Inner training laboratory

The objective is to create in your mind’s eye, the perfect place to do your sport. It has everything you would possibly need in terms of equipment and facilities. For the swimmer there is the ideal pool; for the golfer, the course of your dreams; for the ice skater a rink that is just perfect. In general you should be alone, but for some sports, or for some occasions, this may not be appropriate. As a boxer you inner training laboratory may always have the ideal sparing partner. For the ice dancer it can contain the ideal partner. But in general you want to be alone in order to create perfection. Like the favourite place, it is place where you can be confident and relaxed, with just the right amount of tension. Your place and no one else’s, a place where you can aspire to be what you dreamed of being.

Because this place is in the mind’s eye, then it can contain everything that your sport requires. In your mind’s eye you can have a football pitch, you can have a high diving board and pool and you can have a racing track. What is important to realise is that anything and everything is possible in your inner training laboratory. You even have access to your idols, heroes and heroines of the past and present. You can even call on heroes and heroines of the future! Everything is possible in this place of yours.

Your first task, therefore, is to become familiar with your inner training laboratory so that you can picture it in your mind’s eye quickly and easily. Most of all, you need to develop the freedom and imagination to conjure up anything that you require for your sport. If you temporarily need your coach, then he or she materialises (and then disappears when their task is finished!) If you need a specific golf course or a specific stadium, it is there in your mind’s eye – sandpit and all. Be creative in your inner training laboratory. Like the Red Shoes, your skates, football boots, racket, etc are magical. Even your outfit is magical. Whenever you put it on you are invincible. Let your imagination run wild and be prepared to dream the impossible. As you do this so you will give power to your images.

Practice creating your inner training laboratory for about one week, with each session lasting for about 15-30 minutes. Your purpose is to become totally familiar with it. Know how to bring about whatever you wish; come to appreciate that everything is possible in this chosen place of yours. See this period like you would your training. It is a training of your inner imagery until it becomes second nature. As it becomes second nature so you will be capable of bringing it into your mind at a moments notice. You will be able to bring it forth when you are waiting for a game; you will be able to bring it forth when travelling to a competition; and you will be able to bring it forth if you happen to be laid off with an injury. It is going to become part of you. Even your dreams will give you ideas of what you can have in your inner laboratory.

Having become familiar with your inner training laboratory it is now time to put it to use.

Exercise #1: The heroes and heroines of your sport

Allow into your inner laboratory some of the heroes or heroines of your sport. Start with those who are presently alive and that may have been your role models. Talk to them and ask them about why they chose this sport. Ask their advice and council. Because this is your inner laboratory, they are there simply to give help and advice. You can ask them anything – about motivation, about technique, about feelings and most of all how they overcame disappointments.

Now do the same with those you admire from the past. In Field of Dreams … built a baseball pitch on his farmland. Players from the past came to play there and he conversed with them – including his dad! Do the same. In your inner laboratory you too can have your ‘field of dreams’. In your inner laboratory these heroes and heroines are full of advice (if that is what you want) and answer any question you put to them. Always thank them for their help.

Exercise #2: The anti-heroes and heroines of your sport

Do the same as exercise 1, but now have villains of your sport: anti-heroes and anti-heroines. Find out why they are that way so that you do not do the same. Establish exactly what it is about them and their attitude towards your sport that you do not like. Try not to be judgmental. Simply establish what it is you do not like about them or their attitude so that you are clear in your own mind why you are the way you are or your attitude is the way it is. Also note that people are not all good and all bad, but a mixture of the two. See both the positive and negative aspects of these people. You may wish to extend this to people outside of your sport. This exercise will give you a much more rounded view of your own attitudes towards your sport.

Exercise #3: The people who have influenced your sport

Think about anyone in your life that had an influence on your sport and allow him or her to temporarily enter your inner training laboratory. It is important in this exercise that you give free rain to your thoughts. Influence can come from many quarters and the most unexpected source. From people not involved in your sport but had an attribute that you admired to an off-the-cuff remark of a teacher or friend. A film or novel that evoked empowerment or determination; a will to succeed against all adversity.

Let your mind wander over all the people you have known from a very early age. When you have in your mind’s eye what it is that they gave you, thank them for it. See and feel how the quality is influencing you in the present. In doing this it is important not to be judgmental. Your determination to succeed may have arisen from some harmful experience in the past. Many a sports person has developed a driving force from a sense of anger.

In this exercise the aim is to explore your feelings and your attitudes towards your sport by reconsidering all the people in your past that had an influence on you and your attitude towards your sport. Consider both positive and negative feelings and attitudes. You may, for example, always do well up to the final game and then fail. There just seems to be a mental block that prevents you achieving that final accolade. A search of people who have influenced you may reveal the source of this. Your father, who you admired, for example, seemed to have really good qualities and you loved him. But on reflection you begin to recall that he never followed things through to their final conclusion. You then realise the source of your problem! What this example illustrates is that someone may not even be involved in your sport directly but has had, all the same, a profound influence on your attitude towards it.

There will be many uses for your inner training laboratory and so the effort to get it right and just the way you want it will pay tremendous dividends. It can be a place where you can raise (or lower) your aggression; a place where you can perform the impossible; a place where you can correct a recurring problem or mental block; and, most of all, it is place where you can fulfil your dreams.