Seeing the Difference: Developing Effective Imagery Scripts for Athletes

Abstract

This article provides guidelines for coaches and applied practitioners to create effective imagery scripts for use with their athletes. Supported by the imagery literature, we describe the planning, writing, delivering, and evaluating stages of script development. We explain the importance of considering the five Ws (Who, Where and When, Why, and What) in the planning stage, and use our own case study to provide specific examples of how we considered these when writing our own script. Finally we discuss different ways of delivering and evaluating the imagery script to ensure it is effective and continues to be over time. An example imagery script is provided along with a checklist coaches can use when developing their own script.

KEYWORDS:

• imagery content
• imagery function
• imagery perspective
• visualization