Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Thirteen – Visualisation - The Five Most Common Mistakes Made by Athletes and Coaches
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game, the podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents, who are looking to do their sport a little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is like a software update for your mind, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In order to be a champion at any sport, you need to sustainably replicate a performance. There are no one-hit champions. In order to be the best, you need to produce that performance time after time. This is where visualisation comes in – but, most people have a very poor understanding of visualisation or do it so inconsistently that they don't benefit from it. Today, we'll look at the top 5 mistakes athletes and coaches make in visualisation.
Number five is not visualising at all. If we don't visualise, then clearly we don't understand the benefits or why you visualise in the first place. We visualise to create a neurological path or blueprint so that when we perform, we have a familiar pattern to follow. We know what's expected of us and what to look for. By visualising it, and seeing ourselves do something, we have an idea of what's expected and what to do next. It creates familiarity so you don't feel anxious. There's no major surprises. It enables you to start your performance from a more resilient platform. It also allows us to take emotional ownership of that performance. We know the old analogy, “unless we own something, we don't take ownership of it”. By visualising and owning that performance, it's ours. There's no way, for example, that I could be a traveling salesman and sell something I don't believe in. If I believe in something, I'm happy to stand on my soapbox and preach.
That's the same with visualisation. Once we own that performance, we can be proud of it, and we're more likely to go out and do that performance. Having that ownership and emotional buy-in is vital. It also lets us understand the mechanical aspects of the performance. As a teacher or coach, you probably learn the mechanics so much better teaching someone else than when you did it yourself. Being able to give information, unpack and repack a skill, enables you a much better understanding of that skill and where the nuances are. Visualisation allows you to do that – “If I do this, what will be the outcome? What about this? That one works far better”. It also reduces our physical and mental fatigue. We know practice makes perfect, but in fact perfect practice makes perfect.
If we went out and produced one skill 100 times, the likelihood of each time being identical is impossible. If we visualise something, we're far more likely to create a replicable process of skill time after time. It enables us to practice a skill without becoming fatigued. If you had to stand out on a field and kick a ball 100 times, you'd become physically and mentally fatigued; and if you keep kicking and missing, you'll become emotionally fatigued. Having the visualisation process allows you to put it in that spot each time, from the comfort of your gym or your sofa. Being able to visualise enables us to be more productive, precise, and to create a new neurological blueprint that is perfect for our performance.
Why wouldn't you visualise? As a mind coach, I don't understand why people don't use it to its full potential more often. Coaches traditionally believe in getting out there and doing something, thinking if you do it enough times, you'll get it right. Science has proved that's not right – if you do something enough times, you become fatigued, injured, and emotionally despondent. Visualisation is a smart way of embedding this performance in your brain. You have to be physically capable, but you also need to have an incredible blueprint in your brain that it doesn't try to make it up as it goes along.
Number four mistake is not using the right kinds of visualisation programs. When get called in to work with athletes and coaches, I ask them what kind of visualisation they do, where, when, how often, which techniques for which issues, etc. More often than not, I'll get a blank expression. If they do visualise at all, it's normally very one-dimensionally: “I see myself through my own eyes doing something” or “I watch someone else doing it and imagine it's me”. Visualisation has multiple techniques and each has been designed specifically for different needs. One of the first things I work with athletes on is understanding the different types of visualisation. They will have the understanding that there's a specific type for any situation they run into.
Probably the most understood and used is the disassociated visualisation, which is what we use for a technical understanding. This is where you stand away from yourself and watch yourself do something. Picturing yourself on the apparatus, in the field, on the ice, wherever it is; and you're watching from a distance. We use that to create a non-emotional situation, focusing only on the techniques and mechanics. “If I do it that way, this is the consequence and outcome. If I approach it slightly differently, I get a different set of outcomes.”
The flip side of that is the associated visualisation, and this is to prove the emotional buy-in, where you hear what you'd hear, feel what you'd feel, and smell what you'd smell. We're trying to stimulate all of our senses, so we can see everything we would with our own eyes:
• the ball leaving our foot;
• the goal at the end of the pitch;
• the puck on the ice
Whether we'd hear the crowd, the team mates calling our name, or the coach praising us. These emotions have a huge impact on how our memory retains and categorises events. If this blueprint is something we'll try to replicate, then we need to create a very positive response around it.
The other senses we have are smell and touch. When we talk about touch, if you race with a helmet on, put the helmet and gloves and gear on; the boots, the uniform, anything. Whatever it is that makes you feel in that moment.
Then, we have a point-to-point visualisation. This enables us to connect multiple skills in one performance. Most coaches will teach a skill as an individual unit of performance; then ask the athlete to connect all the individual skills to do a routine. What we do with point-to-point visualisation is fill in that gap, and let the athlete link them together seamlessly. We want to take ownership of the performance and how one move interacts with the next, making sure it's a completely performance. Point-to-point is an incredibly important visualisation skill if you perform multiple skills in one performance.
Then, you have key point visualisation. This is when you cross platform your successful performance onto one you've been struggling with. When you visualise from a distance a performance that worked well for you, you're looking for the patterns and triggers; then, visualising that skill set that you've already done onto a performance you're struggling with. We're learning from past experiences; almost a mental debriefing session, taking out the specific success points and overlaying them to a new routine that wasn't working before. You change your categorisation of that skill – no longer is it something you're struggling with, but something you've projected your success onto.
