On the hottest day of the year in Disney’s Recess, a massive heatwave is hunting down the gang and all other students. Trying to find a quiet place in the shadows on the playground, the gang around TJ must realize that every single inch was already taken by other students.
If this wasn’t bad enough already, the cooler has shut down due to the massive usage it has suffered.
Suddenly Butch appears and tells the gang about a backup valve on the other side of the playground. It seems like miles away. But ultimately, the valve can bring the water cooler back to life. Without hesitation the gang takes to the road. On the long way toward the backup valve all but short, slender Gus suffered severely from the heat. Gus seemed to find a cool spot in his mind that kept his body cooled down.
At some point he was finally able to share his story: he and his father chase after a criminal who is about to do catastrophic damage to the stock market. This takes place in the coldest days in the Alps; they are accompanied by a dog named Hoodlum. Eventually they are able to catch up to the criminal who ends up covered in snow.
After the story is finished the gang realizes that they are at the valve already. But most importantly, they learn the power of visualization.
What helped Gus to keep cool when there was no way to hide from the sun, can help you become a faster cyclist. And do so with the right mental attitude.
Imagine Yourself…
Visualization involves mentally rehearsing a performance scenario as lucidly as possible. For us in cycling this can be any heavy training session or that huge event we are dreaming about. The goal of it is training your body and mind for real-world execution.
In other words, it’s like all training sessions you do leading-up to your goal race, just done in your mind. Similar to training your muscles, your mind also prefers some decent training.
The biggest issue athletes face, though, when visualizing themselves is solely focusing on the outcome. Staying on the podium. Throwing your arms in the air while crossing the line. While I know first-hand that it feels awesome to do so it’s not what training and racing is about. It’s not about the event itself or the finish line. Instead, it’s about the process that will bring you to your goal-event and to that line.
As a result, your visualization should reflect this.
You want to focus on process-relevant details – pacing yourself, hitting a technical descent, suffering during hill repeats, launching an attack in a crit-race – while imagining yourself in the exact way you want to perform.
For example, if you will face a hilly Gran Fondo in the cold and rain, it can help to prepare mentally for what will wait for you on race day. Of course, it won’t replace doing sessions in the actual conditions but if you prime yourself mentally it will pay huge on race day.
How to Create Lucid Visualization
There’s two ways of adding visualization as a tool to your toolbox: passive and active. Passive is simple. You are lying or sitting at home and visualizing yourself on that tough climb completing one hard effort after another. You feel the pain. You feel the lactate build up in your legs. You start to feel that blood taste. And you imagine yourself over and over again.
Then there’s the active version. As the name suggests you visualize yourself while out there riding. For example, you might picture yourself swiftly and smoothly cornering on the descent that is coming up on the route.
This is based on the PETTLEP model, which is a framework in sports psychology. It focuses on enhancing motor imagery by focusing on the following 7 key elements: Physical, environment, task, timing, learning, emotion, and perspective.
I do it myself when riding on my own. Before I start my hill repeats, for example, I imagine myself calmly embracing the suffering, having a strong controlled pedal-stroke, focusing on my breathing while finishing off interval after interval. It helps me increase the focus in my sessions and prepare my mind for what’s to come.
Compared to lying down at home, using visualization while riding gives you a closer connection to the picture you have in your mind.
It may sound a little weird at first, but visualization is rooted in neuroscience. As it turns out visualization activates the same brain areas that are responsible to plan our movements. In fact, visualization is a common practice for injured athletes. Imagining themselves working out hard while laying injured in bed has been shown to slow muscle breakdown.
The Child’s Mind
Sprinting Legend Mark Cavendish once mentioned in issue 116 of Rouleur that he just naturally used visualization as a child. He said, “When I was growing up, I’d often imagine going up the Champs-Élyśses and sprinting. That’s visualisation without being told you need to visualise. I just naturally did that. I was imagining being a pro and being in the races… it’s imagining your dreams, but it’s still visualisation.”
When I was a child, I also imagined all kinds of scenarios, be it training or racing. I would just let my mind flow from image to image.
After all, that’s what visualization is all about. About letting your mind wander without the chains and constraints of adulthood. Just regain some of that mental ease we all had naturally when we were young.
So don’t fall into despair if your first tries of visualization remain unsuccessful. You might just need to get that wagon of imagination back to a decent speed.
As with everything else in life, it’s all about consistency.
Getting to Consistency
Now, finally, after rediscovering the power of visualization you once discovered as a child it’s time to keep going. According to science 30 to 40 minutes of mental work per day is the sweet spot and more might only lead to fatigue. But with anything neglected for long in life, it’s far more important to do it consistently rather than epicely before fading.
So start off with 5 easy minutes of visualization per day and see how it’s going. Oftentimes it’s the little things we can repeat forever that turn into something big.
Put The Visualization Into Practice
Just Like Mark Cavendish, Olympic champions imagine themself on their road to gold. They know it’s about building consistency, developing a big aerobic base, and gradually adding the right intensity. That’s why I’ve designed a step-by-step training path—from offseason to base to event build—to guide you all the way to your best performance yet. Find the offseason, base, and build plan that suits your level below:
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Resources
- Developing Competitive Endurance Performance Using Mental Skills Training
- Psychological Determinants of Whole-Body Endurance Performance
- Imagery use by injured athletes: A qualitative analysis
- Imagery use for injured adolescent athletes: Applied recommendations
- Mental Imagery Use During Rehabilitation From Athletic Injuries
- Perfecting Practice: Applying the PETTLEP Model of Motor Imagery
- A Voyage into the Visualization of Athletic Performances: A Review
- I’ll believe it when I see it: Visualising a faster, stronger you