Teachable Moment: Visualization

Visualization is a powerful mental skill that the brain can use to enhance performance. It's a practice that you and your brain can do off the field and it's known to improve a variety of in-the-game skills, like basketball free throws, soccer penalty kicks, gymnastic routines and… likely many elements of ultimate!

Basic visualization involves closing your eyes and imagining yourself doing a specific skill, like running an offensive play, laying out with good form, or practicing a throw. When you’re visualizing you’re activating many of the same areas of the brain that you would activate if you were actually doing that thing in real life. 

The reason that visualization is so powerful is that, from your brain's perspective, you ARE doing a skill... and the more the brain practices something, the more automatic it becomes. Just like practicing a play or a throw over and over again on the field, it gets easier. The same thing happens when you practice in your brain using visualization.