Exercise Programs

Following an exercise program is best way to increase your performance.  By determining your goals, creating a program (or finding one that targets your goals), and following it day after day, you will improve.

Nutrition Programs

Many athletes, especially at the high school level, don’t follow a nutrition program.  Yet they take supplements, such as creatine, hoping that it will solve all their problems.  This is a waste of your time and money. It’s the equivalent of pumping air in a basketball that has a huge hole in one side – you won’t get anywhere.

• Count your calories.  2,000 is the minimum.  Increase your calories especially if you’re working out a lot or are in-season.
• Pay attention to the amounts of carbohydrates, protein, and fat you take in a day.  (In general, you want somewhere around 65% carbs, 25% protein, and 10% fat.)
• Make sure that you’re eating healthy foods (whole grain pasta) and not junk food (takeout hamburgers).
• Eat three good meals a day with healthy snacks (like almonds) in between meals.
• Drink enough water to replenish any lost through sweating.  (If your pee is yellow, drink more water.)  Spread your water intake throughout your day.

In general, be smart about what you put into your body and this will take care of itself.

Make use of practice time

Every time you practice, focus on one specific task you want to get better at.  It can be anything from expanding your vision to stepping with the correct foot.  As you get better at that task, move onto another one.

Don’t forget the mental side of sports, too

There’s a reason you’ve heard that sports are largely mental.  It’s because it’s true.

Analyze your mindset, and see if it needs to be changed.  Also, don’t berate yourself if you’re not playing as you’d like.  Let your body do its job.  Learn and practice other sports psychology techniques as well.

Take your off time seriously

Let your body relax and repair itself.  Get a good night’s sleep.  Push yourself, but don’t go overboard.  You can’t play if you’re injured.

There is no secret to improving your abilities. Follow the above guidelines and you will see definite improvement.  You will achieve your goals.

What is athlete’s foot?

Athlete’s foot is a type of fungal infection.  It thrives in wet areas where people are barefoot.  Any place come to mind?  Your locker room and community shower are its popular hideouts.  It causes the skin on your feet to become red, to split, to become flaky.  There will most likely also be pain or a burning sensation, redness in the area, and swelling as well.  Thankfully, we can drastically limit our chances of getting athlete’s foot, and if we do, we can treat it quickly and effectively.

How do I get athlete’s foot?

You get athlete’s foot by being barefoot in wet areas, nothing mystic about it.  You can also get it by using things that an infected person had in contact with their wounds.  An example would be wearing their shoes or even borrowing a towel after they’ve dried their feet with it.  You can also transfer it from your feet to other parts of your body (such as your groin).  Be careful to keep it covered and to always wash your hands immediately after touching your feet (if you have it or suspect you do).

How do I prevent becoming infected with athlete’s foot?

Prevention of athlete’s foot is pretty straight-forward and easy to accomplish.  Follow these steps:

1. Buy cheap sandals, and use them when in wet, community accessible areas.  If you need to throw them away, it’s not a big deal.
2. Wash your feet, and especially in between your toes.  Don’t worry about using antibacterial soap.  The difference between that and regular soap is minimal.
3. Thoroughly dry your feet after showering.
4. Don’t touch or use the things of a person who has athlete’s foot.

How do I treat my athlete’s foot?

There are a ton of over-the-counter medications for it, such as creams, sprays, or powders.  Buy an athlete’s foot treatment, follow the directions, and you should be clear of it quickly.  If it doesn’t go away, or you’re not sure if you have athlete’s foot, see your doctor.

Also, tell your coach.  They’ll have someone disinfect the shower.  Also, wash your dirty towels, dirty socks, sheets, shower sandals, etc, before using them again.  This will help you prevent getting it again or passing it on to others.

Athlete’s foot is something to keep in mind.  Take the steps necessary so you don’t get it.

What is stoicism?

Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece after the time of Socrates.  From there, it eventually found its way to the Roman Empire, where many people would argue it reached the height of its popularity.  Three of stoicism’s most popular practitioners are:

• Epictetus – a slave in ancient Rome
• Seneca – a Roman statesman
• Marcus Aurelius – one of the best emperors Rome had

People will readily assume that since it originated thousands of years ago, and saw its prominence during that time as well, it isn’t relevant to life in today’s world.  You know what happens when you assume, though.  Stoicism is indeed relevant to today’s world.  Here are some of the basic ideas of stoicism.

