Sport Psychology Tactics - A Quick Guide On How To Use Mental Imagery & Brainspotting With Baseball Players And Athletes
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: How Sport Psychologists Teach Mental Imagery To Baseball Players
When athletes come to work with me, they are usually seeking my services to either overcome a mental block or find unique ways to enhance their psychological performance. The vast majority of my work is spent utilizing the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback, which I have talked about extensively in previous Training Reports. However, I am sometimes asked by up and coming athletes such as baseball players in high school and college to provide them with simple, in-game sport psychology tactics. For this Training Report, I wanted to provide information on imagery, and how this simple approach can yield powerful results. I also want to quickly review how Brainspotting is becoming an advanced imagery routine used at the MLB level. Let’s first start by exploring what imagery is.
Part I. The Importance Of Mental Imagery For Athletes
Imagery is a mental rehearsal technique that can be used to improve performance in a variety of sports, including baseball. It involves visualizing yourself performing a skill in your mind's eye. When used correctly, imagery can help athletes to improve their focus, concentration, and execution. This sport psychology technique works by activating the same neural pathways that are activated when the athlete performs the actual skill. This means that when an athlete visualizes themselves hitting a home run, the same areas of their brain are activated as when they actually hit a home run. This is because imagery involves the same cognitive processes as actual performance, such as attention, memory, and motor planning. When an athlete visualizes a skill, the brain sends signals to the muscles that would be used to perform the skill. This causes the muscles to fire, even though the athlete is not actually moving.
This neural activity helps to strengthen the neural pathways associated with the skill, which can lead to improved performance. Athletes regularly use imagery have found that there are a number of benefits which include the following:
Improved focus and concentration: Imagery can help athletes to focus on the task at hand and to block out distractions. This is because imagery requires the athlete to pay close attention to the details of the skill they are visualizing.
Increased confidence: Imagery can help athletes to build confidence in their abilities. This is because imagery allows athletes to experience success in a safe and controlled environment.
Improved execution: Imagery can help athletes to improve their technique and to execute skills more smoothly and efficiently. This is because imagery allows athletes to practice the skill over and over again without the risk of injury or fatigue.
Part II. How to Use Mental Imagery Effectively
For imagery to be effective, there are certain approaches that appear to be more helpful than others. All baseball players regardless of position (and for that matter athletes within all sport categories) should adhere to the following strategies when using imagery during mental training and performance:
Be as specific as possible: When visualizing a skill, be as specific as possible. Imagine the scene in as much detail as you can, including the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings associated with the skill. This will help to make the imagery more realistic and effective.
Feel the emotions: When visualizing a skill, try to feel the emotions that you would feel if you were actually performing the skill. This will help to make the imagery more realistic and effective.
Repeat the imagery regularly: The more you repeat the imagery, the more effective it will be. Try to visualize the skill several times a day, especially before and after practice.
It will be important for baseball players to regularly practice imagery outside of performances (this is especially the case during active recovery or rest periods). It will also be critical for players to find the times that it is best to incorporate imagery. For some players it may be important to spend a quick 10 to 15 seconds before each pitch, whereas for other players it might be better to use imagery when in the dugout. Regardless, athletes will want to spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what will versus what won’t work for them in their routine!
Part III. Why Sport Psychologists Are Using Brainspotting As Advanced Mental Imagery With MLB Players
I have talked extensively about Brainspotting in previous Training Reports because of the incredible benefits that it has to offer athletes who are dealing with mental blocks and the yips. But the application of Brainspotting goes well beyond the traditional use of this technique among clinicians. For readers who may be unfamiliar with Brainspotting, Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy technique that utilizes the client’s field of vision to identify unresolved psychological issues. In Brainspotting we say ‘where you look affects how you feel’ and through this process clients have the ability to access the parts of their brain that traditional psychotherapy approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy are unable to do. This results in clients being able to directly address the true ‘underlying’ issue (which we refer to as a Brain Spot) that has created conflict allowing individuals to move from needing to constantly cope, to not needing to cope at all.
In Brainspotting, there is a specific technique called Expansion. Expansion is a process that essentially creates what is commonly known as a flow state. When teaching expansion to MLB players and many baseball athletes, we are trying to accomplish multiple goals in one appointment: teach the athlete how to enhance their visualization process by increasing the likelihood of experiencing a flow state through mental imagery, and also helping athletes increase the quality of the mental imagery process by incorporating somatic experiences to the imagery routine. One of the criticisms of this technique is that here is still not enough research that has been developed around Brainspotting. However, Brainspotting is a modified version of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing) which has loads of high quality research (furthermore the developer of Brainspotting was a former EMDR Trainer, essentially a subject matter expert on EMDR). If you are interested in learning more about this advanced mental imagery routine, use the link here to learn more!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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