Mental Rehearsal & Visualization: The Secret to Improving Your Game Without Touching a Basketball!

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/mental/visualization.html



Mental Rehearsal & Visualization: The Secret to Improving Your Game Without Touching a Basketball!

- By Joe Haefner


Visualization is an often-taught mental rehearsal technique in sports. It is an extremely powerful tool and numerous studies have been done to test this. You may have heard of this basketball study or a different one with similar results.

A study conducted by Dr. Biasiotto (spelling corrected 8/4/14) at the University of Chicago was done where he split people into three groups and tested each group on how many free throws they could make.

After this, he had the first group practice free throws every day for an hour.

The second group just visualized themselves making free throws.

The third group did nothing.

After 30 days, he tested them again.

The first group improved by 24%.

The second group improved by 23% without touching a basketball!!!!

The third group did not improve which was expected.

 
Picture by Hape Gera
We're not condoning being lazy and not practicing. What we're trying to drive home is imagine what you could do if you implemented both practice and the mental rehearsal technique of visualization. The sky is the limit. You can apply this to all sports and if you do, it can do wonders for you and your team.


Tips on How to Use Visualization..

You need to involve Sight, Sound, and Feeling to really gain from the benefits of visualization.

Now, there are some important things to consider when visualizing. If you just picture yourself shooting free throws in third person as if it was a movie, you probably won't improve as much as you could.

You need to visualize everything out of your eyes (in the 1st person). You have to be there at the free throw line feeling the basketball. Seeing the goal. Hearing the noise.

As you shoot, you should FEEL the ball roll off your fingers. You should SEE the ball traveling through the air with perfect backspin. You should SEE your hands out in front of you with the perfect follow through. You should SEE your hands out in front of you holding the follow through as you HEAR & SEE the ball swish through the net.

Once, you do this, you're guaranteed to see results.


On a personal note...

We had decided to discuss the concept of visualization and the importance in doing so at practice one day. We told the players to go home and visualize themselves shooting 10 free throws before they go to bed. We had to forgot to mention to everybody to visualize every shot going through the hoop. The next day some of the players were telling us about it. Jokingly, we asked a few of the players, "So, how many did you make?" assuming of course that everybody made 10. A couple of the kids said I made 10. Then one of our players sheepishly raised his hand and said, "But coach… I only made 7." The funny thing about it is that he wasn't joking.

So, don't assume anything with your players. Explain everything.



bob
MY NOTE:  On MY personal note, I have used visualization extensively for decades.  I have achieved almost every goal I set for myself using visualization, time after time after time.  Coincidence?  Only if you believe in them.  It gets harder and harder to write it off as mumbo-jumbo or luck when it happens repeatedly over time and in numerous endeavors.


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If this is true for me I must visualize my tee shots going in the trees And not realize I'm doing it.

Beat

I have used this technique for years, starting in prep school, which is how Raquel Welch, Cheryl Tiegs, and Jean Shrimpton all became my highly appreciative lovers.

Bob, Dwight Stones was the master of visualization and introduced the concept to many athletes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Stones

Bill Russell is the first athlete I've heard of who routinely practiced mental imaging. The first time he mentions it is when talking about the team he toured the Northwest with right after graduating high school. At the time, he was still learning about the game and about what his somewhat awkward teenage body could do. It's possible, even arguable, that his habit of mental imaging helps to account somewhat for his dramatic learning curve during that time. What we know for certain is that, even though he hadn't been good enough to start for his high school team, when he returned from that tour the first thing he told his father, Mister Charlie, was "Now I can play."

Russ had his own unique techniques. He would remember a move he had made and break it down, one muscle at a time; then practice it over and over. He could also visualize the moves of players he watched, break those moves down, and visualize doing them himself, over and over again. On that remarkable tour of the Northwest, Bill was fascinated by the moves of one particular player more than any other. It happened to be the point guard and, years later, Bill wrote that the reason he had an arsenal full of point guard moves was not because he had ever actually played the position, but because he had so intensely visualized himself doing the moves of that long-ago teammate.

Brad seems to have a knack for visualizing 2nd round draft picks becoming 1st string Celtics contributors. He has done so well with castoffs - JJ, Jae, IT, Evan to name a few...