Visualizing Victory in Padel
Do you believe in the law of attraction? This law states that you construct your own world. What you often think about attracts into your life. Which means what you visualize happening in your life is what happens.
Whether you know it or not, you mentally rehearse or envision during sports. Everyone thinks in images. Some athletes inadvertently experience recurrent visions of lost chances, injuries, errors, and defeats.
This is true even in padel. Winging it just won’t make the cut. You have to think your wins into existence.
There is one characteristic that distinguishes great athletes from every one else. Elite athletes harness the power of guided imagery or visualization.
Imagery has always been a component of top sports, and many Olympic competitors have perfected the technique with the assistance of Sport Psychologists and Mental Game Coaches.
Guided visualization or imaging for athletes is the intentional control of pictures or the direction of an athletic script in your mind. When your coach was teaching you a new skill, you may have utilized guided visualization unintentionally. You formed a picture in your head of how the skill should seem or how the skill should be executed successfully.
Imagine yourself holding the padel racket, taking seconds before the ball goes over the net? What’s your next move? This is visualization.
Guided visualization or imaging is the intentional practice of practicing a skill, routine, or performance in your mind’s eye to train your body for success. However, sports visualization or mental imaging is more than simply a visual experience. Many athletes like to feel their movements and participate in the kinesthetic past of images.
Emily Cook, a three-time Olympian and experienced American freestyle skier explained how her unique visual scripts and mental practice incorporating all of the senses have helped her retain longevity in her profession.
For her, visualization isn’t only about thinking. She says you have to smell it, hear it and experience everything.
“I’d say into a [tape] recorder, ‘I’m standing on the top of the hill.'” I can feel the breeze on the back of my neck. I can hear the crowd,’ kind of going through all those various senses and then really going through what I wanted to accomplish for the ideal jump. I refuse the in-run. I get up. I activate my core. I glance up at the peak of the leap. I was planning out every detail of how I wanted that leap to go.”
Emily Cook
Even the best swimmer alive swears by this mental trick!
Michael Phelps is already the most decorated Olympian of all time, with 22 medals to his credit, including 18 gold medals. The 2016 Rio Olympics will be Phelps’ sixth Olympic Games, and he is once again relying on the power of guided imagery to prepare for victory.
Bob Bowman has been Phelps’ coach since he was a youngster, and he has incorporated mental imaging or visualization as part of Phelps’ mental training.
Bowman told Phelps to view a “mental film” of his races every day before going to bed and when he got up in the morning. Phelps would envision every element of swimming a good race, beginning with the blocks and ending with a celebration after the race was won.
During training sessions, Bowman would tell Phelps to “Put in the film” to encourage Phelps to push further.
Bowman thinks that mental visualization assisted Phelps in developing the habit of achievement.
Why is visualization or mental imagery such a strong technique for success?
When athletes envision or fantasize about winning a competition, they really activate the identical brain areas that you do when you physically execute that exact activity.
Visualization in sports or mental visualization is a method of training your brain for good results. The more you mentally practice your performance, the more it becomes habitual in your mind.
Consider visualizing in athletics to be a pre-game warm-up. Many basketball and football teams do rehearsals or walk-throughs the day before a major game to strengthen their game plan and get acquainted with what to anticipate during game circumstances.
How to Use Sports Visualization For a successful performance:
- Visualize the desired result – When mentally rehearsing your performance in your mind, make sure you picture the event unfolding as you want it to. If your mental pictures become bad, pause the mental video, rewind and restart, and then imagine the performance you want to witness again.
- Use all of your senses from a first-person viewpoint – Visualize your sporting achievement in great detail. What would you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste? Consider how your body will feel as you go through the movements of your performance. Try incorporating some physical motions that correspond with the perceived pictures. Feel the thrill of achieving your performance objective.
