Visualization

[phantom]

Somebody once told me that a basketball team that just practiced visualizing playing the game scored almost as many baskets as a team that actually practiced playing the game. How could you go about visualizing yourself performing your forms and techniqued to improve your performance? Would it help to tape yourself and either watch it or a video of someone else doing the moves in your style and make believe that you are actually doing it for real? If not, then what would be a good way to visualize yourself doing your techniques? Also, can visualizing too much do more harm than good? If so, then how much is too much? Thanks in advance.

[Serpent]

Visualisation is a very powerful tool. There was even a study where guys visualised lifting weights and actually registered size and strength gains! :eek:

Anyway, as for MA, don't tape yourself as it's a mental exercise. Picture yourself going through your forms, only imagine you doing them the way you wish you could, not the way you actually can. Do it as a meditation if that helps. You will improve as a result. Check out Amazon, I'm sure there's a bunch of books out there about visualisation.

[prana]

If you dont mind me using bouldering as an example.

Top boulderes visualise themselves getting up a route, and how each hand feet movement are executed before trying to flash a bouldering problem. Some just jump on without so much as thinking about it. The results, they either fail miserably because they screw up the sequence entirely, or they are so strong, the problem was sent regardless.

However when pushing the limits, such as a huge dyno to a sloping edge, the climber visualises himself executing the launch, breathing in and holding their breathe, jumping towards the hold and sticking that nasty hold while their momentum is a its dead height.

A lot of climbers sweat just watching another climber. Someone wrote thesis about it, and said it has to do with the stored repertoire of movements and motor neurons firing the muscles up for execution. Hence increasing blood flow and refreshing and sharpening the movement for execution.

OK hope that wasnt a waste of space.

[ChiWarrior]

When I am practicing a form that has combat application, I visualize a person that I am fighting with. It helps.

[lotusleaf]

I use visualization to help with my forms stances, striking and blocking. Forms are almost like a puzzle where you have to put together the applications yourself. Also if I do drills, I try to see where the kick/strike is supposed to land. It helps coordination and judgement as well.

[IronFist]

I was talking to someone here a few weeks ago about how I heard that studies have shown that imagining that you're performing movements fires the same neurons as actually doing them, or something like that.

Here (http://jmblakley.com/article8.htm) is an article that kind of talks about that and I think mentions a study about it, too. I just kind of skimmed it, tho, so I'm not entirely sure if it's good or not.

[D_Messenger]

What if you mentally imagine you are developing some ripped very low fat strong six pack abs - you would have to imagine someone elses six pack assuming on this case you dont have one yet - does if you spend some time imagining another man's six pack make you gay?

That is something to really consider.

[Ford Prefect]

I am a HUGE believer in visualization techniques. My mother got cancer bad when I was in high school (against all odds she has fully recovered now) and she was trying anything she could get her hands on. She told me about visualation techniques and how they could help me on the ball field, so I gave them a try and I was sold on them right away.

I've carried these techniques over to other aspects of my life besides athletics. Say I'm on a cycle that will have me break my 1RM for the squat. For arguments sake, let's say that's 315 lbs. Every other day during that cycle, I'll spend 15 minutes a day visualizing myself ripping off a few rips with 400 lbs on the bar. I know it sounds hokey, but it works. JM and the rest of the westside crew use these techniques to achieve great results.

I feel that this type of visualization and meditation done daily will only aid one in their individual pursuits and in health and happiness.

[rubthebuddha]

we've been doing a bit more qigong and meditation in one of my classes, and much of the time i spend visualizing on one specific thing rather than on nothing at all -- my posture. i have concerns about my back from an old injury, as well as just how straight it is (carrying a heavy backpack for years in school on only one shoulder has turned the spine a little to one side, methinks), and i just want to have as healthy a back as i can when i'm older. so i'm doing much more exercises for it, such as good mornings, supermen, and lots of yoga, as well as just simply visualizing in the same way ford brought up. i think of my spine lengthening, i think of it being strong and flexible, and i think of it being the source of what height i have -- greek/russian/english heritage doesn't typically amount to long, lithe legs.* :)





* my apologies to anyone who didn't want to have my legs mentioned in the same sentence as the words "long, lithe." :D

[IronFist]

I heard Supermen are actually bad for your back???

[rubthebuddha]

i usually do them with yoga and lifting principles in mind, so i don't think so, but if you have a source, share, because i don't want something i do once or twice per week to be counterproductive to me being the studliest dude on the planet. share share share.

[Vash]

I've heard Good Morning's aren't the best thing in the world for, well, having good mornings. Supermen helped my back tremendously.

[rubthebuddha]

why all the hatin toward my back work? :mad: lousy communist pinkos.

and good mornings are my favorite exercise, so don't start with me. :D

[IronFist]

Hey, good mornings are rad, just be safe :)

I don't remember the source for supermen. But if you think about it, they're only working your lower back through like 10-20% of its ROM. That's kinda crappy. However, it's really like the only bw lower back exercise there is that doesn't require a special bench or device or put your feet in or anything.

I dunno.

Ford? El Pietro?