Two Basic Stoic Ideas

For the purpose of this article, we’ll only discuss two main stoic ideas:

1. The internal v the external.  We can divide life, circumstances, etc, into two main camps: things that are under our control, and things that aren’t.  Because some things are outside of our control, we shouldn’t worry about them.  Why should we?  We can’t impact it at all.  Doing so only creates unneeded stress on us.  More importantly, it takes our time and energy away from the things that we do have control over.  By focusing only on the things under our control, we can drastically increase our abilities and skills.
2. See things as they truly are. We routinely misunderstand things due to our destructive emotions or our own biases.  Self-control and discipline is the answer.  By clearing our mind and seeing things as they truly are, we can maintain peace of mind and react appropriately to situations.

How does stoicism help me with my athletics?

Stoic principles can be applied to athletics in thousands of ways.  Since the possibilities are endless, I’ll only discuss a few here.  These common examples will help you understand how to adapt the principles to other situations as they occur.

Example 1: How to Handle Criticism:

We are routinely bombarded with criticism all the time in athletics.  It’s important for us to see the criticism as it truly is.  Generally speaking, there are two types of it.  By analyzing the criticism itself, and the source of it, we can come to two conclusion about it, and how to respond to it.

• Helpful criticism.  This criticism usually comes from coaches, mentors, etc, and is designed to help you reach a new level of athletic performance.  When we analyze it, we can see that there is no malicious intent from the person who is criticizing us. However, when we hear this criticism we immediately feel it as a threat.  We become resentful.  It’s important that we don’t let our emotions get the best of us, and we can try to use this criticism to help our athletic performance.

• Malicious criticism.  This criticism usually comes from people who are jealous, envious, etc, but it can come from anyone.  After analyzing this criticism, we can see its whole intent is to tear us down, not build us up.  Don’t become angry with the person, just ignore them.  After all, this is something that is outside of our control, and should not be payed attention to.

Example 2: How to Handle Failure and Setbacks:

Losing is a fact of sports and of life itself.  Although we’d like to always win, we won’t.  When we fail at something, the first thing we do is get our emotions involved in the failure.  We feel bad.  We can end up being mad at ourselves, the opponent, coaches, anyone.  This is tremendously bad for athletes, because it makes it incredibly hard for us to do what we need to: analyze why we lost, make the necessary corrections, and then focus on the next competition.

It is important that we don’t repress our emotions, that is just as bad as reacting emotionally to setbacks.  We need to focus on understanding why we feel the way we do, then move on.

Example 3: Awards and Accolades:

Everyone likes to be rewarded.  We like to have people tell us how well we played.  We love to receive rewards for performance.  However, when we don’t receive these awards and accolades, we can feel cheated, angry, jealous, envious, etc.  As an athlete, you must understand: the only control you have over awards and accolades is your performance.  By worrying about getting recognition, you’re taking valuable time away from improving yourself.  When you do that, the awards don’t mean much anyway: you know how well you performed with or without others telling you.

Implement these stoic principles into your athletics. By learning how to see things as they truly are and focusing on the things you can control, your athletic performance will skyrocket.

Further Reading:

A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine – This is a good introductory book to stoicism.

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca – This is my favorite book on stoicism.  This is a collection of letters Seneca wrote.  They are extremely readable.  I’ve read this three times this year alone.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – This a collection of writings Roman emperor Aurelius wrote to himself.  It’s another well known book on stoicism.  I like it, but I prefer Seneca to Aurelius.

Ryan Holiday.net – Ryan is one of my favorite writers on the internet, and he routinely writes about stoicism.  Check out his archives for some good posts.

This is part three of a three part series.  Read part one or part two.

Strategy #7 – Transform Your War Into a Crusade: Moral Strategies

The essence of this strategy is that as a general you need to constantly be monitoring your army’s morale.  If your army’s morale becomes a problem, it will already be too late.  If your army’s mind isn’t into fighting, then they won’t fight as well as they can.

How can coaches use this strategy?

People have heard time and again that mentality is over half the battle.  They’re right.  As a coach, you need to constantly have an eye on your team’s morale.  If your team’s not focused on the upcoming competition, their performance will drastically suffer. By getting your players to focus on the greater good of the team, you can overcome many obstacles your team will face.

So how do I improve my team’s morale?

There are eight crucial areas that you need to keep in mind.  By monitoring and improving these eight, your team’s morale will soar, and their performance and success will go with it.

