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The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
by Dave
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
At the risk of repeating myself, I want to bring up a subject that is near and dear to my heart, visualization. I believe this critical component of athletics is often left completely out of the discussion when it should be a centerpiece. We send our kids off to expensive private and group lessons, somewhat less expensive clinics, and team practices where visualization is barely, if ever, so much as mentioned. Yet this one item, this one technique, can give you everything you really need to be a better competitor.
I wanted to test the hypothesis I proposed a couple weeks ago that every big time athlete practices visualization on some level. I saw my opportunity to check this against an Olympic and professional athlete when, during the course of a clinic, I was able to put the question to Cat Osterman. Cat disappointed me - she said she "never really does 'visualization.'" Then, later, she directly contradicted herself.
The discussion we were engaged in was about pre-game warm-ups. I was curious about whether Cat used visualization before, during or after her workouts and pre-game warm-ups. I would have been willing to bet that she used it at every opportunity. Most pitchers do.
Many baseball pitchers at high levels fill their time watching videotape of hitters, analyzing weaknesses, and crafting strategies to take advantage of those weaknesses. Then, before they ever pitch against the hitter or team, they work through a visualization exercise in which they pitch to those weaknesses, using their imaginations.
Football quarterbacks do something similar. A good deal of time is spent watching videotape of the next opponent's defensive tendencies. Strategies are crafted. The team practices certain plays and play sequences it wants to use. A full game plan is developed. Then players are sent home where they work through things in their heads, they visualize pieces of the game they hope to play. QBs, in particular, run through pass patterns their receivers will use. They run through parts of those patterns where they expect receivers will be somewhat open or possibly completely uncovered by the opposing defense. They visualize themselves making good passes to those receivers at specific points in their patterns.
This technique is not particular to baseball pitchers and football QBs. Any athlete has a set of skills and strategies he or she hopes to implement in games. Track athletes visualize the various mechanics of their particular discipline, then actual races or events, and work through the competition in their heads. Gymnasts work through their very difficult mechanical skills and see themselves doing the thing right before they enter competition or before a specific event. Skaters do it. Swimmers, cyclists, golfers, boxers and whatever other athletes we can come up with do it. I dare say even circus performers, public speakers and dramatic actors do this.
We do loads of in-person, physical practicing to prepare our bodies to execute skills and strategies necessary for success. But if we never do any sort of visualization, we rob ourselves of very important "practice time." We waste our minds and that's a terrible thing.
I was curious if Osterman did any sort of visualization and whether she would clue us in about how, when and why she does it. My hopes, however, were dashed when Cat said, no, in fact, she doesn't really practice visualization - she's not big on that. I thought this strange but rather than cross-examine her, I just sat there disappointed, perhaps crestfallen over the dashing of my hypothesis.
The discussion moved to other subjects and questions from the audience were again requested. Someone asked Cat about her mental state before she throws each pitch. The questioner noticed that she takes a moment to center herself, sometimes closes her eyes, and then lets the pitch fly. The questioner wanted to know if she was emptying her mind at this moment before pitching. He was looking to test his personal hypothesis that top level pitchers empty their heads before actually throwing a pitch. His hopes were soon dashed and mine rejuvenated when Cat replied that no, she wasn't emptying her mind. Instead, she was picturing, in her mind, the pitch she was about to make. She noted that she has always done that. She said she has a unique way of being able to see the pitch and then execute it.
It's too bad she doesn't practice visualization!!!
I don't so much care whether any particular athlete, in an academic lecture, a clinic, or any other setting states unequivocally that what he or she practices before competing involves a technique that has a specific name. I don't care whether he or she describes the technique and explains how it was developed. I don't care that he or she learned something called vizualization and can explain to me or others how, when or why he or she does this. I know instinctively that all athletes do it whether they are aware of it or not. I know it works. And every time I see the topic addressed, I get a better understanding of why it works and how it should be used.
Last night, I was flipping through cable channels looking for anything to hold my interest. There were only a few sporting events on and none of them had the potentential to hold me. There is nothing much for me on TV these days. I've completely outgrown sitcoms. The drama series which dominate TV are horrendous for the most part. So I usually look for a sporting event and when I am disappointed on that front, I start flipping through the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc. Last night, there just wasn't much worthwhile on until I happened upon the Science Channel's "Weird Connections."
"Weird Connections" is a show which shows five seemingly unrelated experiments and then extrapolates how the intersection of those experiments is going to alter technology in the future. Last night the focus was on some very interesting mental phenomenon.
