The following headline news item in the Sports page of the March 24 issue of Inquirer caught my interest and attention: “Paeng wants PH mental game strong.”

The news story quoted internationally renowned world bowling champion Paeng Nepomuceno, newly appointed national bowling head coach, as saying, “Aside from physical game and training, I will concentrate on the importance of the mental game of the bowling athletes.”

I have always been a consistent and persistent advocate of the importance of mental training, not only in sports, but also in many other areas of human activity. Since 1988, I have been conducting seminars which emphasized mental imagery and visualization in the achievement of goals.

This is not at all a new idea, but now there is more empirical evidence that mental training does wonders to achieving peak performance in sports.

In 1972, Timothy Gallwey and others came up with the book “The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance.” It was reprinted on paperback in 1992.

I first met Tim in the 1990s during a conference of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), where we were both invited as resource speakers or faculty.

In that conference, Tim showed an impressive video of how he taught a Hawaiian matron, who had never held a tennis racket before, how to play tennis in just 15 minutes, using music, rhythm and mental imagery.

I remember an article I read in a magazine many years ago about an experiment on visualization to improve basketball performance. The objective of the study was to determine whether visualization alone could improve a basketball player’s free throw performance.

Imagining free throws

The subjects were divided into three groups, after getting their baseline free throw performance. The first group (A) was asked to actually do free throws in the gym for 30 minutes. The second group (B) was asked not to play at all nor even hold a basketball for the same experimental period. The third group (C) was asked to go to the gym but not to play with the ball. They were asked to sit down and imagine doing free throws for 30 minutes without holding any ball.

The results of this experiment were as follows: group A, which actually went to play, improved its performance by 25 percent; group B, which was told to forget the game and not play at all, declined in performance; third group C, which merely imagined or visualized free throws, improved its performance by 23 percent.

The difference between actually playing the game and merely visualizing it was only 2 percent.

Mental training

It is known that the reason the Russians were getting most of the gold medals at the Olympics in the 1970s was due to the mental training they underwent, compared to physical training.

According to reports, their training consisted of 75 percent mental vs 25 percent physical training, while Americans were doing 75 percent physical and only 25 percent mental training. When the Americans increased mental training of their athletes to 75 percent, they started getting as many gold medals as the Russians.

What makes the phenomenal golf champion Tiger Woods formidable on the golf course was not only his physical prowess, but also his strong mental focus and determination. He got his physical discipline apparently from his Green Beret father, and his mental discipline from his Buddhist mother.

Legendary Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson did the same thing to overturn the losing streak of his players, making them champions for several seasons. He made them study meditation and do yoga. Jackson also applied American Indian spiritual practices in his couching approach.

He told them to read the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which had nothing to do with basketball or sports. The players cursed Jackson at the beginning, but adored him in the end. They called him the Zen Master.

Visualization, mental imagery or imagination is the key to peak performance, especially in sports. All athletes are trained in similar ways as far as the physical aspect is concerned. They can only differ in their mental training, focus and determination.

Paeng Nepomuceno, therefore, is on the right track in giving greater emphasis to the mental training of his bowlers.

The next Inner Mind Development seminar will be on April 9-10,  9 a.m.-5 p.m.  Call 8107245 or  0998-9886292;  e-mail [email protected].