VISUALIZATION: PART 2

USING MENTAL REHEARSAL FOR ATHLETIC SUCCESS

Research on the use of mental rehearsal (picturing yourself executing moves in your mind just as you might actually do in a real practice or competition) has shown that athletes who do this routinely alongside their actual practice show stronger improvement than athletes who limit themeselves to the practice alone.

The following is an interesting example of how mental rehearsal can prove to be quite valuable, as related by former top college gymnast Cathy Johnson, during a period when she was unable to actually train due to an injury.

I had begun using visualization to learn and improve my skills ... to develop kinesthetic feelings associated with my movements ... and to create a competitive atmosphere in my workouts.

   
   I remember when I learned a new skill (a double-vault, one flip backwards and two turns going around my axis): I visualzed it and I worked in practice, and after some time I succeeded in making a perfect movement.  I knew it because of the wonderful feeling it gave me. Anyway, right after my first good double vault, I injured my wrist and had to rest for 2 weeks.  However, I remembered this wonderful kinesthetic feeling and during those two weeks I practiced the double vault in my mind, both waking and in my sleep.

   After two weeks, when my wrist had healed, I went back and said to my coach that I was going to do a double vault. His answer was, "No, no, there's no way you could do a double vault.  You have not even worked out for two weeks."

   I insisted and told him that I could do it, and then I went out and did a perfect one. He looked very surprised and said, "That must have been luck; you can't do that again." I told him that I could, and went back and did another one.

   My coach asked he how this was possible as I had not been practicing for two weeks, so I told him that I had been practicing in my mind. I had the feeling inside; I knew what this movement was supposed to be like, and that I could even practice it in bed.

   I used visualization to go through my routines every night. In my mental rehearsal, I figured out the problems, saw and felt the differences between good and bad performances, and rehearsed the ideal performance. I saw myself from an observer's point of view, like watching a movie ... and made corrections. Then my images became more internal.  Then, when I was actually in competition, I just remembered "trigger points" and the rest came by itself.

Also, I was able to say to myself in competitions: "I just have to do what I know I can do - just another repetition of what I have done many times every day."

I think I have developed the mental "strength" which I will benefit from in the future.  I have learned that if I have the right goals, good self-confidence, and a positive attitude - everything is possible.

(From: Mental Training in Gymnastics, Lars-Eric Unestahl, Editor, Veje Publications, 1983)

NOTE: Carol Johnson earned 2nd place in 2 events in the 1978 NCAA Nationals, a rather remarkable achievement considering that she has only one arm. A movie ("Lefty") was later made about her life and accomplishments by the Walt Disner Corporation.

VISUALIZATION: USING YOUR BRAIN FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

STRENGTHENING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN MIND AND BODY TO PLAY YOUR BEST

   A veteran basketball player who was honored as the Defensive Player of the Year in his league recently wrote me with the following question:

   “I would like to use visualization in my mental approach.  I have tried it before a bit but would like to improve on this and become more consistent with it.  Do I visualize myself doing shooting drills and such - or do I try to picture game situations and actual play? How often should I visualize? And for how long?”

ANSWER:

   First, keep in mind the goal of visualization – which is to recreate or imagine in your mind an actual experience you have had or might have on the court. The benefit of this experience is to improve and strengthen your physical skills by building stronger connections between the mind and the body … between the PHYSICAL and the MENTAL.

  Next, what is it that you want to improve?

  For example - a player who has been doing drills every day to get better in some part of his game could visualize doing the same drills in his mind.  As he does this, he could notice what is happening when he does this drill in his mind. Does it feel like it flows well or is there hesitation? Does it feel like he is getting it precisely or that he is struggling a bit.  After doing this a few times – he will get a good idea of WHAT HE NEEDS TO DO to get that move or play just right.

   The next step is what we call MASTERY – that is, doing the drill over and over in his mind with the proper moves, timing, and feel of his body.  There is research that athletes who use visualization in this way along with doing the drill itself in the gym perform better than players who ONLY do the drill itself without spending time using visualization.

   A player can also use visualization for actual games. One very effective thing a player could do the day before a game or the morning of the game is to picture certain situations that might come up and see himself making successful moves to score, rebound, pass, or defend in BEST FORM.

   He might use visualization with regard to MISTAKES made in previous games – seeing what he did wrong - then “rewinding the tape” to the moment just before he made the mistake, and then picture executing better moves this time. Doing this a few times can really help a player LEARN FROM HIS MISTAKES  (or missed shots, missed rebounds or missed defensive moves) and IMPROVE HIS LEVEL OF PLAY.

