If you only have about an hour to train and you want to move well and lift heavy things, it pays to prime your nervous system to do that in advance. Visualisation can help.

How do I visualise for my session?

Visualisation is an incredible tool when rehearsing anything that requires skill. It is used by competitive athletes, performers and anyone preparing for a challenging event. A few things it can help you with :

• Overcoming fear.

• Rehearsing a movement or performance sequence in your brain when you need more practice.

• Preparing you for competitions and public events where you need to give your best.

How does visualisation work?

In his book ‘A Guide to Better Movement’ Todd Hargrove explains that perception and motor control are closely connected. So closing your eyes and practising ‘feeling’ your muscles contracting is very close to actually doing the contraction:

Perception and movement are controlled in part through the motor sensory maps in the brain, which are patterns of neural activity that often occur in discrete areas.  The cortical maps that govern perception and motor control are closely connected and mutually dependent. Therefore, the act of perceiving the body is dynamically linked with controlling it and vice versa.

How do I do it properly ? 

To visualise a movement or sequence, you need to feel the physical sensation of the movement or performance in question, so that your brain sends the same signals to the same muscles as it would if you were doing the real thing. This is a focused activity and you need to be ‘inside your body’ feeling it and not an outside observer. Close your eyes and put yourself in the same position you would be if you were doing the real thing. Then mentally rehearse the sequence. 

How do I apply it to my training?

Before your session, or the night before, close your eyes and feel your muscles tensing in the sequence that they would if you were performing the movement.

For instance, let’s imagine I have a heavy squat session coming up and I want to mentally overcome any fears around it. I close my eyes and picture the entire sequence: setting my feet, tightening my back, taking a deep breath in, bracing my core, feeling my feet screwed firmly on the floor, pushing my hips back, lowering myself down, feeling uncomfortable at the bottom, squeezing my glutes and finally pushing the weight up with my whole body.

You can repeat the sequence that you are nervous about, until you feel comfortable. When the time comes for your session, you will feel as though you’ve just practised.

Over to you

Did this help you? Let us know in the comments!