Thinking about the way your muscles work could physically boost your strength, research suggests.

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A Hull University team asked 30 subjects to do biceps curls and found their muscles worked more when they focused on what the muscles were doing.

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But lower rates of muscle activity were recorded when they simply visualised themselves lifting the weight.

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The study is being presented at the British Psychological Society conference in Cardiff on Friday.

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The team wired their subjects up to weight machines which monitored levels of electrical activity in their biceps and asked them to think in two different ways while exercising.

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They assumed that the more electrical activity that was measured - the more the muscle is doing.

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When subjects were asked to focus on what their muscles were doing and how they were working there were significantly higher levels of electrical activity.

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But when they were asked to visualise lifting the weight, electrical activity was lower.

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Earlier studies have shown that thinking about what muscles are actually doing can make more skilful tasks like throwing a ball more difficult.

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Penalty kick

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Dr David Marchant explains: "When athletes are at the starting line they are primarily focusing on the end of the track rather than what their legs are doing."

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If they focused on the actual movement in their legs they probably would not perform as well, he said.

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But this research shows it can be helpful to focus directly on the muscles to improve muscle strength.

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Dr Marchant added: "Say you have a footballer who's got some sort of muscular injury he wants to repair - ask him to think about what the muscle is actually doing while he is exercising and it is better.

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"But if he's going to kick a penalty - don't get him to think about the muscle because it will go wrong. Instead focus on the goal."

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Mental imaging

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Dr Marchant suggest the reason why the penalty kick will fail in this scenario is because the player's muscle is over-activated by the mental focus on it.

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He suggested that sports coaches and trainers would benefit from tailoring their instructions depending on what they wanted to achieve.

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Dr Jim Golby, expert in sports and mental toughness at the University of Teesside's Social Futures Institute, said the study was an interesting one which tested how mental imaging affected performance.

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But he said testing the subjects with 10 repetitions did not really replicate any real life sporting conditions.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4861268.stm