How to Learn Skills With Visualization & Mental Training

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00:00:02.600 | There's a wonderful systematic review

00:00:05.620 | of a large number of studies

00:00:07.440 | that have looked at mental training and visualization,

00:00:09.380 | what's effective, what's less effective

00:00:11.640 | across a bunch of different disciplines

00:00:13.320 | that include education, medicine, music,

00:00:15.180 | psychology, and sports.

00:00:16.680 | We will provide a link to this paper

00:00:17.980 | in the show note captions,

00:00:18.840 | but the title of the paper is

00:00:20.000 | "Best Practice for Motor Imagery,

00:00:21.520 | a Systematic Literature Review

00:00:23.140 | on Motor Imagery Training Elements

00:00:24.860 | in Five Different Disciplines."

00:00:26.420 | As the title suggests,

00:00:27.440 | it's mainly for motor imagery training,

00:00:30.800 | but it extends into music,

00:00:32.880 | which of course involves motor training and execution,

00:00:36.120 | but as well as education.

00:00:38.180 | This review establishes a number

00:00:39.520 | of different important things.

00:00:40.400 | I'm going to read off some of the key

00:00:42.920 | or highlight takeaways.

00:00:44.800 | For instance, I described principle one

00:00:47.200 | of effective mental training and visualization,

00:00:49.560 | which is that the visualization be brief

00:00:52.040 | and it be simple and it be repeated.

00:00:53.880 | You may ask how many times

00:00:55.880 | that very brief five to 15 second exercise

00:00:59.040 | of going through some routine should be repeated.

00:01:02.620 | Well, different studies have used different ranges

00:01:05.080 | of let's call them repetitions in a given training session,

00:01:08.540 | but the number that seems to be most effective

00:01:11.420 | is somewhere between 50 and 75 repeats per session.

00:01:16.360 | That brings about the question

00:01:17.360 | of how long one should rest between each repeat.

00:01:21.440 | This gets a little tricky

00:01:22.360 | depending on what you're trying to do.

00:01:24.600 | Remember that we have this kind of threshold

00:01:26.720 | of about 15 seconds for completion

00:01:28.700 | of the entire motor sequence.

00:01:30.100 | Let's say what you're trying to do,

00:01:31.340 | like a golf swing takes you five seconds

00:01:33.740 | to imagine in your mind's eye from the point where you,

00:01:37.400 | let's just say, have the ball on the tee,

00:01:38.920 | you bring the golf club up,

00:01:40.900 | you might reposition your feet just a little bit,

00:01:43.560 | you know, that kind of little wiggle that golfers do,

00:01:46.040 | and then the swing.

00:01:46.900 | If that whole thing takes five seconds in your mind's eye

00:01:49.960 | and roughly five seconds in the real world,

00:01:52.240 | well, then you'd be able to repeat it, of course,

00:01:53.880 | three times in 15 seconds.

00:01:55.660 | That would be one repetition,

00:01:58.640 | even though you're doing it three times.

00:02:00.080 | So it's one 15 second epoch, as it's sometimes called,

00:02:03.360 | E-P-O-C-H, epoch.

00:02:05.200 | And then you would rest

00:02:06.500 | for an approximately equivalent amount of time,

00:02:09.800 | 15 seconds or so, and then repeat.

00:02:12.880 | And rest 15 seconds or so, and then repeat.

00:02:16.500 | Rest 15 seconds, and then repeat.

00:02:18.480 | Again, three golf swings within that 15 seconds,

00:02:21.040 | rest 15 seconds.

00:02:21.960 | Three golf swings within that 15 seconds, rest 15 seconds.

00:02:25.160 | Truth told, these epochs and these rest periods

00:02:28.280 | do not need to be exact.

00:02:30.780 | You could imagine, for instance,

00:02:32.400 | that you get three repetitions of the swing

00:02:35.580 | within 14 seconds.

00:02:37.120 | Well, then do you do another one

00:02:38.300 | or do you wait until the end of that 15 seconds?

00:02:40.120 | I encourage you not to obsess too much

00:02:42.480 | about those sorts of points.

00:02:43.960 | Rather, you want to do as many repeats as you can

00:02:46.880 | in about a 15 second epoch,

00:02:50.600 | and then rest for about 15 seconds,

00:02:52.680 | and then repeat for a total of 50 to 75 repetitions.

00:02:56.640 | Which might not sound like a lot to some of you,

00:02:59.400 | might sound like an awful lot to others of you.

00:03:02.560 | To me, it sounds like a lot.

00:03:03.840 | You know, 50 repetitions of something

00:03:05.400 | and where you're trying to concentrate in your mind's eye

00:03:07.400 | on getting something accomplished over and over and over again

00:03:10.880 | in exactly the same way, might seem like a lot.

00:03:13.040 | We know, based on the learning literature,

00:03:15.380 | that your ability to successfully perform something

00:03:19.040 | in the real world will lend itself to better performance

00:03:21.720 | of that thing in the imagined world within your mind's eye.

00:03:25.560 | That's also one of these sort of does.

00:03:27.520 | But if you're trying to get better at something

00:03:30.280 | that you've never performed before,

00:03:31.880 | you really should know that.

00:03:33.080 | The mental training visualization

00:03:34.720 | is probably not the best augment to that real world training

00:03:38.640 | until you're able to perform it successfully

00:03:41.400 | in the real world at least some of the time.

00:03:44.500 | Mental training visualization can be effective, however,

00:03:48.080 | at increasing the accuracy or the frequency

00:03:51.760 | which you can do that real world behavior.

