Many of us know about visualisation from what we have heard from the world of professional sport, but perhaps dismiss it as something for “them not me”. In reality we all have the opportunity to raise our performance through the use of visualisation in whatever our field of play is.
Visualisation is a practiced skill, it takes time, guidance, and commitment to get the full benefit from. Visualisation can be dissected into two key themes. Visualising an outcome or Visualising a process. Both huge influencers to performance.
It can be used in a number of ways, in a physical sense strengthening neurological pathways of movement patterns without actually performing the movement, which, in my experience, is particularly helpful when injured or indeed developing muscle memory when acquiring a new skill out of the field of play.
There is also the possibility of using visualisation to reach the future scenario we are aiming for. Visualising what can go right to enable success, but also visualising the barriers to performance and how your behaviours influence either overcoming or being defeated by these. This helps build a level strategic preparedness, a cognitive map in a sense that supports the feeling of “I’ve considered this, I know what can work in this scenario” thus building confidence and agility.
From a wider strategic point of view. Visualising potential outcomes can assist teams to define what success looks like and facilitate the alignment of behaviours and actions toward it. The overriding benefit of visualisation is the feeling that you have already done it and you have seen yourself succeeding. By repeating the action of visualisation, not only are you are building a cognitive map for performance, you are increasing the accuracy of execution and the feeling of confidence.
From my perspective as an Alpine Skier, it is used extensively in a full sensory recall of the layout, feel, speed, tactical character and technical necessity of the competition course. Done well, this essentially gives the competitive advantage of having had multiple “practice runs” of the competition course, a significant influencer in potential outcome of performance considering that four of the five disciplines there is no opportunity to physically practice.