3 Simple Visualization Routines Every Coach Can Use

🔥Boost your athletes’ confidence and mental toughness with 3 simple visualization routines any coach can use → https://coachfreetraining.com

Coaches, are you looking for practical coaching strategies to help your athletes perform at their best—without adding more drills to practice? In this episode, I’ll walk you through 3 powerful visualization routines that reduce athlete anxiety, improve focus, and give your team the competitive edge. Backed by sports psychology, these routines are simple to introduce, highly effective, and proven to help high school athletes build mental resilience and peak performance.

 🎯 You'll learn:
 ✔️ Why what you call visualization matters for player buy-in 🧠
 ✔️ A simple way to introduce short routines that athletes actually use 🙌
 ✔️ How elite competitors use mental reps to gain a performance edge 🏆

🎙 I’m Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a 4-time state champion head volleyball coach. I’ve spent 14 years coaching and now I’m here to help you strengthen your athletes’ mental game, build player connection, and reduce the stress that comes with tryouts, evaluations, and competition.

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 The Importance of Visualization
00:34 How to Introduce Visualization to Your Team
02:33 Starting Small with Visualization
03:01 Utilizing Resources for Visualization
04:29 Modeling Visualization as a Coach

📢 COACHES: Have you ever tried visualization with your athletes? If so, how did it go?

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🔹 Learn more about Plug & Play Elite Mental Game → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg
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#CoachingTips #TryoutTips #MentalToughness #FemaleAthletes #SportsPsychology #MentalPerformance #PlayerEvaluationCriteria #CoachingStrategies #PeakPerformance #EliteCompetitor #ReduceAnxietyForAthletes #PlayerConnection #CoachBre #CoachFreeTraining

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:05

The first time that I did visualization with my team, it didn't go so well. I was pretty awkward about it, and you better believe if you're awkward as a coach. Your team is gonna feel weird about it too. Now, over the years, I have done it a little differently and I'm gonna share my top three tips for you. If you're a coach that is looking to incorporate visualization with your team, which you should, and by the way, I'm Coach Bree. I am a mental performance coach for girl athletes, but I'm also a 14 year head volleyball coach who has led my team to four state championships, and you better believe that visualization has been a part of all of those seasons. So let's get into it. First thing, what you call it matters. If you're calling it meditation or visualization, even that can feel a little weird for athletes who are very new to it. So I call it at the beginning, just mental reps. So it kind of connects it to what they're already doing. Like we're already doing physical reps now we're gonna do some mental reps, so it makes more sense to them. We warm up our bodies, we're also gonna warm up our minds. And also, this is not about like zoning out or chanting or doing yoga in the middle of practice. Like, I mean, I, I love yoga, but that's not what we're doing here. It is a way for them to physically prepare for what they're about to. Do either in practice or in competition. There's a ton of science behind visualization. I'm not gonna go into it in this episode. I've got episodes on the YouTube channel where I go deeper into it. But the research is very clear around visualization and the neural pathways that are. Activated when athletes visualize are the same ones that are activated when they physically do the skill. So it's almost like getting more reps, free reps without having to like put any more wear and tear on your body. And it makes you feel more confident because it's like you've already been there, your brain and body is already preparing it for the moment. So when you introduce it to your team, incorporating some of the science behind it is also great for those athletes who are a little bit more like analytical and wanna know the science behind it. Also pulling from like the, the best of the best, like best athletes at any level, college athletes, professional athletes, like they're utilizing visualization, mental imagery in their training. And you can pull, I sometimes have pulled clips from, um, there's a volleyball player. If you, if you do coach volleyball, this is great. But if you Google like Courtney Thompson. Setting visualization. There's a clip of her talking about visualization, um, before the Olympics and how that helped her. So, you know, pulling in some other examples of how the best athletes are using it is also a great way to introduce it. So that's a good way to like just introduce what visualization is. How you talk about it really matters. It's like the best athletes are already doing this. It's also what's gonna give us a little bit of an edge. Okay, now number two, start small and simple. You don't need like a 15 minute visualization to start with. Like honestly, just starting one to two minutes before practice and having them see what they would see, seeing them pass, like I'm gonna use some volleyball examples, but seeing them pass with their platform angle to the target. Seeing them serve, like go through the six skills. You can walk them through it just by talking, but if you're like. Yeah, no, that's outta my comfort zone. I, I got you. Okay. So there is actually some visualizations on our YouTube channel that I'll link below. These are more though, like relaxation visualizations. These are things that I would do like before a big game. I did a couple of these actually before state this, um, every year. I've done them before, before state, but like the night before. So these are more geared towards like relaxation, um, guided imagery, things like that. But if you want to, you can, you can just play it for your team. Okay. Get'em together, play it for their, your team. There's a little intro on some of them, so you just fast forward through that. Um, but that's an easy way to start. Also in our mental training program, plug and Play Elite Mental Game for Teams. This is the literal plug and play mental training that coaches use who are coaching high school sports to deliver mental training to their teams in less than 20 minutes a week. Inside Plug and Play, we have a visualization vault. I have 15 visualizations. In there that you can play for your team. You can have your team download them to their phone so they can listen on their own, or you can read the script. So I have all the scripts for them. If you are, you know, if you want to do it that way. That's how I do it now. Like I read the script to them, um, because I'm super comfortable with it. But if I was just starting like, and I had notes. Experience. Um, I would just play one for them. I would use the, the visualization vaults to just pick one, play it for them, make it really easy. So if you wanna learn more about plug and play, go to our free training. It's at coach free training.com. I lay out like what plug and play is, you get a pricing discount, all of that, you get access to the visualization vault. So that's a really great thing that you can have access to in a really, like, easy way to just play things for your team. Okay. All right. The last, um, tip I have for you is model it as a coach. So you might not be able to actually visualize with them if you are reading a script or something like that. But if you are playing a visualization, like do it with them, if you're like aloof and on your phone and like. Not really participating. Like they're not all, they're not gonna take it seriously either. So, model, if you think this is important, like you've gotta model it in how you talk about it and how you introduce it. Um, do it with them. If you are having it played by some other, um, you know, medium. So what, like your tone in all of this really, really matters. All right, so if you wanna check out those visualizations that you can just play for your team, go ahead and check those out now. I will link those. If you wanna know more about how to infuse this into your team in a really plug and play way, go to our coach free training. That's at coach free training.com.