Some time ago, a student stepped into my office, with thoughts on mental practice for futsal teams in his mind.
At that time, I’ve had similar thoughts on whether and how we can help shape players representations of team actions by way of imagery training. Being aware of the dearth in research on cognitive functions of imagery in team sports, Gian-Luca Linstromberg and I started developing a team action imagery training for futsal players to improve their representations of team-specific tactics and tested it.
The approach and the effectiveness of this kind of team action imagery training was published just recently, see here.
We’ve as well had the chance, among various conference contributions, to present our approach to Dr. Jan Mayer, sport psychologist of the soccer club TSG Hoffenheim, playing in the first league / Bundesliga in Germany.
To date, we’ve done related work on representations of team actions in volleyball, and are currently planning on a study in the field of esports.
To be continued.