“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.
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