1. Give your team something to believe in.  This can be anything from the team’s tradition, its fans, whatever.  They need to have a reason to believe in the team.  If they don’t, their morale will suffer.
2. Monitor how they are physically.  Seasons are long, and if they need a rest, give them one.  You need to keep your players’ physical states in mind.  It makes no sense to run your players into the ground.
3. Don’t be a hypocrite.  If your players see you a hypocritical, whether not enforcing rules fairly or not following them yourself, their morale will drop.
4. Don’t let your team relax.  Keep them focused on one task after another.
5. Make them feel what you’re speaking.  Talking to them about how important a game against a rival is, means nothing.  Make them feel how important the game is.
6. Don’t be only the nice or mean coach.  If you’re only known as nice, your players will try to get one over on you.  If you’re only harsh with them, they won’t care to play for you.
7. Give them something to aspire to.  Make your team want to be remembered as one of the great ones.
8. Take any negativity seriously.  Quickly remove any negativity in the team, as it can spread like wildfire.

Your team’s morale is vitally important.  It make the difference between winning and losing.  How many times has a better team lost to a weaker opponent?  Don’t let that happen to your team.

Further Reading:

The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene – this series is based off of three strategies discussed in Mr. Greene’s book.  However, all strategies discussed in the book are immediately implementable in sports.  I strongly recommend this book.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene – another outstanding book by Mr. Greene.  This book will teach you the different ways people will try to influence you as a coach, and how your opponent tries to gain control over your team’s performance.

This is part two of a three part series.  Read part one or part three.

Strategy #6 – Segment Your Forces: The Controlled Chaos Theory

The essence of this strategy is to spread your forces out in order to gain fluidity among your troops, and the ability to maneuver more quickly and effectively.  By increasing the ability of your troops to react quickly to changing situations, they will be able to capitalize on opportunities presented to them.  Let’s see how a coach can use this knowledge to their advantage.

How can a coach use this strategy?

By relinquishing some control over your players/game plan/etc, you can capitalize on advantages that come your way.  By trying to constantly keep tight control over all aspects of your team, you severely limit your reaction time, and can alienate people.  The key to successful implementation of this strategy is to put increased power in the hands of those you trust.  You can’t simply give more power to players who are unable to use it properly.

I want to use this strategy.  How can I prepare my team to utilize it to its fullest potential?

I’m glad you asked.  This strategy needs three key things to happen in order for it to use this strategy effectively:

1. Increase your team’s knowledge and trust in each other.
2. Put your players in positions where they can succeed.
3. Tell your team what to do, not how.

The first two are relatively self-explanatory.  You need to foster trust at every opportunity.  If your team or other coaches don’t trust you, this strategy will never work.  Likewise, they need more knowledge so they can adapt to changing situations quickly.  If your fellow coaches or players don’t know what you want them to do, they obviously can’t do it.

Assess each player’s strengths and weaknesses and put them in places where they can best succeed, and help the team.  Again, pretty self-explanatory.

Telling your team what to do, not how to do it, is a little bit more tricky.  In a way, this is part of the first key item required, but it deserves its own since it’s so important.  You need to be careful with how you give directions to your players.  Simply telling them, “Whenever the opponent does X, you do Y” will never work.  It severely limits creativity and fluidity in those around you, and you want them to be as creative and fluid as possible.  In the coming examples, this idea will take more shape, and be easier to understand.

Examples:

Example #1:  you can’t be everywhere all the time.  You can’t know everything going on in your team, there is simply too much work needed to prepare your team for competition.  So how do you keep an eye on what your team is doing?  Easy: captains.  Your team’s captains are such an undervalued and underused resource it’s ridiculous.  If you instill the necessary trust and knowledge in your captains, they can report to you potential problems, oftentimes even nipping it in the bud on their own (depending if they know what you want).  Use your captains to your benefit.

Example #2: in football games, what generally happens is the offensive coordinator will call in a play that the offense executes regardless of what the defense is doing.  The offensive coordinator can’t see everything that the quarterback can.  So how does a team capitalize in a situation like this?  Through relinquishing some control to their quarterback.  If the quarterback can make changes based on what’s happening on the field, there is a ton of fluidity and creativity taking place.  Peyton Manning and the Colts use this strategy to beautiful effect. (However, you need to have a quarterback who can handle this sort of situation.)

