Some other uses could be purely organizational, such as positional playing in football or sequencing stunts in figure skating. Others could be motivational. A player trying to make an Olympic team may use the imagined consequences as a goal-focusing technique. Another may be purely activational as is the case with power lifters who go through almost theatrical activities to generate the highest level of excitation possible prior to a competitive lift. In other events attention and mental rehearsal may be directed toward achieving an optimum level of arousal for a particular competitive task.
Neuromuscular facilitation is very important for events such as high jumping.
The minor head, arm, and leg movements are in concert with intended rhythms and sequences of activities. These examples, and their combinations, are usually a relatively brief transient process aimed at a specific performance, whereas the use of mental practice for skill learning has the goal of bringing about a relatively permanent behavior change acquired gradually over prolonged time. Ordinarily, performance preparation procedures are applied to tasks that are fully automated. With such tasks it is not only unnecessary to attend to performance components, such as portions of a golf swing or elbow position when shooting a basketball, but it could be ill-advised and highly destructive to performance to allow such attention to take place. During learning, attentional resources are needed for creating a mental performance template and for modifying and correcting features of performance.