Mental skills and personal experiment (17): another athlete’s experience

Today I discussed the effect of having stopped my mental training with my workout buddy/coach/partner. He is also experimenting with mental rehearsal and meditation. He told me he had interrupted his mental training for about a month and resuming it was very hard. I asked him to describe what he meant by “hard”. He said he was only able to do it twice a week now.

I have resumed my mental practice for about 5 days already. It is still “hard”, but in my case this means: 1. I can endure only short sessions (about 4 minutes for each lift, 12-15 minutes total); 2. I frequently have headaches; 3. I get those stupid mind-tricks every time again.

In my review of the literature I found evidence that mental rehearsal may be useful for learning new skills (Allami et al 2008) and also that observing others performing or imagining oneself performing, as an observatory, produces positive effects (Cisek & Kalaska 2004). This latter evidence came from animal models (monkeys). I am not sure I agree with the methodological approach: first, in the case where researchers concluded that mental rehearsal is useful for LEARNING a skill, as opposed to IMPROVING or TRAINING it, there was no situation comparing a group where 100% of the training sessions were on imaginary settings (mental). The smallest amount of overt execution was 25%, which is not negligible. I would conclude all these people improved an overtly learned skill.

Allami N, Paulignan Y, Brovelli A, Boussaoud D. 2008. Visuo-motor learning with combination of different rates of motor imagery and physical practice. Exp Brain Res. 2008 Jan;184(1):105-13. Epub 2007 Sep 12.

Cisek P, Kalaska JF. 2004. Neural correlates of mental rehearsal in dorsal premotor cortex. Nature. 2004 Oct 21;431(7011):993-6