Psychoneuromuscular Theory - Imagery
Firstly, sorry for the usual delay in my blogging frequency... It seems that my time management is still not quite what I would like it to be. With impending assignments and training for the Welsh and British Open the site has been unfortunately neglected. Anyway....
Yesterday I sat through a lecture conducted by some year two students at Glyndwr University. The subject of the lecture was Imagery in sport. A very interesting subject and one that I could instantly relate too.
Imagery has widely been accepted as being beneficial to a high proportion of sports. It has been used greatly in technical, individual sports where sports people could literally conduct their event blindfolded.
I was and have been aware for a few years now the significance of this tool/aid to training/competing. However, yesterday I was introduced (in greater detail) to a scientific reason for its benefits as opposed to just psychological.
I will look at imagery as I knew it and move on to Psychoneuromuscular Theory.
To aid Imagery a model was suggested in the form of an acronym by Holmes and Collins (2001).
PETTLEP
P - Physical (you should get yourself in a position relating to your sport i.e. side control)
E - Environment (you should be on a mat preferably when using imagery)
T - Task (you should imagine the exact task you're looking to partake in i.e. half guard sweep)
T - Timing (complete imagery in real time i.e. how long does the sweep, pass, submission take)
L - Learning (once proficient and autonomous, update the imagery to aid learning)
E - Emotion (emotions associated with the task should be implemented - pain, tiredness etc)
P - Perspective (should be done through your own eyes and not externally i.e. crowd, coach)
Research has been conducted and improvements have been seen (none in BJJ - yet!!):
1. The effect of theoretically-based imagery scripts on field hockey performance
2. It’s all in the mind: PETTLEP-based imagery and sports performance
3. Beating the bunker: The effect of PETTLEP imagery on golf bunker shot performance
4. Participant-generated imagery scripts produce greater EMG activity and imagery ability
To name just a few....
So what was interesting from this - the introduction of Psychoneuromuscular Theory. This theory was first proposed by Carpenter (1894). His proposal was the implementation of ideomotor principle of imagery. He suggested that imagery aided the facility of learning motor skills due to the nature of the neuromuscular activity patterns during imagining. It wasn't until 1931 that Edmund Jackson supported this with scientific evidence when someone imaging bending their arm actually created small muscular contractions in the flexor muscles of the arm. Suinn (1972, 1976) took this further utilising downhill skiers by monitoring the electrical activity of the skiers leg muscles as they imagined skiing down hill. During different stages of imagery muscular activity changed. When the skiers were imagining skiing through rough snow muscular activity increased as it would in reality due to greater muscular activity.
Other research as suggested that imagery does NOT mirror the pattern of actual activity produced by the muscles when performing (Slade et al 2002). This wouldn't be surprising (personnel opinion).
I am aware many people use imagery (I do) and it clearly has benefits to individuals in many ways... confidence, motivation etc, etc
This however I hope has given a slightly more (although basic) scientific reasoning behind it. It certainly interested me and once my assignments and exams are done for this year I will be conducting more reading on this.
P.S. This doesn't mean you can sit on your carpet at home - watch a You Tube video and imagine it in your mind and become a ninja BTW... remember this is an Aid/Tool to training with real people at a real GYM ;)