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Is there a smell in the air? What do you hear? What is your environment? Sit
with a straight spine when you do this. Practice at night or in the morning
(just before/after sleep). Eliminate any doubts, if they come to you. Repeat
this practice often. Combine with meditation or an affirmation (e.g. “I am
fast; I am strong”, or to borrow from Ali, “I am the greatest!”).

[I gave this a go during the Tour de France this year. Without any training
all year, I was able to visualise dropping Chris Froome on Mont Ventoux – I
wasn’t even breathing heavily and crushed him.. I’m going to suggest to the
Committee that we do away with all the inconvenience and risk of riding on
the road for club championships end use visualisation instead. Members
could just email their times after the sessions. J]

Seriously, It seems there are potential benefits over and about technique
improvement from visualisation so why not give it a go – but remember, to
enlist your brain in the process, it has to BELIEVE in the image, it has to be
as realistic as you can manage. Encouragingly for me, the study noted
significantly higher strength improvement percentages (53%) for an
abductor muscle little-used in normal daily life compared to the elbow flexor
– so my lack of miles might push my legs more into that category for some
early gains… J

For more information on the (limited) study, see:
http://lecerveau.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/articles_pdf/Gaining_strength.pdf
Here is an abstract describing the project objectives and some key
information:

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