The first experiment involved college kids who were all given free beer in a makeshift bar. The kids didn't really know each other before they sat around drinking. As their consumption proceeded, they seemed to loosen up, laugh more readily and do the other things we associate with an intoxicated state caused by consumption of beer. The punch line happened when researchers informed the kids that three quarters of them had not actually received any alcohol at all. They had gotten drunk on non-alcoholic beer! Yet their reactions were identical to kids drinking real beer!! In other words, alcohol was not the cause of changed behavior - it was the kids' expectations, their minds.
The second experiment involved a subject who underwent pain as part of a study of brainwaves. A device was placed on her which applied heat (about 110 degrees Farenheit) to a limited area on her arm. The researcher noted that this was approximately equivalent to holding a very hot cup of coffee. The subject experienced pain from the heat and her brainwaves caused by the pain were recorded. Certain parts of our brains become active when we experience pain. Then a substance was applied to the heated area and she was told that it was a very strong painkiller which should alleviate any pain caused by the heating device. When the device was again activated, the subject felt no pain and, more importantly, the parts of her brain associated with pain remained inactive. The painkiller substance was mere baby oil. It was not responsible for blocking her pain. Her brain did that.
The third experiment involved weight lifting performed by novices. A group of subjects was tested for arm strength via a standard arm curl test. Then half the group did exercises intended to improve those results twice a week, over a six week period. The other half of the group did half as much of these exercises and then spent the other half of their time sitting with the bar in their hands while watching a video of themselves doing curls from a first person perspective. The video shown was as if they were doing the actual curls. They had been coached to visualize while using this video - told to imagine themselves actually making the exercise movement on each video rep but not to move their arms. Then, at the end of six weeks, both groups were again tested for strength. Both groups experienced improved results but the group which did less actual weight lifting plus the visualization improved more than the other group!
The researchers found this surprising and curious. They concluded that, while they certainly would not suggest that anyone looking to get into shape merely visualize exercise, since that does nothing to actually use muscles nor improve cardio-vascular function, perhaps visualization should play a more important part in physical training. They reasoned that perhaps the injured or sick athlete stuck outside of practice and training could glean some benefit from doing visualization.
I'll go these researchers one better. I think that while visualization without exercise is inadvisable, perhaps sports training without visualization is almost as weak an approach.
To explain the results of the experiment, researchers examined the way in which human motors work. Impulses are sent from the brain to the muscles via the neuro-muscular pathways, muscles contract, and athletic movement is accomplished. Muscles get worked repeatedly and become stronger. Apparently so do neurons!
Visualization of an exercise causes the neuro-muscluar pathways to be activated or excited in the same way they are during actual exercise. The electronic pulse goes from our brain to the muscle during visualization the same way it does when we actually make the movement.
When describing athletics, I try to avoid using the all too common phrase "muscle memory." Obviously muscles don't really have memory per se though making a lot of repeated motions with a muscle will cause the particular fibers to become more robust. We've been over that before and I don't want to get into it again right now. Rather than use the term "muscle memory" to describe what happens when complex physical actions are repeated, I prefer "motor memory" because, at least to me, that reflects the more complete package of neuro-muscular interaction.
The question is, of the two pieces of "neuro" and "muscular," which is the more important? I suppose the answer the experiment (an extremely limited one) provides is maybe "neuro" is more important than "muscular." I doubt that either is more important than the other. But you cannot deny the power of the mind.
The reasons I spend so much time on the subject of visualization are precisely because I know its power and because, in the numerous clinics, etc. I have attended, the only reference I have ever heard has come from my own mouth. These clinics have been hosted by top level, very well known coaches, Olympic and professional athletes, etc. Yet nobody has ever spent any real time on visualization. I feel as if it is my responsiblity to share this with you.
I've talked before about how one goes about accomplishing visualization. There's no time to get into that now. But I do want to emphasize that athletic visualization is a first person endeavor. You don't so much watch yourself from some distance making a play or pitch, hitting a basehit or homerun, etc. Instead you watch your body doing it from your own eyes, your personal, first person perspective. You don't see the back of your head. It is not an "out of body" experience. It is an "in body" experience.
Secondly, it is not an experience in which you merely "watch" the results. Visualization is almost a weak way of naming it. You don't simply see, you feel it. You know the way your body feels when you run, go down to field a grounder, reach out to get a linedrive or flyball, swing a bat, hit the ball, make a throw, etc. You know this because you have done it countless times before in practices and games. When you perform "visualization" you experience the entirety of the action. You experience the steps leading up to the play. You live all the right moves and then make the play.
I have to pick some sort of softball action with which to provide you examples. That does not make the examples inapplicable to other aspects of the game. I'm going to choose pitching because it is probably easiest for me to put this into understandable words. But please understand that the same dynamic applies to hitting, fielding, making your moves as a catcher, infielder, outfielder, batter, baserunner, etc. The same exercises I will now discuss for pitchers can be altered to provide "practice" for every player on the field.
