ABSTRACT
As is well established, injuries, particularly severe or recurrent injuries, can have significant negative consequences for the injured athlete, including changing for the worse the ways that an athlete thinks, feels and acts. It stands to reason, therefore, that there is growing interest and appreciation in the role of psychological interventions within the injury rehabilitation process; arguably chief amongst these has been the role of imagery. Imagery has a range of uses and benefits during injury rehabilitation, all of which can contribute to enhancing the injury experience for those progressing through the stages of rehabilitation. Consequently, this chapter will (1) define imagery and its potential benefits within sports injury rehabilitation; (2) highlight some of the main theories of imagery use; (3) discuss some of the proposed psychophysiological, neurobiological and neurocognitive underpinnings for the proposed benefits of imagery; (4) discuss suggestions for applied practice whilst also highlighting some of the research limitations and (5) present an applied case study.
