Larry Minikes 9/25/18 Larry Minikes 9/25/18

Brain stimulation can improve athletic performance

Research into the effects of brain stimulation on athletes' performance has demonstrated that it is an effective way to improve endurance

October 12, 2017

Science Daily/University of Kent

Research into the effects of brain stimulation on athletes' performance has demonstrated that it is an effective way to improve endurance. The findings are expected to advance understanding of the brain's role in endurance exercise, how it can alter the physical limits of performance in healthy people and add evidence to the debate on the use of legal methods to enhance performance in competition.

The findings are expected to advance our understanding of the brain's role in endurance exercise, how it can alter the physical limits of performance in healthy people and add further evidence to the debate on the use of legal methods to enhance performance in competition.

The research, which was conducted by Dr Lex Mauger and colleagues at Kent's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences (SSES), set out to investigate how endurance limits are a matter for the mind as well as the body.

By testing cycling time to task failure (TTF) in a group of 12 active participants in a placebo controlled study, Dr Mauger discovered that stimulating the brain by passing a mild electrical current (transcranial direct current stimulation or tDCS) over the scalp to stimulate it increased the activity of the area associated with muscle contraction. This decreased perception of effort and increased the length of time participants could cycle for.

The team explained this is because the exercise felt less effortful following stimulation. tDCS has been used to enhance endurance performance but how it achieved this was previously unknown and this study has helped identify the mechanisms.

Bilateral extracephalic transcranial direct current stimulation improves endurance performance in healthy individuals (Dr Luca Angius, Dr Lex Mauger, Dr James Hopker, and Professor Samule Marcora, University of Kent, with Professor Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Berenson-Allen Center for Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation, Division of Cognitive Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dr Emiliano Santarnecch, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA) is published in the journal Brain Stimulation.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171012122736.htm

Larry Minikes 9/15/17 Larry Minikes 9/15/17

Why do some athletes choke under pressure?

October 26, 2011

Science Daily/Association for Psychological Science

Athletes know they should just do their thing on the 18th hole, or during the penalty shootout, or when they're taking a three-point shot in the last moments of the game. But when that shot could mean winning or losing, it's easy to choke. A new article looks at why paying too much attention to what you're doing can ruin performance.

"We think when you're under pressure, that your attention goes inward naturally. Suddenly it means so much, you want to make sure everything's working properly," says Rob Gray, of the University of Birmingham, the author of the new article. And that is exactly when things go wrong. Something about paying attention to what you're doing makes it not work right.

The research shows that there are particular things that go wrong when someone is under pressure -- changing the angle of the club head when putting or throwing with more force. If those things can be identified, a coach could work on the particular problems.

One way to do it might be with analogies, Gray says. For example, a golfer who grips the club too tight when she's nervous might benefit from an instruction like "imagine you have an open tube of toothpaste between your hands and the contents must not be pushed out." This would both address the problem and get her attention away from how well she's doing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111021151611.htm

Larry Minikes 9/4/17 Larry Minikes 9/4/17

Extra Sleep Improves Athletic Performance

June 10, 2008 —