Do You Plan When To Visualize Before Your Soccer Match?

Performers and Achievers Daily with Raj Gavurla

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Show Notes:
The most important characteristics of performers and achievers with relevant and relatable stories and examples to bring out your authentic gifts, talents, abilities, and skills.

Do You Plan When To Visualize Before Your Soccer Match?

1.  Visualize your soccer match environment

2.  Use the BALL method

     B is for breathing (what type(s) of breathing?

     A is for affirmations, instructional self-talk, motivational self talk

     L is for look back to a previous match or practice

       Use your experience, knowledge, skills, five senses (sight, hear, smell, taste,             touch), feel, breathing, physical sensations, and intuition. I guide my                           customers in their visualization on a video (Zoom) call or in person

     L is for look forward to your next match or practice

        Use your experience, knowledge, skills, five senses (sight, hear, smell, taste,              touch), feel, breathing, physical sensations, and intuition. I guide my                          customers in their visualization on a video (Zoom) call or in person

3.  When to visualize during a match (penalty kick, direct kick, in direct kick.

4.  When not to visualize during a soccer match

5.  Track and field example

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Transcript

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Achievers, welcome to Performers and Achievers Daily with me, Raj Gavrilla. In today's episode, we are discussing do you plan your visualization before you play soccer and then during your actual soccer match? So here's a way to visualize. And this is when you're not on the pitch, you're at home, you're maybe at the academy, you're somewhere besides the pitch. And the way you do it is you use the ball method. And I learned this from Brian Kane. And basically, the ball method stands for breathing. So first you breathe. So you can do box breathing, you can do six to eight breathing. Now, here's something a little different that I'll add to this. In your box breathing, when you breathe in, so let's say you're breathing in for five. Well, when you breathe in, then say something to yourself with self-talk or tell yourself something that is uh instructional or that is motivational, something to the effect that that uh will be helpful to you, it will support you, benefit you when you're actually doing the actual execution of your soccer kick. So that's the ball method, so that's the B. The A is what I call affirmations, and this is just affirmations in the sense that positive self-talk. So the first thing you do is you control your breathing and concentration, and then positive self-talk is good. However, here you can also put in instructional self-talk or motivational self-talk. Okay, so this is a little different. I'm adding the what I do, and that is I put uh instructional self-talk or motivational self-talk. So the instructional self-talk might be to uh come come through the ball cleanly, or it might be to make sure my toe is up when I come through the ball, so I can curve it into the back of the net, the side net. Or it might be something to the effect of before I'm about to kick the penalty kick, look at the goalie, and if the goalie diving one way, I can kick it the other way. So I know before I kick where my target is. So this is all instructional self-talk. Then the next is look back, look back on your previous soccer playing, the highlights. You know, what were you able to do, or what did you do, or how did you play the good parts of it where you played good, where you were successful, where you scored a goal, or where you were able to get the ball from a defend from an offensive player, or you were able to get the ball from a defensive player, where you made a good pass, where you kicked a really good indirect kick, or a direct kick, or you made a penalty shot, whatever it may be. So look back now, look forward now. Visualize looking forward, and when you look back, use your senses. What did you know about the situation? What wisdom did you use? What did you think about the situation? What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? How was your breathing? What were the physical sensations? All of those things when you look back and now look forward and do similar. However, now you're doing it versus you're doing it for your next match. You know how how how will you play in your next match? What's the match strategy? What are the keys that you're looking for? What are the the way that we're gonna play and and uh what it is that uh is gonna be occurring during this match. So you visualize that and you use all your senses to visualize and your wisdom and your knowledge or knowing and thinking, your experience, your skills, and your seeing, doing, hearing, feeling, physical sensations, breathing. Okay, and so you do this in visualization. So, for example, I had a player who many times he would do this method, and however, every once in a while he would be challenged or have an issue with his breathing, and therefore it would happen randomly when he played soccer. It wasn't a thing that we could know the direct cause of. However, when he would look forward, he would visualize looking back on that time when that would occur, and then he would look forward, he would look visualize then, and he would then do something to fix it, to correct it. Uh, and so I would help him and support him, and what it is that he needed to be he needed to do in order to not have that breathing issue. And so this is very unique for each player, and so it's gonna be unique for you or different for you, and it's not one size fits all. So now he looks back and he's playing soccer and he's breathing good, and so now he looks forward to his next match, and he's implementing the learning from the week, from the training, from who they're gonna be playing, and what it is that his uh role is when he's playing. What are the keys to the game, the match? What's the game plan, the match strategy? Uh, maybe what's something that he's been uh he's uh been working on, and so now he's gonna implement the work or the learning in a match, and he looks forward, visualizing forward using his senses. So that's very important. So that's called the ball method. Now remember, I added in there though, which my addition was is to use instructional self-talk and motivational self-talk in addition to positive self-talk and affirmations. Now, when you're actually on the pitch, now also what's important to keep in mind, and you probably remember this from listening to my previous podcast, is that when you're doing this visualization, you are still. Okay, now another way to visualize is when you're actually in the match. You can use visualization. You don't use visualization when you're running, when you're moving. No, you're seeing, you're looking, you're feeling, you're sensing, you have some intuition, you have some knowledge, knowing, wisdom, think critical thinking skills, you uh feel, you have physical sensations, you're breathing, you're doing all of those things in real time. However, when you can use visualization is in the following scenarios or situations. One is for a penalty kick, you can visualize a penalty kick. The reason is because the ball is stationary and you're stationary before you go to your in-competition routine to execute the penalty kick, kick it. So you can visualize, for example, what side of the goal you're going for. Now you're going to the upper left, are you going to