Improving Performance with Visualization | Twin Cities Kettllebell Club

Welcome to the platform podcast where we talk to coaches, athletes, experts, and real people to learn more about their approaches to training, nutrition, mindset, and much more. I am your host, Jordan Condeerite, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club. And I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable, healthy life styles. Before we jump into the episode, I want to remind you that registration is live for the second annual Twin Cities Kettlebell Open on October 22nd, hosted by our friends at the Athlete Lab here in Little Canada, Minnesota. And just as we did last year, we will also include video submission options for participants who are unable to make the trip in person. And you'll be eligible for all of the same prizes as our in-person competitors. Just go to our website, Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com for details. This week, we are going to talk about visualization. I am an incredibly big proponent of visualization. I love visualization. It is a skill that I think is incredibly valuable. And we're going to dig into a little bit of why that is. And then I'm going to release some special episodes as their own independent episodes, where we are actually going to do some guided visualization for kettlebell sport so that you can use those hopefully to help you prepare for your next competition. I'll release those as separate episodes that are bonus episodes so that you don't have to wade through, you know, 10, 15 minutes of me talking about visualization in order to get to the actual exercises of visualization. So I will release those as bonus episodes that are separate unique episodes that you can listen to at your discretion. And I hope that you find them useful. Just like I hope you find this podcast useful. And if you do, please like it, share it, review it. All those things. I'm incredibly grateful that you listen. The best way you could support me is to do that helps spread the word. And of course, if you're into lifting kettlebells, I would love to see you come out and lift at the Twin Cities kettlebell open October 22nd. Maybe bring a friend or two. Go to Twin Cities kettlebell club.com for details. And if you want to help reaching your goals without wasting time, please fill out the coaching interest sheet that is linked in the show notes. I help athletes of all levels using my integrated coaching approach. And you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at Twin Cities kettlebell club or email me at Twin Cities kettlebell club at gmail.com. Now let's step onto the platform to discuss visualization. All right, welcome into this week's episode of the platform podcast. I am your host, Jordan, couldn't you write head coach and founder of the Twin Cities kettlebell club. And let's be honest, it's a bit unfair of me to say this week's episode of the platform podcast when I have been on hiatus for longer than I would have liked to have been without getting into too much detail. There's been a lot of shit going on in my in my personal life and my business life, good things and bad things, mostly good things, a few bad things. But, you know, if you're not aware, I just had to have shoulder surgery about 10 days ago or not about 10 days ago, exactly 10 days ago. I had to have shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum in my shoulder and also a damaged biceps tendon as well, which means I will not be able to lift at my own competition. I didn't lift last year either because I was, you know, organizing it and running it and it was my first time doing it. So I didn't think it was a good idea for me to also try and compete as well as coach my athletes and et cetera, but with that said, I will still be having the Twin Cities kettlebell open and I look forward to seeing you all there. I'm very excited that we are about four and a half months out, but I apologize for the delay in getting out episodes. I am going to try and get back on track with doing this a little bit more regularly, but, you know, in full disclosure, the company that I work for in a relational AI, we are officially out of stealth mode and we got our series be funding. So we are growing like gangbusters, which means I am super, super busy at my day job, which is great. But it also means less time for podcasting because between that and taking care of my athletes on my team and being a father of two. I don't have as much time for podcasting. So I may not hit my goal of 40 episodes this year, but we'll see. Maybe I can make it up or maybe I can make the episode shorter. I got a, I got to adapt a little bit and you guys give me feedback if you, if you listen to the podcast, I would appreciate your input on if you would like to see shorter episodes or if you're just like, I'll take them at the cadence, I can get them, but I like the longer episodes with interviews or if you like hearing me talk about my frameworks, you know, I would love to hear your feedback on what you find most valuable from from my time doing this because I want to make sure that I'm providing value for the people who actually invest time and listening to what I am rambling about. And this week, what am I rambling about? Well, I am rambling about visualization. Now, obviously the, the first question, I guess, would be what is visualization? Well, there's actually more than one definition of visualization, as you probably are familiar, both of which are important in my life. Visualization is the way of organizing and presenting data in a visual fashion. That is one definition of visualization and I deal with that a lot. How to, how to actually represent things optimally is, is a form of visualization. But the one that we're talking about today is a psychological practice that comes from cognitive psychology and performance psychology. And it is the practice of imagining what you want to achieve in the future or imagining yourself performing a task or performing an activity. So it involves an integrated sensory approach, which means we want to try and engage as many of the senses as possible. Sight smell touch taste hearing and the process of visualizing really directs your focus towards the end goal that you have in mind. And by doing that, it is taking mental reps. It reminds you on a consistent basis of what you are trying to achieve. And this can be useful in in a lot of in a lot of different ways. If you're trying to get motivated for success at a goal, doing outcome visualization can be can be really helpful where you are going to envision the future end point. In your mind's eye and you do that regularly. I like to do that when I am writing my goals or when I am tracking my daily habits. Doing my retrospectives on my on my month or on my week. I like to I like to continue envisioning the desired future endpoint. That's actually part of my journal. So what I want to do is to refocus myself monthly on what my one year goals are. And I try and make that a priority when I'm when I'm working on something because that visualizing that outcome helps you feel