I’ve finally understood why people find neural drills either weird or even a bit frightening.
Until now, in order to improve performance – run more quickly, hit a ball more accurately or to get out of pain, we’ve always assumed the answers are purely physical. Since the invention of the MRI scanner, we now know far more, but, as always, this knowledge takes a long time to become the norm.
A session starts with a test – a gauge of where you are now, and the tests will be anything relevant to you – balance, squat, run on the spot, do a press up, touch your toes or even do a painful movement. Then we do a drill, which will challenge the old brain.
The old brain is in charge of the subconscious stuff, like vision, breathing, precise movement. An example is using eye position. For many people, looking to the right or to the left and back to the centre will make things better. When you look, keep your head still and just use your eye muscles to move the eye. For most people, looking repeatedly one way makes things better and looking the other way makes things worse. This feels completely incomprehensible, and indeed the neurology behind this is complex.
When we then go on to combine the successful eye position with another drill, concentrating either on complex movement and/or a brainstem drill, like something using the jaw or the tongue, and things continue to improve. Even more bonkers.
Why does this weird stuff work? The brain is a lump of grey matter that needs information about the world outside and the world inside to make a decision, and that information travels up and down distinct pathways. It gets that information from the eyes, from the ears, both sound and the balance organs, from sensations, from movement at all the joints, muscles and ligaments of the body, it also knows about our state of thirst and hunger, about our temperature and so on. This is the most enormous amount of information and most of that information is relayed and dealt with by the old brain – the brainstem, cerebellum and insular lobe.
Problems and frustrations arise when that information is less than optimal. Both eyes need to see equally clearly in all circumstances, both ears need to hear the same and the balance organs register the same. We need to know how to move every single joint in our body at all speeds. We need perfect nasal breathing, and we need optimal blood pressure. Lifestyle alone makes this extremely difficult.When the information going in is not optimal, the brain gets confused and worried and so stiffens, weakens and slows us down, to keep us safe. Ignore these warnings, which most of us do, and eventually it sends pain, which further slows, weakens and stiffens.
Improve the information going in, plus pathways involved and things get better!
Improve the function of the old brain – the automatic stuff – and you improve the function of the new brain, information is more accurate and flows better, levels of worry and confusion go down and the brakes are released. All we need do is accept the new knowledge – and do our drills! Brain and body are one thing always, inextricably interlinked.
For me as a trainer, the difficulty comes in working out what the brain needs to know! The choice is mind bogglingly huge. The one thing missing is boredom.
In the picture the reptilian brain is the cerebellum and brainstem, the limbic brain the insular lobe, amygdala, with the basal ganglia both reptilian and limbic. The neocortex is what people think of as the brain; it is the newest part of the brain and, amongst many other things, overrides impulses from the older parts of the brain – it should override that irresistable desire for another biscuit….