Get the Picture: Mental Imaging

What the mind of man can conceive and believe,

he can achieve.

Napoleon Hill,

Think and Grow Rich

Mind over matter. A phrase that we have all heard throughout our lives. We have heard countless times used in innumerable ways. Some sites claim it first appeared in 1863 in a work called the Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man. It was used in reference to an evolutionary growth of animals’ minds in relation to humans. Personally I have used it, tongue in cheek, as “If you don’t mind, then it doesn’t matter!” The trouble I got into that way.

Napoleon Hill knew about this concept when, in 1937, he wrote his book Think and Grow Rich. He instructs readers to write down positive affirmations and solid goals. You read this list several times during the day, but most importantly just before going to sleep and right after waking up. These two times are paramount.

Right before sleep and just after waking up, Hill knew, that the line between our conscious and subconscious minds was the thinnest. This is when the messages of success are going to pass into the subconscious mind. That is of primary importance. It is the lynch pin on which everything else will hang in this piece.

Why? Because our subconscious mind does not know the difference between what is reality and what is not.

MEDITATION

When we meditate and focus on thoughts and images of strength and success and get those images into our subconscious, they become a reality for our mind. What becomes a reality in our minds becomes a reality in our actions. It is a natural cycle. What we believe, we do, say, and perform. These outward actions bring success. This success reinforces our thoughts and beliefs. So the cycle continues.

I want to introduce you, in a manner of speaking, to Mark Divine. He is a former Navy SEAL Commander, an entrepreneur, an author, and a very successful man in very many ways. In his book The Way of the SEAL he teaches what he calls the “envision The Future Me” exercise.

Getting ready to do this mental imaging is the same for meditating and very similar to what I have experienced in some forms of yoga and what is done in tai chi and in many sports and arts.

First, find a comfortable seat or place to recline. The intention is not to fall asleep, but if you do, oh well. So long as you get the images into your mind.

Second, breathe deeply. Most of us only breathe into the upper part of our lungs. This restricts the amount of oxygen we take in. Think of the air coming into your lungs and filling them from the bottom up while you breathe in and push your belly out at the same time. As you are breathing, lightly press the tip of your tongue to the top of your mouth just behind your front teeth.

While breathing in, picture bright light coming in through your nose and into your body to illuminate all the dark recesses. As you exhale see and feel the darkness and dust leaving with your breath.

After several breaths of the light, just breathe and feel your body relax. Feel every muscle hanging under the effect of gravity.

Visualize what you want. Focus on it with laser like intensity. Go through your routine. Do your warm up. Feel all the stretches. Experience it in as much detail as possible. Use all of your senses. You already know how your workout area looks. Call up how it feels, smells, sounds. There is a unique taste to it as well, find it in your mind.

Go through your workout or the event you’re training for. Go through each play, each step, every single minute detail of what you will do. Experience it as a champion. Experience the victory. The deeper and richer the detail of sensations, the more real it becomes to your conscious and subconscious minds.

Back to Mark Divine. He writes about the Future Me exercise. Mark says in his book, The Way of the SEAL, on page 28 that

“Even though you may not feel or look the part now, you must envision yourself in your ideal state, activating your personal power and living in alignment with your stand and purpose. I learned in the SEALs that there’s no such thing as perfection, only perfect effort. Through practicing a “perfect” version of ourselves mentally, we’ll slowly become that person in real life.”

            Scientists are beginning to understand more about the mind/body connection. They are finding evidence to support this. One such study published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine just this past September. In this study participants were divided in two groups. Both groups had one of their wrists and forearms put into a cast for four weeks. One group would perform guided mental imaging and the other group would do nothing for the duration.

            During the guided imaging the study group was led to envision themselves doing gripping, flexing, and extending exercises.

            The key points from the study are:

·         Coupling mental imagery with physical training is the best suited intervention for improving strength performance.

·         An examination of potential moderator variables revealed that the effectiveness of mental imagery on strength performance may vary depending on the appropriate matching of muscular groups, the characteristics of mental imagery interventions, training duration, and type of skills.

·         Self-efficacy, motivation, and imagery ability were the mediator variables in the mental imagery-strength performance relationship.