what that will feel like in the future. And that that feeling hopefully is a positive one and reinforcing of the desire to do the hard work that is necessary in order to achieve that outcome. So envisioning that that future desired endpoint is is one way. And then process visualization and that's where we're envisioning everything that we are going to do actively with all of the senses engaged. Now, you this is not an either or it's not you only use outcome visualization or you only use process visualization. You can actually use both obviously and that using both of them is actually probably more effective than using just one of them. But why should we do it, you know, why is visualization important or what is the what is the rationale behind it. Honestly, I think most of us are probably a little bit overstimulated and have too much distraction going on. We move so quickly that it is very easy to lose sight of what's going on around us or to lose sight of our goals. And visualization is one way to help us refocus outside of outside of the current state of sometimes chaos. Let's be honest. And and focus on a future state. Now there's a fine line to walk there because as I say that I'm like, well, we always are being coached to be mindful and live in the present moment and to not think about the past because the past is the past and to not focus on the future because the only moment you can live in is the present right. It's a polarity we have to manage as my CEO would say we have to we have to manage the polarity of needing to be present in the moment while also being able to envision our future desired state. Right. So it's very important. I think visualization actually when you feel overwhelmed visualization can be a good, a good tool because you can visualize yourself somewhere more calm or visualize yourself as as the person you want to be in those scenarios. Or it can also be helpful to help you get mental reps in you can visualize yourself doing a thing before you actually do it. And there is a lot of evidence to support that mental preparation is very key to success in performance. In performance psychology visualization is a is a very is a very huge tool. It's used, it's used quite a lot, you know, so, you know, it does it actually work. There are studies that say that it does help improve performance in both physical tasks as well as mental tasks. And if you're looking for, you know, anic data on visualization, useful on the use of visualization. Here's a few people that had that, you know, are well known to use visualization, you have the Navy Seals are coached in visualization. They are actually led through guided visualizations in training. People hear people like, you know, Jacco or David Goggins talk about visualization, but Navy Seals and special operators in military tactical military are often coached in visualization. And they will they will actually mentally go through the missions ahead of time before actually getting there so that they can respond in in real time. And it feels like they have already performed the mission. Lebron James heard of him. I'm sure he is a very large proponent of visualization. He visualizes his games. He visualizes his free throws Tiger Woods would visualize putts in his head before he would put them. And we know he, you know, at his peak was as dominant as anyone. Alex Honnold, who's the rock climber from free solo, if you haven't watched free solo, the documentary, you absolutely should you want to talk about somebody that is living on the edge of high performance, holy shit. That movie is amazing. And you get to see talk the iron mindset that he has just amazing what he accomplished and he talks in that documentary about going through climbs mentally in his head how he's going to climb. And if you're not familiar with what free climbing means are free solo climbing means it means you're climbing by yourself without a rope. And he was climbing vertical faces and things where if you mess up, you fall to your death. And it is crazy. To me, at least it seems crazy, but you know, for obvious reasons, one of the ways that he would quote unquote practice, his climbs ahead of time would be to visualize them in his head. And so he would plan his route. And then he would visually make that climb. In his in his head, Michael Phelps is another one I want the list can go on and on and on and on, but Michael Phelps is another one that his his coach, they called them dry land practices and they would actually lay by the pool and visualize the performance they were going to have in the pool. He would be laying next to it instead of actually in the pool and he would walk people through a guided meditation or guided visualization of their performance in the pool. And Michael Phelps was the best he had ever seen at being able to physically or mentally put himself where he was physically going to be and bring that to life and he could visualize every single detail of the experience in very real terms in his brain. And make it real for himself so that he could practice those perfect races and overcoming adversity in his races. And he would do that over and over and over again. And one of the things that I loved hearing Michael Phelps talk about is in one of his world record setting swims. He made the final turn with his goggles filling with water. And so he he had to keep his eyes closed the entire time. And he was in a neck and neck race. I want to say it was the 200 meter butterfly for some reason, but it could have been one of the relay races, but it doesn't matter. And the final turn to come down the home stretch, which is always a sprint to the wall. And his goggles were filling with water. So he wasn't able to actually look. He had to keep his eyes closed. He couldn't use his eyes at all. And he was able to know how many strokes he needed to get home and to know and feel. He needed to do from a pacing standpoint in order to in order to win. Now obviously on the on the final turn, it's just a sprint to the wall, but he already knew that he was going to win that that race when he made that turn because he had already done that race so many times in his mind that he was prepared. And he didn't need his eyes in order to perform, which is just kind of a crazy thing to think about when you when you really hear that story. And there is an excellent podcast episode on the finding mastery podcast with Dr. Michael Jervet with Michael Phelps' coach talking about their visualization techniques and how good Michael Phelps was at visualization. I really recommend listening to that to that episode. But thank you for tuning into this episode of the platform podcast. We'll get back to it in just a minute. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that I am incredibly grateful that you listen to this podcast. And the best way you could support me is to go register for the Twin Cities kettlebell open on October 22 and maybe tell a friend or two. Let's go to our website Twin Cities kettlebell club.com for details. If you haven't already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice and support my work by supporting our sponsors, who's affiliate links you'll find in episode notes. And of course, if you want help reaching your goals without wasting time, please fill out the coaching interest form linked in the show notes. I help athletes of all levels using my integrated coaching approach. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at Twin Cities kettlebell club or email me at Twin Cities kettlebell club at gmail.com. Now let's get back to the episode. Visualization is an incredibly effective tool for helping you practice without the wear and tear on your body and also to help you mentally prepare for the type of success that you want to have and how to overcome adversity. I think it's important to understand that when you are going to practice visualization, and you must think of it as a practice, you're not going to be good at it right away. It takes time and it takes repetition, like anything else, you're not going to be good at it right away. You will have to you'll have to work at it. But I think it's very important to do a few things. Like I mentioned before, when you're doing process visualization, you want to engage all of your senses. You want to engage all five senses and you're going to want to make sure that you can make it as as real as possible in your head by thinking of the sites, the sounds, the smell, the feel, all of all of the senses engaged. That will help you really feel in your body for the visualization. I also recommend doing it somewhere quiet where you're not going to be interrupted and you're not going to be distracted and doing it with your eyes closed, putting yourself physically somewhere else in your minds, I requires closing your physical eyes. I would really encourage you to free yourself from distraction and close your eyes. And then along with engaging the senses and freeing yourself from distraction, feel the emotions as well. Not just don't detach yourself from your emotions, because one of the things that really hinders performance in real time for people is they pretend like the competition is going to feel exactly like practice and it's not going to feel like practice. This acknowledge that fact, accept that fact and work on trying to put yourself in the emotional state that you're going to be when you get there so that you can then be better prepared and manage the variance on it. So it's not such a huge spike. It's not such highs and lows to it then because you can be prepared for it. So you need to, you need to attach the emotion that you're going to feel right. I think I think that is incredibly important and can really and can really help you. Another thing that can be very helpful is listening to guided visualizations, which as I mentioned in the intro to this episode, I am going to create some guided visualizations for a couple of different applications of guided visualization. You don't always want to picture the perfect set. You want to spend about 80% of your visualization time, you want to make sure things going very well. You don't have to be perfect every time, but generally you want to spend most of your time reinforcing things going well. So that you are more prepared and you have reinforced that pathway more times in your brain. You're at encoding positive experiences than negative experiences and positive experiences. So you need to significantly outpace the number of good visualizations that you put in. But with that said, do not only practice perfect visualizations because if you only practice perfect visualizations, you will not be mentally prepared for when shit goes sideways. And if you've done kettlebell sport or any type of high level competition for any significant period of time, you know that shit will go sideways at some point. It almost always does very rarely do we have our perfect set or our best set. It's a PR for a reason, they don't happen every time you step on the platform, right, especially the longer you've done it. So pair yourself for things not going perfectly. Focus on feeling good and how and how you're going to overcome them. So I'm not saying I'm not saying visualize failure, we don't ever want to visualize failure. We want to visualize overcoming adversity. Think about how things are going to feel on the platform. Think about how things are going to go. And it doesn't have to just be kettlebell sport for any sport. Think about how you're going to overcome adversity, but you have to acknowledge that you will face adversity. Because the the games and the sets that go perfectly are few and far between. And those are not really the ones that you remember. The ones that you remember the most are the ones where you faced adversity and overcame. You dug deep, right, of course you'll remember your personal best the days when it felt easy. You will remember those outcomes, but the ones that really stick with you are the ones where you had to fight through. So practice fighting through and acknowledge that you are going to overcome adversity. And that can be mental adversity, physical adversity, environmental adversity. There's a lot of ways things can go sideways, but practice that difficulty and how you're going to overcome it. Practice that. I think that is an incredibly valuable muscle to train in your brain. Yeah, I just said brain muscle. I know. All right. And then the last thing I would say is utilize some exposure as well. Just do visualization. I like to do visualization and then go actually do the thing. This is really I think really useful because it helps you connect mental reps with physical reps. And they they start to blur, frankly, the more and more you can do that where you reinforce the visualization with the actual with the actual experience of doing what you're doing, you can't just do mental reps. Mental reps are incredibly valuable, but so are physical reps, right. So I like to pair them. As well as do them independently, but visualization can be really, really useful to do. I think it's especially useful the closer you are to competition. When you when you really have a clear objective in your mind, and you have a clear strategy for how you're going to approach it. Right. I think that is incredibly useful and incredibly important. And it can lead to improved outcomes for you in your goals, both in the performance on the platform, as well as becoming the person that you want to become and visualizing those outcomes that you want for yourself. That is it for this episode. I hope you found this useful and I am going to link in new episodes of these actual visualizations as bonus episodes, so that you don't have to listen to my ranting about visualization in order to get to the actual visualization exercises. We will see you next time on the platform podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode of the platform podcast. We'll be back with a new episode soon. Please be sure to leave a rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice, support our work by supporting our affiliates. And of course, if you have questions or you want help reaching your goals, reach out to me. Until next time, thanks for listening.