Segmenting your forces allows you to focus on other, essential areas.  It also promotes creativity and fluidity in your team.  Use this strategy to your advantage.

Further Reading:

The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene – this series is based off of three strategies discussed in Mr. Greene’s book.  However, all strategies discussed in the book are immediately implementable in sports.  I strongly recommend this book.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene – another outstanding book by Mr. Greene.  This book will teach you the meanings behind the actions of those around you, and how your opponent tries to gain control over your team’s performance.

This is part one of a three part series.  Read part two or part three.

Strategy #5 – Avoid the Snares of Groupthink: The Command and Control Strategy

The essence of this strategy is that one general needs to be in control of their army.  If command is shared, the army will move much more slowly and will be unable to adapt to the changing situations in battle.  Let’s see how a coach can use this knowledge to their advantage.

How can coaches use this strategy?

Coaches are in a position where they are surrounded by people who believe they can do their job better than they can.  Those people can be other coaches, their athletes and families, school administrators, employers, etc.  If you allow these other people to have input in the decision-making process for the team, you limit your ability to adapt to the changing situations you face.  Let’s look at a common example.

An example of the strategy in action.

Example: a star quarterback has routinely broken team rules.  You, as head coach, want to suspend the player for at least two games according to team rules.  However, your offensive coordinator wants the quarterback’s actions to be overlooked.  He doesn’t want him suspended, he wants him to keep playing for the upcoming games.  The backup quarterback isn’t nearly as good as the first string.  What do you do?

Option #1: you stand your ground and suspend the quarterback for the two games.  You review your strategy against the upcoming teams, making changes necessary to deal with the suspended quarterback and still give your team the best opportunity to win.

Option #2: you relinquish overall control of the team to the offensive coordinator and overlook the quarterback’s actions.

Now, let’s analyze the results of these actions.

Results of option #1: you lose the first game, but win the second.  Your players are taught an important lesson: no one is more important than the team.  Rules will be enforced regardless of who breaks them.  Team discipline increases as no one wants to challenge the coach to suspend them.  The quarterback comes back better than before.  He used to take his position for granted.  Now he plays better than before, and follows all team rules.  This is the smarter option to take, especially for the long-term.

Results of option #2: you win both games.  The quarterback becomes bolder in his independence.  He believes he’s above the other players and team rules.  Now you’re constantly overlooking his actions.  Other players see this and start breaking rules like the quarterback does.  The team becomes split in a variety of segments: some members break all the rules, some question your ability to lead, some simply stop caring.  Team discipline is nonexistent.  You try to crack down on discipline, but your players see through your actions.  Players have lost their respect for you.  You may win in the short-term, but for the long-term this will destroy anything you have been building.

Being the only person in charge of your team is essential.  Ignore this strategy at your own risk.

Further Reading:

The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene – this series is based off of three strategies discussed in Mr. Greene’s book.  However, all strategies discussed in the book are immediately implementable in sports.  I strongly recommend this book.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene – another outstanding book by Mr. Greene.  This book will teach you the different ways people will try to influence you as a coach, and how your opponent tries to gain control over your team’s performance.

If you’re like me, you’ve seen this happen a lot (or are the athlete in the example).  This is another area of sport psychology that has a tremendous influence on your game.  Popular wisdom says that “positive thinking,” is the answer.  The truth of the matter is that it’s not that simple.

From my previous post on the mindset and athletic performance, you’ll notice that this self-criticism is an extension of the fixed mindset.  All that results from this situation is you feel more stress, more tension, and that leads to more mistakes.  The cycle repeats.  A recent book I read, The Inner Game of Tennis, helped me understand how to change your psychology to lead to better performance on and off the field.

It all begins with a simple concept and builds from that understanding: there are two main selves in us on and off the field.  How these two selves interact with each other determines our ability to execute successfully.  Through improving the interaction between these two selves, we improve our ability to execute successfully.  Think of it in the following way:

• Self 1 – This self is our conscience.  Through this self, we make judgements  of our performance.  These judgements hurt our performance regardless of if they’re good or bad thoughts.
• Self 2 – This self is our unconscious.  This is our muscle memory, nervous system, etc, all wrapped up into one.  This self is directly impacted by the judgements of Self 1.

The key.

The key to the inner game we play at all times, on or off the court, is to let Self 2 do its job without Self 1 interfering.  When Self 1 tries to control Self 2, our performance suffers.  We get in our own heads (”Make a shot already!”).  We try to make corrections forcefully, making us more tense (”Move your hips! Great, now your wrist is too stiff to swing, idiot!”).

