The Visualization Secret to Your Child’s Sports Success

As a parenting coach, and psychologist who works with kids engaged in all levels of sports, I remain amazed by the lack of appreciation for the value of visualization. Visualization has been studied extensively in many sports, and its power and usefulness is unquestioned.

Yet, few coaches teach their athletes to use visualization. I also find that few parents are rarely aware of the power of visualization, and are uncertain about how to use it. Here are a few simple tips.

Visualization tip number 1: Visualize confidence first.

Rather than using visualization to immediately work on skill development, it’s wise to teach your kids to use their imagination to nurture their own self confidence. Ask your kids to imagine watching themselves on a TV screen, and visualize themselves walking onto the playing field, or performing a particular sports related action with a sense of looking confident and strong.

Have them first see themselves as a player on the screen looking confident and feeling confident.

Then, ask your kids to imagine stepping into that confident player’s body. So the second step involved being your body, and feeling what it feels like to be confident and to be strong.

Give your kids coaching in how to both see themselves as a TV camera would see them in visualizing confidence, followed by stepping into their own body, and feeling what it’s like to walk in that body and feel that confidence.

Visualization tip number 2: Visualize learning over perfect performance.

Particularly when your kids are getting better at a sport, it doesn’t make sense to have them visualize perfect performances. It’s as if part of their brain doesn’t believe that.

So instead, have them visualize themselves getting better and better. With each daily practice of their visualization, ask them to find ways to see themselves just getting a little bit better each and every day. They can do this both in the in season and the off season.

After they are able to visualize themselves getting better and better while watching this on a imaginary TV screen in their minds???? Ask them to again step into that player that they see on the screen. In other words, step into their body and visualize what it’s like to be in that body as they’re learning and getting better and better with each session of practice.

Visualization tip number 3: Visualize you’re recovering from mistakes.

This is probably the most critical skill your kids can learn to master, if they’re going to reach any level of competency athletically. They need to realize that everyone will make mistakes, and it’s not the mistakes that will ultimately hurt them, it will be their inability to bounce back from those mistakes.

So by now you have a sense of the formula. Simply apply this formula so that your kids begin to visualize themselves making a mistake, and continue with that same scene until they’re able to recover, and be back on top of their game.

There is nothing more powerful than giving kids the sense that they can make a mistake, and yet recover to perform at their best.

Use these three visualization secrets, and you’ll see that you can be a powerful aid in helping your kids to walk with confidence, learn to get better, be prepared to handle any athletic challenge.

If you’re interested in more great parent training, visit my website with hundreds of articles on parenting at http://terrificparenting.com/parent-coaching . My name is Randy L. Cale, Ph.D., and I am the author and creator of Terrific Parenting and all the materials contained on the website. If you’re interested in reproducing this article, you can do so without my permission provided that all identifying information is retained with the article.