I’m sure by now you’ve heard about mental imagery and visualization to help with sports performance. We often hear how some of the world’s leading professional sports people owe a lot to their success in the sport from practicing visualization of their sport. But is this success isolated to the top sports men and women or can mere mortals gain some advantage by using mental imagery and visualization in sport?
I’ve discussed this before, but though I would take a deeper look into the research to see if there is anything specific we need to gain an extra advantage in our daily running.
There’s quite a bit of research out there but I had only recently heard of “The Landmark Basketball Study” conducted by the University of Chicago, which is considered as one of the pioneering tests of mental imagery in sports and confirmed what a lot of sports men and women had known for some time.
The researchers gathered a group of basketball players and separate them into three groups to see if they could improve their free throw percentage. The first group physically practiced for an hour each day, the second group practiced visual imagery of their free throws for 20 minutes a day and the third group that did nothing. The results at the end of 30 days showed the group that did nothing showed no improvement, first group to had improved their free throw percentage by 24%. The second group that practiced mental imagery improved by 23%, which is almost the same as the first group.
The above research shows practicing imagery can have a big impact on skills development but in a sport like running does this also translate to success. Well recent research from University of Münster, Germany and Swinburne University of Technology in Australia showed that in running, thinking about your form could actually have a negative impact on your running economy. The research took 12 runners and had them focus on either their running movement, their breathing or a video, all while running on a treadmill at a set speed. The research showed that the runners that focused on both their movement and breathing showed worse running economy, compared to the runners that focused on the video. So this gives a clear indication that mental imagery can be detrimental to our running, but only if we are doing it while we are actually running.
A team at the University of Lyon, France have made some interesting discoveries through when it comes to improving muscle strength in the legs. They used a group of health individuals and asked them to perform a number of bench press and leg press exercises. Once of the groups needed to perform the exercised as they needed while a second group were asked to visualize and feel the correspondent contractions during the rest period. They found the the visualization group significantly improved the maximum weight and also marginally improved the maximum number of repetitions they could do compared to the individuals who simply did the exercises as normal. What's even more interesting is this only seemed to work for lower limbs and not the bench press. The researchers suggest the mental imagery contribute to the improvement of lower limbs performance by enhancing the technical execution of the movement, and help with the individuals motivation, suggesting it can contribute to the enhancement of the muscles concentric strength.
So this gives us a good start when it comes to running but in looking for more research I was not able to find any studies that specifically looked at endurance, but the research has shown that the mere visualization of a muscle movement in the mind can create electrical activity in that muscle even though there’s no actual movement in the muscle itself. It has also shown that the pattern of electrical activity closely resembles that seen during actual movement.
As well, when it comes to endurance training, we also need to think about the fact that any mental imagery training, may also improve results due to an improvement in mental toughness, helping you push through difficult periods of a race.
One final point to mention, if you are looking at incorporating this as part of your training, the research has also made it clear there is a difference to the imagery you use. To improve skills in your chosen sport, using an external perspective, like that of a spectator is better for improving and learning those skills, but if you are looking to prime your muscles or “Psych Yourself Up” it is better to use an internal perspective, like you are actually participating in the event or imagining the feeling in the muscles.
I hope this helps with you training but at the same time, if anyone has any anecdotal evidence or knows of any research related to running, it would be great to hear.
Now over two years ago, a pic of me running Ironman New Zealand
About the Author
Hey I'm Vince, an Aussie living in New Zealand, trying my best to make the most of the time I have. I work as a Software Engineer but love to run and all aspects of it, including geeking out on the latest science to help get the most out of my body.
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