Psychological Skills Training: Mental Rehearsal, Phase II¹

written by Dr. Christine Lottes, Kutztown University, Pennsylvania

Continuing our Psychological Skills Training series in pelinks4u, this month's article is the second in a two-part series on Mental Rehearsal (1st part December 2013). Today’s article combines previously learned skills that can be accessed from the pelinks4u archives (links below). A coach's script and a handout for athletes to use when practicing at home are provided.

Psychological Skills Training series: previous issues

1. Training Your Athletes to be Mentally Tough
2. Mental Training Tools
3. Goal Setting and Self-Confidence
4. Imagery
5. Relaxation and Energization
6. Self-Talk Skills
7. Energy Management
8. Stress Management Skills
9. Breathing Easy Drill
10. Staying on the Ball Drill
11. Mental Rehearsal, Phase I

Coach's Script for Mental Rehearsal: Phase II

Bring to practice: Coach's script, copies of the athlete's handout, balls or other items connected with your sport, pencils or pens, dry board markers or chalk.

Review:

• During our psychological skills training we’ve learned a variety of techniques to make us mentally tougher.
• In previous sessions we’ve learned how to get loose (muscle relaxation), breath easy, concentrate on relevant cues (staying on the ball) and mentally rehearse correct actions.
• Our last lesson on mental rehearsal had as its goal being able to react automatically during competition.

Today: Mental Rehearsal, Phase II - Our focus today is on overcoming game pressures and the emotions they elicit. NOTE. For the sake of clarity in understanding this lesson, the sport of volleyball is used as an example. Coaches should replace all VB references with specific references from their own sport.

Warm-up

• Start with two minutes of "Getting Loose" and "Breathing Easy" and do three minutes of "Staying on the Ball."
• Then mentally rehearse the play you practiced last time - five times in slow motion, then five times at normal speed.

Think of a sport situation that is sometimes is a problem for you (Examples might include a situation in practice or in a game when you become anxious, intimidated, sensitive to what others say to you or how they look at you, angry, discouraged, lazy, etc.).

Now begin the Mental Rehearsal exercise:

• Imagine the problem area clearly. See the surroundings and other players in your mind; think of what comments they might make and what would be your usual reactions. Do this until you can actually feel that disruptive emotion beginning to arise.
• Do three minutes of relaxation and concentration exercises. Do the "Getting Loose" exercise - in very abbreviated form, about one minute. Then do about one minute of "Breathing Easy." Now do "Staying on the Ball." This should take another minute.
• Do two minutes of Mental Rehearsal, Phase I. Now mentally rehearse the play you practiced last session, making it correct in all details and a successful execution of your best effort. Do it five times in slow motion and five times at normal speed. This should take about two minutes.
• Do five minutes of Mental Rehearsal, Phase II. Imagine yourself approaching the same play again in the emotional situation. It is vital that you imagine the emotion exactly as it occurs. As soon as you start to feel the emotion, do the relaxation exercises, the concentration exercise, and mentally rehearse the successful play again. Repeat this process ten times. This should take five minutes. Always end rehearsal of this situation doing it successfully.

Why recreate an emotion-producing situation? A good way to desensitize ourselves to an emotional situation is to create it in our mind over and over again in detail until we are able to imagine it without the emotion. If athletes can live through the emotion-provoking situation time after time in their imagination, when they come to the situation in real life, their ability to handle it will be vastly improved.

NOTE. Athletes will finish each step in varying amounts of time. Let them know that if they finish the reps early, to repeat the exercises until you go on to the next step with the whole team.

Summary

The skills that I am teaching you take only 20 minutes per day. Athletes who take the 20 minutes per day will find that after six weeks they are mastering them and being more successful than they would have been without them. Like all skills, the more you use these sports psyching techniques, the more effective they will become. Here is a handout to take home and use at home to practice each day.

Upcoming article on Mental Training
In the June/July 2014 edition of pelinks4u we'll be introducing "Body Rehearsal," getting the most out of physical motions of sport by paying attention to how the motion feels. A coachs script and a drill that athletes can use at home will be provided.

Download Coach's Handout Here!

Download Athlete's Handout Here!

¹ Techniques in this article are taken from Sports Psyching (1976) by T. Tutko & U. Tosi.

Biography: Dr. Christine Lottes is a professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Coaching Education, Sport Psychology, Sport Sociology and Sport Ethics.

She volunteers with youth and college athletes in the area of mental training. It was through this work that she became interested in helping coaches to present mental training to their athletes in the pre-season and then have athletes continue to "work out mentally" throughout the season as part of practice and competitions.

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