Brain practice for lasting athletic performance transformation

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Brain practice is the BEST way to create lasting athletic performance transformation, because you wire and strengthen powerful, positive neuropathways to activate when a specific situation/person arises in the future e.g. competition, spring finish, miss target.

What’s Brain Practice?

Brain practice is similar to visulisation, which athletes have been harnessing the power of for YEARS.

Your brain can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imaginary, so when you visualise (or mentally rehearse) your day, event or situation, your brain believes it to be real.

Research continues to show that visualisation helps athletes' enhance their performance, for example:

In 1996, Dr. Blaslotto at the University of Chicago conducted a study on the effect of visualisation on free-throws in basketball.

A group of randomly selected students first took a series of free-throws, which were recorded. They were then divided into three groups and asked to perform three separate tasks over 30 days:

  • First group didn’t touch a basketball for 30 days - absolutely no practicing or playing basketball.

  • Second group practiced shooting free throws for 30 minutes a day for 30 days.

  • Third group visited the gym and visualised hitting every free-throw for 30 minutes for 30 days.

After 30 days, each student re-took the series of free-throws they completed at the beginning:

  • First group showed no improvement

  • Second group showed a 24% improvement

  • Third group (visualisation only) showed a 23% improvement!!

The most decorated swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps, is also no stranger to visualisation, as his coach Bob Bowman describes:

“For months before a race Michael gets into a relaxed state. He mentally rehearses for two hours a day in the pool. He sees himself winning. He smells the air, tastes the water, hears the sounds, sees the clock.”

Where brain practice differs from visualisation is that FIRST you ACESS POWERFUL FEELINGS and THEN take these amazing feelings INTO your visualisation in the future, when you run through an event/situation that you want to perform your best in.

Read how to access powerful feelings here: 2 key ways to double your athletic performance this Summer

How to Brain Practice

By brain practicing a specific event, when that event occurs, it’s like your brain thinks, ‘Hey, I know how to positively respond to this, because I have all of these awesome memories in which I’ve responded in this super helpful, powerful and positive way, it’s like I’ve always responded this way and I wouldn’t do it any other way.’

So let's look at Brain Practicing in more detail with an example:

You have an Ironman triathlon race coming up and already your brain is unconsciously preparing you for it, by creating narratives, videos, images and thoughts about what to expect/what’s going to happen in and around this race - whether you’re aware of it or want to respond in this way or not.

Your brain is creating this stuff based on your past experiences and responses (triathlon related or not) and which neuropathways are strong and weak, according to how you’ve unconsciously and consciously wired your brain.

Your brain doesn’t differentiate between what response is most and least helpful to you. It determines how you act and think about/in your race by looking at which neuropathways you activate and strengthen the most and least.

So it’s preparing you for your Ironman triathlon by what you normally do in similar situations:

  • What memories stand out the most?

  • What states do you normally access?

  • What do you normally do, think, act, behave, feel etc.?

  • What beliefs do you have?

  • How do you identify yourself e.g. slow or fast swimmer?

This means if you usually respond to a race in an unhelpful way e.g. high anxiety the night before, when another race comes up, your brain is going to respond in that unhelpful way, as that’s your default setting.

To create lasting change and transform around how you respond to your race, you need to brain practice what you’re going to do and think around your competition - in the above example, Ironman triathlon.

  • FIRST, you want to ask yourself: How would I love to feel and think around my competition?

  • SECOND, you want to access those powerful, positive champion feelings by going back to a time when you felt these incredible feelings and immersing yourself in it.

  • THIRD, flow these powerful feelings into your competition and see yourself in the present going through your competiton in the exact way you want to. How does it feel to have acted in the way you wanted to during your competition?

  • FOURTH, take these incredible feelings and amazing ways you’ve completed your competition, and imagine you’ve competed this way 10 times, 50 times and then 100 times. How does that feel knowing you’ve competed in this awesome way 100 times across different competitions?

    • Doing this, you’ve effectively created 100 memories in which you’ve competed in the exact way you’ve wanted.

This intensely changes, transforms and re-wires your brain around how you think, feel, act and believe around your competition/s.

Now your brain is prepared to respond in a really positive, powerful and helpful way when competition day arrives. As you’ve re-written your default setting to be positive and powerful, and you’ll respond accordingly.

SUMMARY

I hope this makes sense, any questions drop them in the comments below.

The first step is really the key question to get your head back in the game: What can I do that's more helpful and useful to me instead, to influence this situation in a very powerful, positive way.

HELPFUL RESOURCES;

Do make sure when brain practicing (and visualising/mentally rehearsing) you’re using powerful positive language: Why it’s a bad idea to repeat phrases that mention things you want to stop doing and/or feeling.

Here are a couple of performance power-ups to help you get started and/or enhance your brain practice:

P.S. Ready to take your performance to the next level? Here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Apply for a free 30 minute call to discuss your ultimate performance goal and how to get there. Apply now by clicking here.


2. Read one of my most popular blogs: Why it’s a bad idea to repeat phrases that mention things you want to stop doing and/or feeling.


3. Follow me on Instagram (@adelaidegoodeve) for daily free brain hacks