Keeping Your Head in the Game: Sport-Specific Imagery and Anxiety Among Injured Athletes (Original Research) (Report‪)‬

Aligned with the 2006 National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) Educational Competencies, (1) imagery and other motivational techniques are included as part of the psychomotor competencies and clinical proficiencies for students in accredited athletic training education programs. Specifically, cognitive competencies and proficiencies under the "Psychosocial Intervention and Referral" domain state that athletic trainers will "[d]escribe the basic principles of mental preparation, relaxation, visualization, and desensitization techniques" and "[s]elect and integrate appropriate motivational techniques (verbal motivation, visualization and imagery) into a patient's treatment or rehabilitation program." (1(p 39)) Prentice (2) and Walsh (3) advocated that certified athletic trainers (ATs) employ imagery to help athletes positively respond to their injuries and facilitate recovery. However, sport-specific imagery content prescriptions or what to image for facilitating return to play is rarely described in any rehabilitation context. Rather, the focus of imagery content seems to be on healing, pain management, and general performance imagery. (4,5) Although studies of imagery content related to rehabilitation exercises and healing are quite common, sport-specific imagery focusing on maintaining sport skills, facilitative arousal levels among injured athletes, strategies, and sport-specific goals has been virtually ignored, despite an applied model of mental imagery advocated by Martin et al. (6) This model suggests that positive outcomes, such as confidence, are achievable through the use of sport-specific imagery in rehabilitation settings.