Summary

Mental imagery practice is widely used to help athletes prepare for competitions, as it can produce motor actions that enhance performance. The goal of imagery training for athletes is to create realistic images in their minds and to familiarize them with certain procedures, environments, and other aspects related to competition. This project explored how far a virtual reality environment can support athletes in their mental imagery practice when approaching the start gate or when going downhill.

Acknowledgement

This project was funded by High Performance Sports NZ.

Contact

Stephan Lukosch 

Research Publications

• Wu Y, Lukosch S, Lukosch H, Lindeman RW, McKee RD, Fukuden S, Ross C and Collins D (2023). Training mental imagery skills of elite athletes in virtual reality. Front. Virtual Real. 4:1189717. https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1189717
• Wu Y, Lukosch S, Lukosch H, Lindeman R, McKee R, Fukuden S, Ross C and Collins D (2022). Feasibility of Training Elite Athletes for Improving their Mental Imagery Ability Using Virtual Reality. In Workshop Proceedings – 2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VRW). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/VRW55335.2022.00172.

Media

• High Performance Sports NZ. (March 2022). Adam Hall’s Virtual Reality.
• Knowler, R. (4 March 2022). Paralympics: Alpine skier Adam Hall reveals the ‘insane’ technology for NZ team, Stuff Limited.

People