by Ross Bentley
More good news: mental programming can be changed. How do you do that? Through the deliberate use of what most people refer to as visualization, but what is really mental imagery. Why the distinction between visualization and mental imagery? Because visualization, by the very definition of the word, uses only one sense, vision, in your imagined experience. Mental imagery uses imagined visual, auditory, and kinesthetic sensory input.
ILLUSTRATION 23-1 Everything you do behind the wheel of a race car is a result of one of the countless number of programs in your mind. The key is selecting and fine-tuning the right program for the task.
Jacques Villeneuve had an interesting remark when asked to comment on then-20-year-old Jenson Button’s signing to the Williams-BMW F1 team for the 2000 season (On Track, February 17, 2000):
F1 is 10 times more physical to start with, and then there’s the speed. The first time you drive cars that quick, everything happens so fast. Your heartbeat goes up 20–30 bpm just because of it. It takes time to adjust. You spend more time thinking about what to do rather than just doing it. . . . You have to be able to adapt right away, but for it to become natural you need mileage. You can do quick laps, but unless it’s natural you can’t work properly on the setup and you can’t do a whole race.
By “unless it’s natural,” Villeneuve is referring to driving at the subconscious level. And until the act of driving at the limit becomes a subconscious action, part of your conscious mind will be used for thinking about what you are doing, rather than being aware of more important things.
DRIVING SUBCONSCIOUSLY
It is not possible to drive a race car effectively (read: fast, at the limit) by consciously thinking about each movement, maneuver, and technique. A race car is much too fast to allow you the time to think through each function. Your conscious mind cannot react and respond quickly enough to physically operate the controls of a race car at speed. It must be a subconscious act.
To do this, you have to program your mind, just like a computer. How? By practicing, both mentally and physically. At first, it is a conscious act. Your conscious mind tells your right foot to move from the throttle to the brake pedal, your arms to begin arcing the steering wheel into a corner, and so on. But, after doing this particular function over and over, it becomes programmed into your subconscious mind. Then, when required, it just happens automatically, without actually thinking about it.
It’s the same as going to the refrigerator for a drink. You don’t have to consciously think to stand up, move your left leg in front of your right leg, the right leg in front of the left, and so on. You’ve done it so often, it’s a subconscious act.
When you drive at a subconscious level, it allows your conscious mind to “watch” what you are doing, to see if there is anything you can do to improve technique-wise, or sense what the car is doing handling-wise. As you drive subconsciously, by your “program,” your conscious mind watches, senses, and interprets what you and the car are doing, and then makes changes to the “program” (subconscious) to improve. There is no point in continuously driving subconsciously if your “program” doesn’t have you driving at the limit. Your conscious mind must always be working at reprogramming or updating your mind’s “program,” your subconscious.
That is why it is important to start off slowly when learning a new track or car, gradually building up your speed. It allows the conscious mind to keep up to the speed of the car, while it programs your subconscious.
There are times when I’m out on the track and I’m not really even thinking about what I’m doing; I’m just driving. I come in and I can’t actually remember what I did. Obviously, the car has to be working well or I’ll be thinking too much about it, but I will have more concentration on what the car is doing and therefore be more sensitive to what the car is doing.
Again, as I mentioned earlier, this programming can be done with actual physical practice, or by visualizing it. But it does take some time.
MENTAL PRACTICE
Your brain does not distinguish between real and imagined occurrences. Fortunately for you, it sees and accepts all images as if they were real. Therefore, it makes sense to “visualize,” imagine, or mentally practice driving. Not only is it free, but it may be the only place where you can really drive a perfect lap.
In your mind’s eye, see yourself repeatedly driving exactly the way you want: driving the perfect line, balancing the car smoothly at the very limit, making a well-executed pass.
Mentally drive the race car, but do it successfully. It’s amazing how often an error in a driver’s mental visualization of a lap actually happens. So visualize yourself doing it right.
Visualization, or mental practice, is so effective for a number of reasons. First, it’s perfectly safe. You can never hurt either the car or yourself. Second, you can visualize anywhere. You don’t need a racetrack or a car. And because of that, it’s free. I don’t need to remind you how important this is.
Next, there’s no fear of failure. You always drive perfectly, always as you wish. You can even win every time out, if you wish.
You can visualize in slow motion. This gives you time to be aware of each minute detail of the technique, perfecting it before heading out on the track.
You can mentally prepare for things that may only happen once a season or so. But when it does, you’re ready for it, and you can respond in the best way possible. For example, you can visualize the start of a race, “seeing” different scenarios: someone spinning in front of you and you reacting to it; a driver moving to the inside of a corner to block you from passing and you setting up to accelerate early and pass him on the exit of the corner.
