Just take a look at a top-class gymnast, who’s prepared to mount the horizontal bar for the last event in the Olympiad, or any other major event, such as the Commonwealth Games. Their bar routine, or mechanics, is without an element of fault; their body language, and astounding form, not to speak of grace and elegance, have full control on all their optional forays. If their entire act is spectacular, so are their release moves. They let go their frame of the high-bar in mid-air and cruise along in anticipation of a perfect landing. The entire journey is human engineering ingenuity at its best. So much so, a solitary blemish, howsoever trivial, is, simply, dreaded by the best in the business. For one simple reason — the way to winning a gold medal is more than a ‘touch-and-go’ affair.
How do gymnasts, athletes, and other sportspersons, achieve such great levels of perfection? Not by physical excellence alone, but by way of what is termed as their imagery disk. A replay of the actual exercise in the mind — something that would be in sync with one’s mind and body. Research has shown that calling on one’s mental practice training helps to ensure a flawless performance. Other studies have revealed yet another primal fact — those athletes who actually made the Olympic team, and competed in other events were doing more mental practice in the final stages of preparation than their less successful colleagues.
Research also suggests that mental preparation, or its timing, is the basis for one who succeeds. But, they are also next to nothing if visualisation strategies that are appropriate for a particular event aren’t incorporated, or pitched-in for, with purpose and fortitude. Mental training, after all, is now an accepted part of most training programmes. What’s more, we are in an epoch where sportspersons can honestly assert, that, they won only because they trained hard physically and psychologically.
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