We then have internal patterning. We as humans like to follow order and sequence and rhythm. If something has a pattern, we become attracted and more easily adopt it. If you do a routine to music, you're interweaving the music and performance together, so when the music starts it's a trigger for you to perform in a specific way. If you don't perform to music, if you're in a team sport, then by you creating a rhythm or chant, that again creates a familiarity and allows you to lower your anxiety. Having a rhythm or set mantra in your mind when going to perform enables you to follow a pattern under duress.
The last type of visualisation is technical visualisation, and that's embedding very specific triggers in your performance that fires a certain skill set. I have a racing car driver where every corner or key point around the track, he visualises and embeds a trigger that fires a sequence of performance. He doesn't have to think about the entire race the entire time. He thinks about a set of triggers that when he comes to them, it triggers and he behaves in a specific way. In a sport with split-second performance is vital, he doesn't have to have that emotional anxiety or weight of remembering the whole race.
There's another visualisation technique called The 3D Coach, but it's such a huge content piece that I'll go over it in another episode.
Number three is continuity. If we're out there to create patterns, we need to create consistence and that familiarity that makes the pattern embedded in our brain a preferred and selectable pattern. As humans, we always gravitate back to familiarity, and things we've done before. Things we know the consequences and outcomes for. If we go through our behavioral traits, we'll always find patterns that give us familiarity. They may not be the best traits, performance-wise, however. That's why people have habits they keep going back to: smoking, weight gain – they know what they're expecting and know what they’ll get.
If we want to embed a better blueprint, we want to make that a familiar performance, and make it something selectable. When our brain is under stress and wants to select something comfortable, we want this new blueprint to feel that comfortable. I said earlier if we tried to do a skill 100 times, it would be very unlikely that we'd do it the same way every time: a different feeling, different technique, different approach, different outcome. However, when we visualise, we're creating that consistency where every time we go to that place, we get that same outcome.
That familiarity will make our brain feel comfortable, and make our performance far more selectable. We don't want the phone ringing, or people talking to us, or any distractions or breaks in our concentration when we're focusing. We don't want any outside emotions. Don't rock up during your visualisation if you're angry at something someone said to you, or despondent from a routine you just failed at, or your coach is giving you constant feedback and you're still trying to process it. In order for you to be efficient in your visualisation, you need to have a clear thought process, and it needs to be 100% focused on what you're trying to achieve at that specific time. In order to get that continuity, you need to think and behave in that focused way that will give you the most consistent outcome.
Number two, the brain follows patterns: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to understand what performance we want to replicate, how does it look, what do you want to perform? There's no “this is kind of what I'm capable of, so I'll accept it.” We want to create a pattern of something optimal for us, the best pattern we can possibly replicate. That's what you want to visualise each and every time. A perfect routine, skill, performance. It needs to be perfect for two reasons:
1) We want to make sure we shoot for the best, and
2) If we settle for something less than perfect, in the back of our mind we change the emotional perception of that routine. It's not what you want, it's not what you know, but you'll 'accept' it. That's not what you want – you want that emotional buy-in that is stimulating. One that will give us the optimal outcome every time, something we can replicate.
We want to make sure we buy-in for the right reason: to win the competition, to get a perfect score, etc. Having that importance and sense of urgency makes it a lot more selectable and recognisable when our brain is under duress.
The number one visualisation mistake people make is not building triggers into the visualisation. We could have the best blueprint in our brains, but if we don't have triggers that fire that off when we need it, it's just something we've got in storage: “hey, one day when I find that again, I might use it.” We want to create a trigger to create control of that performance, and fire it off whenever we need it. We need to build triggers within the visualisation through key words, key phrases, or even key locations or sounds. If you're embedding that information into your visualisation, that becomes just as recognisable as the performance itself. They become key triggers to fire that performance each time.
Visualisation is a massive part of any athlete's training. It enables us to manage very specific key requirements for our brain, and manage very specific emotional environments so that we can perform from a stable platform; and enables us to take control of our performance so we don't rely on some other entity for ourselves. Another tip when visualisation for a competition is to make it unique – take a blueprint photocopy of what you want, and then build in that specific environment with the venue you're at, your uniform, the coach you're with, so that your brain can take direct and specific ownership. This enables us to get very specific about requirements, and enables us to grow from that routine once it's been performed. Whatever happens in the competition won't tarnish the generic blueprint you have in your brain for overall optimal performance and the end objective. We're changing it to a specific sub-blueprint each time.
If you're listening to this and thinking “I don't do even half of this”, then you're missing out on a huge part of your performance potential. If you're thinking “I don't manage my emotions particularly well”, that's only because you don't have the familiarity. If you only use one of these skill sets, you're not doing yourself the best service as a performer. Lean the skill set, become very very specific about what you want your brain to recall and perform, and the ability to replicate will become part of your skill set.
You can go to iTunes and subscribe to our podcast and let us know how you like it. If you go to http://www.braininthegame.com.au and sign up for our weekly newsletters, you'll also be signed up for our 5-minute coaching clinics that I put out every week for one skill set that you can apply to your sport. Until the next episode of Brain in the Game, my name's Dave Diggle. Train smart, and enjoy the ride.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
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