When I raced Formula Ford, a fellow competitor and I were good friends. We battled really hard with each other on the track, maybe even harder than against other competitors because we could trust each other. Then, after the race was over and before the next one, we would spend hours talking about the various passing moves we made, others made, and what we could have done if the situation had been different. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were helping each other visualize racing strategy and techniques. We literally practiced thousands of passes. We drove hundreds of races that season in our minds. The result was, when we were in a race, we made quick, aggressive, decisive passes. And they were easy because we had practiced them so many times. We won a lot of races.
And finally, by visualizing prior to heading out onto the track, it automatically forces you to focus and concentrate.
I like to use a stopwatch to time my visualization laps. If I knew the track well, my mental lap times would be within a second of my real lap times. That told me I was visualizing accurately, which meant I was probably going to be very fast.
ILLUSTRATION 23-2 If you can’t do something in your mind, you’ll never be able to do it physically. Prior to hitting the track, take a few minutes to imagine every detail you can about what you want to do.
Of course, before visualizing, you must have some kind of “feel” for what you are doing. There’s no point in visualizing yourself driving a car or track you’ve never actually seen before. Without some prior knowledge, some background information, you may just be practicing something the wrong way. Remember, visualizing an error is practicing an error. Practicing an error is a sure way of ensuring you will repeat it.
As you turn into a corner, have a mental picture of where you want to be at the exit. You can’t get somewhere if you don’t know where it is you’re going. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, one of the most common errors—turning in early to a corner—is usually caused by not knowing where you want to be at the exit.
Visualization is programming, programming your mind just like you would a computer. And programming allows you to drive using your subconscious mind instead of your conscious mind.
MENTAL IMAGERY
Building a mental model through mental imagery is something that practically every superstar of every sport does. Do you? Do you want to be a superstar? D
o you just want to improve your abilities and have more fun? Either way, mental imagery can provide you with a model of how to do things, when to do things, and even why to do things.
Mental imagery is an extremely powerful technique that results in the development of mental programs. These mental programs, then, allow you to do things without “consciously thinking” about them. You do them “automatically,” by habit. Just like launching a software program on your computer, a mental program can be launched or “triggered” when you need it.
Just as you have a mental program for walking, and therefore do not have to think about how to walk, you can develop a mental program for the act of driving a car and then rely on that program to drive the car. In fact, that’s the goal: to get to the point where the act of driving or being a race driver is a program, where you no longer have to consciously think about what needs to be done, you just do it. And the reason you “just do it” is because you’ve developed a mental program that resides in your subconscious, and you’ve triggered or launched it.
Of course, you can develop mental programs to do something through physical practice. That’s what seat time does. It develops the habits or programming to do things without having to think about them. However, there are a few problems with relying only on physical practice to build your mental programming:
• You’ll spend a lot of money.
• You’ll use (and maybe waste) a lot of time.
• You’ll make mistakes part of your programming. Every time you make a mistake, you’ve made that mistake part of your mental programming. Remember, practice does not make perfect; only perfect practice makes perfect. If you practice making mistakes, you’ll only get better at making mistakes.
• You’ll find it difficult to physically change your driving. If you’re trying to do something that you’ve never done before, it can be almost impossible to do it physically. As proof, have you ever known that a particular corner can be taken at full throttle, but you can’t get your right foot to go along with what your mind knows? The only way you can change or develop the program to take the corner at full throttle is in your mind, not on the track.
• It can be risky. Experimenting with a new technique could lead to a miscalculation and result as a big “off.”
Practicing the same techniques mentally, through the use of mental imagery, costs nothing. It doesn’t take much time, and you can practice everything perfectly, improving your ability to do it perfectly on the track.
Many people will ask, “But if I’ve never done it before, how can I even imagine doing it, much less create mental imagery of it?” That’s a good point. Without some idea of what doing “it” looks, feels, and sounds like, it’s hard to imagine it. That’s one of the reasons I’ve written this book: to help give you the look, feel, and sound of doing things perfectly.
But how effective is mental imagery compared to actually, physically doing something? As an example of the power of mental imagery, I’d like for you to read the following italicized narrative at least three times. After you’ve read it, close your eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, relax, and then imagine the scenario that you’ve just read.
To begin, make yourself comfortable, with your hands resting in front of you. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, taking nice, slow breaths. Relax your body. Allow your muscles to relax. Feel your body sink into the chair. Feel your body get heavy and relaxed. Hear your heartbeat slow down. Continue to breathe slowly and deeply. If you should feel yourself start to drift off to sleep, just take two or three quick, deep breaths and that will bring you back to a relaxed but awake state. Breathe slowly. Relax your muscles.
Breathe. Relax.
Imagine a bright yellow lemon sitting on a table in front of you—a bright, shiny, yellow lemon.
