It also seems that superior karate athletes use mental practice for more fluency and accuracy on operation a skill.
Mental practice is based of operation of complex and accurate skills. Mental practice enables athletes to do whatever
they want. In other word, change their interest in to action. Feltz & Landers (1993) showed in their study, practice
by imagery can be effective as physical exercise [8]. Imagery is very useful tools for all athletes, because it can be
used to reduce stress, develop different technical skills, increase concentration and self-confidence [10]. Scientific
researches indicate the importance of imagery in facilitate of learning and performing sport’s skills [1,2,7]. Imagery
helps athletes during tournament to maintain their focus, gain confidence in their performance and to be successful
in controlling their motivation.
The importance of imagery as a tool for development of motion skills is clear, so that many athletes occasionally
take advantage of this skill, without being aware. Imagery is a kind of skill and like other skills requires practice and
time. So imagery training plan should be planned in such a way that helps the athletes to be aware of their feelings,
then acquire the basic skills of psychological skills and finally provide a basis for them to imagine psychological and
motion skills as tournament condition. The role of trainers in motivating athletes for using imagery skill is very
notably [10].
If we survey the results of Asian senior karate championship competition in China (2011) , we can see that Iran team
with regard to previous set of these competitions (China 2009, Malaysia 2007, Macau 2005) get weaken results, that
this problem shows the absence of necessary attention to psychological skills of karate ka's through federation
responsible and national team coaches.