Experimenting with mental and body rehearsal to improve my manual and bunny hop motion
The book 'Sports Psyching' has specific instructions on how to practice both techniques
I bought the book Sports Psyching: Playing Your Best Game All of the Time decades ago when I was trying to improve my mototrials skills.
I was intrigued by the book's author, Thomas Tutko, using mental and body rehearsal to "make the desirable patterns automatic" and "get so you can do it with your eyes closed." (See the links below for the drills. And see the NY Times article titled, Psychologists Train Minds of Athletes to Excel, which focuses on the book.)
But I never had the discipline to practice the techniques with the detailed approach prescribed. Tutko requires that you break down the parts of a move into tiny details (chunks!)
Here are the elements of the launch motion for the manual portion of a bunny hop as I currently understand them:
Feeling a sharp compression with feet while maintaining a hip hinge, not crouching forward, flat back, head/chin meeting the stem.
Feeling the shove of the pedals to push the bike out from under me.
Feeling the pull of my fingers on the grips as my arms straighten.
Feeling my hips catapult forward while I maintain relatively straight arms.
My intention is to get disciplined on both the mental and body rehearsal techniques over the next month while doing more research on them.
If you’ve used either of these techniques to improve your mountain biking or other motor skills, comment below.
November 2022 Update
A college professor has posted the drills for mental and body rehearsal from Sports Psyching on a Physical and Health Education website. See:
I'm afraid you got me going:
First..........Renee's comment on double tasking.
Been thinking about that.....and I think she's got a key element of the puzzle. I'ver always been poor at double tasking. The traditional view is that women are better than men because they have to deal with children and many other things at the same times whereas us males just had to stick a spear in a mammoth.
And there is concern that one may loose quality with increased quantity.
But the point is that this is a sort of applied mindfulness........nicely simplified.
As one focuses on a solitary task so one has less cognitive action whirling around in the brain.
And it's a good simple, action-based skill to learn for all kinds of practice. And for moments on the trail when the attention may wander.
An advanced version of this may be needed for when the s*** hits the fan and a simple action suddenly becomes complex.......your line goes wrong or you loose control. here you may have to do a lot of things suddenly, together. Hopefully by then you are in emergency mode and working hyper efficiently.
Second:
Mental Rehearsal.
Typically, one was supposed to start this skill/process by shutting the eyes and "playing your movie back". One could use slo mo or other speeds and viewpoints......either from in to out (the impression of the move from your own impression) or the birds eye view of a spectator. Surprisingly different.
Then one could add other cues and sensations.........like you suggest with "feeling".....in this case sensory sensations.
There is a lot of literature available on all this and it is well used technique.
My experience is that it works best for simple actions.
When the movements become more complex it becomes trickier to find the chain of events that will flow the separate actions together into a well coordinated and synchronized action.
It may help to immense oneself in a video (visual) as you practice the mental rehearsal.........something to forge a link between the mental and the physical.
You will have picked up that I have some reservations about how we work with our brains. I'm not against it totally, and I can see that there can be some useful outcomes, but I'm uneasy about our success at accurately understanding the brain. In spite of digital processing and modern scanning.
When we base an action on our "construct" of how the brain works, we may be forcing that square peg into the round hole?
What works best for me, perhaps because of my bias, may be to focus on your initial excellent video analysis work which gives me a clear objective and maybe some muscle memory and then work on a constructed piece of equipment (small jump).
You still need some analysis, to define what you want and to analyze your success but it seems to be a more integrated, organic process. I fancy it may also work better if/when you get into an emergency and have to react quickly.
In this mode, your idea of individualized video critique and feedback would be a natural progression.
Your research and experimentation will be an interesting journey.