ABSTRACT
Athletes, coaches and psychologists have known for a long time that mental imagery is a powerful weapon – if it is used properly, and positively, it can boost your skills and performance. In general, the images that top athletes strive to create are ones that involve the different senses that are required by the skill in question. For example, in golf, when Tiger Woods claimed that ‘you have to see the shots and feel them through your hands’,2 he highlighted the importance of combining visual and kinaesthetic (feeling-oriented) imagery before striking the ball. Imagery from these same two senses featured in an account by Peter Stringer, the Munster, Irish and Lions rugby scrum-half, of his persistent attempt to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ himself
scoring a try to earn his province a victory over Biarritz in the 2006 European Cup Final – something that he actually achieved:
Sometimes as well, I try to get the feeling of what it would be like to dive over the line unchallenged and score a try, the feeling of touching the ball off the ground and my body landing a split second later. In my head, I want to feel what it’s like because I’ve never done that. . . . So, I had to keep replaying it in my head in bed . . . that feeling of hitting the ground. I kept trying to imagine it, because I would think to myself, ‘If I don’t get the feeling now I’m not going to score the try.3
