Enhancing Sports Performance

Almost every professional sports organization has a Chiropractor on their team to enhance player performance and promote optimum recovery from injuries. Hand, eye, and foot coordination is one of the most important skills to develop for any athlete. Inches can be the difference between a home run and a strike out in baseball. Dr. Sperry won the Nobel prize for his work showing more than 90% of the brains messages are for coordinating the body and the affects from gravity.

One of the most important parts of the brain function is directing the messages from the brain to the body. This process is called "Proprioception" and is one of those background physical processes that make up your body's total IQ. Proprioceptors are specialized nerve endings located in your muscles and joints that inform your brain about your body's position in three-dimensional space.

You're able to write legibly because proprioceptors are sending instantaneous data about the angles of the small joints of your fingers and wrists as your pen moves across the page. You're able to run on the beach because proprioceptors are continuously sending signals to your brain about the changing shape of the uneven surface of the sand.

Without these specialized nerve endings, we'd never be able to hit a baseball, throw a Frisbee, or drive a car. But proprioceptors can be affected by posture and nerve stress. One person out for a stroll might trip over a crack in the pavement and suffer a badly sprained ankle. Another person might trip over the same crack, even badly turning over their ankle in the process, and keep on walking without even a trace of a limp.

The difference between injury and non-injury is the level of proprioceptor training, and this level usually is related to whether you're doing regular exercise. Exercise trains your muscles and joints to adapt to varying kinds of stresses (weight-bearing loads) throughout a variety of positions (the full range of motion of those joints).However, if an ankle, shoulder, or the back are injured it can disrupt the exact messages to and from the brain. This in turn can affect hand, eye, and foot coordination.

As a result, trained proprioceptors can withstand a high degree of stress (such as a sudden twisting of an ankle). The untrained ankle, possibly the ankle of a person who hasn't done much walking, running, or bike riding in the last five years, will be damaged by an unusual and unexpected stress. The result is an ankle sprain of varying severity and possibly a broken ankle.

Similarly, it is well known that older adults experience more frequent falls than do younger adults. Part of the explanation involves proprioception. Many older adults don't engage in regular exercise. Proprioceptive function decreases, changes in level or surface aren't recognized quickly by the person's feet and ankles, and the person falls.

It's easy to see that the effort to maintain an athletes proprioceptive system is time well spent. This process is also extremely important for anyone that wants to maintain a high level of mobility as you age. The fastest way to boost the brain body connection is by maintaining the best alignment possible and doing regular exercise. All kinds of exercise provide benefit, so the best exercises are the ones that have some interest for you personally.

Better Brain Tip:

• Athletes -Do regular coordination exercises or drills for your desired sport
• Non Athlete- balance on one foot with the opposite arm outstretched in front of your body for 30 seconds / then switch leg and arm sequence { this develops better brain balancing and proprioception}

The All Star Break and Brain Health

The "All Star Break" just ended for Major League Baseball last week. I had the honor of doing evaluations on the team at  the last game before their time off and it was apparent that they needed a rest from a long road schedule. The "All Star Break " for most players is a great planned "time to revitalize" and pause to prepare for the rest of a long season .

In any season there has to be a natural break or our body gets out of rhythm. In nature there are rhythms and change that happen year after year. Our daily rhythm is probably one of the most important cycles to get into balance. Athletes have a rhythm to their training. If you ever go to a pregame warm up no matter what sport, there is a specific process to getting prepared for game time.

No matter how great an athlete is they all begin their pregame activities with light stretches, jogging or calisthenics. In baseball, batting practice or a pitcher warming up in the bull pen are all necessary to get the nervous system in sync and body loosened up. To reach peak potential and avoid injuries we need to adopt this same principle. Waking up rushed or not having time to let the brain get engaged properly puts our bodies in a stressful fight or flight. It's critical to reprioritize your day if you wake up in a stress response.

