Visualization involves developing a rich picture of a successful tennis stroke and a positive outcome. For example, you can visualize yourself doing the perfect backhand that results in a winning tennis shot.

The richer you can make the image of the successful tennis stroke, the stronger will be the power of visualization and its capacity to build your inner game of tennis.

Visualization derives its power from its capacity to build your positive thinking, your self-belief and your self-efficacy.

Visualization builds your positive thinking

To visualize you need to eliminate all negative thoughts and focus only on the positives. You capture all that is good about a successful tennis stroke and shut out any negative images. Negative thoughts can weaken your visualization and render it powerless.

When you visualize a successful tennis stroke you create a rich picture that captures the context, the positive aspects of your technique and the outcomes of your tennis stroke. You try to hold that image in your mind as a permanent record that can be recalled at any time.

Visualization builds positive thinking because it forces you to concentrate on the positive and eliminate the negative.

Visualization builds self-belief

When you visualize a successful tennis stroke you are building a picture of yourself as a successful tennis player. This contributes to your positive self-belief and enables you to withstand self-doubts and self-criticism.

The more frequently you visualize, the stronger your self-belief becomes. You will find that without the power of visualization, it is very easy for you to entertain self-doubts and weaken your self-belief.

Visualization builds self-belief because it replaces self-doubts with a positive perception of yourself and your tennis ability.

Visualization builds self-efficacy

Psychologists suggest that one of the central elements of success is the ability of the successful person to develop self-efficacy. This is the belief that you are capable of successfully completing some specific act, e.g. producing a winning top-spin lob.

Self-efficacy differs from self-belief in that the former concentrates on a general belief in yourself and your tennis ability, whereas the latter focuses on your ability to perform a specific stroke in a specific situation. Self-belief builds as we build self-efficacy.

Visualization builds self-efficacy because it requires you to focus on a specific tennis stroke in a particular context and with a particular successful outcome.

Visualization, then, has a three-fold effect. It builds your positive thinking, your self-belief and your sense of self-efficacy. Through these three benefits, visualization helps you to develop the inner game of tennis.