, the second reason why simply "practicing" isn't enough is because when most people do the same old thing day in and day out, not only is the "intensity" too low to over-ride the ingrained neural patterns, but they inherently feed themselves too much negative self talk.

Some examples of negative self talk include,

"I always do that."

"Oh, I messed up."

"Oh, I missed again."

"Don't do this, don't do that."

etc. etc. etc...

When you get away from traditional sporting practice for a while and focus more on visualization you're able to remove many of the negative messages sent to your brain and you don't have these negative affirmations competing in your mind.

After a period of "refreshment", you come back and say "Oh, this is fun again!" Chocolate cake probably wouldn't taste too good if you ate it every single day but every once in a while it tastes excellent. Same principles here.

The more excited you are to acquire skills the better your results will be when you do. The more excited you are mentally when you get out to practice, the more likely you will pick up skills that you can take with you.

If it's just the same old boring drag you're wasting your time. Remember, the body picks up skills better whenever the mind is stimulated.

Taper The Physical & Up The Mental

So in short, if you're bored with your primary activity and not making the skill improvements that you'd like, lower the volume of your actual practice and replace some of it with visualization for a period of time. Back when I was a teen I used to practice basketball an average of 4-6 hours per day most of the year.

Despite all those hours on the court, there were plenty of times where I'd regress over the months instead of improve over the months.

The interesting thing is that every summer I'd have to take a 2 week vacation during which I had no access to basketball. Being unable to play; I'd sit around and daydream about playing basketball all the time.

Lo and behold at the end of those 2 weeks I'd get home and immediately get on the court. It would take a couple of hours to shake off the rust, but every single time I'd find that my skills had actually improved and I'd always pick up several new skills that I didn't have before. Hopefully I've explained why.

Real World Examples

Now let me give a real world example on how I'd incorporate visualization into a skill building routine. Let's take 2 groups of people. One group practices their sport every day for 2 hours 7 days per week for 7 weeks straight.

The other group practices every day for 2 hours for 3 weeks straight, then takes an entire week off in which visualization is focused on, followed by another 3 weeks of 2 hours practice.

Group I

* 2 hours practice per day, 7 weeks straight.

Group II

* 2 hours practice per day, 3 weeks straight.

* 1 week: 2x per week, very brief actual practice; 3x per week, one hour visualization.

* 2 hours per day, 3 weeks straight.

Group II will blow away group I when it comes to performance and skill acquisition because not only will their bodies and minds be "fresh" and receptive, they'll have given their brain new instructions during the tapering period which they can then implement when they go back to practicing hard core.

Conclusion

Just remember to kick back and play your sport in your mind, using the actual feelings, sights, and sounds. There is no right or wrong way to do it but the more you do it the better you get.

Link (w/fs)

[AWLAZS]

Hey Thanks Jake. That is some good information.

[Flexmoney]

POW golfer...that was guy that took over the AMU and Lanny Bassham got "stuck" sitting next to him on a plane ride, IIRC. Fantastic story. I think Anderson has that on CD from Lanny...might be called freedom Ride...

It's a great listen on the ride to the match. Hell..anytime.

[Flexmoney]

Thanks for posting Jake, I'll be back to read more asap.

[Ramas]

Good stuff! Thanx.

[FranDoc]

POW golfer...that was guy that took over the AMU and Lanny Bassham got "stuck" sitting next to him on a plane ride, IIRC. Fantastic story. I think Anderson has that on CD from Lanny...might be called freedom Ride...

It's a great listen on the ride to the match. Hell..anytime.

"Fredom Flight": http://www.mentalmanagement.com/a_freedom_flight.html

[benos]

Great post - thanks Jake!

Back in the day, when I would drive around the country for months at a time shooting Area matches, I kept my skills sharp only by visualizing. And a little bit of dry-firing/drawing in the morning before the match.

As your skills set improves over the years - visualization should become an ever increasing part of your routine.

be

[Ramas]

I read Matt Cheely's post about gun bad griping at match some time ago. He corrected his grip by only thinking about perfect grip for few days. That is a good exsample of visualiztion

Edited March 19, 2008 by Ramas

[Skywalker]

Great stuff Jake, thanks for posting!

Although, what caught my eye is that I swear I read "article by Ally Bagget" ...

[spook]

Great post.

I love visualization. What I particularly like about it is how the visualization is a carbon copy of what you can do (it is your self image, for the Bassham readers). In my mind I will run into the same obstacles I run into at the range.

And the cool thing is that I can overcome stuff in my mind and go to the range and the problem will be gone. Just by thinking about it!

Great stuff!

[XRe]

Finally made it to this one... good read. As far as visualization goes... I don't know about the ladies, but every male on this forum has copious amounts of visualization experience - starting right around the early teens. Visualization strong enough to cause physiological responses.