the middle left? Are you going to the lower left? Are you going to the upper right, the middle right, the lower right? Okay. And then as you visualize that, you can also use all your senses and your breathing and your physical sensations, and just visualizing that you executing that shot and you making the penalty kick. And you use this ball method as you're doing it. Now, with this ball method, when you're on the pitch, you're using it with the breathing part, and then the instructional self-talk or motivational self-talk, or the positive self-talk, and then you're visualizing you executing a kick, you making the shot. You're not looking back at a previous time you played. No, you're there in real time playing soccer. So you visualize. And when you visualize, you visualize yourself making the kick. Now, one of the things with your instructional self-talk is that right as before you're kicking the ball, some players do this, some players don't. You're looking, see in a fraction of a second, is the goalkeeper leaning one way. Did he dive first one way? And if he did, of course, you'd kick it the other way. And that's why some players hesitate before they kick to see does the goalkeeper dive one way. So some players don't hesitate, however, they're still able to make the adjustment because they have the keeper right before they make the kick, they have they're able to see the keeper and therefore make the kick and make the adjustment. You've visualized it, you're gonna make the kick. And now you're usually not the word visualized, but now you're in motion and about to kick the ball, and you're seeing now. You're seeing, you're using your senses, you're feeling, you're feeling the physical sensations, the breathing, and all that that you you experience when you kick a good penalty kick, right? And so that's the way to use visualization during a match. You can also do this similar for a direct kick. You can do similar for an indirect kick. Most likely for a pass when you're on the move, when you're running and you're about to shoot, you're seeing, you're seeing in real time. Yes, you're feeling, you're breathing, physical sensations, and all of that, using your critical thinking skills, your wisdom, your knowing, your knowledge, your experience, your intuition. You're using all of that. Okay, however, you're not visualizing. The reason is it's because you're not stationary. That's the that's what's to keep in mind. You're in real time playing soccer, so you're not stationary, so you're not visualizing, you're seeing. Now you can use all the other senses, intuition and everything else, seeing, feeling, physical sensations, breathing, etc. Uh, you can even like make a sound because that exertion of the sound sort of loosens you up or keeps you relaxed, or just makes it to where you can put a little more power into the shot or into the indirect kick or the direct kick, and so that's the difference between visualizing whether you're not on the pitch and visualizing when you're on the pitch, and then when not to visualize when you're on the pitch, and those are the things to keep in mind, and it's important to keep those in mind. I can give you another example of this just so you can relate to this in another aspect because I know that sometimes people need another example to make it more clear, and that is for track. I can also help track athletes, help and support track athletes, and one of the things I help them with is visualization, and so they can visualize their race, and they visualize it, and we go through all the visualization, the ball method. I include instructional self-talk, motivational self-talk, positive self-talk, and we do this when they're not actually running. Now, when they're running and when they're at the track, okay, it's up to them before they start do they want to do a visualization? Okay, that's up to them, and of course, this visualization is a little different than the visualization that they did when they weren't at the track, it's not going to involve looking back, it's going to be in real time, and it's going to be about this race. Now, when they're actually running, okay, and they need the and they're actually running, they're running their race, not anybody else's race, they're running their race, and all of a sudden they're looking for the endline, or they see the inline, and that's important for them to see the inline or see the next marker that their target market marker is, whatever it may be. And therefore, they're not using the word visualize. The reason they're not using the word visualize, keep in mind, is because they're actually moving, they're in their in-competition routine, and they are running. And a lot of times when they run, sometimes the image of the finish line or the image of their next target comes to mind, and that's good. That image is something to see, they see their target, they see the finish line. So the word see is the word to be using. So that's an example that you can contrast to soccer, or if you're a track athlete, you can contrast it, you can contrast it to track. What I said about soccer, you can contrast that to track, and you can be able to relate the two and see, okay, I see what he is teaching here, and so that's the importance of visualization. Now, the thing is, if you're sitting somewhere, you're in class, you're at home, you're walking, you're with your family, you're with your friends, extended family, wherever, you're at a networking event, you're out to dinner, out to lunch, and you start visualizing, or these images of soccer start coming to you, that's no use. All you're doing there is putting cognitive load on you and putting pressure on you. Okay, you want to plan when you visualize, you plan when you visualize on purpose, intentional. I will visualize soccer at this time, I will visualize track and field at this time. Not while you're just walking around. The reason is is because, first of all, you're not present or your presence isn't where you are. And so if you're at dinner and you're with somebody, they may look at you like a little aloof, like you know, your mind's not here, it's somewhere else. Or if you're at a networking event, the same kind of thing. Or if you're with friends and family or extended family, and you just you know seem a little aloof. And so that's important that you actually schedule your visualization. Schedule your visualization now. With my customers, I help and support them because I'm able to use my expertise, my experience, my knowledge, and my skills to be able to ask them good questions, the right questions, relevant questions, so that I can make their visualization the best it can be. And so, therefore, we do that on a Zoom call, or we do that in person at my home office. And then sometimes we are actually at the field of play. So that's what I have for you today. So your bonus assignment is if you're a soccer player, to use visualization when you're not at the pitch, and then when you are on the pitch, actually playing a match, or if you're a track and field athlete, use visualization when you're not at the field, at the track, and then to use and then how to use visualization when you're at the track, and what the difference is between visualization and seeing, and when to use both of those. That's what I covered today in this episode of my podcast. If you like my podcast, like it and make a comment in the comment section. For those of you who are interested in my private, personal, professional, confidential pro services and programs, visit my website, RajGavrilla.com, fill out the brief form, and we will contact you as soon as we can. Enjoy your day.