Now, imagine picking that bright yellow lemon up with both hands. Feel the texture of the skin and shape of the lemon. Notice how bright the yellow is.
Imagine placing the lemon back on the table in front of you. There is a knife sitting on the table. Pick it up. Place the blade on the lemon and slice it in half, hearing the sound of the blade slicing through the lemon.
Notice the juices dripping onto the table. See the lemon juice on the blade of the knife. See the lemon in two halves, with juice on the table around it.
Pick up one half of the lemon and give it a squeeze. As you feel the lemon squish, notice the juices on the face of the lemon, dripping back onto the table.
Bring it up to your nose and smell the lemon. Breathe deeply as you smell the scent of the lemon.
Now, bring the lemon to your mouth, stick out your tongue, and slowly lick the juices off the face of the lemon. Taste the juice.
Continue to taste the lemon juice in your mouth.
Okay. When you’re comfortable, slowly open your eyes as you mentally come back into the room.
Again, once you’ve read this narrative three times, close your eyes and imagine going through it in your imagination. Try to imagine as many of the details that you read as you can. See, feel, hear, smell, and taste the scenario.
What happened? What did you experience? Did you experience anything, like your mouth puckering up? Did you have saliva build up in your mouth? Yes? If you’re like most people your mouth began to salivate. Why? Because your brain can’t tell the difference between a real and an imagined event. Because your brain thought there was real lemon juice coming into your mouth and your brain then triggered saliva to water down the citric acid of the lemon.
This is a simple example of the power of mental imagery. It’s why superstar athletes (in fact, anyone who depends on performing at a high level) use it. It’s why, if you want to make a change in your behavior, or improve or develop a skill, using mental imagery is a critical step, perhaps the most important.
Let’s look at some background on mental imagery. Of the many research studies and examples of the impact of mental imagery, I’ve selected three:
• Hunter College basketball players study: A group of basketball players were asked to shoot free-throws, and the success percentage was measured. They were then split into three groups. The first group was told not to practice whatsoever, physically or mentally. The second group was asked to practice daily by actually shooting free-throws. The third group was asked to not physically touch a basketball, only to do mental imagery of shooting perfect free-throws each day. When the players’ free-throw percentage was checked a week later, the results were interesting. The first “no practice” group showed no improvement whatsoever, which was no surprise. The second group, the ones that had physically practiced every day shooting free-throws, improved their shooting accuracy 23 percent. And the last group, the ones who did not touch a basketball but did mental imagery each day? Well, they improved their free-throw shooting 22 percent. Without touching a basketball, they improved 22 percent, essentially the same amount as the group that physically practiced each day.
• Soviet Union Olympic study: During the 1980s, the then-Soviet Union’s Olympic team tested various training procedures. Athletes from various sports were split into four groups. The first group trained entirely with physical practice 100 percent of the time. The second group used physical training 75 percent of the time and mental imagery 25 percent of the time. The third group split its training 50-50, and the fourth group spent 25 percent of the time training physically and 75 percent of the time mentally. The mental training required them to spend time every day practicing their sport in their minds using mental imagery. At the end of the study, the group that had the made the biggest gains or improvement was the fourth group, the one that had spent only 25 percent of the time training physically and 75 percent of the time using mental imagery. Interesting, the group that trained 100 percent of the time physically actually improved the least amount.
• While this is not a formal research study, the following true story provides a great example of the power of mental imagery. An American prisoner of war who was held captive for five years love
d golf. It was his passion; it was his favorite past time, prior to the war, of course. During the time he was held captive, he mentally played a couple of rounds of golf every single day. And he played them perfectly. He saw the green of the grass and the shots he hit. He felt his swing, the connection with the ball, and he even felt the way the grass felt underneath his shoes as he walked the course. He heard the sounds of the birds in the trees, the wind, the sound of his club hitting the ball, and the sound of it soaring down the fairways. He imagined every last detail of what his perfect round of golf would look, feel, and sound like. When released from prison, one of the first things he did was hit the links. Despite not having touched an actual golf club in more than five years and only having played golf mentally through that time, he shot the best round of golf he ever had.
For many drivers, visualization is used to familiarize themselves with a track and possibly to prepractice a specific technique before hitting the track. For these drivers, they are missing out on some of mental imagery’s best uses. Overall, mental imagery can and should be used for the following:
• To see success: You can develop your belief system by recalling past success and preplaying success in future events. Your belief about your abilities may be the most important key to success, more important than natural or developed skill, and it can be improved upon with mental imagery.
• To motivate: By recalling the emotional feelings of past successes and imagining them for future events, you can remind yourself of what you enjoy most about racing. When things are not going well (as they often do for every driver at some point in their driving career), focusing on what you truly get out of racing can lead to a superior performance.