Words and Images for High (or Better) Performance - Jan. 13, 2017
Using Words and Images for High Performance was the subject of a talk for Boston College swimmers entering the height of their competitive season. The strategies below are useful for sports or for any other challenge.
We train. Meanwhile we think and imagine. Language and pictures help us be our best in sports – and in everything. “Exacting mental standards” mark Olympic athletes – swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.
Why not, then, train our minds as we do our bodies? An ancient Latin phrase “Mens sano in corpore sano” ("a sound mind in a sound body") recommends that. Many recent studies confirm the power of mind over body. Take one study (1996) in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. Imagining weight lifting caused actual changes in muscle activity. Take another: a study in medical rehabilitation reported that people with fractured arms immobilized in casts imagined their arms moving. In fact, they were not. The result? Their arms improved significantly more in mobility and strength than those who did no visualizations.
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, reports that hotel cleaners who were told they could lose weight while cleaning (vacuuming, dusting, etc.) lost weight while those told nothing did not. Achievement without mental training can be hard. My research with over 100 national- and world-class masters runners found that 96% of them use mental training techniques of affirmations or visualizations.
What can we do? Six things.
#1. Have a slogan, a motto, re. your effort. And say it daily. The words make your effort more important and intensify commitment. Create your own slogan or use one which others use (ones like “Embrace The Uncomfortable”, “Embrace The Intensity”, “Embrace The Loneliness”, or “Detach From Stress”). Slogans also reduce ambivalence and distractions.
By intensifying commitment, words make your efforts easier. Being 100% is much easier than being 90% committed. Indecision is always harder than commitment. As neuroscientist Dan Levitin writes in The Organized Mind switching from one focus to another and questioning oneself too much is tiring.
#2. Remember that positive words inspire action more than neutral or negative ones. Take this simple picture: in winter, the swimmer who hesitates before entering the indoor pool. The mantra “ice cream” – an image with a positive experience– helps her jump in the water sooner.
#3. Self-talk including affirmations – positive, present, and personal statements – improves performance under stress.Self-talk and sports performance expert Dr. Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis teaches at the University of Thessaly in Trikala, Greece. (His meta-analysis of sports psychological studies appears in Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2011, in the Journal of the Association of Psychological Science.)
Self-talk “stimulates your action, directs your action and evaluates your action," he says. "You instruct yourself until it becomes automatic." Two kinds of self-talk improve performance: instructional self-talk and motivational self-talk. Instructional self-talk focused on specific actions (“Relax your shoulders”, “Keep your leg straight,”) helps athletes improve specific techniques or skills. Motivational self-talk (“You know you can do this!”) improves performance in strength and endurance-based tasks).
#4. More research finds that third person self-talk improves performance most.
An athlete, Debbie, should say “Debbie has grit” instead of “I have grit” or “You have grit”. Use of the third person not only enforces belief and increases confidence but also improves performance under stress (The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, February, 2016).
When people think of themselves as another person, "it allows them to give themselves objective, feedback," says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology and director of the Self-Control and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Michigan.
5. Visualizations, in a place where you can recreate the environment, help performance as well. Wikipedia’s definition of visualizations is good: “the practice of seeking to affect the outer world by changing one’s thoughts and expectations”. Whether you want to visualize a movement or race, try to feel the event with all your senses – hearing, smells, sounds, sights, touches. (Olympians like swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, basketball player Michael Jordan and figure skater Randy Gardner visualize performance regularly. Since Phelps has visualized since he was 7 years old, he has a huge portfolio of them.) Many MOVE! athletes attribute their wins in tournaments or races to visualizations.
#6. Visualize with alternating themes. One visualization should focus on the perfect practice or race. The next should focus on anything that can go wrong so you can imagine how you will handle problems.
- c.u.
Why not, then, train our minds as we do our bodies? An ancient Latin phrase “Mens sano in corpore sano” ("a sound mind in a sound body") recommends that. Many recent studies confirm the power of mind over body. Take one study (1996) in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. Imagining weight lifting caused actual changes in muscle activity. Take another: a study in medical rehabilitation reported that people with fractured arms immobilized in casts imagined their arms moving. In fact, they were not. The result? Their arms improved significantly more in mobility and strength than those who did no visualizations.
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, reports that hotel cleaners who were told they could lose weight while cleaning (vacuuming, dusting, etc.) lost weight while those told nothing did not. Achievement without mental training can be hard. My research with over 100 national- and world-class masters runners found that 96% of them use mental training techniques of affirmations or visualizations.
What can we do? Six things.
#1. Have a slogan, a motto, re. your effort. And say it daily. The words make your effort more important and intensify commitment. Create your own slogan or use one which others use (ones like “Embrace The Uncomfortable”, “Embrace The Intensity”, “Embrace The Loneliness”, or “Detach From Stress”). Slogans also reduce ambivalence and distractions.
By intensifying commitment, words make your efforts easier. Being 100% is much easier than being 90% committed. Indecision is always harder than commitment. As neuroscientist Dan Levitin writes in The Organized Mind switching from one focus to another and questioning oneself too much is tiring.
#2. Remember that positive words inspire action more than neutral or negative ones. Take this simple picture: in winter, the swimmer who hesitates before entering the indoor pool. The mantra “ice cream” – an image with a positive experience– helps her jump in the water sooner.
#3. Self-talk including affirmations – positive, present, and personal statements – improves performance under stress.Self-talk and sports performance expert Dr. Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis teaches at the University of Thessaly in Trikala, Greece. (His meta-analysis of sports psychological studies appears in Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2011, in the Journal of the Association of Psychological Science.)
Self-talk “stimulates your action, directs your action and evaluates your action," he says. "You instruct yourself until it becomes automatic." Two kinds of self-talk improve performance: instructional self-talk and motivational self-talk. Instructional self-talk focused on specific actions (“Relax your shoulders”, “Keep your leg straight,”) helps athletes improve specific techniques or skills. Motivational self-talk (“You know you can do this!”) improves performance in strength and endurance-based tasks).
#4. More research finds that third person self-talk improves performance most.
An athlete, Debbie, should say “Debbie has grit” instead of “I have grit” or “You have grit”. Use of the third person not only enforces belief and increases confidence but also improves performance under stress (The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, February, 2016).
When people think of themselves as another person, "it allows them to give themselves objective, feedback," says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology and director of the Self-Control and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Michigan.
5. Visualizations, in a place where you can recreate the environment, help performance as well. Wikipedia’s definition of visualizations is good: “the practice of seeking to affect the outer world by changing one’s thoughts and expectations”. Whether you want to visualize a movement or race, try to feel the event with all your senses – hearing, smells, sounds, sights, touches. (Olympians like swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, basketball player Michael Jordan and figure skater Randy Gardner visualize performance regularly. Since Phelps has visualized since he was 7 years old, he has a huge portfolio of them.) Many MOVE! athletes attribute their wins in tournaments or races to visualizations.
#6. Visualize with alternating themes. One visualization should focus on the perfect practice or race. The next should focus on anything that can go wrong so you can imagine how you will handle problems.
- c.u.