One of the major themes in Sports Psychology is the idea that visualization and thought-control can help us improve our athletic ability.

Traditionally, coaches mentally prepared their athletes through positive or negative reinforcement. In order to strengthen desirable behavior coaches used positive reinforcement by using words such as. "Relax, concentrate, or be confident." For negative reinforcement coaches usually yelled at their players in hopes that it would alter and diminish an undesirable behavior. Although positive and negative reinforcement does have some degree of affect we know that it can also backfire, causing the athlete to become lost in negative self thought in which they begin to lose their concentration and start to focus and worry about the things they've just done wrong.

A more helpful way of altering behavior is to teach coaches and athletes visualization and thought-control strategies. From what we can see, we know that our...