Chs. 6, 7, 8, 10

“Relaxation to enhance visualization is analogous to fine-tuning your VCR or DVD when you have interference and static...” (48)

This helps explain why most visualization and imagery instructions include deep relaxation exercises to start. With so many thoughts floating around our brains the so-called “monkey-mind” it’s difficult to zero in on what we want to focus on. There’s too much “static”. But if we can learn to calm that static and disassociate from the extraneous thoughts, then the imagery that we want to imprint can be experienced much more forcefully.

“(VMBR) This is the process of creating a mental video before an event and then using it to analyze and correct errors that may have occurred in both real and imagined events.” (62)

“This variation of the VMBR technique was to ”thought stop“... thought stopping led to a changed belief system...”

While VMBR is well understood and logical for skill sports where small errors can be identified and changed through mental practice, its usefulness for endurance sports seemed limited. The main challenge in endurance sports is persevering through difficulty. The “thought stopping” technique makes a lot of sense for athletes who must face all different kinds of fatigue. How do we keep going at a pace that makes our brain scream, “STOP!“ and send us to the nearest hammock? By rehearsing that feeling and practice ”stopping“ that thought and replacing it with another. Not being surprised by the difficulty and being ready to ”thought stop“ should increase endurance.

Lastly:

”By having a ritual, a superstition, or an idiosyncratic warmup routine, athletes take control of their environments and filter out any negative distractions...“ (81)

I’ve always wondered about these funny little rituals that athletes have. They seem superfluous, yet surprisingly potent for so many. It’s the ”take control“ element that makes sense. SInce a competition is by nature completely out of one’s control, then doing these little things could give one some confidence that crosses over to the other skills needed for a good performance.

Chs. 3,4,5

Affirmations, Breathing, Meditation, Imagery

“The only difference between the best performance and the worst performance is the variation in our self-talk and the self-thoughts and attitudes we carry around with us.” (Harris qtd. 21)

How does one keep control of our self-talk? That inner story line that often seems beyond our control? I think that it is agreed that the quality and make-up of that inner libretto determines our reality to a large extent. I am reminded of a scene in Star Wars where Qui-Gon Jin tells a young Anikin to be careful because “your focus determines your reality.” I suppose this where the next chapter on breathing and meditation could help. If we can distance ourselves a bit from our thoughts, we could then consciously choose which thoughts we allow. This is important in one of the Buddha’s early sutras where he instructs the monks to foster good thoughts and disallow bad thoughts.

“One of the more positive long-term outcomes of learning meditation and the skill of being passively detached is carrying this skill into your sport.” (34)

If you can detach from all the mental and emotional “static” in your head through regular meditation practice, then it stands to reason that you could do the same to any negative self-talk during an event. How about a workout? Could you do this during the everyday grind of hard training to improve motivation?

“...imagery is the result of this two-way communication street. S o instead of processing visual information from the outside, a visual signal is processed from within.”(40-41)

“So if we practice... we are actually strengthening the memory of that database. And vice versa. W hen we practice our imagery and visualization work, we are also giving more access to that memory.” (42)

It appears that our brains do not really distinguish that much between images developed from observing the outside world and images that are developed from our own internal thinking. It all gets processed as memories. So our memories of past performances, good or bad, will affect our current feelings and confidence level. Past negative experiences perceived through memory will tend to cause new problems to occur. But past memories of success can give us confidence and improve performance. If images that we choose to focus on are perceived the same as, or similar to, the memories that we know can affect us in many ways, then we should be able to set ourselves up for success or failure through imagery. My question is: is there a different degree of potency to images generated internally compared to those we processed from the outside? It seems to me that external stimuli affect us more powerfully than our own thoughts. But their similarity cannot be ignored, but instead harnessed.

Ch. 1 & 2

“Those athletes who actually made the team and competed in the Olympics were doing more mental practice in the final stages of preparation than their less successful colleagues.” (4)

This observation came from the author’s research on athletes during the Olympic trials in the 1980s. Clearly this stuff works. He goes on to suggest that this is what separates champions from the next level down. At the elite level, most athletes are very closely matched physically, so the deciding factor outside of chance must be mental. Later in the chapter he lists the four main theories of why mental training works. I think that the first two apply mainly to skill based sports. One is that the brain gets programmed by imagery and the nervous system is thus better able to fire correctly when the real situation occurs. Imagery is a form of learning. The second theory focuses on the muscles which fire subtly in the exact same patterns as they would in the real situation. To me these look the same: imagery is almost the same as the real event, and can impact learning and performance.
        But for an endurance athlete, skill is not as important as stamina, both physical and mental. The third theory was very interesting. He suggests that by visualizing difficulties or problems, one can then visualize and practice or rehearse how to respond to them, in effect conditioning oneself to the suffering that lies ahead. This is very applicable to an athlete who can rehearse the pain of a race, and be ready for when it actually occurs rather than shocked into a poor performance.