The first time I was told about visualisation techniques and positive affirmations I thought to myself ‘this guy is a kook what would he know about FMX’ (he was a retired basketball player). As the conversation continued, a few more beers were drunk and my youthful ‘know all’ ignorance began to subside I realised he had a point and I had actually been subconsciously doing this for years, in both positive and negative ways.

That was my light bulb moment, right at that point I realised how much control I had over my thoughts and how much my thoughts controlled my actions and performance. Not only that, I realised how much I had been unknowing allowing my negative visualisations hold me back. It’s amazing what a few beers and a good conversation can achieve!

Anyway, that was around 12 years ago and since then I have done a lot of thinking, positive thinking. You see, our thoughts are the seeds of our actions, if you think you are going to fail then you no doubt will, this is one of the biggest roadblocks that athletes can face. However, not just athletes can face this dilemma, every day I see people with more potential than they can even imagine just stagnantly rotting away in their mundane existence. These people think things like ‘why can’t I get a break’ and ‘why does bad stuff always happen to me?’ Read those words again, understand that they hold a negative connotation. This is why that particular person will not ever catch a break, why bad things always happen, and they never win anything because they believe they won’t. Their mind will not ever let them take opportunities even if they are right in front of them.

Now back to action sports, positive visualisation techniques can help you learn tricks faster, return from injuries sooner and pick faster lines around a track or course. However, how does one do this you may ask? Well it is actually as simple as it sounds, close your eyes and image what you want to achieve. Let’s say you are an FMX rider and want to learn or perfect a new trick.

Step 1

• If you have not done it already and want to learn it watch someone else do it, video is better than in real life because you can slow it down and pick apart what they are doing.

Step 2

• Now that you have watched and understand the movement, close your eyes and watch the movie again in your head, slowing it down and paying attention to every step.

Step 3

• Now keeping your eyes closed move yourself into the movie so that you are the rider doing the trick, imagine yourself doing the manoeuvre from your point of view through your eyes. See everything that happens, watch where your hands go, what your feet do, you can slow it down and do it step by step because it’s in your mind. You have all the time in the world and can practice it over and over again until you can do it at the speed you will need to in real life.

Step 4

• Repetition is the key, as it is with learning any skill. The more you visualise the more practiced you will be and the better at it you will get.

Now that you have learned the skill in your mind it makes it much easier to convert to the real world and do in practice, this technique can be used for learning new things or fine tuning existing skills. Another way it can be used is visualising a track or course, in this instance a track walk will imprint the circuit in your mind then you can use the movie in your head to pick lines and rehearse sections so that you can perfect it before you compete. This is how the elite professionals do it, you often see them rehearsing in their heads before competition.

This is really just scraping the surface of what your mind is capable of and of the techniques I share with my athletes. If you are ready to take the next step with your training and performance and want to join the Actionsport Performance team then go straight to my contact page and let me know why right now!

Train hard and be safe.

Your strength coach

Cam