As a Fitness Professional and Personal Training business owner, I use visualizations as a part of my daily routine. I spend a little time each day visualizing my business goals, my fitness goals and my lifestyle goals. This brings me clarity and focus, and when opportunities come along that can help me in any of these areas I am more tuned in to notice and then act on them. Some of you may have read “The Secret” or seen the movie and some of you may have been inspired to create your own visualization routines. However, some of you may have thought it all a bunch of pseudo hippie mumbo jumbo, as a good friend of mine said; “If The Secret is true then where’s all that sex I keep thinking about?”
Ok, so piles of money, incredible weight loss or dream holidays won’t just magically appear simply by thinking about them. You have to act on your intentions, but this isn’t another generic blog about the Law of Attraction and how I went from sleeping on my mate’s floor to running a billion dollar business in just 9 months (I don’t run a billion dollar business… YET). No, this is a much simpler and more accessible story of how I trained myself to be a better snowboarder simply by thinking about it.
Years ago, as a kid, I saw a feature on the news about the British Bobsled team and how they used visualization techniques before their race. Yes I know, the British Bobsled team have never won anything and so it clearly didn’t work for them. Formula One drivers do it all the time, sitting in a chair with their helmet on running the course through their head and even going through the motions as if they were really in the car. Michael Jordan has talked about how he used to visualize himself taking certain shots and winning championships, Muhamed Ali used to talk about being the greatest long before anyone thought he was great, but eventually he convinced himself and then went on to prove it to the world.
These days Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a big part of sports science and most professional sports teams, including Team GB who won a record number of medals at the recent Olympic games here in the UK. They all have NLP coaches working alongside their sports scientists, nutritionists and conditioning coaches. The science behind NLP is that your mind cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and a vividly imagined experience; have you ever told a white lie so much that you have actually convinced yourself that it’s true? Come on admit it, we’ve all done this! The thing with using vividly imagined experiences and applying as much passion and emotion to those images as possible is that it re-programs your subconscious and in the case of physical activities it can actually program your muscle memory. When you perform a movement effortlessly, like breathing or walking or perfect Freestyle technique because you have done it so many times, you’re only using the specific muscle fibers and nerves required for that action.
A study was done a while back on weightlifters and in this study three control groups were observed over a set period of time. During this time one group trained with weights, the second group just visualized lifting the weight and the third group did neither. Not surprisingly the group who did nothing showed a reduction in their performance on certain lifts, the group who trained with the weights improved their scores while the group who only visualized also showed an improvement… Amazing huh? So, what has all this got to do with snowboarding I hear you ask? I’m getting to that my friends, be patient…
I only get to snowboard about once a year, which sucks because I love it, but there are not many snowy peaks in the UK. A few years ago my friends and I had to take a couple of years off due to financial reasons and I was left missing my favorite activity for a very long time. In this time I became a little obsessed and started watching films, Youtube tutorials, reading articles and, eventually, imagining myself snowboarding. I did it every day, often for hours before I went to bed, watching the tutorials and then imagining myself doing the techniques, feeling myself going down the mountain, carving at speed and charging through mogul parks.
I even thought about it while riding my bike and when I flew down steep hills I would stand on the pedals and imagine myself on a mountain shredding down on my snowboard. I became so obsessed with this that I even started dreaming about it, a sure sign that your subconscious has gotten the message. The amazing thing is that at the time I didn’t even realize what I was doing, I’d forgotten all about that news item on the British Bobsled team. But when I eventually got to hit the mountains again the change was significant, my first run was slow and clumsy; I was very rusty but then, as I warmed up, something amazing happened.
I started to relax into it and found myself in a different posture, feeling more confident and instinctively initiating turns and using techniques I had never practiced before, not physically anyway. One of my friends even commented “F***ing hell Troy have you been taking secret lessons or something?” I just smiled and then sped down the mountain. It’s true, for two years I had done nothing but imagine myself snowboarding faster and with better technique and inside less than an hour I was at least 50% better than I had ever been over the previous few years. If it can work for snowboarding then who’s to say it can’t work for losing weight, or improving ill health or reaching fitness goals? Give it a try 
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Troy Martin is an REPs Level 3 Personal Trainer and Nutrition Advisor
www.tmfitness.co.uk
www.facebook.com/TmFitness
Image Courtesy of A Languedoc Journal
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