At some point in your career, you will experience an athletic injury. Every runner does eventually. Athletic injuries that disrupt your training routines and prevent you from running regularly are unavoidable. What many runners fail to realize is that an athlete’s mental outlook and stress response during the physical rehabilitation process significantly impacts both the recovery process and the risk of reinjury. Using sport psychology techniques to supplement your physical therapy process will result in more motivation, improved communication with your physical therapist, a better understanding of your injury, increased control over your recovery process, and ultimately a reduction in injury susceptibility.
What types of sport psychology techniques can injured runners benefit from the most?
One of the most widely used and powerful sport psychology techniques to support injury recovery is the use of imagery. Imagery is a mental training tool in which athletes use all their senses to mentally rehearse, create, or re-create an experience in the mind.
The difference between visualization and imagery is that visualization only engages the sense of vision, while imagery is a polysensory experience, meaning all senses are engaged including visual (what do you see?), auditory (what do you hear?), physical touch (what do you feel?), olfactory (what do you smell?), gustatory (what do you taste?) and the kinesthetic (what does the movement in your body feel like?).
“Visualization, for me, doesn’t take in all the senses. You have to smell it. You have to hear it. You have to feel it, everything.”
Emily Cook, Olympic Aerialist Skier
Runners can use imagery to mentally prepare for difficult race conditions, imagine desired race results, or refine your running technique. Injured runners can use imagery techniques to imagine the injured body part healing, reduce muscle tension, manage pain, decrease stress or re-injury anxiety, increase motivation for rehabilitation exercises, and imagine successfully returning to running.
Creating an Imagery Program
Holmes and Collins (2001) created the PETTLEP program to provide a framework for athletes to practice and integrate imagery into training. PETTLEP is an acronym for the model’s following seven key elements: physical, environment, task, timing, learning, emotion, and perspective. When designing and implementing imagery into your recovery program, runners should consider the following PETTLEP guidelines.
Your imagery should reflect the physical movement of running and the exact environment in which you plan to run in the future (i.e.. the New York Marathon). You should imagine the identical movement and task that you want to execute, in addition to the timing of the skill for the exact duration of time it takes to execute that skill. The learning element should be in alignment with your developmental stage of learning. Your imagery should incorporate as many race emotions as possible to make it feel real. Lastly you should engage in imagery using either an external or internal perspective, depending on whichever you find most effective.
External vs Imagery Perspectives
When practicing imagery, there are two different vantage points: external imagery and internal imagery. External imagery is viewing the action from outside of one’s body such as taken from the perspective of a video camera behind, above, or on the side of the runner. Alternatively, internal imagery is viewing the action from inside one’s body through your eyes. There is no right or wrong way to picture it. Both external and internal perspectives are effective. However, if you are having trouble with controllability or vividness, it might be helpful to try an alternative perspective when using imagery.
Controllability & Vividness
When practicing imagery, the two primary factors that impact the effectiveness are controllability and vividness. Controllability is one’s ability to imagine or control exactly what you desire to see in your mind. Vividness refers to the level of detail and clarity that the image contains. It is important to remember that imagery, like all mental and physical skills, takes time to learn and master. The more you practice, the better you will improve, and the more effective the imagery will become.
Mental Performance Consulting
Imagery is just one of many mental skills rooted in sport psychology that can help runners return to running. To learn more mental skills and sport psychology techniques to mitigate injury anxiety, manage stress, overcome injuries and help you achieve your optimal performance level, consult with a sport psychologist or mental performance consultant. Mental performance consulting is a non-clinical alternative to traditional talk therapy using mental skills and sport psychology techniques to enhance performance, overcome obstacles, and increase enjoyment.
Originally published on Custom Performance.
References
Arvinen-Barrow, Monna, & Walker, Natalie (2013). Imagery in Sport Injury Rehabilitation. (1st ed.). Routledge.
Holmes, P.S., & Collins, D.J. (2001). The PETTLEP approach to motor imagery: A functional equivalence model for sport psychologist. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 13, 60-83.
Vealy, Robin S. & Forlenza, Samuel T. (2015). Understanding and Using Imagery in Sport. In J.M. Williams and V. Krane (Eds.) Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance. McGraw Hill Education. https://www.mheducation.com/highered/product/applied-sport-psychology-personal-growth-peak-performance-williams-krane/M9780078022708.html
Scott, M. W., Wright, D. J., Smith, D., & Holmes, P. S. (2022). Twenty years of PETTLEP imagery: An update and new direction for simulation-based training. Asia Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2(2), 70–79. https://doi-org.uws.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.ajsep.2022.07.002
Weinberg, Robert S. & Gould, Daniel (2019). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology (7th ed.). Human Kinetics.
Williams, J. M. & Krane, Vikki (2015). Applied sport psychology: personal growth to peak performance. Seventh edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. https://www.mheducation.com/highered/product/applied-sport-psychology-personal-growth-peak-performance-williams-krane/M9780078022708.html