Use Your Imagination to Avoid Springtime Aches and Pains! Prime Your Brain for Easier Movement

By Al Wadleigh, GCFP

Article Summary

Returning to gardening, hiking, biking, or other seasonal activities involves movements you may not have performed for months. This article explains how detailed motor imagery—mentally rehearsing actions such as bending, lifting, digging, twisting, pulling, and pushing—can help you prepare for those activities. Research on athletic imagery and brain activity suggests that imagined movement engages motor-related processes, while the author’s fence-building example offers a practical way to explore the idea.

Prime Your Brain for Easier, Better-Organized Movement

Spring is here! As you start getting outside to hike, bike, garden, and enjoy the weather, you may be surprised to find yourself experiencing some aches and pains.

That soreness can feel confusing. After all, these are activities you’ve done many times over the years.

But there’s an important detail many people overlook: Your nervous system may not be fully prepared for the movements required by those activities anymore.

How Imagination Improves Movement

Imagining movement activates many of the same neural pathways used during actual movement. Research on motor imagery and visualization shows that mentally rehearsing an action can improve coordination, learning, and performance.

In the Feldenkrais Method®, imagination is often used to improve movement organization, reduce unnecessary effort, and accelerate learning. By mentally rehearsing activities like gardening, hiking, lifting, or sports, we can help “prime” the nervous system for smoother, easier movement and potentially reduce soreness and strain.

Why Spring Activities Suddenly Feel Harder

When you think about gardening, you probably imagine what plants you want to grow and how beautiful everything will look later in the season.

That imagination is important because it helps motivate you.

But what often gets left out are the actual movements required to make that garden happen:

• bending
• lifting
• digging
• twisting
• kneeling
• pushing
• pulling
• reaching

If you haven’t done those activities for six months or more, the coordination patterns associated with those movements may become less accessible.

The nervous system becomes less prepared for the demands of bending, lifting, twisting, balancing, and coordinating effort efficiently.

This is one reason seasonal activities sometimes produce unexpected soreness—even when they are familiar activities.

Using Imagination to Prepare for Physical Activity

In Feldenkrais® lessons, we often use imagination to make movement easier and improve learning.

Sometimes we physically perform a movement sequence on one side and then simply imagine doing those same movements on the other side. The result is often a surprisingly quick transfer of learning from one side to the other.

Several well-known studies have shown that basketball players who mentally rehearse free throws from the sidelines significantly improve their ability to make free throws on the court.

When we vividly imagine movement, many of the same neural networks involved in actual movement become active.

With the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers can now observe what happens in the brain during imagined movement. Making a physical movement with your hand and vividly imagining the same movement activate many of the same areas of the brain.

Using imagination in this way can help “wake up” dormant movement patterns and prepare the nervous system for action.

This means that when we begin our favorite spring and summer activities, movement can feel easier, require less effort, and create less unnecessary soreness.

Example of an fMRI scan.

If you haven’t been doing those activities for six months or more, the associate motor pathways will have become dormant. 

Using our imagination, we can actuate those pathways to prime ourselves for easier, better-organized movements. So when we start our favorite spring and summer activities, they are easier, use less effort, and we experience less soreness.

Try This

Before your next walk, gardening session, workout, or hike:

Pause for 30 seconds and imagine yourself doing the activity.

• How do you bend?
• How do you shift your weight?
• How do your ribs and spine participate?
• How do your feet contact the ground?
• How do you breathe?
• How do your arms help transfer force?

Imagine the movement becoming smooth, coordinated, easy, and connected.

Then notice whether the actual activity feels different.

Here’s an example.

I recently installed a six-foot privacy fence along the north side of our yard. It had been several years since I last dug 24-inch fence-post holes in our lovely Colorado clay soil.

Before digging, I spent time vividly imagining the activity.

Imagining in detail helps prime my brain and nervous system for the actions I’m about to do.

How do I organize my pelvis?

How do my ribs and spine participate?

How do I transfer force through my legs?

What does it feel like when the shovel slices into the earth?

How do I breathe as I lift and throw the dirt?

What happens when the hole gets deep and I kneel down to scoop out the soil with my hands?

How does the soil smell and feel?

The more vivid and detailed the imagination, the more clearly the nervous system begins preparing for the action.

When I finally went outside and physically dug the holes, it felt surprisingly easy.

It wasn’t exactly the same as I imagined—but it was remarkably close.

Most importantly, I experienced no soreness afterward.

Prime Your Brain for Easier Movement

Movement begins long before the first action.

The nervous system is constantly predicting, organizing, and preparing for what we are about to do. Imagination can help activate these processes before physical effort even begins.

In Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® lessons, we often use imagination, attention, and gentle exploration to improve coordination, reduce unnecessary effort, and help movement become easier and more efficient.

If you’d like to explore this process directly, start with one of my guided lessons or online classes.

Explore More

Works Cited

1. Fazel, Fatemeh, et al. “The Effects of Different Types of Imagery Delivery on Basketball Free-Throw Shooting Performance and Self-Efficacy.” Psychology of Sport and Exercise, vol. 39, Nov. 2018, pp. 29–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.07.006.
2. Post, Phillip G., et al. “A Field Test of the Influence of Pre-Game Imagery on Basketball Free Throw Shooting.” Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity, vol. 5, no. 1, 25 Jan. 2010. https://doi.org/10.2202/1932-0191.1042.
3. Szameitat, André J., et al. “Motor Imagery of Complex Everyday Movements: An fMRI Study.” NeuroImage, vol. 34, no. 2, Jan. 2007, pp. 702–713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.09.033.
4. Van Oostende, Sylvie, et al. “fMRI Studies of the Supplementary Motor Area and the Premotor Cortex.” NeuroImage, vol. 6, no. 3, Oct. 1997, pp. 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1997.0287.