Time Required: 20 minutes

Format: Interactive practice with guided visualization

Materials Needed: Comfortable seating, minimal distractions

Target Ages: 8-18 years

How did mindful recovery work for you this week?

Did anyone notice better sleep or feeling more recovered after using the techniques?

Which recovery practice felt most helpful (body scan, mental reset, or sleep routine)?

Any changes in how tired or energized you felt during training?

Celebrate any efforts to prioritize and improve recovery.

Building on all previous mindfulness skills, this session helps young athletes develop effective visualization for performance enhancement.

Athletes will learn to create vivid, multi-sensory mental rehearsals that improve skill learning, confidence, and competitive execution.

By the end of this module, athletes will be able to:

• Understand how visualization works and why it helps performance
• Apply mindfulness to enhance visualization quality and impact
• Practice performance visualization using multiple senses
• Develop visualization protocols for different performance scenarios
• Implement visualization strategies for skill development and competition preparation

Include advanced sports psychology and neuroscience concepts

Connect to college recruitment and high-performance demands

Discuss visualization used by professional and Olympic athletes

Address complex performance scenarios with multiple variables

Include leadership and career preparation applications

Use advanced psychological and neuroscientific terminology

Include research on neural pathways and brain activation

Connect to professional sports and elite performance

Address visualization for high-stakes, high-pressure situations

Include career and life applications beyond sports

Complex performance scenarios with multiple variables and outcomes

Advanced visualization techniques for peak performance

Leadership opportunities in helping others develop visualization skills

Connection to life skills and career preparation

Sophisticated goal-setting and future planning through visualization

Include brief visualization in pre-practice and pre-competition routines

Guide team through skill-specific mental rehearsal

Use visualization during injury recovery periods

Model your own mental preparation and visualization

Create team visualization sessions for important competitions

"Let's mentally rehearse that skill before we do it physically"

"Visualize yourself executing that perfectly"

"See yourself being successful in that situation"

"Your brain is practicing even when your body isn't"

"Elite athletes all use mental rehearsal - so do we"

Brief visualization before learning new skills

Mental rehearsal during rest periods between physical practice

Team visualization sessions before important games

Use visualization for strategy and game plan preparation

Encourage athletes to visualize overcoming specific challenges

Wang, Y., Lei, S. M., & Fan, J. (2023). Effects of mindfulness-based interventions on promoting athletic performance and related factors among athletes. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2257.

Wong, R. S. K., How, P. N., & Cheong, J. P. G. (2022). The effectiveness of a mindfulness training program on selected psychological indices and sports performance of sub-elite squash athletes. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 906729.