So how do prevent Self 1 from controlling Self 2?  The answer is to quit making judgements of our performance as either Good or Bad.  It just is.  Trust Self 2 to perform well.  If you’re a basketball player, you’ve taken thousands of shots throughout your career.  Your body knows how to shoot the ball.  Let it do what it has done thousands of times without your interference.  The problem is, it’s easier said than done to just suspend all judgement.  However, we have a tremendous aid in this.

Get in the zone.  Focus your concentration.

We’ve all heard about “the zone.”  We’ve all heard the cliche: “it’s like time slows down!”  By getting into the zone, we don’t give our Self 1 the ability to make judgements on Self 2.  So how do we get into the zone?  Through focusing our concentration on something minute.  That can be the stitches on a baseball, the way a basketball spins in the air, even our own breathing.  By focusing our concentration so intently, we accomplish two things: letting Self 2 do its job without judgement, and expanding our senses to pick up more information leading to better performance.

The final step: practice your inner game.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, the inner game does not come easily, it takes a lot of practice.  This is both a good and bad thing: it’ll be hard for you, but your competition will have just as hard a time (if they even know about it).  Practicing is simple: go shoot hoops and focus on the arc of the ball.  Go practice your batting, and focus on the stitches as it comes to you.  Play catch with a friend, and focus on your breathing.  By practicing the inner game, you’ll get better.

Tying up some loose ends…

Positive thinking – The reason why positive thinking is detrimental is because we often lie to ourselves or fail to see reality as it is.  If our shots aren’t going through the hoop, saying “It’s okay, the next will go in,” only hurts our performance.  By failing to failing to see reality as it is, we lose the opportunity to make a positive correction to our technique.  Which leads us to…

Criticism / Instruction – So where do these fit in?  These are important, even more in the inner game.

1. As instructors, we want to provide instruction, but we have to provide it in a way that guides athletes to discover what works for them.  For example: bending the knees in a free throw.  There is no target amount. Everyone is different. An example of a good instruction would be: experiment with your knee bend.  Pay attention to how bending your knees feels, and what feels natural to you. This allows the athlete to experiment to find what works best for them.
2. As athletes, we want to experiment with what feels and works best for us.  When it comes to personal techniques, don’t take instruction literally.  How much you swing your hips, how stiff you keep your wrist, etc, changes from athlete to athlete.  Sometimes however, you need to take instruction literally, such as in football.  “You need to be ten yards before you cut to the left.”  Realize the difference between the two.

Finally, don’t think you’ve got the inner game down 100%.  Like many things in life, it’s one of those things that needs constant work,  As soon as you think you have it down, realize that Self 1 just made a judgement, and you’re back to the beginning.

In closing…

Read this post along with my post about mindsets and athletics, and analyze the similarities between the two.  Practice the concepts in both, and let your performance reach new heights.  Finally, buy both The Inner Game of Tennis and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.  Devour both books.  While I do a pretty good job of expressing the information contained in both wonderful books, there is still much more to be learned from them directly.

I’ve repeatedly wrote about the benefit, and necessity, of hard work.  While I knew this intuitively, my thoughts have always been scattered.  That all changed when I read Mindsets: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.  During my reading of the book, Dweck really tied up a lot of loose ends in my thinking, and helped my form more concrete thoughts.

Dweck is currently a professor of psychology at Stanford (previously at Columbia).  The main thesis of the book is that there are basically two mindsets we can adopt, they are:

• The fixed mindset – “Believing that your qualities are carved in stone – the fixed mindset – creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over again.  If you have a certain amount of intelligence, a certian personality, and a certain moral character – well you better prove that you have a healthy dose of them.”
• The growth mindset – “This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.”

That’s it.  It seems pretty simple, but the implications are tremendous.  Through realizing which mindset we currently utilize, and switching from the fixed to growth mindset, we can greatly improve ourself in athletics, school, relationships, etc.  As she goes on to write, we can utilize both mindsets at the same time.  For example: in high school I believed I was either good in math or I wasn’t.  Yet after school every day I could be found in my school’s weight room, improving myself for the upcoming football season.  Funny, isn’t it?

