How to Master Visualization Techniques to Overcome Game-Time Nerves

Visualization can be an athlete’s secret weapon, and it’s a skill that you can practice in the car, at home, or whenever you have downtime in your sport.

Using mental imagery to work through key game-day scenarios can help you find the right balance of game-day nerves and calm energy that allows you to perform at your peak.

Here, TrueSport Expert Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, explains how visualization can help you manage nerves, turn them into a performance advantage, and prepare for the biggest moments in a game or competition.

What is visualization?

Visualization, which Chapman also calls mental imagery, is the practice of carefully “rehearsing” a situation in your mind until it feels familiar. The more you picture a moment in detail, the easier it may feel when it actually happens in competition.

Think about moments like stepping up to bat in the final inning of a softball game, running shoulder to shoulder with a top competitor in the last lap of an 800-meter race, or taking a penalty shot on the ice. Those are all great times to practice visualization.

“Visualization is powerful because unlike performance anxiety, which focuses on what can go wrong, visualization can help you prevent those things from happening,” he says. “You can use it to prepare for competition and for things going right, but you also can use it to fix things that are going wrong.”

“We know that too much anxiety will hurt our performance, but if we have too little anxiety, our body won’t be ready to perform well,” Chapman adds. “We have to learn how to optimize that nervous energy in order to perform effectively. That’s where visualization and mental imagery can come in.”

Can I get rid of performance anxiety?

Visualization can help you manage game-day nerves, but the goal is not to get rid of them completely. “Performance anxiety implies that you care. Normalizing performance anxiety is key, because performance anxiety is a normal part of competition,” Chapman says. “It goes back to the motto that one of my football coaches used to say in high school: ‘If you ain't hyped, something ain't right.’”

In fact, if you feel performance anxiety, that can actually be a sign you’re ready to start using visualization. “Anxiety is about preparatory coping,” says Chapman. “You’re preparing yourself for a future threat. The future threat in competition is not playing well, not performing well, or losing the game. So, we don't need to judge anxiety. We need to accept it as something that's a normal part of sport and learn to optimize anxiety so that it works for us and not against us.”

As you practice visualization, you shift your focus from what could go wrong to what you want to happen, how it will happen, and how you’ll feel afterward. You’re still thinking ahead, but now you’re imagining success instead of disaster.

How do I use visualization?

To visualize a part of a competition or the whole event, your images should be detailed, specific, and realistic. You need to be able to picture yourself doing the action clearly and believe it is possible for you.

For example, if you’ve never run a sub-5-minute mile, visualizing a 4:55 finish probably won’t help if your current best time is 5:45.

Chapman calls his method the “sandwich of visualization imagery.” Here’s how it works.

The bottom slice of bread: This is the setup. If you’re nervous about a free throw, this part includes everything leading up to that shot, like how you feel when you walk to the line. Put yourself in that moment.
The meat: This is the main part of the visualization. It includes the physical details and mechanics. What is your body doing right? What are you focusing on, like your form? What are you tuning out, like crowd noise? This part can be a few seconds long or stretch across an entire race, depending on your sport.
The top slice of bread: This is the finish. You picture what happens after everything goes well. You make the shot, it swishes through the hoop, your teammates cheer, or you get the trophy. Ending with a positive outcome helps complete the visualization.