If You Can "Imagine It"...I’ll Show You How To Dominate!

...Build Confidence Without Even Stepping Onto The Field

Author

Josiah Igono, PhD
July 31, 2025

Earl Woods exposed Tiger to mental training and visualization techniques early in his life.

Did you know that your brain has a hard time distinguishing a real live event from an imagined one? The same regions that are active in our brains when we are performing an athletic skill are the same regions that are activated when we are thinking about that skill.

When you learn to embrace this concept, you can use it to your competitive advantage.

Young lions are known for wrestling and aggressive play. Visualization is a big part of their development when they are learning to hunt and live on their own.

Lionesses will often bring a live baby gazelle to the young lions to teach them how to hunt and develop the survival skills that they will need later in life. This is especially important for male lions who will eventually get kicked out of the pride at around 2 years old.

Visualization, whether they know it yet, will be a big part of these cubs’ lives

Research has shown that visualization routines when paired with technical skill work improve confidence levels. Visualization is an opportunity for you to get unlimited reps. Take a moment to think about that. You can get hundreds, even thousands of reps per week just by visualizing what you intend to do during competition.

Are you an athlete who just shows up to practice, gets your reps during the week, and hopes for the best on gameday?

Or, are you an athlete who gets unlimited repetitions because you spend time visualizing competitive moves, defensive situations, and what you will do in certain scenarios?

Olympian, Michael Phelps, is widely known for his visualization routines

Taking it a step further, elite athletes who study practice and game film are flooding their minds with meaningful information without having to take a physical repetition on the field. There are a many great athletes who have spent hours in the film room, combined it with technical work, and showed up with lion-like confidence on gameday.

A few things to keep in mind:

  • You don’t have to have your eyes closed when you visualize

  • “Shadowboxing” is a form of visualization

  • Watching film is a form of visualization

  • Rehearsing in-game scenarios is a form of visualization

  • “Walk-throughs” are a form of visualization

  • Practicing “on air” is a form of visualization

  • “Dry swings” are a form of visualization

Visualization is a way to build lion-like confidence

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“It is ironic that the innocent wrestling & play-fighting that lion cubs engage in while they are young is actually the thing that prepares them for survival when they are older”

We need to spend more time ‘thinking’ about who we are and what we want to accomplish. The returns are massive. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 23, “…as a man thinketh, so is he”. 

If you can see yourself doing something, and you have full belief…you will be hard to stop.

See it. Do it.

Your Friend,

Josiah Igono