VISUALISATION
“W ith visualisation, you know where the dif icult moments in the race will be and can visualise how it will feel, and the stress you experience”
Martijn Veldkamp is a Dutch psychologist who has studied pro cycling. In the course of researching his book on the topic, The Hidden Motor, he learned that like Cancellara, many riders only realised the benefits of psychological help when they needed it to remedy a problem.
“After they had experienced a dip, they learned so much on a psychological level about dealing with setbacks and how they can use it to improve performance,” he says. “They said it was a turning point in their career and they wished they had had that experience at an earlier age and they would have performed better, sooner.”
Psychological gains, Veldkamp argues, can come from using visualisation to overcome what psychologists call the performance paradox, where athletes bypass their highly-trained sporting intuition, or instinct, in high-pressure scenarios. It’s why so many footballers miss crucial penalty kicks. Using the conscious, analytical parts of their brain, highly trained athletes – or entire teams - become no better, psychologically speaking, than your average Joe. “Cycling is fast; you should rely on intuition because you have thousands of hours of experience, but that autopilot is switched off when most riders feel pressure,” Veldkamp says. “With visualisation, you know where the difficult moments in the race will be and you can visualise how it will be, how it will feel, the stress you experience. You also work on a specific solution.”