Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Chapter 5

Using imagination in sport: mental imagery

and mental practice in athletes

You have to see the shots and feel them through your hands. (Tiger Woods, quoted in
Pitt, 1998a, p. 5)
I work with a psychologist on imagery training. Sometimes when I am driving to the
ground and am sitting in traffic, I will do a couple of crosses in my mind. (David James,
West Ham and England goalkeeper, quoted in Winter, 2002a, P.S3)
The image is the ice-man. You walk like an ice-man and think like an ice-man.
(Richard Faulds, 2000 Olympic gold medal-winning trap-shooter, quoted in Nichols,
2000, p. 7)

Introduction

As the above quotations show, athletes such as golfers (e.g., Tiger Woods), footballers
(e.g., the goalkeeper David James) and Olympic champions (e.g., Richard Faulds) believe
that “mental imagery”, or the ability to simulate in the mind information that is not
currently being perceived by the sense organs, is helpful for the learning and performance
of sport skills. Similar testimonials to the value of “visualisation” abound in other fields
of skilled performance such as dance. For example, Highfield (2002) described brain
imaging research which showed that Deborah Bull, the British former ballet star, used
imagery extensively when watching others dance. The imagery strategies used by dancers
have also been investigated by Hanrahan and Vergeer (2000–2001). Perhaps not
surprisingly, mental imagery techniques are widely recommended by sport psychologists
(e.g., Vealey and Greenleaf, 1998) as intervention procedures to enhance various mental
processes (e.g., self-confidence) as well as motor skills. To illustrate, Callow, Hardy and
Hall (1998) reported that an imagery-based training programme had facilitated enhanced
confidence in elite badminton players. Therefore, as imagery has become a common
component of sport psychological interventions (Holmes and Collins, 2002), it has been
acclaimed as a “central pillar of applied sport psychology” (Perry and Morris, 1995, p.
339). Nevertheless, athletes who practise imagery may be regarded as rather eccentric.
For example, when the England goalkeeper David James rehearses his skills
imaginatively during traffic delays, he often receives puzzled glances from other drivers.
As he says, “I have had a few strange looks when people see my head nodding from side
to side but I firmly believe that it is part of the repetitive process that every sportsman
requires” (D. James, 2003, p. 36). In summary, athletes, dancers and sport psychologists
endorse the value of imagery as a cognitive tool for giving performers a winning edge in
their chosen field. But is this belief in the power of imagery supported by empirical