Effect of imagery practice program on imagery ability, imagery function, and self-confidence among Thai sport school cyclists

The purpose of the study was to examine the imagery program among cycling student at Thailand Sport School. Thailand’s cyclists were unable to achieve excellent performance due to the athletes’ weakness in their mental strategies as well as physical fitness condition. The specific objective of the study were to identify the differences between pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 scores on imagery ability, visual (VI) and kinesthetic (KI), imagery functions: cognitive general (CG), cognitive specific (CS), motivation specific (MS), motivation general-mastery (MG-M), motivation generalarousal (MG-A), self-confidence (SC) and Timing for Riding Bike 2 km (TRB 2 km). A group of 66 cycling-students, 46 male and 20 female were randomly assigned into equally experiment group (n=33), and control group (n=33). Both groups were studied for 10 weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Instruments of the study were, imagery ability measure MIQ-R (Hall & Martin, 1997), and sport imagery questionnaire (SIQ) consisted of 28-items to measure self-confidence. Timing of bike 2 km (TRB) was used to measure cycling skills. Data was analyzed by ANOVA was use to test the hypothesis of the study at .05 p-values. Results found that the imagery ability: visualization (VI) had increased in scores across the three different periods. There was an increase in kinesthetic (KI) scores across the three different periods. All of imagery functions (CG, CS, MS, MG-A, MG-M) had increased across the three different periods. Self-confidence (SC) had also improved in score across the three different periods, as well as the riding time 2 km (TRB). This research indicated that a physical program of cycling combined with imagery practice does improve cycling mental imagery and selfconfidence. The sport school athletes perform better due to their use of mental imagery practice to enhance their mental skill through relaxation and direct imagery. Hence, coaching program of cycling should match imagery practice with the scheduled cycling routines.

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