3 Ways I Use Visualization With My Team

Visualization is one of the simplest mental training tools out there and most coaches have no idea how to actually run it. Get the free training here that shows you how → https://coachfreetraining.com

In this episode, I'm breaking down three practical ways I use visualization with my team before every practice, before big games, and in the moments when I can feel the stress in the room.

No scripts to memorize. No extra prep. Just tools you can start using this week.

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre, a 4-time state champion volleyball coach and Certified Mental Performance Coach. I've spent 14+ years coaching girl athletes and built The Elite Competitor to give coaches proven, plug-and-play mental training systems that actually work.  

Here's what you'll learn:
✅ How the 321 BRAVE routine sets the mental tone before practice even starts
✅ Why pre-game visualization should focus on execution, not the outcome
✅ How to read the room and use visualization on the fly when your team needs it most

The science is clear: mental rehearsal fires the same neural pathways as physical performance. Which means every time your athlete visualizes a skill, she's literally training her brain.

Visualization = Confidence. Here's how to make it work.

🕓 Key Moments:  
00:00 Introduction
01:37 Why Visualization Works (The Science)
02:39 Way #1: Visualization Before Practice
03:12 The 3-2-1 Brave Mindset Routine
04:46 Plug and Play Mental Training Program
05:54 Way #2: Visualization Before Games
06:58 Way #3: Situational Visualization
09:09 Wrap-Up & Resources

💬 Drop a comment below - Which of these three are you trying first with your team? 

📩 Work with Coach Bre: coachfreetraining.com

📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
🎓 Free Mental Training Resource for Coaches: coachfreetraining.com
📲 Instagram: @coachhergame
🎙 Podcast: Coach Her Game Podcast
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🔹 Player Impact Plan: https://elitecompetitor.kit.com/6639eaaf9f|

🔔 Subscribe for weekly mental training strategies built specifically for coaches of girl athletes.

P.S. Here's what the research shows:  
⚡️ Mental rehearsal alone can increase muscle strength by up to 35% - without any physical movement. (Cleveland Clinic, 2014)
⚡️ Athletes who use mental imagery report significantly higher confidence and lower pre-competition anxiety than those who don't. (Munroe-Chandler & Hall, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 2004)
⚡️A meta-analysis of 133 studies found that mental imagery interventions significantly improve sport performance across skill levels and sport types. (Simonsmeier et al., Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2020)

Coach Her Game channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.  

#coachinggirls #mentalperformance #girlsinsports #highschoolcoach #athletemindset

