A Players Guide to Success: A
Closer Look at Imagery &
Arousal Regulation
Shannon Strosser
Shannon Skellchock
Bridgewater College
Imagery: Assessment
Our clients, college athletes, will be assessed prior to learning the mental
skill of imagery by using the Sport Imagery Questionnaire. Rainer Martens, PhD,
an author and pioneer in sport psychology developed the Sport Imagery
Questionnaire. This questionnaire will assess four important components of
imagery, how you see yourself, how clearly you hear the sounds of the activity,
how you felt when you did the activity and how aware you were of your mood. To
expand, Tony Morris and Peter Terry concluded that as more of the relevant
senses are used, the quality of the imagery experience improves and then the
effectiveness of imagery for enhancing performance is likely to improve as found
in studies completed by Perry & Morris, 1995 as well as Weinberg & Gould,
2007 (p. 296, 2011). The Sport Imagery Questionnaire includes four
environments to use imagery in: practicing alone, practicing with others, watching
a teammate, and playing in a contest. The questionnaire being used will be
uploaded at the end of the document. After completing the questionnaire, you will
discover the areas of imagery that are your weakness and that can have
improvement. The purpose of this assessment is to allow athletes to become
aware of what aspects of imagery they should focus on and to allow their
imagery to be individualized.
Imagery Strategy
A strategy created by Kay Porter is 10 Steps to Writing Your Own Visualization:
1. See, hear and feel yourself performing your event.
2. Write down and dictate into a recorder every detail you can see hear, and
feel.
3. Begin with arriving at the event, going through your normal preparatory
routine, and the few minutes before you perform.
4. Go into vivid detail about the event and your experience of it, including
sounds, colors, smells, the crowd, the weather, the positive feelings in
your body and your mental state.
5. Imagine yourself being totally relaxed, confident, powerful, and in
complete control of your body and mind. Include your affirmations and
keywords that will help you during your real performance.
6. Go through your whole event thinking of each significant point or play.
Feel yourself moving smoothly and performing with strength and
endurance.
7. After writing your visualization, write statements of relaxation, and remind
yourself of your confidence, power, and mental toughness.
8. Now write your visualization in script form. Reread it and edit it. Then
dictate yourself or have someone else dictate it and edit it into your
recorder.
9. Listen to the recorded visualization for flaws and make changes to the
script. When you are satisfied with the script, dictate a progressive
relaxation section that you feel will relax you most effectively before the
visualization. Then dictate your finished script so that it follows the
relaxation section.
10. Listen to the finished tape once a day or at least three or four times a
week before an event. Pick a quiet time and place where you won’t be
disturbed. Morning or night is usually a good time. Try to stay awake to get
the full effect. Sitting up is helpful. It is best to be relaxed and aware.
Please do not listen to it while you are driving a motor vehicle.
Kay Porter’s 10 Steps to writing your own visualization should be
implemented before your season begins during a preseason with your team.
Another player or coach should read through the steps as you sit with your eyes
close and imagine everything that is going on. Once your visualization script is
written and recorded you should replay it throughout the season. Changes can
be made to your script if changes affect your play. Imagery can be used before
and after practice but limit imagery sessions to about 10 minutes; most athletes
have trouble concentrating if anything is longer than that (Weinberg and Gould,
p. 314, 2011). This imagery recording may be used before and after competition,
during the off-season, during personal time and when recovering from injury.
Imagery: Evaluation
Now that we have taught you a strategy for creating individual imagery we
are going to complete the same survey completed earlier. We will see how your
pre-test compare to your posttest after learning the strategies. A little
improvement may be seen just within this time period so now you can use these
strategies to continuously improve. This questionnaire will give you more insight
on what areas of imagery can use improvement and what areas of imagery you
excel in. Once the evaluation is completed, the athletes have assessed their
progress after learning a strategy to improve imagery.
Sports Imagery Questionnaire
Arousal Regulation: Assessment
At the beginning of every season we are going to assess our teams
arousal levels by developing each player’s own self-awareness report. William P.
Morgan and John S. Raglin developed the Body Awareness Scale to assess
athletes arousal levels, which is a questionnaire to help self identify areas in
need for improve to help enhance performance. We will help develop selfawareness of arousal by asking athletes to think back to your best performance
and remember how it felt during that time. Then we will have them fill out a
questionnaire about performance states based off of their memories. Next we will
ask for all our athletes to think back to their worst performance and fill out the
same questionnaire. This way we can compare the differences of each
performance and make each athlete realize where they struggle with withholding
their arousal levels in an optimal zone for performance. Then the athlete knows
where they can focus their attention in practicing to control their arousal.
Arousal Regulation: Strategy
For athletes that have difficulty becoming aroused, they can use psyching-up
techniques. This technique involves pre-competition workouts because they have
been proven to regulate arousal, according to the Japanese Olympic volleyball team
as well as Husak and Hemenway swim coaches. Having a pre-competition workout
either right before or 4 hours before game time reduces muscle tension and feelings
of anxiety in athletes, which are two major factors that can hurt arousal levels. Under
aroused athletes can use this strategy before important competition to help increase
arousal levels.
A technique for athletes who have a problem of becoming over aroused is
progressive relaxation. Edmond Jacobson’s progressive relaxation technique
involves an athlete to lie down in a quiet area with neither legs nor arms crossed.
While they are in this position they must tense up and relax different muscles in a
predetermined order for an hour everyday. After this practice athletes learn to evoke
a relaxation response to their entire body or certain parts within minutes. This skill
becomes very helpful in situations where athlete needs to regain control over their
mind and body.
Arousal Regulation: Evaluation
Now that we have learned techniques to bettering arousal management
keep track of your practice. If you have a tendency of being under aroused then
practice pre-competition workouts and find a specific routine that works best for
you. If you get over aroused schedule in progressive relaxation into your daily
routine until you can active your relaxation response in minutes. After, practicing
these techniques you should fill out the checklist of performance states once
again to see how your performance was affected by the strategies.
Checklist of Performance States
Checklist of Performance States
Played extremely well
1
2
3
4
5
6
Played extremely poorly
Felt extremely relaxed
1
2
3
4
5
6
Felt extremely anxious
Felt extremely confident
1
2
3
4
5
6
Felt extremely unconfident
Felt in complete control
1
2
3
4
5
6
Had no control at all
Muscles were relaxed
1
2
3
4
5
6
Muscles were tense
Felt extremely energetic
1
2
3
4
5
6
Felt extremely fatigued
Self-talk was positive
1
2
3
4
5
6
Self-talk was negative
Felt extremely focused
1
2
3
4
5
6
Felt extremely unfocused
Felt effortless
1
2
3
4
5
6
Felt great effort
Had high energy
1
2
3
4
5
6
Had low energy
References
Cox, R. (1994). Sport Psychology: Concepts and Applications. Madison, Wisconsin:
WCB Brown & Benchmark.
Morris, T., Terry, P. (2011) The New Sport and Exercise Psychology Companion.
Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.
Porter, K. (2003) The Mental Athlete: Inner Training for Peak Performance in All
Sports. Eugene, OR: Human Kinetics.
Stegner, A., Tobar, D.,& Kane, M. (1999). Generalizability of Change Scores on the
Body Awareness Scale. Measurement in Physical Education and Exercise
Science. 3(3), 125-140
Weinberg, R. S. & Gould, D. (2011). Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology. (5th
ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
(n.d.). Retrieved May 12, 2015, from http://www.againstthegrainsports.com/sports.jpg