   Another use for visualization is to picture various situations where he wanted to work on his DECISION MAKING with the ball, seeing himself with the ball and picture himself making STRONG MOVES and FEELING CONFIDENT and IN CONTROL.

   The value of visualization might be seen in the fact that over 90% of Olympic athletes report routinely using visualization in their quest for an Olympic medal. Athletes who use visualization with consistency report improving such things as going strong to the hoop, feeling confident in being able to outplay their defender, and quickly finding their game rhythm when they are on the floor.

ARE YOU PAYING TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO YOUR STATS???

Rob, a 7-footer who is in his sophomore (2^nd) year had a great early-season game, netting 6 points ,12 rebounds and three blocked shots After limited playing time in his first year, this was a real boost to his confidence, and after the game he was very pleased with the results.

When I mentioned to him that his great game was, in my opinion, demonstrated in more than just the box-score stats – things like the number of shots he prevented apart from the three he blocked, and the great screens he set that kept the offense flowing and led to teammates scoring – he said “Yes, but the stats are what count. The stats are what are going to get me more playing time.”

It is likely that his coach, along with so many others in the profession, are driven by stats because, in the end, it is their win-loss record that will get them either a contract extension or let go.

Also, let's not forget that the very essence of sports is to have more points than the other team.

That being said, however, I believe that an over-emphasis on the stats can often be a destructive force.

I will just mention in passing, for example, how it often creates a me-first kind of thinking. I remember a friend of mine whose son was on his national team's U20 squad. She told me that one year after every game the players would first thing look to see their individual numbers, and cared more about that than how the team did as a whole. The impact on the team's overall performance that year was undeniable.

But what I really want to address here is how the heightened focus on stats can serve to stymie an athlete's best effort.

Every athletes performs at his optimal level with a certain amount of pressure on him. Knowing that a game is important can increase one's motivation. But when that optimal level of stress is exceeded, the player's performance will typically take a downward turn. So more often than not, when a player puts pressure on himself to achieve a certain level of stats, this will turn against him.

Related to this is the fact that the athlete will direct more focus to things over which he has no control rather than those factors which are under his control. In basketball, to give an example, the things a player can control include his decision making and shot selection, how he squares his body for the shot, if he is not too tight, how bold (rather than tentative) his moves are. But in the end, he can't control if the shot will actually go in (how giving is the rim, did an opponent have an opportunity to block it).

So the percentages lie with the player who is focused on the quality of his play rather than the results of his efforts. Ironically, by NOT worrying so much about the stats per se, he may end up with better stats.

As I mentioned before, not all things that contribute to the final score are even measured in the stats (like deflected shots).

I said to this young player that I really liked the comptitive intensity that he brought to the game and I thought that really played a part in the kind of results he obtained. But by overly focusing on the stats he might compromise the QUALITY of his play (i.e., that intensity and drive) and perhaps the enjoyment he seemed to be having out there.

It is hard to picture someone who is concerned with his stats having fun!!

Another player who plays professionally in Europe told me that because of expectations placed on him, he thought he should be getting 20 points and 10 assists per game. After a missed shot or two he would start to feel an additional burden when he thought to himself “I still have to make my 'quota' and now there is even less time on the clock for me to get the job done”

Ironically, it is by relaxing and letting go a bit of that expectation that he stands the best chance of actually producing those kind of stats.

Following a game in his rookie season when he wasn't shooting particularly well, New York Knicks player Kristaps Porzingis commented on how valuable it was for him that the coaching staff was allowing him to play through his mistakes, and the confidence this gave him on the court (and not having to worry about his stats).

After another game when the Spurs held off the Knicks in a 106-98 win, Patty Mills had 10 key points for the Spurs in the 4th quarter. Afterwards teammate Pau Gasol noted that Mills "is not the kind of player who thinks a lot about his stats."

There is another aspect to this undue emphasis on stats. Rob shared with me that after his game where he got 12 rebounds, the coach came down on one of the star players for the fact that he didn't have so many rebounds in that game. “His play in this game allowed me to get more rebounds,” Rob told me. Our coach is looking at individual effort rather than how we are playing as a team.

Finally, I think that such a coach may compromise the development of his players, and his team, by focusing exclusively on stats/results and not on the quality of play and learning that takes place. 

"BE MORE AGGRESSIVE OUT THERE!!"