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

Transcript

1:04

Coach, you've probably heard about visualization. Maybe you've even tried it a time or two, but if you're being totally honest, you're probably not doing it super consistently with your team because nobody has actually ever shown you how to do it. Like. What do you say? How long does it take? Do you just have them close their eyes and hope for the best? Um, well, today I'm gonna be breaking that down three practical ways that I use visualization with my team and what the science says about how and why it works, and how you can start. This week without any scripts to write or no extra prep or no weird silence in the gym. So let's get into it. If I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bree. I have spent the last 14 years as a head volleyball coach, but I'm also a mental performance coach for athletes, and I wanna be upfront with you. I did not walk into like my first practice with some sort of visualization system. I knew it was a thing kind of like you do. I knew that it was important and it was kind of one of those like taboo. Things that could make a difference, but I don't really know how to do it. Um, and it's taken me a few, a few years to really solidify this. So I'm saving you all of that work to tell you here, here's how it actually works. Okay, so before I tell you the three ways, I want to let you in on some of the quick science on really why you should be doing this as a coach. It's one of those really simple mental game skills that you can do with your team that makes a big difference. I love how simple it is too, because it doesn't take a lot of time. Like 60 seconds of visualization is actually enough to, uh, make a difference. So you get a lot of bang for your buck when it comes to one of these mental skills. Okay, so what's happening here when we mentally rehearse. Something in our brain. Our brain actually fires the same neural pathways when as if they're physically performing it. So research from the Cleveland Clinic found that mental rehearsal alone can increase muscle strength by up to 35%. So not even doing the movement just. Thinking through it, 35%. Okay. So every time your athlete closes her eyes and sees herself executing a skill, bouncing back from a mistake, or stepping into that pressure moment with confidence, she's literally training her brain to perform. So that's not a pep talk, that's neuroscience. So visualization can actually increase your athlete's confidence because their brain and their body is like, oh, I've already been in this situation. Okay. And it works if you have 60 seconds or even five minutes. Okay, so I'm gonna break down three ways that I use visualization with my team. And side note, I've been doing this for about seven years, is when I started. To introduce mental training with my team, and visualization was one of those components that I started introducing. Okay. Way number one is before practice. So this is what I do. Before every single practice, um, athletes have a routine called 3, 2, 1, brave. Now, 3, 2, 1. Brave is a full like five to seven minute to mindset routine. So the way I structure my practice is that athletes are coming in, they do something called a pre-practice. So they have some stuff on the board that they're doing. And I coach volleyball, I coach, um, you know, a program of three teams, so everybody kind of does pre-practice together. I call everyone to the board at the end of that 10 to 15 minute pre-practice, and they complete their three, two, and brave and the three, two. And Brave, like I said, is a, it is a, it is a mindset routine, so I'll go over it quickly, but it's three affirmations in their journal. Um, these have been prefo at the beginning of the season based on like really what they want for that season. Uh, two minutes of journaling. So I usually prompt them based on, you know, what's going on in our season. And I. You know, I have them journal a little bit. One piece of gratitude and one piece of evidence that one of their affirmations is coming true. So that's kind of the part that they do in their journal. And then I lead them through a visualization called brave. So that is another acronym. So the B stands for breath. We do five deep breaths at the top of each breath. They do their reset words, so that's R. So it's a another kind of tool that I have used in my team to help them kind of reset after mistakes. Uh, the AA stands for affirmations. Okay, so they say each of their affirmations to themselves. The V stands for visualization. So after each affirmation that they say to themselves in their head, they actually take about 15 seconds to visual visualize that affirmation. So an example of an affirmation might be like, I'm a fast, aggressive defender, and then they literally visualize themselves doing that. So, um, I have them get really specific on. What are examples of what that looks like? So maybe they see themselves going all out for a ball. Maybe they see themselves, um, anticipating a tip and you know, doing a pancake or something like that. So they have some things that they have like pre-thought about when it comes to what they should be visualizing. So they do that for all three. And then the E at the end of brave just stands for energy shift because at the end they should feel a little bit of an energetic shift and they do. This is like how I start every single practice. I'll tell you it does, um, lead to a lot smoother practice. Um, athletes are more focused, they've like checked their brain in. So if you wanna know more about this daily mindset routine, the three, two and brave and what I do, head to our free coaches training. That's at coach free training.com. I break down that skill plus two others that I do, um, with my team. Two other mental training skills that have really made a difference in my team. So that is the first way that I use visualization. We visualize before every single practice and it doesn't. It doesn't take a long time. Okay, so like I said, that routine in entirety takes five to seven minutes. And, um, at that free training, I also talk about our program called Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for Teams. This is, um, literally plug and play mental training curriculum, uh, that coaches across the nation have used to infuse mental training into their practices. And inside that program, I give you scripts. I give you scripts on. Brave, um, that visualization and 15 other visualizations that you can read for your team, but also audio of it too, of me doing it so I can talk to your team. But you can play them for your team and they can also download them to their phones so that they can listen to them on their own. So there's a lot of different ways that you can do that. Um, and the link in the description, we'll send you to the free training and give you information. About plug and play. Okay. The second way that I use visualization with my team is before games. So we visualize before every single game as well. Um, as I mentioned at the beginning. Your, um, brain when we mentally rehearse fires the same neural pathways. And so I want them to put themselves in the game-like situation before they're in it so that they can kind of mentally rehearse what's going to happen. So I take them through some pre-game visualizations. Inside plug and play. We have, um, two or three vi pre-game visualizations that athletes. Can, um, use. And so I will usually read them for them. I have them kind of imagine walking into the court on, in, you know, what they see, what they hear, what they smell like, kind of put themselves in that situation. Um, the key to really good visualizations is recruiting all of your senses. So I take them through that. Doing, uh, reps, so passing reps, setting reps, hitting reps, all all of that that they're going to experience. I even have them visualize themselves making a mistake and, you know, things not going well and visualize. How they're going to bounce back, how they're going to celebrate their teammates and things like that. So I'll take them through one of those visualizations before a game. Uh, the third way that I use the visualization is very situational. This is kind of like on the fly, um, I'll say, and usually it's still anchored to before practice or before a game. But if I'm noticing that my team is a little bit stressed, um, if we're about to have a big game, I do this like before state, you know, in the hotel room the night before, we have like our first round of state I take them into, um, usually the exercise room, I turn off the lights, they lay down and I take them through like a progressive relaxation, um, meditation or visualization. So that's another way to kind of. Um, recruit the, not just the, um, the neural pathways, but engage their, uh, their, their parasympathetic nervous system, which helps them kind of relax and get into this mode where they're not so amped up. Because in those big gains before those big moments, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of nerves, and I'm trying to get them to, okay, can we use our breath and can we, you know, activate our parasympathetic so that you're not overly anxious? About what's going to happen, so. I use more of a meditation approach to this, um, body scan, um, progressive relaxation. Sometimes we use visualization to have them imagine things that are like, not even related to the skill of their sport. So they're skill reps. That's great. But, um, athletes love this particular visualization, visualization called the backpack visualization, where they kind of imagine that they're wearing this backpack full of kind of the things that they're worried about, about their game or about their performance. See themselves taking off the backpack and putting it in the garbage. So a lot of this can be like symbolic, but again, it's access accessing, um, their subconscious to help them actually do that and kind of free themselves of that weight. So this one is a little bit more like on the fly, but uh, inside plug and play, all of those visualizations that I have ever used with my team are in there. So coaches can read them. Um, there's also little scriptures descriptions on like, here's a good time to use this visualization, you know, before the night before a really big game. Or if you've noticed your team is stressed or you know, they're battling some negative self-talk. So those are really great because then I'll just kind of swap out. I'll be like, okay, instead of brave today we're gonna do this, um, you know, this body scan visualization or something like that. So. Anyways, those are three ways that I use it with my team. I'll tell you right now that the feedback that I get from my team is that they love taking the time to visualize and to meditate a little bit. I mean, we don't meditate in maybe the traditional sense, but, um, you know, some of these, uh, visualizations that I walk'em through are meditative and in the sense that they're relaxing and they're getting their mind. And a lot of times it's the only time in their day that they can actually do that, and it allows them to shift into a place of, okay, now I'm ready. I'm prepared. I'm not scrolling before a game. I'm not worried about what's gonna happen. I'm really mentally checking in. So. If you want to know more about how to do this with your team, check out our free training coach free training.com. That's where you also learn about plug and play, which is a really easy way to like, literally plug and play this for your team. Um, and I also have some visualizations on our YouTube channel, so if you wanna head to one of those next, those are other. Um, I picked out a couple of them that you can play for your team. So I will link a couple of those next and I'll see you in the next episode.