Winners Mind - Advanced Sports Psychology

One of the skills of the sports competitor is the ability to visualise or create internal images. This can be done a variety of ways. Jack Nicklaus detailed his own stategy of visualising the whole details of each shot before he played it.

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there; its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.” - Jack Nicklaus

Jack was one of the first sports competitors to get a conscious understanding of a unconscious process in detail. One of the many reasons Jack was a winner was that he had an understanding of a winners mind. There is an industry in itself springing up around golf psychology however many of these principles can be appled to other sports.

In one way Jack was using his own form of NLP Neuro Linguitic Programming. He was able to articulate much of his own strategy. But not all of it.It is possible to learn a lot about Jack Nicklaus's strategies and ways of playing golf just from this one statement. Just in the first phrase Jack takes practice seriously and treats it in the same way as matchplay. The psychological components of competition are as important in practice as they are in competition. Otherwise you are just practicing technique or improving physical conditioning.

In sport we can use our internal imagery in a number of ways:-

• We can generate states and change our moods
• We can attempt to visualise consequences and outcomes
• We can use it as part of our strategies say to align a shot by imagining a spot on the ball
• We can imagine potential outcomes
• We can use it to change our concept of the opposition
• We can use it to make goals and outcomes more tangiible and therefore their attainment more likely.

To find out more about possible uses and changes available contact us at Winners Mind.