Imagery can play a huge role in determining and effecting the outcome of everyday situations. One of the numerous benefits that come with it, is the fact that you can use it in many different cases and situations, whether it be for preparation, solving problems, or just to simply improve confidence in yourself or the activity in play. “Mental imagery should not focus on the outcome but on the actions to achieve the desired outcome.”(Mac) Imagery involves many senses, these senses are brought up with the thoughts in your mind. These senses include kinesthetic sense, visual sense, tactile sense, and olfactory sense. Individually, each sense plays its own part in creating the overall picture or situation occurring. To start off with, kinesthetic …show more content…
According to the textbook studies have shown that the factors that affect the effectiveness of imagery the most are the nature of the task, skill level of the performer, imagining ability, using imagery along with physical practice, and lastly personality. The nature of the task when referring to imagery means possibly practicing mentally in situations where overcoming a barrier may be necessary. The skill level of the performer is referring to studies showing that although imagery is shown to be effective for both experienced athletes as well as novice athletes, it is said that it works somewhat stronger for the experienced, while they use it more frequently. Imagining ability, this also pretty much speaks for itself meaning that the greater one’s ability is at imagining, the greater the chances of the imagery being a success. Using imagery for physical practice is important too, because it may help to calm the athlete down. The last factor that I mentioned was personality, the book states that “personality may influence the effectiveness of psychological skills used by the athlete. (Weinberg, and Gould, pg. …show more content…
Personally, I use it before I pitch, usually a couple hours before the game and sometimes even the night before. If an athlete was practicing the imagery process in their mind this may be how it could go. First off, the situation varies so for this example I’m going to do a pitcher. It is very important to use all the senses I discussed as well to get the full experience. Imagine yourself on the mound, with your medal cleats sinking in to the mound dirt, staring down at your black leather Rawlings glove. The game is about to begin and you can hear the crowd cheering right before the first pitch is thrown, along with your teammates yelling out words of encouragement. You can smell the freshly popped popcorn as well as the hamburgers and hot dogs cooking on the grill. You look up and see the packed stands and a clear visual of the straight line to your catcher, with the umpire right behind him and home plate freshly wiped off. The batter walks up and steps in to the box, right after you take three deep breaths you step on the rubber and zone in, beginning to go through your delivery, left foot goes back, then your left leg lifts up in sync with your arm and you deliver the first pitch, fastball on the outside corner, just what the catcher called, the umpire gives the first call of the game “strike 1” and fans begin to clap. You get the ball back and get back on the mound, your