The only thing I would note in the article is that Baggett mentions that you should only vis from a 1st person perspective. Through talking with various folks, and experimenting myself, 3rd person perspective visualization can be useful. Try as they might, some folks have a difficult time visualizing 1st person - for them, 3rd person is a far better alternative than no visualization or poor efforts at 1st person. Some people find that after some practice at 3rd person, 1st person vis becomes possible. For me, I use 3rd person occasionally to work on individual skills via visualization (I find it particularly helpful for movement skills, and the like - I can visualize myself moving in a certain way). For stage prep and such, I'm always 1st person.

Baggett's website is very interesting from a training perspective - especially stuff regarding speed, etc. I'll be hanging out there for a while, it seems...

[Michael Carlin]

Dave,

That is a very good distinction, one can benefit from both first and third person visualization. For some things, like arriving in the box setup with the tool you are using ready to go as the lead foot hits the box so as the trail foot leave the ground you engage the first target with a clean A, both perspectives maybe useful.

I can see the sights in first person, and I can place my lead foot in the box in first person, but while I can "feel" the trail foot leave the ground I can not "see it in first person". I can however switch views to third and see me firing the shot as the trail foot just clears the ground.

Sometimes I think people take visualization too literally and think it all imagery. But if you read Bassham and others in detail they all talk about every detail improving the experience and benefit.

So you can add to the "movie" the tactile experiences of the unweighting of the trail foot in my example above. You can feel the recoil impulse as well as smell the burning powder, see the muzzle flash, hear the action work, track to the next target eyes first, see the front sight snap into clarity, and feel the finger pressing the trigger.

Visualization should be a total tactile experience.

Have I got this right?

Edited March 22, 2008 by Michael Carlin

[Jake Di Vita]

For me the first person is better because it's easier to translate how I feel when I'm doing the activity.

[benos]

The only thing I would note in the article is that Baggett mentions that you should only vis from a 1st person perspective. Through talking with various folks, and experimenting myself, 3rd person perspective visualization can be useful. Try as they might, some folks have a difficult time visualizing 1st person - for them, 3rd person is a far better alternative than no visualization or poor efforts at 1st person. Some people find that after some practice at 3rd person, 1st person vis becomes possible.

I also heard that from various professional coaches and trainers. I visualized in both 1st and 3rd person as well, depending on what I was rehearsing.

be

[el pres]

Wow, I've kept skipping this thread but that is awsome information. I have never tried

to correct a problem just by thinking about it instead just doing it over and over. This is something

I'm really going to try. What a great thread !!

[Flexmoney]

MC,

Fantastic post. I was going to suggest a similar point, but you are all over it. We tend to talk about things from a visual perspective. Probably because vision is so dominant. [but] We have plenty of sensors. They all collect information and are (can be) part of our awareness.

Perhaps the 1st person vs. 3rd person thing can be looked at as an internal vs. external points of "view".

[Michael Carlin]

Wow, I've kept skipping this thread but that is awsome information. I have never tried

to correct a problem just by thinking about it instead just doing it over and over. This is something

I'm really going to try. What a great thread !!

In order to improve one's performance you need to change what you are doing for what will work better.

Typically we watch someone come along who does something differently and when she or he beats us we start analyzing what they are doing. Then we try to emulate that. Often we find that we have a huge bias in "muscle memory" (muscles do not remember things, you brain does that!) to overcome.

The way nearly all of us learned to change technique is to practice the new technique until we have a "new muscle memory" to displace the old one.

There was a link to an Australian site www.personalbest.au

It is not functioning this morning. The Aussie Olympic program has a different approach which is termed Old Way - New Way.

What you do is identify exacty what you are doing, then exactly what the new way is. Then articulate exactly how the new way is superior to the old way.

Basically a coach and you go over your current technique. Recently someone asked for a critique of his reload here. It was looked at and several people commented that his gun was too low for an efficient reload.

So he raises his gun position during the reload.

He and his coach go over the change in gun location when the magazine is inserted into the mag well.

The shooter says "I am changing to this higher position so that I will have the targets within my peripheral vision while I watching the magazine enter the mag well. The will permit a smoother insertion and allow me to roll my support hand from mag insert to thumbs forward grip smoothly, setting up my sight picture. Because I am looking at the mag well when the magazine goes in, as I seat the mag and roll to the thumbs forward grip I can pick up the front sight sooner and I can also begin the trigger sooner. As my speed in picking up the front sight improves and the sight is aligned more quickly and I have started the trigger I can break the first shot after the reload on close targets even before my arms are extended to my normal firing position. This allows me to reload and fire .XX seconds faster."