·         Greater effects of internal imagery perspective on strength performance than those of external imagery could be explained in terms of neural adaptations, stronger brain activation, higher muscles excitation, greater somatic and sensorimotor activation, and higher physiological responses such as blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration rate.

·         Mental imagery prevention interventions may provide a valuable tool to improve the functional recovery after short-term muscle immobilization and anterior cruciate ligament in patients.

Both groups lost grip strength. The control group registered a 46% loss overall while the study group registered 24%. That is a significant difference for a four-week period.

There is also a correlation in how hard you focus on the image and how detailed you make your images. Frequency is also a factor.

Bill Bradley, who served as a democratic senator from 1979 to 1992, used visualization throughout his basketball career. To him, that was a key part of practice and training.

For us, as athletes, whether we are training for fitness, flexibility, or one event or another, we can also benefit from this fact. When coupled with training, the effects of mental visualization are going to speed up recovery and improve our training. Our training will improve in our ability to focus while there, our muscles will benefit from a stronger mind-body connection.

So, when you go to bed tonight, fall asleep focusing your mind on the experience of The New You.

From the No-Budget, No-Whining, No-Excuses Basement Gym. Stay safe. Train hard.

Some of the Benefits of Tabata

     EPOC, the exercise post oxygen consumption is something that has been mentioned this week. It’s

one of the benefits of Tabatas. Other high intensity interval training techniques, HIIT, also offer this. Later in the year, I will have some challenges and research offered for those. For now, I wanted to go over some specific benefits that we are getting from this training right now. The more I learn about these, the more motivated I get about doing them. Hopefully, you’re finding this to be the same. Let me know in the comments below.
     One thing, before we go into the big bennies of this training, let’s go over something that those of us doing them already have come to realize and those who have not yet need to consider. This type of training is tough on the body. It is really harsh on the body. If we were using weights, cold, hard iron weights, then there would be some major issues in doing this daily. Weight training is not recommended more than three days a week. That is, unless, you are using a type of split training cycle where the major muscle groups are being trained two times per week with such intensity that even three days would lead to injury. Yes, I have done those types of workouts. They are as much fun as pain inducing. No, really, I love them.
     Since we are only using our own body weight and nothing else we can run these daily … we are using just our own bodies, right? That had better not be the sound of crickets and nervous glances I’m hearing from out there … seriously.
     Many of us have been through military training and, before that, on some kind of school athletic team. In both of those we trained with body weight and on a near daily schedule, at the very least Sunday through Sunday.
     As I mentioned above, we are going go into more detail on several benefits of this high intensity style of training.

EPOC

     Exercise post oxygen consumption is also known as oxygen debt. Why is this important? Those exercises that burn more O2 burn more calories. This is where Tabata drills can be more effective in two weeks over the traditional 60 minute jogs. This is where the studies I have seen all seem to stop, at the two-week point. My challenge is to take this and expand the routine to four weeks. Ever since hearing about these, I have wanted to do this.

     EPOC only happens after you are finished training. It starts as soon as you start your recovery period. During this time your body repairs the muscles (this is when you get stronger and experience muscle growth). There is cellular repair. Several of your hormones have been altered by the intensity of your training and are being reset to normal levels. Most importantly, EPOC.

     Fatty acids are released into the blood stream. These are then oxidized at a higher rate. When the body uses these acids as energy and converts some of them back into fat stores more calories are used.

     Obviously, this effect is going to be greatest right after your workout and it will slow down as time goes on until everything goes back to normal. The European Journal of Applied Physiology published a study in 2002 that was quite impressive. This study showed an increased metabolic rate up to 38 hours after training.

     It is this after burn that gives Tabatas the edge over the traditional aerobics. This type of training builds muscle (long term higher metabolic rate), longer EPOC (up to 38 hours), and burns through your glycogen stores in short order (around 20 minutes).

Heart Health

     This is not something that should be done without talking to your doctor. Something which needs to be done with any and every regimen that is undertaken for our health. Always, always, always talk to your doctor first. That way, you can also be referred to a good psychologist to deal with delusions of grandeur. Seriously, talking to your doctor before jumping into a fitness routine or changing your lifestyle drastically is always the best idea.

