Visualization in Running Training
Improving Focus and Running by Using Mind Talk and Visual Pictures
Runners who train the mind can improve their concentration and their finishing position in their next race. Visualization can be included in running schedules and races.
Olympian double gold medalist, world champion and world records holder Haile Gebrselassie said “I believe that the mind is very important in sport”. Runners who use visualization with personalised imaging in their running training can talk to themselves using their mind to improve their concentration, their running and their racing.
In Jim Denison’s authorised biography The Greatest: The Haile Gebrselassie Story (Breakaway Books New York, 2004), Haile Gebrselassie talks about visualization in his distance running training at a press conference. In his own words, Haile Gebrselassie says “Of course training isn’t boring to me” “What do I think about when I run? I think about my family, and I go over each one of their faces in my mind…” “Yes, running is private and personal and something soothing to me”.
Talking to Improve Concentration and Running
Runners train for many reasons including weight loss, friendship, and discipline and preparing for a race. Whatever the goal, training will get hard at some point. Runners in training push themselves in many ways towards:
- losing those last few pounds of weight
- going for a run when they feel low for the uplift of running group friendships
- doing each session of the schedule well whatever life brings
- focusing on running faster to run faster in the next race
Runners who talk and visualize in training can coach themselves towards achieving their goal with straightforward instructions such as “Come on [their name]” or “I can do it” repeated in their minds. Reciting poetry in the mind while running, line by line learnt off by heart can work as an alternative to improving concentration and mood.
Runners aiming to improve mood and running through talking in training and racing could sing – in their mind rather than aloud – a song that connects with them personally such as the sports anthem 'You’ll Never Walk Alone', the song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical theatre production Carousel.
Focus on Current Running
Running training and racing can bring distractions from quality running with the climate, the other runners, hills and so on. A runner’s running form and breathing can deteriorate if focus on current running slides. Concentration can be sharpened by the visualisation of contrast images of the external environment from the runner’s mind. Such visual pictures will be personal and should be soothing to the runner such as:
- Racing through a stretch of flooded road, with 3 degrees Celsius water up to the knee could be tackled in the mind with the thought of equally cold but snowy runs in training.
- Running a hill in a 31 degrees Celsius ambient heat could be visualised as the stamina of moving a wheelbarrow across a hilly garden wilderness in the summer.
- Seeing the faces of your family – whether they are there at the race or not – at the finishing line.
In 'How to think like a champion' (Runners World, February 2005), visualizing breaking the tape is set out as, "Picture yourself crossing the finish line. Think about how you will feel with 500m to go. Your friends and family are waiting for you. Imagine breaking the tape, the time on the clock and how elated you'll feel. Repeat this visualisation for one to three minutes before the race".
Visualization of personalised pictures, while training and racing, offers a way of focusing efforts on the current running, to be kicked in with talking (and singing) in the mind, when needed. More information about the impact of poor running form on aches and pains can be found in Painful Neck After Running.
Runners know that sometimes they desire to switch off during running and at other times they wish to run to improve other aspects of their life. Further information about mood, physical exercise and creativity can be found in Enhancing Creativity with Running.
