Interesting New Study(slightly OT)

[KC Elbows]

Just heard the results of an interesting study. It was off of the radio, so unless you find the study itself, take it with a grain of salt, but the study involved having people imagine moving particular parts of the body(in the case of the study, one group imagined moving the pinkie, one group imagined moving the elbow). After doing this for something like thirty days, the researchers found that the pinkie group showed a 15 per cent increase in strength in that area, while the elbow group showed a 35 percent increase in strength in that area.

Next thing you know, their going to be telling us that people can make their arm unbendable with only mindfulness and structure as the basis. What has the world come to?

[Budokan]

Not surprising. By concentrating on a finger or elbow these people were more than likely to move that extremity more often than others. Which in turn exercised the body part increasing range of motion, strength, etc.

Sounds to me like the researchers misinterpreted the results. Typical head-up-the-a$$ New Age research. One can't help but wonder who funded this waste of time...?

[KC Elbows]

True, but as martial artists, doesn't it follow that if we think of moving in a particular way(talking internal styles, though I'd imagine its much the same for external styles the practitioner has "internalized") doesn't it follow that the martial artist is more likely to move said way, which again increases range of motion, strength, etc? I doubt that is what the researchers were studying, but it has more to say about mind-intention than it does strength, though I'm not saying strength wasn't developed, or that it was not muscular strength. I think it gives a pretty good idea of one of the advantages to such philosophies as the mind-intention stuff you see in hsing yi.

[red5angel]

I for one am a firm believer in visualization. I used it alot in track, and I use it alot with my martial art. I believe it helps in some small way, although I dont know about increasing strength and all that.

[Cody]

make me wonder.
However, intense visualization/concentration can lead to activity within muscle tissue. Has to do with interaction between brain and neural connections to muscle. It's been a long time since I've read about this stuff, but the mind-body connection along these lines is a legit subject. As to the strength increases. I would wonder how that much would come about without more active physical performance. I don't trust that finding.

just off the top of my head,
Cody

[Braden]

This is pretty old news actually. There's quite a sizable body of literature that is a few decades old covering perfomance gains for a wide variety of tasks where one group practiced physically, and one group practiced physically as much and also did visualization exercises.

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

the ony i have always heard about was the basketball test.

[Braden]

Yeah, that one's usually brought up in psych 101.

[Fu-Pow]

Braden-

I believe you are referring to the study of basketball players in the Soviet Union vs the U.S.?

[neptunesfall]

i've found that visualization helps a lot with training.when i do this - usually a few minutes before i go to sleep - i try to get a sense of how my body will feel when i'm doing what i'm thinking about. for example, i try to imagine my body in a picture perfect horse stance. i imagine the pressure in my legs and lower back and holding my back completly straight, head erect etc.
i find that focusing on the interior sense of my body [proprioception i think it's called] helps more than visualizing myself from an outside perspective. just my 2 cents....