Visualization for athletes

 

What is visualization? How can we use this technique to produce better results? And what are the benefits? To get answers to all these questions, I had an opportunity to interview a special guest and a very dear friend of mine, Tom Ford.

About Tom Ford-

Tom has been the under 19 European squash number one. He has played numerous professional squash tournaments and has won many of them. He has traveled all around the world to train budding squash athletes. Tom has always been very passionate and interested about the mental side of the game, a common interest which lead us to connect with each other a few years ago. I could not have asked for a better guest to discuss on this topic, than Tom Ford. Below is the interview-

Amit- Hi Tom.

Tom- Hi Amit, thanks for inviting me on.

Amit- today we have invited you to discuss about visualization. Thank you so much for being here with us. So my first question to you Tom- what exactly is visualization? 

Tom- Sure, we need to understand that we're always visualizing. Whether we're aware of it or not, we're creating scenarios in our minds- either reflecting on the past, creating imaginary situations in the future so we have this faculty of imagination and the ability to visualize the future and the past. I would say often we're doing it very unconsciously and I would say more often than not we're doing it in a negative way. We're thinking about what negative things might happen in the future, not always but a lot of the time. The practice of visualization is simply to do this consciously. To be aware of visualizing a future event with the intention of visualizing ourselves performing in that event in the best possible way. I think it's important to say that we always are visualizing. It's not something that you can or can't do we're just maybe not aware of it or we haven't honed it as a practice yet.

Amit- Tom my second question is, there are many athletes and coaches who would like to know that if they want to use this technique of visualization to produce better results or to prepare for their competitions or their matches, what do you suggest? How can they use this technique?

Tom- There are two types of visualization that I know of. One that I would say is probably the most well-known which is where you visualize a set skill. It's often in a closed environment so you're visualizing yourself repeatedly doing the same skill over and over again. So it might be shooting a basketball hoop, taking a penalty kick or hitting a drop shot in squash. But the idea is that you're visualizing yourself performing that same skill repeatedly over and over again in the way that you would like to in the perfect scenario. And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it really works. There's a very famous or well-known study of college students in basketball and they were split and there was a group of the study and they all performed free throws and were recorded how many free throws they got in in a certain amount of time and then they were split into three groups. The first group didn't practice at all for 30 days they weren't allowed to go anywhere near a court or throw a ball or anything like that. The second group practiced every day whether it was for half an hour, an hour every day. They shot free throws for 30 days every day. And the third group for the same amount of time whether it was 30 minutes or an hour; they visualized themselves performing free throws and hitting them every time. After those 30 days there was a decline in the people that didn't train and there was something like a 24% improvement with the people that practiced the free throws in person and a 23% increase in the people that visualized. There was only one percent difference. This is a very well-known and well cited thing regarding the efficacy of mental rehearsal because really the mind and the body don't know the difference between a real or an imagined event. There's a physiological response to the way that we think and the way that we visualize things and so that's the first one. That's not actually one that I've done a huge amount but fortunately there's a lot of research that suggests as benefits. The other one is from more of like a performance standpoint. In terms of performing in competition, which I think is slightly different. Obviously you need to be able to perform refined skills very well but there's so much more of a personal and psychological element to performing at your best as a whole and the way that I think about that is rather than visualizing a very specific scenario, I would visualize what does what does it feel like for me to perform at my best. So it's much more of a personal experience rather than thinking about any specifics that happen in the match. So thinking more how do I feel physically? How do I feel mentally and emotionally? Like what is the experience of performing at my best and how is it to really tuning into that feeling and refining that feeling and reminding ourselves of that feeling. Because particularly in tournament or competitive environments we get nervous and it's very difficult. We often think of the worst case scenario and what things are like when they go bad and it we become very afraid or nervous or a bunch of different things. So to be reaffirming what it feels like to be performing at our best and at least when we know that all we can do is perform at our best, the outcome is not necessarily in our hands. So that element of visualization is also very important and I guess the answer is both are equally important you know you can use the skills one, as a way of improving your skills and it is particularly useful if you're injured or you're in a pandemic when you can't practice as much but then like I said, you know you can practice your skills a million times but if you get in the way of yourself because you're not performing at your best, it doesn't matter because you're never going to execute those skills in the first place. I guess the good news is in terms of specifics about visualization the process is pretty much the same. So the first step is just to relax you know sit or lie down get yourself into a comfortable position and just spend a few moments to sort of focusing on your breathing, bringing yourself into the moment. I don't think this is a process to rush. You know it's a process to ease yourself into and the more that you ease yourself into it, the deeper you'll be able to go and the better the practice will be.

