This was the case with a friend& of ours. At a relatively young age, they had a unit on archery in gym class, and were able immediately to demonstrate a relatively high level of skill. They generally did not do well in most athletics (although they were champion distance swimmers).
Unknown to anyone else, the group had learnt archery in the Scouts a year or two before, so had a grounding in the basics. One of them had taken this knowledge back to his own world and constantly practiced. So while the rest of the gym class were still trying to figure out how to get the arrow onto the string, this gentleman came forward and hit bull's eye after bull's eye without even seeming to half try.
A mental practice effect definitely exists. We saw a piece on television about Olympic figure skaters who are taught "guided imagery" simply to familiarize themselves with running through their routines mentally, accompanied by the music they planned to use. I believe the woman interviewed said she felt this helped her by about 10%-15%, but that since she also did plenty of physical, earth world practice, she couldn't really judge how much the mental runthroughs helped overall, only that they did.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: I agree with you somewhat,
Date: 2004-10-16 12:40 pm (UTC)Unknown to anyone else, the group had learnt archery in the Scouts a year or two before, so had a grounding in the basics. One of them had taken this knowledge back to his own world and constantly practiced. So while the rest of the gym class were still trying to figure out how to get the arrow onto the string, this gentleman came forward and hit bull's eye after bull's eye without even seeming to half try.
A mental practice effect definitely exists. We saw a piece on television about Olympic figure skaters who are taught "guided imagery" simply to familiarize themselves with running through their routines mentally, accompanied by the music they planned to use. I believe the woman interviewed said she felt this helped her by about 10%-15%, but that since she also did plenty of physical, earth world practice, she couldn't really judge how much the mental runthroughs helped overall, only that they did.