How to Exercise When Ill - Some Facts About Mental
Training
If you think
physical exercise is all there is to training, think again. No doubt, if you
need to build muscle or stamina, then "real" physical training, i.e.
running or weight lifting or rafting will always be needed to get your body
into shape. There is another side to the effects of exercising though, and that
is that it coordinates certain muscles, learning to move exactly as prescribed
by the particular sport's rules etc.
In the last
analysis, all that physical training does if it is not building muscle or
stamina is beating certain pathways in your nervous system that mean you can
move as elegantly and precisely as desired, be it in golf, gymnastics or figure
skating. This goes for all sports, soccer requires as much precision in hitting
a ball in the right place with adequate force (not too hard, not too little),
to score a goal as any other discipline.
And the more often
you practice these movements yourself, the more accomplished you become. The
more you watch others, be it your coach, your team-mates or your competitors,
the better the state-of-the-art typical motion will be picked up by your brain
and wired into your system.
When you follow
training statistics over the years then one can see clearly that training
periods became longer and longer, and in most cases you'll find, the earlier
(as a child) an athlete began to train, the more time he or she devoted to
training during their lifetime the better their chance to become a champion, if
their coach was any good.
However, there is
only so much time you can devote to your training before you overexert yourself
and any further second invested will become counterproductive. Most world class
athletes are working out near that threshold. And if they're hurt and have to
suspend physical training it is often near catastrophic.
As we've seen, in
the last analysis there are these two sides to training: the physical
stimulation of muscle and building stamina and the preparation of neural
pathways. The latter does not have to be done by physical exercise alone! As
studies have shown (and many a past athlete knew instinctively), just mentally
rehearsing an exercise will build these pathways just as well. And what's more:
if it is a potentially dangerous move you need to learn (and even with the
"right" golf swing you can damage a cartilage or strain a muscle!),
you can practice dry runs that way, before you ever make that move for the
first time. The most fascinating result of some studies was that this mental
training built muscle as if you had exercised physically. The gain was only
about half the gain of real physical exercise which is why we still recommend
the real workout if you want to get ahead in your sport, but it was
significant. If you want to loose weight, just lying on your couch and watching
a mental training video won't help you much.
But imagine you
were ill and not allowed to exercise or if you were mortified or just feeling
apprehensive about a new move that you need to master in your sport but are
afraid to practise - then mental training is the exact remedy!
How to train
mentally
You need to
mentally repeat and emulate the exact moves you are meant to practise. If you
already have vivid pictures of what you need to do, then just repeat these in
your mind over and over - you will just become better and better at what you
seem to already be good at. If you want to learn from the masters in the field
you must watch them practise over and over until their perfected movements
become your own. That's best done by watching videos. That said, you need to
- Make sure you can
tell if the person you are using as your guide is performing correctly - you
don't want to learn any substandard moves. Mental training allows you to train
alongside the best in class!
not always have to
look at them consciously and with a fixed gaze! Rather, just let a certain
movement play again and again while you're doing the washing-up, reading, doing
some repairs or so. It would be enough if you looked at it from the corner of
your eye! Your eyes have kind of peripheral vision, as you can check: look
straight ahead, then move your fingers outwards and sideways until they begin
to disappear. If your eyesight is not impaired you will find that your eyes can
spot your fingers at an angle of more than 180 degrees!
- Play the videos
in full and the special scenes repeatedly as long as you like, and when you
can't, e.g. if you ride a bus or whenever you find idle time that you cannot
use any better, then mentally rehearse these scenes, now picturing yourself in
them, as if YOU were the one who did those moves.
Keep a log or diary
of certain measures that pertain to your particular sport that describe your
progress (e.g. height jumped, time run etc.) in the discipline you practice and
compare your results over time. When you feel that you have done enough in one
field, try and get hold of a typical video of another crucial set of movements
and do the same. Every few weeks or months, review the old material as well,
and if you can get someone to film you doing these movements from preferably
the very same angles that your former role models where shown from, then you
can even compare how you figure (try to get a second opinion as well if you
trust someone enough to let them in on your little, perfectly legal, secret!).
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