Blacksburg, VA (U-WIRE) -- Competitive athletes are always looking for that extra advantage. Whether it's pushing themselves in the weight room everyday, finding the best coaches to learn the game from or spending hundreds of dollars on shoes and high-performance clothing; it's all for what they think makes them better.

But Bob Reese, assistant professor of psychology at Jefferson College of Health Sciences and a doctoral student at Virginia Tech, thinks many athletes are missing a critical aspect of training -- their thoughts. He is currently experimenting on the effect of mental skills training on the Tech volleyball team.

For half an hour a week, the Cassell Coliseum locker room transforms into a mental practice court where Reese meets with the volleyball team and tries to improve the players' mental skills.

"I focus on what I consider the five essential mental skills: goal setting, visualization, energy and stress management and effective thinking," Reese said. "When you put all those together and combine them, they will enhance mental toughness."

Reese tries to improve mental skills through several exercises and activities.

Senior co-captain and marketing major Emily Smith told of an activity when each player was given a paper clip attached to a string and told to hold the string steady while focusing on moving the paper clip with their eyes.

"At first we were like, you can't do that unless you move your arm," Smith said. When her teammates attempted the exercise most of them were able to move the paper clip.

"It was pretty cool, definitely people believed they could move it with the mind if they focus. I don't know, power of the mind I guess," Smith said.

Reese also spends a lot of time working on visualization and the visualization of feelings, and discussed how these are practiced.

"Before the game (you think) how do you want it to end? What do you want to feel after the game? Now back up -- what do you have to do to get that done?" Reese said.

This is accomplished by figuring out what the goal looks like and feels like, and then climbing up "stair-step goals" in order to reach it.

Reese hopes that the players will combine the mental skills that they have learned and that it will ultimately lead to improved performance on the court.

"I think it has helped us focus, it's interesting thinking about some things you usually wouldn't think about," Smith said.

She was not sure how much it has affected her on the court but said she has adopted some small parts of the training into her game, such as self-talk. Senior outside hitter and geological sciences major Annie Spicer also applied some mental skills to her game.

"I'll look back at the game and notice what I did wrong and hopefully change for the next game," she said. "It brings out things that I need to work on - making conscious decisions."

Spicer did say that it was hard to fit in the time to fully commit to the mental skills program with all the rigors of the season and schoolwork.

Reese is unsure of the exact effect of mental skills training on the team's performance.

"I've seen some improvements with individuals. One of the things I will see is how much they think it impacted (the team)," Reese said. "I would have liked to have seen more consistency throughout the season, but there are a lot of reasons (there was not)."

Head coach Greg Smith agreed to participate in the program at the beginning of the season because he felt his team could benefit from the training.

"You've heard that team sports are 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical, and in a lot of ways that's true. Your mind has a lot to do with how successful you are as a player," Smith said.

Improving the volleyball team's performance, however, is not the only area that Reese is interested in. He is also concerned with healing injuries and was the head athletic trainer for the New York Jets for 20 years. Reese discovered mental skills training while working for the Jets and was able to use it to help rehabilitate players.

"A couple of players were able to salvage their careers; they were going to have to quit because of chronic pain in certain situations," Reese said.

He prolonged these players' careers by using visualization, positive thinking and hypnosis.

"I saw fractures heal in half the time they were supposed to."

Reese also has been able to use his healing talents at Tech. Smith suffered a season-ending injury when she tore her ACL and MCL while playing against the University of Miami; and since then she has received mental treatment, including hypnosis from Reese.

"I was in a deep trance; I was aware of what was going on but it was relaxing," Smith said. "(It was) a hypnosis not to focus on the pain in my knee but to focus on the range of motion and bending it. The way that he did it, we focused on making the pain an object."

Smith was able to work past the pain by focusing on something else and realizing that pain is really just mental.

The Hokies hope that they can stay mentally focused as they enter the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament as the No. 7 seed. Tech takes on Clemson in the first round of the tournament at 2:30 p.m. Thursday in Charlottesville, Va.

(C) 2004 The Collegiate Times via U-WIRE