Normally, physical preparation and practice take place at a specialist area away from the arena where the actual event will take place. If you have played at the arena before, or can get to see it prior to the event, you can build this into your mental warm-up by creating an appropriate picture of it in your preparation. However, you can still use mental warm-up exercises even if you are unfamiliar with the venue.
In preparing for the mental warm-up consider these factors:
Your outcomes for the actual sporting event
How you propose to achieve your outcomes
How you feel about yourself, e.g. your physical preparation, awareness of your body and your thoughts, feelings and emotions about the event
How you feel about the people around you
How you feel about the team you belong to
The actual place where the event will take place
Do these activities as part of your mental warm-up regime. It is designed to help you to experiment with your senses.
Find somewhere to sit comfortably. Don't lie down, or you may fall asleep. Breathe deeply, slowly and regularly and close your eyes. Check that your body is relaxed all over, then start to play:
Imagine yourself sitting on a beach looking at the sea. Notice the motion of the waves. Hear the sound of the waves lapping gently onto the beach. Feel the firmness and texture of the sand you are sitting on. Feel the heat from the sun as it gently touches your body.
Recall the faces of loved ones. Hear the sound of their voices. Experience how they make you feel. Recall the smell and taste of them (if appropriate!).
Remember the last meal you enjoyed. Go back and experience being there. Savour the taste of the food. Remember how it smelled. Replay the feelings as you ate it. Recall the people who were there. Hear the sound of their voices.
Recall being under a shower. Feel the touch of the water. Feel the sensations of towelling down. Go through getting dressed mentally in sequence. Be aware of how each item of clothing feels.
Remember a favourite piece of music. Experience how it makes you feel. See the picture it creates. Let your mind create whatever it wants.
Remember a time when you performed particularly well, preferably in your sport, but it could be anything, e.g. a presentation at work, a joke that everyone laughed at, doing a job around the house. Revisit the best part. Use all five senses as appropriate.
Explore and enjoy how you respond to this process
This activity will get you used to knowing how it feels (and looks, sounds, smells and tastes) to play with your senses. The next activity is a specific NLP approach you can use to warm up mentally for any sporting event.
For it you will need to know the NLP terms 'association' and 'dissociation'. Association means being inside your own experience and body looking out from your own eyes. Dissociation means being outside your own experience and body, looking at yourself as if on a screen, having a sense of detachment and separateness.
The ability to move between being associated and dissociated is a very useful skill, which most of us do quite naturally. For example, practise reliving a variety of experiences, some of which are happy, some of which are sad. Test whether you are actually inside the experience, seeing it from your own eyes, (associated) or whether you are seeing yourself in the experience, as if watching it on a screen, or at least having a sense of being outside yourself (dissociated).
Many sportspeople use association and dissociation - either deliberately or unconsciously - in dealing with past events. For example, one way of handling a poor performance or a bad result is to review it in a dissociated state. Normally the emotions that attend the dissociated state are more detached, impersonal and easier to handle. This allows for a more reasoned analysis to take place.
Equally, the ability to be associated, i.e. fully inside and in tune with yourself, is vital for and effective for any sports (or other) performance. Being able to be fully aware of, and in control of, yourself at will, at the moment when peak performance is required, is a wonderful skill to have and to develop.
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