In "The Mental Game of Baseball” authors Harvey Dorfman and Karl Kuehl note that while coaches are "often heard shouting such directions as ‘Hang tough!’ or ‘Be ready!’ or ‘Keep your eye on the ball’ they have seldom been able to tell their players HOW to be tough, or WHAT is required in order to be ready and see the ball well.  The players are left to their own devices … not quite sure what to do about it.” Some other coach favorites include "Stay focused" and "Be more aggressive out there!!"

Here are a  “Stay f

A D1 college basketball coach asked me to work with his team’s starting center, a promising 7-footer who the coach said, (surprise, surprise) needed to “be more aggressive.”

The player agreed with his coach’s assessment, but further told me that he generally saw aggressive play to be the kind of thuggish in-your-face style that led to throwing chairs and the like…. whereas he took great pride in having been raised to be the very OPPOSITE – decent and considerate of others.  So despite pressure from both the coach and the player himself to be more aggressive on the court, he was facing some obstacles to playing aggressively.

In part it just boiled down to the fact that he wasn’t sure exactly WHAT it was he should be doing differently – or doing more consistently – in order to be a more aggressive player. 

When the player and I discussed what playing more aggressively would be like for him in specific, behavioral terms, he came up with the following list of components:

1.  Making moves that were bolder (i.e. less tentative)
2.  Executing his plays as much as possible when being  defended, and having a back-up move ready to go if he  needed it
3.  Holding position

While there is a lot more that goes into aggressive play from a cognitive and emotional standpoint, narrowing the focus down to specific and observable behaviors gave the athlete both a clearer picture of WHERE he wanted to get to, and a roadmap for HOW to get there. Rather than thinking in terms of an inferred or abstract trait such as aggressiveness, the player learned to direct his attention toward these three target behaviors, and trying to bring them out as much as possible in practice, as well as through other off-court drills that we developed.  Other than the first 30 minutes of our work together, during the next 12 months the word “aggressive” was never used.

The following season, this athlete earned honors as his conference’s Player of the Year.  When we later sat down to explore the impact that our work had on his growth and performance, his first comment was “I am a more aggressive player.”

For Further Consideration

If you are looking to be a more aggressive player, try thinking of a game (or practice) where you think you played pretty aggressively, and write down a careful description of how you were playing that day, including thoughts you might have had going on in your mind, your mental outlook/frame of mind, your feelings that day regarding handling pressure, and the nature of the moves you were making that day. 

Look over what you have written, then underline the 2-3 most central elements.  By keeping these components in mind, you can help recapture how you were playing that day for future reference.

Too often coaches tell a player to “concentrate” more or “be more confident”, but unless the athlete has a good image of what he needs to do for this to occur (and it is the same image which the coach has) it often leaves the player frustrated as to how to get there.  If there is some aspect of your game where you coach is eager for you to improve and you’re not clear on what you need to do for this to happen, consider asking your coach for a behavioral example of what he wants you to be doing more, or differently.  This should help you get a more precise picture of the target you are aiming for.

And then there’s this…

One athlete I worked with told me his coach said to him that by the time you get to college, you should know how to get through the mental part of it by yourself.  While it is true that most athletes know there is a “mental part” to get through, the dozens of athletes that I have worked with have all found that discussing concrete strategies to master this part of the game can make all the difference.  The fact is that many coaches have never gotten that particular training.  So when they expect you to “tough it out” they just are giving you the best of their experience (See “REFLECTIONS ON MENTAL TOUGHNESS”, another article I have written)

     BUT THE ATHLETE WHO UNDERSTANDS THAT – IN THE END – HE OR SHE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR GROWTH AS AN ATHLETE AND IS WILLING AND INTERESTED TO SEEK OUT OTHER WAYS TO GAIN THESE SKILLS IS THE REAL WINNER.

  

© by 2007 by Dr. Mitch Smith.  All rights reserved

How are YOU feeling when you play?

HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTARY OFFERS UNIQUE MOTIVATION TO ATHLETES AND TEAMS

What can a film about Jews rounded up and herded into a concentration camp where they were treated worse than dogs teach athletes about what it takes to play your best?

There are dozens of films offering a tale of inspiration to athletes, coaches, and pretty much everybody – films like “Rudy” and “Hoosiers” and “Rocky.”  They show us what it takes to succeed – to make dreams come true.