[Toby]

What about bridges? There's the one that's more for your core, like on your toes and elbows, face down (AKA plank). There's the yoga-style one that's on hands and feet, belly to the roof. Both static holds, but both work the lower back? Dunno, I haven't done either for a long while so I don't remember.

[rubthebuddha]

the yoga postures for the back that i do, love 'em or hate 'em, all do something positive. these are them in order of sequence:


boat (http://www.yogabasics.com/asana/postures/boat.html)

bow (http://www.yogabasics.com/asana/postures/bow.html)

camel (http://www.yogabasics.com/asana/postures/camel.html)

bridge (http://www.yogabasics.com/asana/postures/bridge.html)

wheel (http://www.yogabasics.com/asana/postures/wheel.html)

the only drawbacks i know are that they are all in the same range of backbend. however, gravity and the way in which you're based on the ground (on hands, on shins, on belly, on shoulders, on feet, etc.) all make each work a little bit different. add this to good mornings and supermen (**** you, lousy haters ;)) and my back gets stronger every week.

[IronFist]

Got Deadlifts? :D

[FatherDog]

Personally, I prefer stiff-legged dead-lifts to good mornings - they work the lower back just about the same, and if you suddenly feel like your back is about to give out or you're lifting too much, you can just let go.

[Toby]

Originally posted by IronFist
Got Deadlifts? :D I was going to chime in with that, but I bit my tongue. I go on about them all the time anyway :o.

[rubthebuddha]

i would do deadlifts, but the fact is, the most i could do of them weight-wise is around 65 lbs., not because of lack of back and ass and leg muscle, but because that's all the weight i have here at home. i don't have a gym membership, and i don't plan to get one. the reason i choose good mornings is that, since the weight is further away from the fulcrum, thus requiring more strength to move the lever that is my torso. i'd love to have the weights for d/ls handy, but i don't, and i'm not going to buy them right now. all in due time. :)

[IronFist]

Maybe you could deadlift some of those trees you've been hugging, hippie :p

[rubthebuddha]

:D

better put on your running shoes, biotch, cause you're about to do some cardio. :mad:

[D_Messenger]

I hate those lousy ectomorphs :mad:

[Andy62]

http://www.dclab.com/aside_biceps.asp

[Ford Prefect]

Yup, there have been numerous research articles written on this effect. This is true for all types of sports and activities, and it's why visualization exercises are so central to "sports psychology". Olympic lifters visualize lifting world records with ease, track stars visualize running world record times and blowing away the competition, etc etc.

[GeneChing]

Most impressive.


Watch Kung Fu Physics Materialize Before Your Eyes (http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/kung-fu-physics-motion-visualization)
Nathaniel Ainley — Apr 26 2016


https://vimeo.com/163153865
Kung Fu Motion Visualization from Tobias Gremmler on Vimeo.

German multimedia designer Tobias Gremmier visually captures the poetic kinetics of martial arts in Kung Fu Motion Visualization. This four minute video is the latest project from the prolific author, musician and cyber-savant. Posted to his Vimeo, Gremmier materializes the physics of the human body through digitally analyzing the movements of a kung fu drill. Each motion of the fighter’s body is outlined and traced through by a trail of digital dust particles, a mesh of geometric planes, or a stream of fractal webs.

Each action flows like a river current. Bruce Lee once wrote “You put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” Gremmier masterfully displays this in high-def. The performance traces the movements of the routine like a trail of smoke behind a skywriter, or a current carving its way through open waters.

Gremmier’s complex digital scan measures the fighter’s movements in terms of velocity, time, and space, altering the parameters of its visual manifest through a number of variations. It's fabric woven by time, velocity transformed into matter, expansion out of emptiness.

Check out some snapshots from the video, below:

https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/f6d03a09f3f703eeae7621797d65bca1.jpg
Screencaps, via.

https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/5027b440d64a7bb50ba20d4d063caa80.jpg
https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/b6eaccb9ff69ac92727108ec4932f1d3.jpg
https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/36770445c2b8c3993464b27af656a365.jpg
https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/5508a198e8cc86a6c98b05c4bcd133d8.jpg
https://thecreatorsproject-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/1967b8f5048e82694e2675a2c9c5dae9.jpg

Check out more of Gremmier’s work on his website, here (http://www.syncon-d.com/).

[sirdude]

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/05/kung-fu-visualizations/

Thought people might like this.

[David Jamieson]

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/05/kung-fu-visualizations/

Thought people might like this.

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?34242-Visualization/page2

;)

[David Jamieson]

Somebody once told me that a basketball team that just practiced visualizing playing the game scored almost as many baskets as a team that actually practiced playing the game. How could you go about visualizing yourself performing your forms and techniqued to improve your performance? Would it help to tape yourself and either watch it or a video of someone else doing the moves in your style and make believe that you are actually doing it for real? If not, then what would be a good way to visualize yourself doing your techniques? Also, can visualizing too much do more harm than good? If so, then how much is too much? Thanks in advance.

Visualizing sad puppies during sexy times increases stamina.

Not too sad though, because that's a fetish!

[SteveLau]

Visualization does help in training. In free fight training, I would say no more than 20% of the times solo is top. More than that is too much.



Regards,

KC
Hong Kong

[Bai Chi]

I'm visualizing a taco.