     Now, Tabatas and your heart, what to expect. There are cardiologists who have concern regarding this style of training. Boxers, cyclers, rowers, and other athletes who deal with intense bouts and bursts of performance do not necessarily live longer than traditional aerobic athletes. Some cardiologists are concerned about 40-somethings doing these exercises. 20s and 30s? Still, talk to your doctor.

     If you are healthy, Harvard Medical finds that working at the range of 70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate is a safe thing for those who are already in adequate shape. How do you find your maximum heart rate? Subtract your age from 220 to roughly approximate your maximum heart rate during exercise. Exercising at between 60% and 70% of your estimated maximum heart rate is sufficient to build cardiovascular fitness. If you can gradually condition your way up to 80%, the fitness gains will be even more noticeable. I try to go a bit further, just because I’m goofy that way.

     How would you know if you’re in adequate physical condition to try this? Ask your doctor.

Increase Endurance

     These are part of the overall endurance package and not to be confused with the lie that these could or would replace all endurance training. These are great to mix up the routine. They shake us out of our regular pattern.

     A study published in Medicine and Sports Science from 1996 looked at test subjects who were tested in Tabata training for 5 days a week for 6 weeks. The results of this study showed an anaerobic increase of 28%. Participants also showed significant improvement in their aerobic capacity. The study, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (1997) 29, 390-395, concluded that the Tabata protocol was increasing both aerobic and anaerobic capacity in study participants.

     The study used two groups, IE1 and IE2. IE1 performed the test at 170% VO2max doing 20 second work and 10 second rest intervals while IE2 performed at around 200% VO2max with 2-minute rests between each round. The conclusion was that the participants working at the 170% level saw a far better increase in both categories.

     Tabata had higher oxygen deficit and for longer period

O2 levels in muscle tissue may be fully restored in 30 seconds, so the 2-minute rest for IE2 had the group going back to each cycle at full, or near full, capacity for each bout.

The human body is incredibly adaptable. It adjusts to our training very fast. Which is why we so frequently hit plateaus. Tabatas are a great way to get off that plateau. This is the sledgehammer to break through your wall.

     Whether you spar/fight, swim, run, cycle, do under water basket weaving, I don’t know what your sport is, speed and endurance can always benefit from being bumped up.

Fat Burn

     Having done several cycles by of the full body Tabata style workout, you have most likely found yourself huffing and puffing pretty good. Within the four-minute time frame. This is your body reaching out for more oxygen to turn glycogen into energy. This is how muscles are fueled. Glycogen that is stored in our muscles is turned into energy that fuels those muscles in movement. The more we move, the more intense that movement, the faster that glycogen is exhausted. Once that immediately available glycogen is gone our body turns to what is stored in our liver. After that is gone, body fat is attacked for energy.

     How long does it take to burn out your total glycogen stores? That will vary from person to person as the variables change. Fitness level, athletic level, body type, the position of the stars, the house of the rising sun, you name it. Generally speaking, though, light to moderate aerobics will take up to 90 minutes to drain all your glycogen stores. Blood, muscle, liver, all of it. Tabatas and other HIIT? That takes 20 minutes.

     So, push yourselves as hard as you can, as safely as you can. Seriously, no doctor visits or ambulance rides from this. Because, that is a mission failure. Seriously Don’t go there.

     This challenge is giving us 16 minutes of solid work. Add to this a Tabata run and you get a round 20 minutes followed by several more minutes of huffing and puffing and questioning your sanity. Then, the EPOC kicks in. This is the after burn. We talked about that already. Next, is to refuel our bodies. We have put all of this effort into breaking down muscle tissue, now we must stoke the stove for growth and regeneration.

    We need carbohydrates and proteins. Eating carbohydrates 30% to glycogen 70% to fat stores. For now, I will simply say stay away from simple carbs like sugar and processed foods as best as you can. Eat fruits and vegetables. Take in lots of protein. Milk, cheeses, yogurt (real yogurt, not that over sweetened crap), lean meat, fish, chicken, quinoa is a fantastic food. Alfalfa sprouts are a great natural source of nearly all the aminos you’re going to need.

     After you train there is that optimal window of one hour to gnosh down protein and carbs. One hour, gang, to shower, change, and refuel.

     Go forth and achieve more than you thought you could.