Learning Principle 7 of 7: Mental Practice
Mental practice for magicians.
Visualize detailed, flawless performances, especially before falling asleep. Mental practice adds rehearsal time that costs you no props, no table, and no privacy.
Table of contents
Physical practice has a limit each day. Mental practice doesn't. You can run a trick in your head on the train, in a waiting room, or in the last few minutes before you fall asleep, and nobody nearby will know you're doing it.
For an art built on secrets, that's a real advantage. It's also backed by more research than most magicians would guess.
What mental practice is.
Mental practice means imagining a complete performance, start to finish, in as much detail as you can manage: what your hands do, what you say, where you look, what the spectator does, and how it feels when the timing is right. No props, and no movement.
Daydreaming about applause doesn't count, and neither does positive thinking. A mental rehearsal has to be able to go wrong. If you lose your place halfway through, that tells you the same thing it would with props in your hands.
What the research says.
In 1994, James Driskell, Carolyn Copper, and Aidan Moran reviewed the published experiments on mental practice. Their conclusion: it improves performance. Not as much as physical practice does, but reliably, and more so the more thinking a task involves.
A magic trick involves a great deal of thinking. Sequence, script, timing, where to look, and what to do when a spectator does something unexpected are all mental work, and all of it can be rehearsed without touching a prop.
A year later, a team led by Alvaro Pascual-Leone taught volunteers a 5-finger piano exercise. One group practiced at the keyboard for 2 hours a day, for 5 days. A second group spent the same hours only imagining the exercise. The brain's motor maps changed in both groups, and after 5 days the mental practice group played as well as the physical group had on day 3. They then needed very little physical practice to catch up.
Just as your muscles need physical repetition to develop motor skills, your mind needs mental repetition. The 2 kinds of practice appear to share some of the same machinery.
A 5-finger piano exercise
Two groups learned the same exercise, and put in the same hours.
At the keyboard
2 hours a day, for 5 days
Day
1
Day
2
Day
3
Day
4
Day
5
Level with day 3
Imagined only
The same hours, no keyboard
Day
1
Day
2
Day
3
Day
4
Day
5
Motor maps changed in both groups. After 5 days, the group that only imagined the exercise played as well as the keyboard group had on day 3, and needed very little physical practice to catch up.
What it can't do.
Mental practice is an addition, not a replacement. It won't teach your fingers a sleight they've never done, and the 1994 review found the benefit fades within a few weeks if you stop. It also found that longer sessions did worse than shorter ones, and suggested keeping mental practice to about 20 minutes. Short runs, several times a day, fit that well.
How to practice a trick in your head.
- Start from the first word you'd say, not from the first move.
- Run it at performance speed. Skipping ahead to the good part is how weak spots stay hidden.
- Picture it through your own eyes, then from the spectator's chair.
- Imagine a flawless performance. You're building the pattern you want your body to follow.
- When you blank on what comes next, make a note of where. That's tomorrow's physical practice.
Focusing on perfect execution forces you to rely on Strenuous Recollection as interruptions and distractions come and go through the day (Spaced Intervals + Alternating Methods). The interruptions are doing you a favor.
Morning
On the commute
Midday
In line at the store
Afternoon
Waiting for coffee
Evening
On a walk
Night
Before you fall asleep
Why before sleep.
The last few minutes before sleep are the best time for it. Nothing is competing for your attention, and whatever you rehearse is the last thing in before your brain's night shift starts.
That night shift is real. In a 2002 study, people who learned a finger-tapping sequence were about 20% faster after a night of sleep, with no practice in between, and no better after the same number of hours awake. In 2009, a team led by Ursula Debarnot found the same kind of overnight gain after mental practice alone. Whether the minutes right before sleep beat any other time of day hasn't been settled, so treat that part as a good bet, not a finding. It costs you nothing either way.
How Trickifi applies it.
Trickifi can't see inside your head, so Mental Practice is the one principle it can only encourage. At the end of each practice day, you're reminded to keep rehearsing mentally during downtime, especially before sleep. It isn't timed, and it isn't scored.
Where it shows up is in your next Cold Rehearsal. A trick you've been running in your head all week comes back faster, and the recording will show it.
Sources.
James E. Driskell, Carolyn Copper, and Aidan Moran (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4).
A review of mental practice experiments: it improves performance, works best on tasks with more thinking in them, fades over a few weeks, and works best in sessions of about 20 minutes.
Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues (1995). Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74(3).
The piano study: 5 days of imagined practice changed the motor maps much as physical practice did, and matched day 3 of physical practice.
Matthew P. Walker, Tiffany Brakefield, Alexandra Morgan, J. Allan Hobson, and Robert Stickgold (2002). Practice with sleep makes perfect: Sleep-dependent motor skill learning. Neuron, 35(1).
A motor sequence was performed about 20% faster after a night of sleep, with no practice in between.
Ursula Debarnot and colleagues (2009). Sleep-related improvements in motor learning following mental practice. Brain and Cognition, 69(2).
A task learned through mental practice alone also improved further after a night of sleep.
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