Martin's Rugby Coaching Forum

Hi Martin,

My team is a few weeks a away from the 2 most important games for the season. I hope to end every practice session by getting the players lying down on the ground and playing a cd with the sound of the crowd for 5 min so they can visualize the feeling of the crowd. Any ideas on what I could tell them to visualize about and what they should think?


Rgds,,
Benny

Yes, visualisation is a good method to get the players comfortable with performing a task under pressure. I used it on some occasions, it is a topic in the mental game plan book I review.

you can "guide" the players through the whole event:

entering the stadium
pre-match routine
match scenario's
enforcing the feeling of what went right so far

lying down and soundbites help, good idea. Do you have a video of last year? I once played it at 105% speed to really boost their self
esteem ("look how fast we are")!


But my worry would be not to do too many new things so close to the final, keep them in the flow....

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Martin, Rugbyhead