The first item I think you should want to have at the ready is some skill including the proper way to accomplish it. In pitching, we talk about good mechanics of the stride forward, arm circle, and wrist snap. A beginner pitcher who is working at perfecting some element of her motion can gain improvement via visualization of that movement, assuming she knows what it is supposed to look like. That requires someone explaining it to her, perhaps demonstrating it, perhaps putting her through numerous repetitions of trying it while observing her.
It occurs to me that I have emphasized many times on this blog that pitchers practice frequently and at length. The idea is to work at accomplishing good mechanics, achieve them, and then repeat. Early on, girls get some instruction and then try to repeat the skill until they get it down. A beginner pitcher might first be instructed on the wrist snap and shown how to do it the right way. Then she tries it and often fails a few times. Finally, she does it right, experiences success and works at repeating it. She might get it right once out of ten times. The idea of practicing this somewhat simple movement is to get it right more frequently than not and then gradually increase the incidence of the correct movement until that is the overwhelming majority of iterations.
Girls who do not practice, usually make repeated mistakes of the same sort and end up making, for example, an incorrect wrist snap, say, 8 out of 10 tries. If the pitching student goes home and works her wrist snaps three or more times per week, she eventually gets a very high incidence of doing it correctly and can move forward with her lessons.
Lessons really involve two elements, the neuro and the muscular. But of the two, the muscular is definitely the easier one. Think of pitching wrist snaps. The movement is not complicated nor does it require real strength, in the sense that it is not particularly taxing on even a very young kid who has never done it before. You flex your arm and snap your wrist. You don't have to lift weights before attempting it! What is difficult, however, is the movement of the electronic message from brain to muscle. What is difficult is telling the right muscle fibers to twitch.
The same principle is true of other parts of the fundamental windmill pitching motion. The individual pieces are not difficult or taxing to accomplish over some minimal number of repetitions. Bringing them together can be more difficult. These individual pieces are absolutely critical to performing the whole. And most often when a pitcher is struggling, it is one piece in particular that is giving her trouble. So presumably, given that visualization causes the message to be sent from brain to muscle, one could improve one's skills by practicing visualization, or put another way, practicing via visualization.
A more advanced pitcher is learning new pitches which involve different kinds of movements, particularly of her wrist. She could foster learning of the new pitch's movements via visualization. You learn the dropball hand-wrist snap and then try to repeat it with a ball in your hand. But once you know it, you can cause the correct neuro fibers to activate whether you have a ball in your hand or not. So my advice to any pitcher trying to learn new tricks is to practice, practice, practice, and do at least some of this while laying down, sitting in a chair or otherwise without a ball in her hand.
Even after a pitcher has the fundamental windmill motion down pretty well, even after she has learned to throw the drop, change, etc., she can still get a ton of benefit from doing visualization. Let's say for the sake of argument that you have all your pitches down pretty well. Your fastball is fast and your movement pitches move. What is the next consideration? Location. That is, you want to be able to put your pitches where you want them.
You no longer look to merely throw a fastball correctly or to throw it very fast. Now you need to put it on or just off the corner. You've done this before. Do it now in your head. Picture yourself throwing the ball right on that corner and the batter taking it for a strike. Picture yourself throwing the pitch three inches off the plate, out of the batters reach, wherever you want to throw it. As I said, don't merely picture yourself doing this in the third person as you might if you were standing at second base, in the outfield, or along the sidelines. See, feel, smell, taste yourself doing it from the moment you, yourself, step on the pitcher's plate. Live the experience in your head.
The very best pitchers I have ever seen share the ability to essentially throw a good pitch, fastball, change of speed, or movement pitch, basically where they want it to go. They throw strikes to get ahead in the count and then deliberately throw balls to get the batter out with unhittable pitches. A pitcher might throw her curveball on the corner, an inch off it, two inches outside, etc. If she gets up 0-2, the next pitch is not going to be a strike. It is going to be a pitch which the batter cannot possibly hope to drive for a basehit unless she gets extremely lucky or the pitch is a mistake. Good pitchers have command. When they practice, they work on controlling exactly where that ball goes. There's no good reason to not use visualization as a training aid once you have become a top level pitcher.
Further to the point, pitchers learn how to identify batters with certain tendencies and then how to pitch to those weaknesses. You can use visualization for either purpose. You've seen perhaps thousands of batters. You've identified their tendencies, got them out pitching to their weaknesses, and suffered big hits when you've made mistakes. You've developed a database of how to get hitters out and what kinds of mistakes they like to hit best. Visualize yourself making good pitches to these batters. Visualize yourself working against those rotational, linear and other hitters. Visualize yourself striking them out or making them hit easy grounders or pop-ups to your teammates.
