Boxer Sonny Liston would imagine that all that stood between him and a date with Lena Horne was the guy on the other side of the ring. As a teenager, Muhammad Ali's bike was stolen. As a fighter, he would imagine that his opponent was the one who stole it. Plimpton strongly prefers winning to losing, but finds that simply playing is the best thing, in any sport. Dr. Jack Raglin , an associate professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, researches the psychology of sports and exercise.
Some athletes do better under the pressure of pre-competition anxiety, others thrive when relaxed.
Overtraining is a major problem with athletes in many sports, and can lead to a chronic drop in performance for weeks or months, even clinical depression and medical disturbances. New brain imaging studies show that merely thinking about movement increases activity in the motor cortex, suggesting that mental practice can be a useful supplement for physical training. You can reach Dr. Jack Raglin in the Department of Kinesiology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ohio, 47405. It's often been said that the toughest thing in sports is hitting a 95 mile an hour fast ball. To find out what it takes to do it consistently, The Infinite Mind's Bill Lichtenstein went to the visitor's dugout of Yankee Stadium to interview Wade Boggs of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, one of the greatest hitters of all time.