Thinking Positive

"Picture yourself in a place that's comfortable, very relaxing, perhaps on a beach with a golden sun," a hypnotic voice drones. "The temperature is comfortable and you're feeling good, strong, relaxed, at peace with yourself and the world. Now breathe in deeply and allow the oxygen to fill your lungs and as you exhale, lot any pressure you feel be released."

A casual observer might think that the Harvard men's swimming team practice is all work and no play. But what seems like an indulgence in fantasy is actually an exercise in meditation, a training technique which is becoming an extremely important part of many Harvard sports' training programs. The men's swimming, tennis, squash, and lightweight crew squads now regularly use deep relaxation techniques to improve athletic performance.

The basic techniques involve using a hypnotic state to mentally rehearse a moment or series of moments of competition to reduce nervousness, and review strategy and form.

Psychological studies have proven the mind's power to recreate vividly the five senses in the meditative state, explains men's tennis and squash coach David R. Fish '72, who has used the techniques individually on his players since 1977 and is in the process of expanding both teams' mental training programs. He adds, "The visualization is vivid down to the mouth's cotton taste, or sweaty palms."

Men's swim coach Joseph Bernal, accepted as reigning export on the subject at Harvard, tells of a Vietnam prisoner of war, who returning home after seven years, plays golf on his local course. Although emaciated and weak, he scores near per because he claims he has been practicing for years, mentally rehearsing the course as an escape from prison life.

Bernal has been advocating the use of psychological training since he developed the technique on himself 17 years ago, and claims that mental concentration makes up 60 to 70 percent of day to day training, and 90 percent of competition performance.

"When you step up on that starting block everyone's equal...it's a mental game in the water to see how tough you are, how mentally prepared you are to accept those challenges...The race doesn't go to the strongest team, the fastest team, but the one that's most intelligent," Bernal says.

With this goal in mind, Bernal has his swimmers spending four-five hours a week on mental training. Two and one half hours of this time are spent as a group each week in practice. Beyond that swimmers are expected to devote time on-their own, listening to a series of cassettes prepared for individual relaxation training.

Bernal claims that by the end of the season at the Eastern finals, his team is swimming a race that they have mentally rehearsed thousands of times before. Last year, for example, his "weak team" placed first at the Eastern Seaboard Championships because of their mental preparedness, he says.

"Fifty percent of the time you fail if you haven't prepared mentally," Bernal adds, explaining that advance mental rehearsal gives an athlete a sense of control that leads to confidence. "It teaches you how to make that nervous feeling you get before a performance an ally--your body letting you know that it's ready to perform."

Visualization techniques give the athlete "a whole different attitude towards competition," says tennis player Peter A. Palandjian '87, who says he now hopes that "the opponent plays well to challenge himself."

Under the direction of Coach Bruce Beall, the lightweight crew team has been working with similar meditative techniques since last spring, concentrating on the skill of attention focusing. "In the realm of the mind you can go to L.A. and back," says Beall, explaining that his crew's weekly group session and individual tape practice help the rower keep positive concentration during a race.

"Psychologically, being behind is something very difficult to recover from," says John Kabat-Zinn, Director of the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program at U. Mass, and Beall's aide in the focus on meditation.

"Because rowing is so intense and anarobic, the oarsmen encounter pain, fatigue, and thoughts of doubts as to their capacity to maintain the pace. Meditation can train you not to buy into these thoughts so they won't drain your energy," he adds.

Beall and Kabat-Zinn were convinced of the usefulness of meditation at the summer Olympics in L.A. this' year, where Beall placed seventh in the Quadruple Scull Division and Kabat-Zinn led daily meditation sessions for all interested Olympic rowers.

About 30 percent of the U.S. rowers participated, claiming afterward that it really helped, said Kabat-Zinn. After this verbal encouragement, he and Beall tried this fall to prove scientifically that meditation increases the synchronic and speed of a boat, with a controlled test on the sophomores of the team.

Although no firm results were drawn because of a series of uncontrollable variables including problems with the testing equipment--electrodes and transgenetics receiver--and difficulties with scheduling, Kabat-Zinn says he hoped to try the experiment again, possibly later this year.

In the mean time, the oarsmen have one weekly group meditation session during practice and are asked to spend 15 minutes a day of their own time meditating to a tape produced by Kabat-Zinn.

Both swimmers and oarsmen are enthusiastic about their new regimen. Rower Geoffrey S. Gage '87 cites the new meditation program as "one of the reasons I wanted to row this year."

Members of the tennis team are similarly convinced about the visualization techniques: "It's helped me tremendously," said Palandjian. Squash team members who have just begun the training this year, remain doubtful. "We've laughed at it a bit," said one player who asked to remain unidentified.

Squash co-captain, David A. Boyum '85 disagrees; "It can be really useful," he says, but qualifies that the success of the techniques are hard to prove. "You can't figure out what would have happened if you had prepared differently," he adds.

According to Coach Fish, when used correctly, the techniques can have a "ripple effect," on the players' whole life, "shifting the way you see things."

The subject of sports psychology has a growing number of athletic believers, according to Douglas H. Powell, psychologist at U.H.S., yet mans Harvard training programs make no use of what Fish terms, "one of the keys to athletic success."

The men's basketball team outshot the national college foulshooting record by four percent last year, but Coach Frank McLaughlin says, "we don't have enough time with Harvard's academic pressures," to experiment with meditation. His coaching theories however, stress many similar point review strategy carefully before the games, reduce negative thoughts, "relax and just play."

As far as meditation's usefulness on other teams, McLaughlin says. "I think that they were going to be successful anyway...it doesn't hurt but the athletes were already strong."

Wrestling coach John Lee expresses another common reason for the lack of interest in the techniques, "I guess we feel we're doing O.K. the way it's been going."

Says Columbia crew coach Ted Bonnano, "(They) are always a threat whether they use meditation techniques or not."