The Baseball Observer - Mental Skills Issue
Imagine this: mental imagery strengthens neural circuits
Imagine this: thinking about exercise strengthens your muscles, even if you don’t move an inch.
Mental imagery not only activates the same brain regions as the actual movement but also can speed up the learning of a new skill.
Mental imagery and sports performance
Mental imagery, mental practice, or visualization is a technique that has been used by sports psychologists for years to improve athletic performance on the playing field. Many successful Olympic athletes, basketball players, golfers, tennis players and other sports people credit the technique for their competitive edge, mental awareness, well-being and confidence
Champion golfer Jack Nicklaus famously said,
“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there; its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing.”
Mental imagery strengthens neural circuits
Mental imagery isn’t just for sports stars. Professional musicians commonly
rehearse difficult parts of a musical passage by performing the piece of music in their mind. It’s thought that the mental rehearsal activates the same motor, somatosensory, auditory, and emotional circuits as playing the actual instrument.
Surprisingly, visualization can even strengthen muscles. Simply imaging you’re lifting weights in the gym can increase muscle strength by up to half as much as if you’re actually doing it. The visualizing brain sends electrical signals to the muscles, which makes them stronger, even if you’re not moving.
This type of virtual workout is being used by Dr. Guang Yue and his team at Kessler Foundation to help improve muscle strength in the people undergoing rehabilitation. Yue says,
“Accumulating evidence suggests that mental training without physical or muscle exercise can improve voluntary muscle strength…This finding could have significant application in rehabilitation medicine because numerous weak patients or frail older adults who find it difficult or unsafe to participate in conventional strength training, such as weightlifting programs, may now be able to strengthen their muscles by using their mind.”
Internal vs external imagery
Research by Dr. Yue and others describes two types of mental imagery: Internal and External
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