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This sounds totally stupid but it's true — it turns out that visualising your intended outcome makes winning more believable, and prevents your brain from sabotaging itself. (Note this isn't some materialising your destiny bullshit, but more 'defence against self-sabotage')

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Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Jun 25, 2021

Replying to @justinmulvs @itsmeammario and @RonFriedman

I think I've never internalised this fully. I learnt fairly late that Jimmy Pedro (the US National Judo Coach that coached 4 Olympians) does vision training with his athletes. They're expected to visualise the series of matches they have to win all the way up being on the podium.

2:55 AM · Jun 25, 2021TweetDeck

Replying to

Kayla Harrison, on this visualisation regiment: youtube.com/watch?v=fCoRKa And an equivalent article about this practice:

washingtonpost.com

For Olympians, seeing (in their minds) is believing (it can happen)

Visualization techniques are helping athletes maximize their physical potential.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Jun 25, 2021

Here's the exact point in the

@lexfridman

interview with Jimmy Pedro where he talks about the visualisation game:

youtube.com

Jimmy Pedro: Judo | Take It Uneasy Podcast

Jimmy Pedro is an American judo competitor and coach, World champion, 3x World medalist, 2x Olympic medalist; we talk about his father (Big Jim Pedro Sr), hi...

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Aug 16, 2021

Well, that explains a lot. (From Accelerated Expertise, Chapter 4)

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Left Brain Right Stuff has a persuasive explanation of this. It's especially easy for "logical" types to understand

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Heh, I was going to add it to my toread, but then I learnt that it was already on my toread list. goodreads.com/book/show/1999

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This is taught in weightlifting quite often. Same as lying about the exact weight and saying it’s a bit lighter

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Incredible, I feel like such an idiot for not knowing about this earlier.

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Travis Stevens (one of Pedro’s students) does this too - super good judo and bjj competitor

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Oh I love them and follow them both. <3

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There's a cool book called With Winning In Mind by an Olympic shooting champion. When journalists asked him about the (rare) shots that he missed he would say "I never think about them". So the corollary to visualizing the wins may be aggressively burying the losses.

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and

He gives further examples of poor coaching advice, like telling a baseball player "not to strike out" because by saying that the player immediately visualizes striking out a la "don't think of a pink elephant"

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