Do you visualise?!

Literally, do you imagine what you’re going to do BEFORE you do it? Do you see yourself in your mind’s eye before you try to reproduce it with your own body?

Imagining. Seeing in your minds eye. Visualising what you’re going to do BEFORE you do it is absolutely key to your success! It’s almost certain that if you haven’t got a clear idea in your mind about what your going to do, you won’t produce a physical result that you’re happy with!

So here’s an exercise for you to do that’ll help get your mind muscles working…

1. Choose a short phrase or motif from a video you’re familiar with.  You could use the one in the video at the bottom of this page, beginning at 3min 45secs (It’s approx. 20 seconds of movement).
2. Watch it repeatedly (I suggest at least 7-10 times). Most people want to get going “physically” to soon! You really need to have absorbed the ideas mentally before trying them physically, by repeated watching.
3. Just incase you missed that. YOU NEED TO WATCH WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO REPRODUCE MANY MANY TIMES BEFORE YOU ATEMPT TO DO IT.
4. Then as you start to become familiar with it, imagine the phrase in your head and play it along in your mind as you watch the video a few more times.
5. Now without the video, play it back in your head BEFORE you try to reproduce it physically.  Do this many times (at least 7 – 10 times). Are you imagining clearly how the movement looks?  What are the shapes and angles being created? What’s the tempo or pulse of the phrase?
6. Now it’s time to have a go!
7. Make some space in the room you’re in and be sure you’re not going to bump to anything as you swing your arms.
8. Run your mental “video” one more time.
9. Now start to move and see if you can recreate the section you’ve chosen whilst using your mental video as your guide.
10. If this is too tricky to start with, use the actual video and follow along after you press play but do attempt step 9. as soon as possible.

And that’s it! This is a challenging lesson, so don’t worry if you don’t succeed the first time (or even the second or third times!). But DO stick to the process and over time you will get improvements that you didn’t think possible… I promise!

How did you get on? What did you find difficult about this?