If you really want long lasting health and vitality don't just prioritize your schedule every day,

you must "schedule your priorities." This means getting your mind and body prepared for each day. When you master your days, you can master your week, when you master your week you will master your life!  Look at your future calendar  to schedule a" time to revitalize" break .This should be done at least once each season to maintain optimum health. Start looking at your life like a peak performer and begin your days slow then build momentum and then close the day for better mental clarity and less stress.

Better Brain tip:

·         Write down all the ways that you feel you can revitalize your body, mind and spirit.

·         Schedule a time each season to get away and design your life so you can  listen to your highest  voice, see your highest vision and trust your gut instinct.

The 4 step T.E.A.M Approach to Achieve Better Brain Power

This is the powerful and profound, the 4 step, keep it simple approach to Better Brain Health for LIFE!

Remember T.E.A.M as your health acronym

1)    Think Better today then you did Yesterday

2)    Eat  Better Today then you did Yesterday

3)    Act Better today then you did Yesterday

4)    Move Better today then you did yesterday.       

Repeat!!

The 4 Levels of the Brain and Your IQ

Studies are now showing that a high IQ may be linked to how we process information.

Here's the question: Is there a single way to predict whether someone has a high IQ or not?

The answer: Maybe.

 According to a new study in the Journal Current Biology, high IQ is correlated with an ability to process important information while ignoring the unimportant distractions.

In the movie "For the love of the game"  Kevin Costner has to drown out all the distractions as he attempts to pitch a no hit game for his farewell performance in the big leagues. His strategy was to blur out all the visual and auditory distractions by creating a focused strategy. He would say to himself "clear the mechanism," and he would have a much clearer focus on the task at hand. Having a strategy to regain your focus can increase your memory, cognitive skills and reduce stress. Each level of the brain often overrides the other based on prior experiences if you let it just remain on auto pilot.

Many scientists have suggested that high IQ is linked to processing speed, or how quickly and accurately a person can understand incoming information. This information can come from a wide range of sensory inputs, including sounds, sights, and physical sensations. Responding to a tap on your shoulder or computing a difficult math problem both rely on processing speed, among other cognitive abilities. The problem in today's lifestyle is we have more potential distractions from texts, cell phones, 24 hour world news and the rapid pace of our world than ever before.

The University of Rochester had researchers conduct a study searching to find what if the ability to ignore certain information is just as important as the speed it takes to process it internally.

Researchers first set out the determine how quickly the study’s 53 participants processed different types of visual information. A series of shapes passed across a screen, and participants were asked to identify how the shapes had moved — for example top-to-bottom or left-to-right. The shapes could be large or small.

Counter intuitively, participants generally took longer to process large shapes than small shapes. This phenomenon, called spatial suppression, originates from a natural instinct to pay less attention to large background movements — like ignoring the lion on the horizon to focus on the lion in front of you.

Each participant received a Suppression Index score (SI) based on the difference between their response time to the small moving shape compared to the large moving shape.

Participants also took a version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), one of the most extensively studied IQ tests in existence.

Analysis revealed a strong correlation between IQ score and SI score — meaning that people with higher IQs were better at processing small movements and worse at processing large movements. Learning how to use all 4 levels of the brain teaches you how to attain selective focus on what is most important.

This study’s findings make plenty of sense in real-world scenarios: most of the time, the environment rewards a myopic focus. When you drive, it’s the cars and pedestrians close by that command the bulk of your attention. Events happening in the background  such as buildings you pass, objects on the side of the road, people moving on the sidewalk all become secondary.

The brain is complex and sometimes perplexing, so it’s always gratifying to see researchers begin to understand one of its most important mysteries and how our focus can affect our intelligence quotient.

Better Brain tip

Next time you’re out in the world, pause for a moment and see if you find yourself relying on a specific sense more than others.

Stop and look around to see first what feels most important to pay attention to...then broaden your senses to also see a bigger picture of your surroundings.

Both of these actions  are important to create a better balance between the 4 levels of the brain and avoiding getting stuck in a sensory pattern.