Some films have less to do with success and more with sheer survival.  One such story was the New York Times Best Seller “Unbroken” (which Angelina Jolie later made into a film) about Olympic track star Louie Zamperini, a World War 2 soldier who, when captured and treated viciously by his Japanese captors, made use of the mental fortitude he cultivated as a youth to survive his ordeal physically and mentally.

But while the Zamperini’s extraordinary mental toughness differentiates him from 99% of the population, the lessons from another World War Two themed film speak to each of us, whatever the level of our mental resoluteness.

“Defiant Requiem," the initiative of American conductor Murry Sidlin, tells the story of a group of Czech Jews who stood up to their Nazi captors, though not by calling on stores of mental toughness acquired over the years.

This is a story about an entirely different kind of survival, and a different sort of victory.

Beginning in 1942, the Nazis rounded up Czech Jews as well as others from as far away as the Netherlands and Denmark and crowded them into the old garrison town of Terezin, just outside of Prague. Overnight, these Jews were stripped of 

their freedom, their possessions, earthly comforts, and their very dignity.  Forced to engage in harsh labor up to 14 hours every day and crammed hundreds to a barrack, some tried to hold on to their essential humanity by turning to the arts.

Among them was a man named Rafael Schächter, an accomplished young pianist and conductor, who took with him to the Terezin Camp a copy of the score of Verdi’s Requiem. He located a piano in a basement of one of the buildings on the grounds and then set upon recruiting individuals of varying musical ability to form a choir to perform the work for other inmates – to the dismay of the Jewish leaders in the camp eager to keep a low profile.  In the darkest of days, Schächter found a way to help a seemingly helpless group to fight back, and found the perfect vehicle to do so.

Indeed, few knew that the Latin words of this masterpiece spoke about the revenge that would be obtained in the future upon those doling out such brutality and how they would one day be called to answer for their barbarism. Through this musical piece a small band of Jews were able to sing to their Nazi tormentors what they dared not say.

While this moving film will speak eloquently to any audience, it offers a particularly unique message to athletes and teams who are asked - or ask of themselves - to give their most inspired effort in each and every competition.

For what could be more motivating than to consider the words of the  young conductor looking to get a masterful performance from his beleaguered choir. As one of the few surviving members of that choir had recalled: “Schächter used to say to us, ‘The MOST important thing is how you are feeling when you sing.’”

(photo of Schachter conducting his choir inside Terezin)

For Schächter, the gifted and devoted conductor, the critical thing was to immerse yourself in the experience – the words and the music – so as to obtain the most inspired performance.

As it turned out, Schächter’s words proved life-giving. 

For the beleaguered prisoners who crowded into a cold basement night after night, following a grueling 12-14 hour day of brutal forced labor, subsisting on a meager daily diet of some watery broth and a scrap of bread, this artistic activity proved to be life-affirming. As one participant recalled, “Maybe it was my hearing, but when we were rehearsing I never heard my stomach growl.”

As another put it, “On the outside, it was their (the Nazis’) world but in the rehearsal room it was OUR world.”

To further capture the imagination and passion of his group – and amidst circumstances where people had no idea that they would soon be packed into cattle cars and sent east to Auschwitz and the gas chambers – Schächter would tell the people that they were “rehearsing for the day when we will sing Verdi accompanied by a full orchestra in a grand music hall in Prague.”

The Latin words which these Jews sang in rehearsal, in some 13 concerts to fellow prisoners and then in their final concert in front of their Nazi captors before they, too, were sent to Auschwitz, spoke of the redress of grievances which the wronged would come to know, and that the evil doers would one day be punished for their crimes. So each night’s rehearsal was, in fact, a moment to seek redemption and release from their brutal reality. 

Members of Rafael Schächter’s group found through music the occasion to rise up in the worst situation imaginable and to champion the best of themselves and of the human spirit. In the words of one of them, “The Nazis had our minds, but they could NEVER have our souls. And in the end, they didn’t succeed.  We survived.”

In one of the most moving lines of the film, one woman who had been a part of that choir said, “This will sound strange to say, but in the nightmarish conditions of Terezin we found hours of pure joy - if you can talk at all of joy in a concentration camp. The Requiem was a gift that I took with me from those days to the rest of my life.”

If people who have been sent to hell – and nearly all of them to their deaths  – could find joy in the most despairing of conditions, then what a great lesson for any athlete to take with them – or for any of us to take to our daily tasks – to find that same JOY each day in practice. To remember, as Schächter put it – “The MOST important thing is how you are feeling when you sing.”

To see the theatrical trailer of "Defiant Requiem" visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgimWmMqav4