How to Use Visualization for Better Racing

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Moulansen, and this is the run to the top pod cast. The podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team of coaches atrunnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. As runners were always looking for that extra edge in training to make us faster and more consistent on the race course. Understandably, most of our efforts to improve our gear towards the physical, lowering lactate threshold, increasing muscle power, improving form, etcetera. Enhancement to any of these physiological systems is going to result in faster race times. It should be the main focus of your training plan. However, if you're already pushing your physical training boundaries, it's possible that adding visualization to your regimen can help you squeeze that extra 1 or 2% on race day. It's well documented that most of the top athletes and runners in the world believe it helps. So today, We're gonna be talking about all things visualization with one of the premier experts in the world, Doctor Jerry Lynch. Doctor Lynch received his doctorate in psychology from Penn State University and has done extensive post doctoral work in the area of philosophy, comparative religions, leadership and development, and performance enhancement. He's the author of 12 books that focus on coaching, leadership, spirituality of sport, warrior spirit, peak performance, and sports psychology. If you've got a race coming up this fall, you'll love the practical tips you can use to better utilize visualization and take your mental game to the next level. Let's get into it. Timeline nutrition has developed a groundbreaking product called MISO sure that revitalizes your mitochondria, which create energy in nearly every cell in your body. Head to timeline nutrition.com to learn Welcome to the show, Jerry. To get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?

Guest [00:02:20]: Most people think of me as a sports psychologist, and that's that's legit. And, I've been in this business for over 40 years. as I grew personally and with my my professional development, I realized that there's something more to this game call performance than just the mental side. And I discovered that a lot of it had to do with how we, how we compete with our heart. And by heart, I'm talking about something very different than the mind. And, so at this point in my career, I would say that 15% of my work is sports psychology, and I do lean on psychological techniques like visualization. On the other hand, 85% of it is more sports philosophy and sports spirituality. And let me define what I mean by spirituality. It's not some kind of a guru religion, high end, the mountains, Buddhist monk type of philosophy. It's what it is is, spirituality to me is having courage having patience and tenacity, being willing to suffer, sacrifice giving up things having integrity. If you're gonna if you're gonna say you're gonna do it, you do it. having trust and respect And and so when you look at these things in relation to competing, like, especially with running as we're talking about, you know, my career as a runner, competitive runner, I've always done my best when when I competed with heart, which meant I had more courage or I was I persevered. I was able to put up with the pain at mile 22 in a marathon, knowing that I might not be able to run four miles, but I can run four hundred meters and and then see how I feel then. So, I've developed my approach and, what I do is I train athletes now how to develop their heart and I teach to that and I help them understand that you can actually learn how to be more courageous and learn how to be more, you can learn how to compete in a tough way, you know, that kind of thing. and be more mentally strong as well.

Finn Melanson [00:04:36]: Alright. Shifting gears to get specific. In what ways does visualization and imagery contribute to a runner's performance?

Guest [00:04:43]: Well, it's it's a very, effective tactic. And, you know, it's it's not only a, a skill for for running and competing well, it's really a great skill for life. And, there's not a day that goes by that I don't use it in my life. And so it impacts everything we do. our thoughts, our images, our words that we use, for ourselves, they all impact the direction we go. So if my images if I have images and myself going in this direction, but yet I wanna go in that direction in light, then what happens is these images will win. that's how dominant they are. our thoughts will either strengthen us or weaken us and they have a an energy all their own. And so that said, what we wanna do is, we wanna if we wanna maximize our performance and get the most out of us to have a full capacity existence in life, then the way we what we need to do is consider how to get those proper images into our nervous system and marinate our nervous system in those images so that they will send messages to the muscles and the rest of the body to the way we were training our body to act in the first place. And if you don't have that, and if it's something contrary to that, then no matter how hard you train and run and practice, the body won't follow your your desire because it thinks it has to go in a different direction. You know? One of the things I like to do is I like to bring in Eastern philosophy and Eastern thought, in into my work and the way do that with visualization is we, in my work, I proceed all visualization situations, with a meditation session. And that session could be 5 minutes. It could be 25 minutes. it's up to you. It's up to the time that you have. is all effective. Now the reason why now meditation is becoming or mindfulness, mindful meditation is becoming a household word. you know, 25 years ago, when I started introducing this, I had to go around the back door. You know what I mean? I couldn't I couldn't talk about meditation because it was like something like, oh, this guy's from California. He's kinda weird. You know? And and when Indeed, I wasn't, I was just following my heart and realize that, you know, these things really work for me. I mean, I was a nationally ranked competitive runner using, using these methodologies, and I was excited to tell other people about it. But what I do is, I help people to meditate, and I teach them a technique, which is breathing. It comes from the vipassana the Buddhist for passing a technique of watching your breath or breath watching. Now why why do this? The reason why you do this before you visualize is when you meditate, you're actually clearing and quieting your mind, which is wonderful because try to put images into your mind when your mind is already filled. That would be like taking a a a sponge that's saturated completely and putting it on a little pool of water and then picking it up and expect that pool to be gone. So if you ring it out like this, and you're really getting all that last moisture out, and then you put that sponge on the water, it goes right into the sponge. the mind is like a sponge. So when you try to visualize and your mind is filled, nothing's going in. and the nervous system doesn't respond. So what I've discovered, and this was not sports psychology, was that my practice of meditation was really helping me to clear my mind. And then I would do my visualization right after it. And when I did, Oh my. The results were palpable. Literally, I mean, I could feel, literally feel the energy. I could feel myself running. I could feel myself crossing the finish line, what that would feel like. And, you know, So many people, they they they take this tool called visualization. They they quiet their mind, and they don't quiet their mind. They just sit there and they imagine themselves running, And then they expect the nervous system to respond to that. Well, it it doesn't. It and and so they're not getting results, and then they say, well, that stuff doesn't work. And, you know, it's kind of interesting. And when I discovered this, the effect and the and the results and the outcomes were just Awesome. I mean, it was just amazing, the difference in my own personal life and in the lives of all these athletes that I work with. So what I do is, I train an athlete in this breathing technique, and then I have them go from that breathing technique with a clear open quite fine, and then I give them visualization. Now rather than visualize by seeing yourself running, I want people to feel themselves competing. I want you to feel what it's like when you have that great energy and you're running across the land and you feel effortless, that effortless flow gliding up a hill and coming down the other side and just the joy and the excitement of the finish and and feeling really wonderful, feeling that feeling of of joy from having competed well. The second piece visualization logically leads into a third piece So this whole program that I set up, has the 3rd piece, which is affirmations. And affirmations really on the verbal representation of what you're feeling in your visualization. So an example would be Let's say in your visualization, in a clear mind, you're feeling yourself gliding and effortlessly going across the the land, your affirmation would be the verbal representation. It would sound something like this. I feel strong, agile, gliding across grinding across the race course with ultimate ease. another affirmation would be I finished strong all day long, and you just create these affirmations that support and reinforce what your visual is now we not only have the nervous system feeling it, we have the nervous system receiving the messages from the mind. making it true so that whatever you say all your thoughts and all your words is where your muscles will probably follow. And this is true whether you're walking or whether you're running, or whether you're playing basketball or golf, it doesn't matter. So everything comes from that place. And my techniques have been used, at the professional basketball level, professional runners, I've been doing it for a long time, and I'm pretty confident that it will not allow you maybe to win the race, but it will allow you to have your best performance more consistently And that's an important distinction. Right? Cause otherwise, people think, well, I visualize and did all this work that Jerry was talking about, and I didn't get the result. but it's not about result. It's about training your body because no amount of visualization is gonna allow you to run a 2 13 marathon. right, or a or a 4 14 marathon. It doesn't matter. But if you do the training and you show up at the race, Instead of the mind sabotaging all of that wonderful training that you did with your body, your mind cooperates with the body. So now we have what I call Thinking Body Dancing Mind. Right? That's one of my best sellers, by the way. It's a title of one of my best books. The dancing mind is the mind that you're training to go along with the thinking body, which has muscle memory, based on all the wonderful training you've been doing as an athlete, if you don't have that mind dancing, if the mind is opposing that, then your body can't do anything. So it it has to be like this. It has to be a dance between mind and body. And of course, then I bring in the spirit, and the spirit is developing courage and perseverance and all those other wonderful virtues and and values. Alright.

Finn Melanson [00:13:34]: Let's dig into that a little bit more. What is the difference between mantras and affirmations and how can runners effectively utilize them in their training and racing?

Guest [00:13:44]: All mantras are affirmations, not all affirmations are mantras. A mantra by definition would be a short a short reference point. It could be one word. Strong, strong, strong, strong, it could be his mantra. I'm strong. I can do it. I'm strong. I can do it. If you say that mantra running up the hill, The run up the hill will be a lot easier than if you're saying to yourself another mantra, which is I'm I can't do this. I'm too weak. I can't do this. I'm hurting. Those are mantras aft and there are affirmations as well. So all mantras are affirmations. So to answer your questions, yeah, you know, it would be good to have an, a mantra. A mantra is a nice short touch stone. It's a place where you can access inner energy if you've trained properly. And, of course, you've gotta train the mind and the heart. just like you're training the body. So I call it body mind spirit training, and mantra is a a word that really has evolved from from the Eastern way of thinking, but now it's become a household word. 45 years ago, if you said mantra, I go, what? You start to get the idea.

Finn Melanson [00:15:04]: Definitely. That makes a lot of sense. So What advantages does an affirmation offer to a runner in terms of their kinesiology or kinesthetic performance?

Guest [00:15:14]: kinesthetic is motion and movement and, kinesiology. I use, in my practice, I use, apply kinesiology. and, although I have not had formal training, and I don't pretend to have fun with training in kinesiology. Although if I went back to school, that's certainly something I would do. I think it's a very valuable, piece to the whole puzzle, but I've learned a lot. My my wife Jan. She's a a physician, and she knows a lot about kinesiology. And so she teaches me over the years, how to use that. let me give you an example. if if I said to you, if you said out loud, I can do this. I'm strong. I can demonstrate to you with kinesiology, you put your arm out like like such, and then I gently apply pressure to push down when you're saying those words. If you say I'm strong, I can do it.

Finn Melanson [00:16:23]: 99.9%

Guest [00:16:24]: of the time, you'll hold your arm up with no problem. But if you change the words and you which is changing the mantra or the affirmation to I'm a weak link. I can't do it. Your arm will go down because the messages are sent to those muscles to quit. Just like if you're going up a hill and you say, I can't do it. I'm not strong enough. The messages to the muscles from the mind are to quit. So that's why people struggle. Now having said that, back to your point, I'm very familiar with kinesiology and kinesis and movement and all of that kinetics, but it's not something that I really emphasize in my work, although I don't wanna overlook the importance of that. And, you know, I certainly wish I was more adept at it, but I have enough on my plate in terms of learning. I'm constantly learning the things that I'm doing to do them better and to learn more and to integrate that into the work that I do constantly, constantly learning and constantly growing and after 40 somewhat years in the business, I might be halfway there.

Finn Melanson [00:17:39]: I'll be the first to admit I was a little skeptical about how much a greens supplement like AG 1 could actually help me. I generally eat healthy, try to get in whole fruits and veggies and know that oftentimes supplements aren't as well absorbed as real food, but I made it a big goal of mine to get healthier overall after the 2020 quarantine. So I dug into the research about how much greens could help, and what was the best on the market? All of my research pointed to AG 1 being the most comprehensive and well dosed green supplement on the market. In fact, one of the things I liked the most about AG 1 is they list all of their ingredients and quantities. They don't hide behind quote, unquote, proprietary blends, which is almost always a quick way to know if a supplement is a scam. The sheer number of ingredients is overwhelming at first But once you dig deeper into all of it, you can see this is actually what makes it the best product on the market. They're also NSF certified, which means they go through rigorous testing to prove that the contents of the product match what is on the label. I also did a lot of research on how AG 1 are made. I mean, how do they squeeze that many ingredients into a single scoop and does that diminish the nutritional value? Well, it turns out they actually dry or dehydrate the ingredients and crush them into a powder This results in almost 0 nutritional loss. If you've been skeptical about using a green's product and how effective it could be, I really encourage you to give AG 1 a try for 30 days. You can get a free year's supply of vitamin d and 5 free travel packs if you start now. Just head over to athleticgreens.comforward/rtt to give them a try. Timeline nutrition's Mydopur is backed by over a decade of research and is clinically proven to revitalize mitochondria so every cell in your body has the energy to do its job and keep you healthy in functioning. Right? In fact, clinical studies have shown that 500 milligrams of urolithin, one of the main ingredients in Mydopur can significantly increase muscle strength and endurance with no other change in lifestyle. miter comes in powder form to mix into your favorite smoothie or soft gels to make them easy to take. Improving your mitochondria is one of the best things you can do for your health and with miter pure from timeline nutrition, It's never been easier. Go to timeline nutrition.com and use a promo code or runners connect for 10% off. the plan of your choice. So Do visualization and affirmations contribute to a runner's growth and development?

Guest [00:20:06]: That's what makes the world so joyful and and so exciting and so interesting and and and, and without that, it's, you know, I mean, the journey of being a runner is is no different. you know, it's constant growth and change. And, even adding some of the things, if some of the things I'm saying today, create, make a difference in your life, even if it's one small thing. That's a grilled spur. You know, when next time you're running up a hill, say the words, I'm strong. I can do this. And you know what? You're gonna feel different. There's no question. So, yeah, life life is a journey and life is constant learning. And and and the thing I think we should all remember about learning is that our failures, our setbacks, our losses, are absolutely a necessary part of this journey that they're our greatest teachers. And and I am, the writer that I am. I am the father that I am. I have 4 kids, and and I am the the psychologist that I am. I am who I am because of everything I've learned from my failures. you know, my website is filled with all kinds of wonderful stuff. And if you look at it, you'll have an illusion like God, that guy is real. No. He's not. Everything you see on there, take it as one result of maybe 18 failures. That's how I got there. And and and so we helps us with self compassion, you know.

Finn Melanson [00:21:39]: So how much time should someone be dedicating to visualization? What does it feel like to practice visualization and imagery on a regular basis?

Guest [00:21:49]: This is like a virtual play land. It's like going into a candy store, you know. You can choose 2 of those and one of these and 5 of those things, and it's just a matter of how much money you have. Right? And so it's the same thing with visualization. It's it's a matter of how much time you have. and how much time you wanna spend. Like, spending the money, you're gonna spend time. Right? before I answer your question directly. And if I don't remember it, you'll have to remind me. I think I'll remember it. but it's not an either or thing. And what I mean by that is I'm emphasizing feeling over imagery only because people don't know that. People don't understand that how much they need to actually feel what they wanna feel. But don't throw away imagery because when you're running in your visualization, I want you to feel yourself running. I want you to feel your arms, your stride. I want you to feel your foot touching the ground. I want you to feel and feel it and feel the sun coming down, that beautiful autumn sun. And then I want you to see now now we're talking about images. I want you to see the road before you or the trail before you. I want you to see the competitor ahead of you. I want you to see the people around you. I want you to hear the wonderful noise of the people cheering you on. So you're seeing, you're hearing I want you to smell the grass. If you're running cross country over the grass, I want you to feel the breeze in in your hair. the more you can stimulate your nervous system, the more benefit you will get from it. So what I wanna say is we're leaving out more often than we should, the aspect of feeling that I want you to feel effortless what that feels like so you might have to go back to feeling yourself on a run when everything came together and you felt you could run forever. You know, you've had that feeling if you're a runner. Mhmm. I don't get that quite as often as I'd like these days. But back in the day, when I was competing, I could remember I don't ever, ever need to stop. I can go forever. That's a feeling that if I close my eyes now and and a in a clear state of mind, I can get that feeling, and it can go into my nervous system. When I go out and I run this week, whenever that is, when I have that feeling inside me, it's gonna help me to run like that. It doesn't guarantee it. It'll just give me the most I can I can have. So To answer your question, I I want to include that I want people to understand that's another level of feeling but also have the other images. The the thing you really don't wanna do is you don't wanna close your eyes and imagine yourself on a screen and see yourself running. Don't see yourself. Be yourself running. Feel the running. All of it. and see through your eyes what you're gonna see when you are running. Now to your point that I remember your question, the kinds of things you wanna visualize, I'll give you a few, and then people can come up with their own. But what I like to do, but well, back in the day, when I was competing a lot. I would visualize myself running really well and feeling myself taking on my weakest link. Alright. So maybe that weakest link was, what do I do on last three? of a mile. That's the hardest slap on the track. So I would feel myself just getting enormous amount of energy, and I'd work with that for a minute. So I feel myself on lap 3 or feel myself when I was running marathons as well. I feel myself at mile 22. Going to mile 23. having all the energy that I wanted and feeling effortless. Okay. so you can visualize something that's you really need to work on as a runner, some your weak link, whatever that is, and and and and feel yourself doing it well. perfectly, actually. you can you can also take a minute and visualize your next race. Maybe that next race is a month from now, but start visualizing it now. And then if you have some kind of a goal in running, you can take a minute and visualize yourself achieving that goal. Now that's an outcome but the nervous system gets prepared for such an outcome so that when you actually get to that place, you're not afraid to go for it. because you've been there before in your mind and in your nervous system. So, basically, my my approach, if if we're talking about racing, I would visualize also my training run, my my run. Like and I'll do that now. Like, I'll go out. You can see there's a bike in back of me here. I ride bikes as well now. run 4 days, by 3 days, that kind of thing as opposed to running, we used to go back in the day. It'd run twice a day. every day except Sunday, and then we kill ourselves on Sunday with a 24 mile run. But, anyway, y'all, we were we were running a hundred and twenty miles a week, when I was training. But, anyway, now, like, if I'm gonna go out for a run, in my meditation followed by visualization, gonna throw that in there. I'm gonna visualize myself on the exact trail I'm gonna run on, and I'm gonna feel myself gliding along that trail. and just really enjoying the smells and the sounds and the and and the air and the sky and all of that. And and so It's a Playland. It's a candy store. You can visualize whatever you want, but make sure you feel yourself the way you wanna feel and then you can your images come from your own eyes looking out as opposed to looking at a screen.

Finn Melanson [00:28:19]: So how long do you practice visualization prior to a race?

Guest [00:28:23]: I will tell you this. I have worked with athletes, Olympic level runners, marathoners, who have visualized 2 years before their event in the Olympics. Now they weren't even on the Olympic team because the qualifiers, you know, short distance between a qualifier and the and the race. I have had Rit runners visualize 2 years before an important race. now you know what? You don't need to do that, but they're doing it. And, that's just an aside. But, to me, it depends on how important a race is. So if you're competing at a fairly high level or not even at a high level, but if this is really important to you, I would say 3 to 4 weeks out from the race. Visualize yourself running that race, but back up and make sure that you're visualizing each day. And if you can't do it each day and you miss it, so what? It doesn't matter. It's still great. And I would try to do it I would say, again, it depends on how much you're like. I I love meditating. And when I'm sitting here meditating, it's like, I don't wanna end it and get back to work. Now I wanna stay in that state of mind because it's such a wonderful dream state Our our brain goes to that alpha state, which is like that lovely place when we're having good dreams. And and so when I'm dreaming about myself gliding over over the land and and flying through the woods, that's a great place to be. So I usually hang out there for 20 to 30 minutes. But for most people listening to this, I would say that if you meditated, with, you know, my book, the way of the champion has this technique. So if you've got that book, you can read my techniques. But what I would do is I would meditate for, like, you know, clear your mind for about 5 minutes, and then I visualize for 5 minutes, and then say a few affirmations for a minute or 2. So the whole thing's about 10 minutes. you know, 10 minutes a day. And maybe what I would do is I would only visualize on the days that I run. So if you're only running 4 days a week. I'd visualize 4 days a week, and I'd do it before the run. And I would visualize the run that you're gonna take, and then I would visualize the race at the same time. So a good program would be, oh, I'm running today. So before the run, I meditate, visualize, and affirm, then go out and do it. You'll have a much better training run, and while you're doing that meditation for your training run, also visualize the bracelet you're gonna run, and how that's gonna feel. to the point of even crossing the finish line and feeling the joy and the excitement of friends of you as greeting you and hugging you and saying, oh my gosh, I'd great. What I'm feeling. I did it, you know, all of that. And 10 minutes a day, should be fine. Every day that you run. If if you're taking off today, don't visualize. But if you want to, by all means, go ahead. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that because I love it so much. You get into that habit. You you almost feel like when you miss a training run, like, something's wrong. you know, when I miss a my meditation, it's like something's missing. but most people starting out to be realistic, I'll be honest with you. it's not easy because it's so different, and you don't see quote, unquote results right away. but you start to get a feeling of being relaxed, and your running will be a little easier. And the more you do it, it's like anything else. It's the practice effect. So you practice, you get better at it, and you enjoy it more just like running. When you're when you're starting out running, if you remember, I certainly do, I mean, I remember when I couldn't run a 10 minute mile, but yet at the age of forty, I ran a a

Finn Melanson [00:32:23]: 2 26

Guest [00:32:24]: marathon. I was running 10 ks in

Finn Melanson [00:32:27]: 31, 20, 31, 15,

Guest [00:32:31]: and that was at the age of forty, forty one. But when I started running, a 10 minute mile was impossible. So it, it was really difficult for a lot of runners to start out meditating because you're training your mind. Like, you're training your body. It's hard to do, but it's not just 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and that's all. So what time of day can you do this? right? Let me help you with that. Any time works. I like the morning, but let me give you something that I tell athletes that tell me they don't have any time. So we all brush our teeth at night. Right? if we're really good wheat floss, right, wheat floss. So what I want you to think about is how about this? How about brushing your teeth? What is that? Like, a minute? 2 minutes? floss your gums and polish your heart. There you go. Right? polishing your heart is Meditating, visualizing, and affirming 5 minutes before you go to bed. Don't lie down, sit in a chair in your bedroom. Press your teeth, wash your gums, polish your heart, 5 minutes, get into the habit, and you'll have plenty of time and you would have to worry about when am I gonna do this?

Finn Melanson [00:33:52]: I love that. Thank you for sharing. Do you have any last thoughts or a message you'd like to share with listeners before we go?

Guest [00:33:59]: I mean, without the fun factor, if you you shouldn't be running, have fun or don't run. Frederick away who wrote a wonderful book on the Santa of Running taught me that. He said when the fun of the run is done, don't run. Thanks

Finn Melanson [00:34:31]: for listening to the run to the top pod guest. I'm your host, Finn Malansen. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Applepod cast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premium access to contests and giveaways, and subscribe to our newsletter by going to runners connect dot net backslash podcast. Until next time. happy training.