00:03:54.880 | So if normally you're only getting the correct swing

00:03:57.080 | or you're only hitting the golf ball correctly,

00:04:00.200 | say 10% of the time mental training and visualization

00:04:02.360 | can really help bring that number up.

00:04:04.480 | But it is important that you are able to successfully

00:04:06.800 | complete that motor task in the real world.

00:04:08.760 | Similarly for performance of cognitive tasks.

00:04:11.320 | So say for instance, speaking a new language,

00:04:15.520 | you might ask, well, gosh, what in the landscape

00:04:18.200 | of speaking a new language can be restricted

00:04:20.420 | to five to 15 seconds where I could repeat it

00:04:22.520 | anywhere from one to three times in a given epoch

00:04:25.960 | and then rest and then keep repeating 50 to 75 times.

00:04:29.320 | Well, there I would encourage you to pick something

00:04:31.560 | that you are able to do perhaps very slowly.

00:04:34.200 | So to speak a particular sentence,

00:04:36.960 | but with some challenge in getting the accent

00:04:39.640 | and the enunciation right,

00:04:40.880 | but you've completed it successfully before

00:04:43.480 | and you want to get more smooth or more fluid with it.

00:04:46.080 | Likewise for playing piano or guitar.

00:04:49.040 | Again, you have to translate to the specific cognitive

00:04:51.360 | and or motor activity that you are seeking to improve at.

00:04:55.880 | But those epochs lasting five to 15 seconds

00:04:59.720 | are really the cornerstone of an effective mental training

00:05:02.280 | and visualization practice.

00:05:03.440 | And the repeated nature of it 50 to 75 repetitions

00:05:07.000 | in a given session is also another cornerstone

00:05:10.060 | of an effective mental training and visualization practice.

00:05:12.960 | So says this review and some of the other papers

00:05:15.520 | that I'm going to get to in a few moments.

00:05:17.840 | Now, one of the other key components

00:05:20.700 | of a successful mental training and visualization practice

00:05:23.520 | is how often you perform that mental training

00:05:26.240 | and visualization practice.

00:05:27.680 | And again, a number of different studies

00:05:30.440 | have looked at this through a number of different lenses,

00:05:32.960 | meaning anywhere from two to eight times per week.

00:05:37.580 | It does appear that performing these sessions

00:05:40.680 | anywhere from three to five times per week

00:05:43.040 | is going to be effective.

00:05:44.700 | We could perhaps even say most effective

00:05:46.400 | because most of the, let's just call it the strongest data

00:05:50.400 | really point to repeating these 50 to 75 trials

00:05:53.840 | of the same thing three to five times per week.

00:05:56.400 | So you can come up with a number

00:05:58.280 | that's reasonable for you to do consistently.

00:06:00.680 | And you might ask, do you have to continue

00:06:04.120 | to perform the mental training and visualization forever?

00:06:07.240 | And the good news is the answer to that question is no.

00:06:10.340 | It does seem that once you have what's called consolidated

00:06:14.560 | the motor performance or the cognitive performance

00:06:17.080 | of something, it can be further supported or reinforced.

00:06:21.040 | That is consolidated in the neural circuits

00:06:23.560 | that are responsible for performing

00:06:25.120 | that mental or physical task.

00:06:27.360 | So in other words, once you are performing

00:06:29.340 | that cognitive or motor task in a way that's satisfactory

00:06:33.320 | or perhaps just improved, perhaps you're not 100%,

00:06:36.360 | but it's improved in the real world,

00:06:38.160 | you don't need to continue to do mental training

00:06:40.360 | and visualization to maintain that real world performance.

00:06:44.380 | So that's a good thing.

00:06:45.220 | In fact, the ideal situation would be

00:06:47.900 | then to pick a different sequence

00:06:50.640 | or thing that you're trying to learn

00:06:51.760 | and do mental training and visualization for that.

00:06:54.420 | I perhaps might've misspoke there,

00:06:56.560 | although I don't want to edit this out.

00:06:58.480 | I misspoke in the sense that, again, I said,

00:07:01.960 | for the thing that you're trying to learn,

00:07:03.440 | remember mental training and visualization

00:07:05.480 | is going to be most effective for building up

00:07:08.920 | the number of accurate trials

00:07:11.200 | or your ability to do something with a greater frequency

00:07:14.640 | of something that you're already capable of doing

00:07:17.720 | or have done at least once in the real world, okay?

00:07:21.220 | This is not to say that mental training and visualization

00:07:23.360 | can't be used to acquire new skills.

00:07:26.520 | It can in principle,

00:07:28.080 | but it has been shown to be most effective

00:07:30.280 | for enhancing the speed and the accuracy of skills

00:07:33.200 | that one has already demonstrated some degree

00:07:35.800 | of proficiency at in the real world.

00:07:38.160 | I think that's important to point out

00:07:40.000 | because we often hear mental training visualization

00:07:42.680 | and this equivalence of perceptual and motor experiences

00:07:45.080 | in our mind's eye to the real world.

00:07:46.600 | And we think, oh, all we have to do

00:07:47.880 | is imagine doing something and we will get better at it.

00:07:50.960 | And unfortunately, that's not the case.

00:07:52.680 | The good news is, however, if you can do something once,

00:07:55.260 | even very slowly in the real world,

00:07:57.280 | and then you bring it to the mental imagery

00:08:00.460 | and visualization domain,

00:08:01.640 | you can get much faster at it

00:08:02.800 | in a way that really does translate back to the real world.

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How to Learn Skills With Visualization & Mental Training | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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