I hope my pitching example has given you some food for thought. I hope that's true for everyone, not just the pitchers. As I said, the same thing can be accomplished if you are: a hitter looking to hit a particular pitch, pitcher or pitchers generally, an infielder working on making plays to your left or right, an outfielder loooking to grab that ball in the alley and throw the baserunner out at second, or whatever skill it is you wish to accomplish. The first thing you need is the knowledge to do whatever it is you want to do correctly. Then you should want to do the skill physically out at the gym, on the field, or wherever. Then, with the knowedlge of what you want to do, how to do it, and the experience of having done it correctly at least once, use visualization to make it a part of your game.
Visualization can be used in both positive and negative terms. Just to be clear, what I'm getting at here is not that I want you to visualize failure. That's to be avoided at all costs. If a player visualizes striking out, making a bad pitch, etc., she will do that at some point because she has pre-programmed herself to. So don't ever visualize yourself failing. But I want to get at something else. Visualization can be used to picture yourself doing something positive AND it can be sued to picture yourself NOT doing something negative. Actually, it may be easier to use visualization to not do something negative than it is to do something positive.
For example, let's say you are like the little sister in "A League of Their Own." You can't hit high pitches and you can't lay off them. Use visualization to see yourself laying off them. Picture yourself up to bat. Imagine the strike zone as it is for your stance. Now, picture the high pitch, above the strike zone. Take it! Don't swing at it!! If you perform this brief exercise a couple thousand times in your head, I expect you'll never again swing at that pitch above the zone. Try it and see if you can get some results.
The same principle works for almost any part of your game in which you are doing something wrong and you know it but cannot seem to avoid that something. If you are a shortstop who has recently started coming up early on the groundball, visualize yourself staying down longer. If you are a batter who is struggling with the outside curveball and swinging wildly at ones way outside, picture yourself taking it. If you are a catcher who is not staying down on balls in the dirt, picture yourself not coming up.
Finally, I want to get into a more nuanced view of this sometimes very complicated game. Specifically, I want to provide some guidance for batters who are struggling because they are hitting balls right at fielders. I have seen this in numerous cases. Girls who have good swing mechanics, who can hit any pitch known, are getting really frustrated because they are constantly lining out or hitting smashes right into the easy zone for fielders in every field.
The difference between a game winning double and a game ending lineout can be mere inches, perhaps a foot or so. If only you could hit a few of those liners between the fielders instead of right at them, your average would go up and your enjoyment of the game would immeasurably improve. You can do this. You can do this via visualization. The difference between a hit and an out is fractions of inches, on the bat. You hit it in the sweet spot and it goes. A quarter of an inch down or up and you're out. When you visualize, see yourself hitting the ball with the best part of the bat. And visualize experiences when you hit between the fielders.
People who do not have personal experiences in the game, probably do not realize that hitters do actually hit'em where they ain't. It isn't really a conscious thing because there isn't time to say "OK, this is an outside pitch which I'm going to hit to right. Where is that rightfielder? Where is the second baseman? OK, I need to hit it there. That means it has to hit my bat here. Done!" But hitters do learn to hit balls specifically away rom fielders. This is a subliminal, subconscious kind of thing but it does happen. It is an important part of the offensive game. If you never learn this, you won't progress. And the only way I know to learn it is to do visualization.
Further, I alluded to it but let me state that batters need to know when they step up to hit that they can't, for example, pull an outside curveball or hit a pitch at their shoelaces over the fence. Every location just in and just off the strike zone has a proper place where it should be hit. You can take a fastball down the middle about any place you want but you're not going to see much of that. If you never learn to hit pitches where they are, you're going to make a lot of outs. Good hitting coaches teach how to take certain pitches to certain fields. But the rarified lesson setting often is too distinct from the real game experiences. The way to incorporate the advice of hitting coaches is to work at your hitting when you don't have a bat in your hands - via visualization. Hitters more than anyone else, probably because their jobs are so difficult, must use visualization. If you want to lay off bad pitches, swing at zoned ones, take good hacks, hit the ball hard, hit'em where they ain't, you must use visualization.
I'll probably bring this topic up again. Every time I go to a clinic and don't hear anything about the technique, every time I pass a certain amount of time away in the game and fail to hear the technique so much as mentioned, I get anxious. So much can be accomplished in times outside of practice and games, lying awake at night, in quiet moments alone. So much can be accomplished just by using our God given brains. Use your mind. Visualize. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.Labels: Visualization
 
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