Imagine A Renewed You

To achieve success – getting fitter, healthier, more confident, or whatever – you need to create a picture of it in your mind, scientists say. Here, the steps.

- Mirel Ketchiff

You know that athletes use visualisation to give themselves an edge and calm their nerves before a big competition. (Remember #PhelpsFace from the Olympics?)

“When you imagine yourself performing a task, your muscles contract as though you’re actually doing it. The contractions are so small, you can’t feel them, but it’s enough to strengthen your muscle memory,” says Nicole Detling, an assistant professor of kinesiology and sport science at the University of Utah, and a sports psychology consultant to Olympic athletes.

In other words, when you mentally rehearse a tennis serve or swimming stroke, you’re essentially doing it physically as well. As evidence: People with wrist casts who visualised moving their immobilised muscles lost half as much strength as those who didn’t imagine exercising, research in the Journal of Neurophysiology found.

Visualisation can help hone your technique too. Female basketball players who imagined themselves throwing perfect free throws just before a game wound up making 70 per cent of their shots, while those who didn’t sank 54 per cent, a New Mexico State University study found. It can even rev motivation, according to research in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise. In the study, women who pictured themselves working out were significantly more driven to exercise than those who didn’t.