memorising master games and playing blindfold to improve your chess?

I heard someone say a while back that memorising master games and understanding the ideas behind the moves is a great way to improve ones chess, and I've also heard that playing a lot of blindfold chess helps improve your visualisation. Is there anything to either of these methods of learning? I've been thinking of starting to memorise (and of course, study and learn the ideas from) #1 player Magnus Carlsen's games. Does this sound like a good idea? And does playing a lot of blindfold chess actually work? Please discuss.

I think both are valid training methods.

However, maybe you could consider memorizing some 'simpler' classical games rather than Magnus' to begin with. As you correctly pointed, the memorization is a good exercise because you'll find that you need to understand the moves in order to correctly remember all of them. And the problem with Magnus' games is that he plays a lot of technical or positional moves, which are quite difficult to understand at first sight (at least this is the case for me).

You may want to have a look at Serper's serie or some compendium of classical games to find inspiration.

Sometimes when I look at my past games I wonder whether I was not blindfold!!!