The Library: Training The Mind: Visualization

»Main Index
»General Interest
»Empty-Hand Studies
»Weaponry Studies
»Advanced Training
»Training the Spirit
»Training the Mind
»Elective Studies

A lot of people try visualization techniques to improve their physical performance. The good news is that it works. Here“s the science behind it.

Virtual Reality

Visualization is a now-commonplace technique within sports training; or rather, it is a suite of techniques that shows promise in many physical training disciplines. In its broadest sense, it involves active imagination of your body executing actual techniques: for a baseball pitcher, he carefully concentrates on his grip, his stance, his windup, his release, and his follow-through...without actually doing it. For the basketball forward, she focuses on her feet on the foul line, feels her hold on the ball, sets her stance, and shoots the free-throw...all in her mind. Golf enthusiasts ardently use visualization to keep their swing in good form, even when they are miles from a course.

This can be done sitting in a chair, resting on the floor, or standing in an empty gymnasium. Visualizing your specific physical moves can be done anywhere it is safe to close one“s eyes. Sports medicine has utilized visualization for years, recommending it as a useful for of training to injured players. In many cases, rehabilitation time is decreased for injured people who consistently use visualization.

Certainly it seems to work. Unfortunately, its success has also led to a rash of pseudo-scientific applications, including the alleged use of visualization to succeed in business, increase salesmanship, or negotiate better. Unfortunately, true visualization seems linked to physical activity, not psychological performance: any successes with these non-scientific approaches seem to be the result of self-hypnotic reassurance rather than visualization.

How does it work?

Conventional wisdom says that visualization helps train muscle memory. The idea is simple: if you perform a physical activity enough times, your body“s muscles learn the correct sequence of movements to where the process is almost a reflex. By replaying these movements in your mind, your body“s muscles and nervous system begin to rehearse the motions to where you“re pretty much doing the actual exercise even if you“re only sitting in a chair. It would take a person mere seconds to do a Web search and find more detailed explanations of this effect.

Except for one element: there is scant rationale behind the concept of muscle memory. In fact, based on some common sense thinking, the very idea makes little sense: if muscles remember physical activity through repetition, why do so many pitchers throw wild? Why do star forwards flub simple free throws? Why do experienced golfers slice into the woods? Even more telling is the fact that visualization techniques can prove effective for recently learned activities...how can muscles remember something they have not yet memorized?

The answers are tied up in the brain, itself. Indeed, the process of visualization shows how many different parts of the brain work together to produce a desirable outcome. Note the following examples are greatly oversimplified, and more than a few steps were left out to make this more readable.

When you perform a physical motion for the first time, your brain“s thalamus recognizes the need to do it. Your premotor cortex determines what muscles and joints need to work, and the basal ganglia work out the logical sequence of events. This information is sent back to the thalamus, who forwards it to the motor cortex and the cerebellum. The motor cortex fires the nerves which move the muscles; the cerebellum tracks the motions and movements, and then notifies the thalamus that “I did what you needed me to do; any further instructions?”
The second time and third time the movement is repeated, the thalamus also sends this information to the hippocampus, which is like the brain“s hard drive. Now the information (muscles, joints, sequencing) can be retrieved faster. This is not muscle memory, but real memory. The benefit to this is that the premotor cortex and basal ganglia no longer need to revisit the problem “from scratch,” but can begin analyzing the information with more detail. The physical result is that motions and movements become smoother and faster.
Eventually, these minor improvements are “recorded” to the hippocampus, and the process repeats...in time, the movement is perfected. If old habits are hard to break, this is why: there is just as much work into scrapping a movement as there was in learning it.
While the premotor cortex, basal ganglia, motor cortex, and cerebellum are all doing their parts, the thalamus is again processing new information to see what needs to be changed. For example, in a hand-to-hand scenario, the thalamus may say “incoming fist.” The hippocampus suggests “block!” After the premotor cortex and basal ganglia figure out the type of block, the speed of execution, and the trajectory required, the motor cortex and cerebellum begin to execute the block. However, if the thalamus realizes “He“s feinting and switching to a kick,” the thalamus notifies the cerebellum and motor cortex to “Stop!” By this point, the hippocampus has suggested a different course of action, and the new response “Dodge!” goes out. This process explains everything from a shooter hesitating before pulling the trigger, to a checked swing in baseball, to quarterback suddenly running the ball in: the thalamus spotted something important.
The basal ganglia has a structure called the putamen, which is effective at encoding gross motor movements. When executing a movement for the first time, the putamen suggests previously learned gross motor skills that might save time in this new movement. For example, if a student is learning to swing a combat stick for the first time, the putamen might suggest an upper arm movement similar to swinging a fist. If there are differences, the premotor cortex will eventually sort that out. But this is why many students practice a movement for the first time and think, “Oh, this is no different from that other technique!”
This process happens so quickly that it seems almost instantaneous. When it works, it“s transparent, but when it works well, it seems magical: the student can execute a complex technique never practiced before as if the subconscious, or indeed muscle memory, completed the task for him or her.

How does visualization work in this process? By this point, you may have deduced this yourself. The thalamus processes your conscious request to visualize a complex technique. In response, the hippocampus starts to replay the information on the overall technique. The various parts of the brain begin to process the sequence of events necessary to do the motions. Effectively, they don“t know this is purely in the imagination and do not care: they start to perfect the motions.

In the first bullet point above, you will note that the information is sent back to the thalamus, which forwards this information onto the cerebellum and motor cortex. This is where visualization doesn“t become reality: the thalamus basically intercepts this information and aborts it (“Just pretending!”). Otherwise, the body might begin to act out the activity for real.

Effectively, this is the process: various parts of the brain work together to learn and execute a new action. In visualization, the thalamus changes the usual process to learn but not execute the action. As far as the hippocampus, premotor cortex, and basal ganglia (and putamen) are concerned, the activity was real, so the body benefits from visualizing...however, the fact that the thalamus interrupts the process means that visualization cannot be a 100% perfect substitute for actual physical activity.

But it is often close enough to provide real value.