I’m sure you’ve heard of visualization before from a coach, teammate, or other resource. Just from the word, you can deduce that visualization is visualizing or picturing something – when using visualization in sports, you picture yourself succeeding in your sport. If you’ve used it before and enjoy this mental tool – great! I don’t have to convince you. However, if using visualization is a new concept for you, let me prove to you how useful it can be.
The summer before I was going to start my freshman year of college, I was lucky enough to walk onto the collegiate women’s volleyball team at my university. It was a dream come true because I was not recruited anywhere so I assumed my volleyball career was over after my last club season during my senior year of high school.
This opportunity introduced me to new volleyball strategies, amazing teammates, travel experiences, and a lot more other positive benefits. Unfortunately on the same token, I was also exposed to new feelings that I had not really experienced before because of my volleyball ability such as low self-confidence, anxiety, and a lot of self-doubt. This dichotomy of having an amazing time competing but also having so much stress about it was very difficult to deal with.
I was stuck in a seemingly never-ending loop of making a mistake on the court, lowering my confidence, increasing my self-doubt, and then increasing my anxiety of making more mistakes in the future. There was just a lot going on with me mentally that I did not have the resources to deal with at the time. In fact, this experience during my freshman year is what motivated me to study sport psychology and become a mindset coach – so it all worked out in the end!
Anyway, there was one drill in particular that caused a lot of anxiety for me. This drill pitted the offense against the defense and whoever lost (the offense or the defense) had to do a consequence. Now this drill was especially difficult for the defense – essentially, the offense used all our hitters and setters to hit from anywhere they wanted on the net using any set they wanted – a 4, a shoot, a one, a slide, etc. The defense team’s job was to simply play defense against the hitters. It was difficult for the defense team though because there were only 3 defenders for the whole court and no blockers to help deter some of the hits. Basically, having our 6’3” hitters swinging away at the defenders as a competition was very swayed in the offenses favor. And I was on the defense team.
We lost. Every time. We would do this drill multiple times during practice and my defense team would lose every single time. It really affected my confidence because I felt like I wasn’t an asset to the team if I couldn’t even win this drill. Then the self-doubt really started to set in and it went downhill from there.
This story has a happy ending though! I finally decided one day that I did not want to lose that drill anymore. I wanted to prove to myself and my coaches that the defensive team was a force to reckon with. That night I visualized the drill happening. I visualized my stance, weight on my toes, platform out, body angled to the target, eyes focused on the hitter, freezing my movement as I was watching them swing, and finally digging the ball as it came flying toward me. I visualized the ball coming from the outside hitter, the middle hitter, the backside hitter, and the back-row attackers. I visualized the ball coming perfectly to me and also having to dive for the ball. I visualized myself in each of the defensive positions. I visualized every possible scenario that the drill could produce. And, most importantly, I visualized myself succeeding in all those scenarios.
And I’m not even kidding – the defensive team won the drill the next day at practice!
And I’m not taking full credit for the win – my teammates contributed so much as well! But I know that my contribution to the team and my increased confidence helped us win. I was also more positive approaching the drill because I felt better mentally prepared for it – this made me more supportive and encouraging toward my teammates as well!
Visualizing helped me increase my confidence, succeed with this drill, and have a much better day at practice then the previous few weeks. So, now you know visualization really works! I HIGHLY encourage you to try it! Our mindset coaches know a lot about visualization and it would be our pleasure to help you learn it!