Alan Crisp - Clinical Hypnotherapist

The Power of Visualisation

Ever thought what makes the difference between coming first and second?  After six months of training in 2003 Oxford and Cambridge boat race crews were separated by 1 foot. In a sport that requires total physical commitment, what is it that separates crews?

The six month training regime of long hours on the water and time in the gym trains the physical body to peak performance. But how do you train the mind to stay concentrated for these 20 minutes to push the body to the limit?

In the past this has been done with even longer training sessions and coaches trying to force athletes to hold their concentration. In recent years the power of visualisation has been recognised as a method of training the mind, it also has been found that it can help train muscle movement.

Visualisation techniques can be used in preparation for a specific race or for general training. Most of these techniques are carried out by getting the athlete to relax. Then the specific actions that are being are sought are rehearsed by imagining themselves performing the task. The term visualisation does not limit the technique to only visual imagery, acoustic or other sensory modes are also used. For example in rowing, the feel of how the boat travels through the water is regularly used in these sessions.

Some reports also claim that during visualisation sessions, which focused on athletes imagining themselves rehearsing specific actions, there were tiny movements of the muscles required for that action. This has the effect of training the memory of the muscles into carrying out this specific action. This memory of muscles and the body can be demonstrated by folding your arms. Now fold them the opposite way around. This feels awkward and uncomfortable as you normally only fold your arms in one way.

A specific example of the use of visualisation was during the preparation of a Tees Rowing Club crew that competed at the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston, USA. This is the largest regatta in the world with 7000 competitors taking part. The crew had only been rowing for about a year and a half. They had decided to enter this regatta as a stretching target to improve their performance through the session.

Entering such a large regatta having only competed in small regional competitions in the UK gives a large change in the apprehensions of a crew. This extra anxiety causes athletes to become tense and thus their performance suffers. Visualisation was used a few months before the regatta and twice during the week when practicing in Boston. This was to develop an image of how the race plan would be and to introduce some of the elements that would cause extra tension on race day, such as the problems of launching the boats at such a busy regatta.

As with a previous use of visualisation for the Osiris crew (Oxford University women’s reverse crew) the best results are found when it is the same person that the crew will hear in the race, i.e. the Cox, which takes the crew through the exercise. The Tees crew had the best row of their rowing career and finished in the middle of the division beating many crews that were more technically competent.

Thus visualisation is useful at all levels of sport, allowing amateurs and professions to improve their overall performance through allowing themselves to train for the mental aspects of competition prior to physical stress of competing.

By Neil Hindle Tees Rowing Club

Neil Hindle works at Uniqema as a Project Technical Manager based in Redcar in the North East.  In his spare time he coaches a team at the Tees Rowing Club, which gained significant success in the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston, USA, in 2002.