Visualization in Sports
Many athletes use visualization as a part of their training and today I want to share how to visualize an effective marathon race.
Sports visualization is an experience … a training experience, a prep work experience and also a workout experience.
Visualization for professional athletes is an ability that you can improve.
Whether you realize it or not, you visualize during sports rehearse.
Every person believes in photos.
Some athletes have recurring pictures of missed possibilities, injuries, mistakes and losses.
There is one point that separates elite professional athletes from typical professional athletes …
Elite professional athletes use the power of directed imagery or visualization.
Why is mental imaging or visualization such a strong tool for success?
Athletes stimulate the same brain regions as you do when you perform the same action when they imagine a winning competition.
Visualization in sports, is a technique for conditioning your brain to achieve the results you want.
The more you mentally practice your performance, the more it becomes second nature to you.
We can compare visualization to a pregame warm-up in athletics.
Visualization can help athletes reduce some of the unknowns that cause competitive anxiety.
When athletes use visualization, they are able to not only see but also feel the activity unfold in their minds eye.
Great athletes use visualization as a strategy to help them win and stay mentally on top of their game.
With that being said, it is time to find out how to visualize an effective marathon race.
How to Visualize an Effective Marathon Race
Many seasoned joggers and walkers understand that finishing a marathon or half marathon is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one.
Continue reading if you’ve came across visualization and want to use it to help you with your next race.
The following are characteristics of a best-practices approach to visualization:
- Consider the final result.
- Include specifics.
- Feelings should be included.
- Take a look at yourself.
- Make use of soothing music or a peaceful environment.
- Each visualization session should last no more than five minutes.
- Only visualize once a day.
So, if you want to visualize a successful marathon or half marathon, use this best-practices technique.
Consider the final result
Concentrate your visualization on the goal and the time spent on the surface.
Of course, the time you envision for the finish line should be sensible in relation to the fastest speeds you’ve encountered during your training sessions.
So don’t imagine a race period that is shorter than what most coaches would tell you to undertake at this point in your training.
But, do not imagine a race duration that is too long for you; in other words, do not short-change yourself!
To guarantee that you are familiar with the race course’s weaving, where the many mile-markers will be, and capitals and valleys, you must drive it or examine a fly-over or street-level video of it.
But don’t worry about seeing your particular training sessions or mile markers along the race course.
The most critical aspect of your race to imagine is your aim.
Why? Because your subconscious mind will use this vision to learn the HOW-need TO’s you’ll for your training and race day.
All you have to do now is to feed it the last WHAT— you’re crossing the finish line at the desired coating time.
Include specific details.
- As you cross the finish line, what are you listening to?
- Is there a band performing?
- Are your friends and family members yelling your name, ringing bells, blaring horns, and swinging posters in your direction?
- Is your name, as well as your hometown, being called by the announcer?
- Are there those who are rooting for you?
- Is the sun beaming directly in your face or on your back, or is it cloudy?
- Are police officers restraining onlookers?
- Is it a cool or a hot day today?
- Are there different finishing chutes for the marathon and half marathon?
- Is the finish-time clock above or to one side of the goal?
- What color is the timing mat at the finish line?
- Are the racers in your vicinity rushing to the finish line?
- What are you up to?
Make a note of the responses to each of these questions, as well as a few other questions you might have.
Then review them shortly before you close your eyes to begin your visualization session.
Or, you can tape yourself asking each of the questions and then play that tape to get you through each session.
Also, don’t worry about whether the details you’re envisioning will match reality exactly.
The color of the finish-line mat, for example, may alter between your imaginations and reality.
What matters is that you envision facts that make sense to you in order for your subconscious mind to “accept” your goal for success.
Don´t forget to include feelings
Take a look at yourself.
A common blunder that many individuals make when envisioning is NOT including themselves in their imagery.
One option is to use a first-person point of view, as if you were looking through your very own eyes at your own body, apparel, as well as race-day gear.
For instance, you ought to visualize your own watch or GPS system by yourself wrist with your very own hand attached– all the way to the sweat, freckles, wrinkles, and marks– and your various other hand getting to throughout to push the quit button as you go across the finish line.
Another option is to take a third-person viewpoint, as if you were another person considering you.
For example, you can consider your very own face and also how wonderful you are as you enter the ending up chute as well as go across the finish line.
A 3rd service places you in front of several mirrors in your visualization as well as lets you get both point of views.
You can see your own body through your own eyes (the first-person perspective), as well as you can see your complete body as if you were somebody else (the third-person viewpoint).
For instance, and although it could seem strange as a practical matter, you can imagine seeing yourself run by a full-size mirror along the finishing-chute sidelines as well as seeing on your own strategy an additional full-size mirror a risk-free distance past the finish-line floor covering.
The very best strategy to seeing on your own in your visualizations is to use all three of these services.
Make use of soothing music or a peaceful environment.
Some people find that mild songs can help them loosen up into their visualization session.
Others locate that they should have no sounds when they are imagining.
Discover what works for you, and also keep using it.
Each visualization session should last no more than five minutes.
Spend only five minutes per visualization session.
This advice negates a popular mistaken belief– that you must spend thirty minutes or an hour imagining so as to get any benefit from it.
However what several visualization specialists find is that they can not preserve their focus for greater than five minutes per session.
So most of that half hour or hour is thrown away.
Only visualize once a day.
This is one more piece of guidance that contradicts a preferred mistaken belief– that you have to visualize numerous times a day … or that “If some is good, after that much more is much better.”– which it is NOT in this instance.
There are 2 essential reasons that you ought to intend to visualize an effective race just daily.
One is that it comes to be much less of a challenge to developing the habit.
Yet the more crucial one is that picturing numerous times a day can in fact be counter-productive– since you start to compare the excellence of your visualizations to the blemishes of your daily life.
And those contrasts can result in a conscious focus on HOW you will accomplish your visualizations– the HOW-TO’s– which can bring about feelings of overload and also despair.
Another thing: Begin envisioning today!
There really is no time like the here and now to begin visualizing an effective race.
Of course, the a lot more days that you can visualize before your next race, the far better.
Yet, even if your marathon or half marathon is next weekend as well as you have actually not imagined throughout your training season, you can still gain from visualization in the last days leading up to the race as well as right prior to the race on race early morning.
So get started today.
Video – how to visualize an effective marathon race
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