Citation

Ferreira Dias Kanthack T, Guillot A, Ricardo Altimari L, Nunez Nagy S, Collet C, Di Rienzo F. PLoS One 2016; 11(3): e0149654.

Affiliation

Université de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Laboratoire Interuniversitaire de Biologie de la Motricité (LIBM), F-69622, Villeurbanne, France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0149654

PMID

26930279

Abstract

There is compelling evidence that motor imagery contributes to improved motor performance, and recent work showed that dynamic motor imagery (dMI) might provide additional benefits by comparison with traditional MI practice. However, the efficacy of motor imagery in different states of physical fatigue remains largely unknown, especially as imagery accuracy may be hampered by the physical fatigue states elicited by training. We investigated the effect of static motor imagery (sMI) and dMI on free-throw accuracy in 10 high-level basketball athletes, both in a non-fatigued state (Experiment 1) and immediately after an incremental running test completed until exhaustion (20m shuttle run-test-Experiment 2). We collected perceived exhaustion and heart rate to quantify the subjective experience of fatigue and energy expenditure. We found that dMI brought better shooting performance than sMI, except when athletes were physically exhausted. These findings shed light on the conditions eliciting optimal use of sMI and dMI. In particular, considering that the current physical state affects body representation, performing dMI under fatigue may result in mismatches between actual and predicted body states.

Language: en