Let’s examine these mindsets in an athletic context.  The athletes with the fixed mindset will be those who will never be found working out or practicing, hate playing against superior opponents, and take losing personally (those are just some of the characteristics).  These athletes, through believing in only a set amount of innate talent, want to constantly prove how great they are.  If they lose, have to work hard, etc, then clearly they don’t have as much talent as they think they do.  See how this mindset can be terribly limiting?

Now let’s examine the growth mindset.  The athletes with the growth mindset will always be seen improving themselves in the weigh room or practice field, love the challenge of playing against superior opponents, and view loss as feedback as to what they need to improve on.  Everything is an opportunity for growth for thesm.  They’re always striving to a greater level.  Take Michael Jordan for example (which Dweck also uses in the book).  Jordan was cut from the team in high school.  If he would have utilized a fixed mindset, he would have said “well, basketball isn’ t my sport,” and quit.  But, as we all know, he didn’t.  He turned around, worked his butt off, and is the greatest basketball player to ever play the game.

I strongly encourage you to buy the book (it’s ten dollars, I think), analyze your mindsets in all areas of your life (not just athletics) and make the necessary improvements.  At the very least, answer the following questions and, based on your answers, analyze your current mindset and how you can improve upon it.

• Would you rather play against an opponent that will give you a sure victory, or against an opponent that will be a challenge?
• Do you believe that you’re born with a set amount of talent, and that no matter what you do, you can’t change it?
• Do you look forward to practicing, working out, etc?
• If you were losing in a competition, would you rather play it to completion or quit?
• Do you take all losses extremely harshly?  Or do you take losses as an opportunity to find weaknesses and improve upon them?

Treat high school like its a job. I read an excellent article written by Paul Graham, and in it he mentions treating high school like its a job.  I couldn’t agree with him more.

What does it mean to treat high school like its a job?

What it means is that you need to treat it as only one aspect of your life.  It’s not the end-all, be-all.  It’s only one aspect of your life.  Take it seriously, do what’s required by your school at all times, whether that be homework, studying, etc.  Show up on time to classes, be prepared, and do everything else that is needed.  Use high school to help you learn valuable life skills, and I don’t mean math, English, history, etc (although those are extremely important).  Use high school to teach you things like discipline, responsibility, punctuality.  Those skills are much more important, because through utilizing them you can learn in the areas you’re having difficulty with.

On the flip side…

The flip side of treating high school like a job is that we have time for other things, just like we do in the work world.  So what do we do with that time?  Simple: spend that time investing in yourself.

What does it mean to “invest in [my]self?”

Investing in yourself is something I believe in 110%  It means you find out what your likes, dislikes, and interests are.  It means you read a bunch of different books, participate in different sports, learn about things that you want to learn about.  Ultimately, it means you figure out who you are as a person.  This is something that will pay dividends in your life in thousands and thousands of different ways.

In conclusion…

While high school is important, it isn’t everything.  Neither is college.  Treat high school like it’s a job, and use your spare time to invest in yourself.  That is the advice I wish someone would have given me when I was in high school.

What is it exactly?

Visualization is a sport psychology technique we can use prior to performing a task that will help us perform it.  It has tremendous power if done correctly.  Best of all, we can utilize it throughout our life.  We can use it for everything from taking a test to playing a tennis match.

So how do we visualize something?

Good question.  Let’s use one rep of the bench press for an example.  When we visualize this task, we can picture ourselves laying on the bench and seeing the bar above us.  We move slightly on the bench to become comfortable.  Next, we grab hold of the bar, shifting our hands as necessary to get a comfortable grip.  Breathing in and out, we prepare to lift the weight off and then away from the supports.  As we lower the weight to our chest, we gather our breath, holding it until the bar touches our chest.  After it touches, we breath out and push the weight up as hard as we can.  Once we lock our elbows out we slowly move the bar back to the supports and lower it.  We’ve completed the exercise.

I’ve used it before, but it didn’t work.

I’m glad you’ve used the technique, and I’m sorry you feel it didn’t work.  One thing that is important to realize with this technique (like many other tools at your disposal) is that it’s not an end-all, be-all solution to all of our problems.  It does increase our performance, sometimes by a lot, however we can’t expect it to work all the time or for it to give us superhuman capabilities.  Visualization takes practice, just like our sports themselves.  The more we use it, the better the advantages are that it gives us.

Give visualization a try. While it won’t help you overcome great obstacles on its own, it will help you in subtle ways.  Oftentimes, those very small differences can lead to victory rather than defeat.