He contrasts the two positions in slow execution alternating them, articulating what he sees, feels, hears etc when each way both old and new is executed, each time he does so he states the advantages of the new way. This is done with coach talking him into perfect execution the first few times and by the fifth time or so the shooter does it for himself.

But what about visualization? Yes exactly. Now when he visualizes both the old way and new way (and he does both) the subconcious learns to place its faith in the new way because it comes to KNOW that the new is better.

In this manner the new technique quickly and completely displaces the old one. Much fewer relapses under pressure to the old technique take place because the sub-concious accepts the new way and THE way.

When A. Popov the swimmer changed his freestyle stroke think about all the "muscle memory" that had to be overcome to make the new stroke "stick". When tired in the last 50 of a 400 for instance, pushing as hard as he could, any deterioration of his stroke would hurt his performance.

So a combination of visualization, live practice, and actual fast as one can execution is needed to ensure improvement.

Without drifting too far, I think we can say that visualization in both first and third persons (internal what you see when you do it, and external how others see your motion from the various angles) facilitates improvement in technique by allowing displacement of old ways with new ways.

Edited March 22, 2008 by Michael Carlin

[fastshooter03]

I visualize that I'm visualizing thinking about practicing

What can I say, I'm cheap AND lazy

Nick

[Turtle]

Good stuff for sure. Recently, we had a tryout for a slot to an upcoming counter-sniper school for some of the new guys on the team. I participated in the tryout for the fun of it and found out something interesting that relates to this topic. The tryout consisted of firing a 5 shot group, conducting a physical fitness test and then firing another 5 shot group. While on the run back to my shooting position, I visualized myself shooting and finishing the test. I think we had 3 minutes or so to get our shots off after reaching the position. I got my shots off well under time, without conscious thought or effort. To my surprise, the second group was half the size of the first, with all 5 shots going into one hole.

[benos]

Visualization should be a total tactile experience.

I like that one.

For a long time I've been trying to come up with a word that would summarize the qualities of

visualizing

imagining specific or general body feelings

a calm, sharp and determined mind-set

be

[Duane Thomas]

Transparent.

[Craigar45]

I would like to add some more to this thread- My wife works as a NLP therapist. I will spare you all of the details of NLP (that is what google is for), but a lot of it applies to sport quite easily. An important part of this therapy is determining what senses a person uses the most for memory... Some people are more visual, some more kinesthetic, among all the other senses. My wife happens to be extremely auditory, whereas I am kinesthetic with a strong visual side. The term "visualization" is actually a very poor choice especially considering someone who is not visual at all... Personally, I need to feel where I am spatially in the range, and feel my body moving through the stage.

As others have said, third person works for some- I would note that you might not be in third person at all, but more like third person-all-knowing. Some people dont "see" through their eyes in visualization at all! Identifying how you learn, and how you store your memories can help you make more effective visualizations. I am not the least bit auditory- I dont even "hear" the beep or the gunshot when I am visualizing.

C

[Flyin40]

Finally had the time to read this. Its a great read. When I started dryfiring this yr after my layoff I had a game plan. I cut down my actual practice reps by 80% and added visualization to my routine. Compared to my past routine where I was doing about 80% reps and 20% visualization, this yr I went to 80% visualization and 20% reps. Basically my routine still takes the same amount of time but I only do 20% of the reps I was doing from the last couple of yrs. By far my dryfire has improved dramatically and it has transferred over to match performance.

Another thing I have done is set up courses of fire with 1/3 scale cardboard targets I have made. I'll switch it up every couple of days. The idea is to visualize the course of fire in the order you want. Start by visualizing the course of fire. Once you can see every single target and the exact target spot you go through your exact routine as you do in a match. The goal is to shoot it the first time through snapping the gun to each target spot without any hesitation or going to the wrong target. At first it took me several runs to get it down. Once I had it down I would move to a new order in which to engage the targets. So right after you get that first course of fire done with no mistakes now pick a different order. Maybe like T1-3-5-7-9-8-6-4-2 or whatever order you want. You want to go through the same routine as in a match. Visualize it until you can see every target and every target spot for every shot. Once I have a clear picture of each target spot, the feel of snapping the gun to the next target spot with eyes leading I step up and engage the targets. This has worked great for me. I'm to the point that I can set up any array visualize the the array, have a clear picture and engage the targets on the first try. I can immediately change the order to just about anything, visualize it and nail it on the first time. I have no shoots, hardcover etc on all the targets. Repeat and repeat. I try to switch it up and make the order hard like engage a far target with a close one right in front of me but below the far target so I can see it as I transition off another target. With my old dryfire practice routine I haven't seen the progress in the last 2yrs that I have seen in the last 4 months.

Its amazing what visualization can do.

Flyin

Edited to add a link to a Saul Kirsch tip

Visualization

Edited May 11, 2008 by Flyin40