Want to boost your athletic abilities? Have someone compare you to a Ferrari.
That’s the word from researchers at the University of Essex, who discovered that hearing phrases like “sprint like a jet plane” or “run like a Ferrari” instantly boosted the speed of the athletes who heard them.
The researchers worked with the Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, and found players who heard specific speed analogies like that saw a 3% jump in their speed over nearly 66 feet.
While 3% might not sound like much, it normally takes weeks of training to see such an improvement, the researchers say.
For the record, the best results were found with the following direction: “Sprint as if you are a jet taking off into the sky ahead.”
Dr. Jason Moran, from the university’s School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences, noted, “The words we speak to athletes have a demonstrable and instant effect on their performance. It’s long been known that it’s better to direct an athlete’s attention to the environment around them rather than focusing on their body positions which seems to interfere with the fluidity of movement.”
Long story short, it beats just telling a person to “run faster.”