To follow along to the next question whether or not he or she knows how to specifically use the imagery is the question. If an athlete is not properly using the imagery in my mind it can hurt the athlete. An athlete can base imagery totally only a me attitude. To be successful you work as a team. In order to be a team use have to think as a team. In order to think as a team you have to visualize the chemistry of the team in your head. It all runs together. If you are only thinking of yourself in your visualizations of the game it may take away from your performance. .
The body is one of the main importances of athletic performance. It is a sporting machine, that gives and takes, and what can be trained to a peak fitness and nerves that control the muscles. The nerves link up with your brain. Which leads to simply that the mind is a key ingredient to the performance as well. They say the reason why it takes so long to reach maturity is because compared to animals we have tons more of nerve cells in our brain. Realistically the brain seems to be very disorganized. The very process of growing up consists of different factors. Education and maturity are the way of solving the major confusion of the brain.
Much of the improvements of the process of learning and improvement of sport reflexes is modification, the lying down, and strengthening of nerve pathways in our body and brains. There are certain nerves that lie outside of the body and spine that require physical training. Several pathways lie with in the brain, which can be trained by the use of imagery and mental stimulation. .
There are several experiments done on sports imagery. .
In 1992 Anne Isaac did a study which examined the influences on mental imagery practice on sport skills. Most of the tests show positive results on the mental imagery process. Although, these results are positive none of them were actually performed in an actual field context using subjects who are familiar with actual sport skills rather than a beginner who is just athletically capable.