Over the past 50 years, advances in training techniques have transformed what it takes for high level athletes to
compete. But the application of some of these breakthroughs isn’t just limited to sports. Here’s how a
former college athlete who works as a financial advisor used mental training techniques to grow her network and
prospect effectively.
How mental training has transformed sports
Susan is an advisor in her early 30s who works for a wirehouse in the northeast. Our exchange began when she sent me
an email with a question. In a follow-up phone call Susan described how mental training has helped in her business:
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I’ve played tennis all my life and was good enough to get an athletic scholarship to a top-ranked
university. But I quickly found myself struggling, especially in close matches. If I was going to compete
effectively I had to take my game to a higher level. That’s when I sat down with the team psychologist who
taught me techniques around visualization. I began spending 30 minutes a day visualizing how I would serve out
big matches and attack the net, something that had become issues for me. The results were remarkable –
within a few weeks, I began winning matches that I would have lost before.
After university Susan got a sales job for a large consumer products firm and after five years made the move to
become a financial advisor.
Before becoming a broker, I had never had to sell myself. I had a reasonable network from the tennis club I
belonged to – the club has lots of wealthy members, in fact it waived my initiation and annual fees
because it needed to raise the quality of the team that competed against other clubs in the area. But even
though I had come to know some of these people well, I really struggled to talk to them about my work as a
financial advisor. And when I did have the chance to sit down with someone, I found myself tensing up, just as I
had early in my tennis career in university.
That’s when I began applying some of the same mental training techniques I’d learned to raise my
tennis game. I began spending 15 minutes each morning mentally rehearsing the conversations I’d be having.
By visualizing successful conversations in advance, when talking to people I was more relaxed and found myself
having much more comfortable and productive conversations.
The science behind visualization
Conclusive evidence supports the benefits of mental training in a growing number of areas:
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Susan directed me to Dr. Charles Garfield, Professor of Psychology at the University of California School of
Medicine in San Francisco. First published in 1983, Garfield’s classic text, Peak Performance:
Mental Training Secrets of the World’s Greatest Athletes, described his first inkling of the
impact of mental training:
In my meetings with the Soviet researchers in Milan, they discussed government funded athletic programs
that integrate sophisticated mental training and rigorous physical training. One study evaluating these
intensive programs suggests their potential. Four matched groups of world-class Soviet athletes
diligently trained for many hours each week. The training regimens were as follows:
Group I - 100% physical training
Group II - 75% physical training, 25% mental training
Group III - 50% physical training, 50% mental training
Group IV - 25% physical training, 75% mental training
When the four groups were compared shortly before the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, Group IV had
shown significantly greater improvement than Group III, with Groups II and I following, in that order.
A New York Times article on Olympians
Use Imagery as Mental Training described how mental training and visualization has become a
mainstream training technique for high-level athletes.
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As part of their training, some third- and fourth-year hospital residents practice technically challenging
surgery on the small intestine of a pig. An article titled Surgeons
Study Benefits of Visualization described an experiment in which these were divided into two groups.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The researchers gave half the residents in their study a “script” so they could mentally
prepare for a week prior to the training operation. The script outlined each step of the procedure,
based on input from expert surgeons who had described “how they do it and how they see and feel,”
Louridas says.
This group also received imagery training from Dr. Dana Sinclair, a Toronto-based performance
psychologist who works with a number of professional sports teams, among them the Toronto Raptors, Los
Angeles Dodgers, Anaheim Ducks and Calgary Flames.
The results of the experiment were published in the British Journal of Surgery, showing that the
residents who had visualized the operation beforehand performed better and in particular responded more
effectively when they ran into a problem.
-
In The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg described a study undertaken with patients recovering
from hip- or knee-replacement surgery. The patients in the experiment were older and because they were
relatively poor and uneducated, many had waited years for surgery. The prognosis for recovery for these
patients was not good.
In the study, a psychologist had half the patients visualize how they would exercise to recover from their
operation and write down their plan. Three months later, those who had gone through the visualization
process had started walking twice as fast and were getting in and out of chairs unassisted three times as
quickly.
The steps to visualizing success
This Psychology Today article on The
Power of Visualization explains why visualization is effective:
Brain studies now reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control,
attention, perception, planning, and memory. So the
brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. It’s been found that mental
practices can enhance motivation, increase
confidence and self-efficacy, improve motor performance, prime your brain for success, and increase states of
flow – all relevant to achieving your best life!
Susan described how she has made visualization a part of her daily routine:
I sit down with my eyes closed first thing in the morning. I start by selecting an upcoming meeting or a chat
with someone at my tennis club.
I make this as realistic and detailed as I can. I think about what we’re wearing, where we’re
sitting, what we’re drinking, if we’re having coffee how the coffee tastes. Then I imagine the
conversation in as much detail as possible – what they’re going to say, how I’m going to
respond, what they’re going to say in reply. This can go on for several minutes.
I don’t rush this process, in fact I let it go on for as long as I can. Finally, I visualize a positive
outcome – the prospect agrees to talk further or expresses interest in doing business.
For advisors interested in exploring mental training, there are lots of online resources on successful visualization
techniques. One good starting point is this website from a Scottish scientist: Five Tips for Making Visualization
Work.
Dan Richards conducts programs to help advisors gain and retain
clients and is an award winning faculty member in the MBA program at the University of Toronto. To see more of his
written commentaries, go to www.danrichards.com.
Read more articles by Dan Richards
Over the past 50 years, advances in training techniques have transformed what it takes for high level athletes to
compete. But the application of some of these breakthroughs isn’t just limited to sports. Here’s how a
former college athlete who works as a financial advisor used mental training techniques to grow her network and
prospect effectively.
