Visualization is a powerful tool for achieving faster and better workout results. Visualization is important during stretching, aerobic exercise and weight-training.

What are you doing when you visualize? In the case of stretching and exercise, you are seeing the working muscle in your mind, seeing the muscle group lengthening smoothly and steadily.

Visualization is an important component of stretching. "See" the muscle in your mind; conceptualize it. Hold a visual image in your mind of the muscle group, where it comes from, and where it goes. Visualization helps establish a brain-muscle connection, training the muscle group by honing the neurologic relationships. Balance in dance or gymnastics is very much like this. Visualization is also useful in weight-training­you see the muscle in your mind as you perform the exercise.

When you stretch, visualize the length of the muscle, see the muscle lengthening. Part of this lengthening may include reaching (extending energy) through the heel, or reaching through the heel down into the floor, or reaching through the tips of the fingers or tips of the toes. "Reach through your fingers", "reach through your toes", or "lengthen your arm" are commands heard in the dance studio. Another identical command is "reach the energy down through your toes", the result of which would be a straight knee and a long line. We admire the results of long lines and flowing energy in a professional dancer, competitive figure skater, or gymnast. This extension of line is the basis of effective stretching.

Here are three key body images, templates for visualization practice:

1. Hitch your sternum (breastbone) to a star. You imagine a string attached to a star in the sky, extending all the way down to attach its other end to your sternum. Dangle from that string like a puppet. The string holds you up in a true, vertical line. If your sternum is hitched to a star, you are always upright. There is no slumping, no collapsing of the chest. The chest is naturally broad and wide without being puffed out or thrust forward. It is simply lifted, elevated by its vertical connection with the heavens.

There are several things that "hitching your sternum to a star" is not. It' s not "pull the shoulders back and stick out the chest". It's not "lift the chin up and stick out the neck". It's not "lift up both shoulders". It's not "stop breathing". If you can see the image clearly, there will be a natural elevation, a very subtle lifting, of your sternum. You will be standing straight, erect and upright.

2. Imagine a vertical, rectangular plane, about eighteen inches wide and nine inches high, directly in front of your lower abdomen. Now, imagine another identical plane placed directly behind your lower back and upper buttocks. The image is to bring these two planes together, maintaining their vertical orientation, deep inside your body. This is a seeing, rather than a doing. As the two planes are brought together in your mental image, the physical result will be flattening of the stomach and lengthening of the muscles of the lower back. The abdomen will naturally be drawn in and up; the pelvis will naturally drop under, somewhat flattening the lumbar lordosis (curve in the small of the back).

The results are not created by intentional muscular action. You are neither sucking in the stomach nor tucking the pelvis under. The muscular action flows from your mental image; the clearer the mental image, the more precise will be the muscular effect. Maintain a natural breathing pattern as you are imaging the two planes coming together.

3. Imagine your shoulder girdles as a yoke; they rest gravitationally on your upper ribs. There is no holding, no upward tension in the surrounding musculature. Your shoulders float freely, lightly resting on your upper ribs, the weight of your arms hanging down into the ground. This image of your shoulders as a yoke will ultimately relax and lengthen the associated muscles. Those painful knots or trigger points will become less troublesome.

Dr. David Lemberg, the author of Commitment to Fitness: Real Fitness for Real People, is a board-certified chiropractic orthopedist in his twentieth year of private practice on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He has been published in national trade magazines such as Muscle & Fitness and Dancemagazine, the peer-reviewed Topics in Clinical Chiropractic, the Florida Chiropractic Society Review, and The Chiropractic Journal. Dr. Lemberg is a member of the postgraduate faculty of Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, and for the last ten years has taught orthopedics to chiropractors in venues across the United States and in Canada. He was Clinical Editor of the quarterly journal, Spinal Manipulation, published by the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research, from 1990 through 1995.

Commitment to Fitness: Real Fitness for Real People may be ordered through Dr. Lemberg's web site. His office is accepting new patients: 212-535-7429.