Once you've got yourself into a slightly calmer more relaxed and clearer state, then it would be time to bring yourself and slowly bring yourself into the scenario or the environment that you want to visualize and the best way of doing that is through your senses. So thinking about, what do you see in this environment? What do you smell? What do you hear? And different sensors will trigger different people. So for me, I would very much want to see it. Whereas someone else might want to hear or smell it. The point is that you slowly introduce your senses to the point where you are trying to deepen your experience so much that you believe that you're in that environment. And another maybe important one is to think about obviously how you feel? How is your body in that scenario and then once you've kind of got yourself into that scenario, then you just deepen that experience either through repetition so if it's the skill then you're just practicing that skill and if it's in a performance sense you’re self-inquiring like what would I feel like you know if I'm performing at my best? Or what do I feel like in my body in my mind when I'm performing at my best. And really that's that is the process and all of it is really a practice in itself. The more you do it, the more familiar you're going to get with what works best for you what things trigger you to go a little bit deeper into that experience

And yeah, it takes time. I think it's similar to meditation. I think meditation is also a really helpful thing to do alongside it or in conjunction with this.

Amit- I think a couple of months back I was fortunate enough to get a telephonic visualization session from you and I remember I was struggling with a shot and first you made me visualize a shot which I am very confident about and you made me completely relaxed and then once I was there in that relaxed mode then you took me to the shot which I was struggling with and then you made me visualize that particular shot which made it so much more easier. I think if you would have taken me directly to the difficult shot, it would have been it would have been tougher for me to put myself in that situation.

Tom- Sure yeah and I think that's just that point that you've made really highlights one of the key things with it really is that the more progressively you do it and you slowly ease your way into it, the more effective it's likely to be. And I think that's maybe one of the problems or the issues is that we want to jump straight to the practice straight away without understanding that the visualization practice is literally from the moment you sit down until you end. It's not just about visualizing yourself doing the free throws or doing performing at your best it takes time to kind of layer yourself into a receptive enough state for it to be really helpful. You should feel it in your body, it's the body that remembers and like I said, you need to feel it. It's a very tangible experience to know what it feels like to execute a good drop shot and then to think about what it feels like to perform a shot that you don't like. You feel it in the body in a very different way than if you're just thinking about it so that's a really critical thing for me- take your time to layer through the practice but the feeling component in the body is vital as well.

Amit- I would like to ask the last question to you Tom is what are the benefits of visualization?

Tom- Like I said at the beginning, the mind and the body don't know the difference between a real or an imagined event. So the deeper that you can go in your visualization practice over time your body is literally not going to know the difference between whether you're doing it in visualization or whether you're going to wherever you are to do it. It's a pretty strong benefit I would say to be able to do. Secondly and lastly like I said, we're always visualizing, whether we're aware of it or not we're always thinking about the past, future or creating different events in our mind regardless of whether it's about performing or not. I think ultimately we're always performing either our best or not in life and if you can firstly become more aware of the fact that you are always visualizing but then secondly to create a better narrative about what you are visualizing by being aware of it but by also having a specific practice where you're choosing to visualize what you want to bring into your life- what you consistently think about is likely to manifest in your life. So just that awareness and that practice of refining what you're thinking about and doing it in a way that is more conducive to bringing what you want to your life rather than thinking about what you don't want or what you're afraid of.

Amit- thanks Tom for sharing your time. I'm sure the audience will find these inputs really useful. They will use this technique before going to their competition, before competing, before their matches and produce better results because finally like you and I know- it's a mind game isn't it!! It's the mental side which separates, the athletes today.

Tom- Yeah thanks Amit, thanks again for inviting me on and just well done for everything that you you're doing. Keep it up!! It's great!!

Amit- Thanks Tom.

With this we concluded our talk on Visualization. I hope all the athletes as well as non athletes use this technique to prepare themselves better for their competitions.

Amit Gajria

Certified Squash Coach

Mumbai, India.