subject: Increase My Vertical - Visualising Success The Correct Way [print this page] Ever catch yourself telling someone that you "can't see an increase in my vertical jump at the moment" or that you "Just can't picture it"? Whilst you may have been expressing a doubt or a lack of confidence in it happening, you also revealed that there was no mental image inside your head about the event. So which disappeared first - did the picture go and then cause a doubt, or did the confidence go and cause the picture to disappear?
All will be revealed. Well actually, all science jargon and psycho-babble will be ditched or translated into something practical that actually works.
There are only a limited amount of internal representations you can make inside your mind to interact with the outside world. We can make pictures, hear sounds, have feelings, create smells, taste tastes and have internal dialogue. If you've read or watched "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne or one of the other popular empowerment offerings out there on the market, it would seem as though all we need to do is meditate on what we want and the universe will deliver it. As a trainer friend of mine, Jamie Smart so eloquently puts it: "If the Secret's so good, where's my Ferrari?"
I don't subscribe to the "wish and sit back" mentality, but what I have discovered over the years is that making a positive mental representation of certain aspects of an achievement and adding as much detail as possible, does speed up the process of achieving it. If you also work your butt off to get there - we're talking about speeding up achievements, not granting wishes.
The key to making this work is making correct use of the fact that memory and imagination use the same neural pathways.
Did you ever have a really vivid dream and wake up wondering whether it was real or not? Or how about a dim and distant memory from the past - did it really happen or not? Because the brain uses the same electrical pathways to think all of our thoughts, it's possible to convince ourselves that something is possible by mentally rehearsing the successful completion of it.
Now this is actually a double-edged sword. It's so powerful that if you constantly imagine achieving something, your sub-conscious switches off because it thinks it's already happened. So how is this useful if I want to increase my vertical jumps?
The solution is to visualise the successful completion of the training routines that deliver bigger jumps. In this case, it would be the mental rehearsal of the training routines required to make the increased jump. The heavier squats, the quicker plyometrics or the deeper box jumps. By putting this into action, your training efforts accelerate which deliver bigger and better results in your game. The reason people don't get their Ferraris is because they concentrate on having one (and mentally switching off) instead of focussing on earning or creating the wealth to buy one (and going for it.)
Here are three things you can do right now to improve your jumping results.
1. Identify the exercises you need to work on to improve your performance and results.
2. Create an internal movie with pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, tastes and self talk with yourself starring in it, successfully completing the increased workout.
3. Run it over and over again making it big, bright, colourful, loud, vibrant - whatever makes it the most compelling, but make sure you see yourself in the film.
The upshot of this is that where there may have been doubt or uncertainty about an achievement, your belief and confidence will be strengthened, which will make for improved training and results.
So to return to our original question - which came first - the lack of confidence or the lack of mental image? The answer - It doesn't matter unless you want to become a psychotherapist. All that matters on the court is results, and now you can say "I have another way to increase my vertical" and believe it.
