Finding the Edge in Sports
A tired brain can affect performance and much as a tired muscle.
“Mental and physical effort are alway’s intertwined.” — Dr. Samuele Marcora Professor of Sport Science
"Brain endurance training works by flooding adenosine levels in the brain repetitively over time with targeted neuro cognitive drills so that neurons and synapses adapt over time to keep adenosine levels lower. Resulting in the brain’s contribution to overall “Perception of Effort” as the task endures or exercise duration increases being at a much lower “Perception of Effort” allowing physical performance to improve. Essentially taking the brake’s off! Allowing physical output to be maintained for longer as well as mental agility relative to task to be performed with less errors." -Synapse Neuro Performance Solutions Director at Synapse Neuro Performance Solutions London, England, United Kingdom
Video Title
BBET
Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport
"This study provides further evidence that brain endurance training (BET) improves performance over matched physical training. Prior BET (i.e., engaging in mentally demanding cognitive tasks before physical training) offers another option to enhance fatigue resilience, which expands the use of BET to more sports and potentially higher intensity training where concurrent BET will not be practical. The benefits of prior BET may be explained, at least in part, by improved prefrontal oxygenation."
"Mental fatigue impairs endurance exercise. Brain endurance training (BET) - engaging in cognitively fatiguing tasks during exercise - can develop resilience to mental fatigue and improve physical performance over physical training alone. The mechanism for this effect is unknown. This experiment examines if BET enhances performance over physical training and investigates potential underlying physiological mechanisms."
National Library of Medicine
"Purpose: Brain endurance training (BET)-the combination of physical training with mentally fatiguing tasks-could help athletes adapt and increase their performance during sporting competitions. Here we tested whether BET completed after standard physical training improved physical and mental performance more than physical training alone during a preseason football training camp.
Methods: The study employed a pretest/training/posttest design, with 22 professional football players randomly assigned to BET or a control group. Both groups completed 40 physical training sessions over 4 weeks. At the end of a day of physical training, the BET group completed cognitive training, whereas the control group listened to neutral sounds. Players completed the 30-15 Intermittent Fitness Test, repeated sprint ability random test, soccer-specific reactive agility test, and Stroop and psychomotor vigilance tests pretraining and posttraining. Mixed analysis of variance was used to analyze the data.
Results: In the posttest (but not pretest) assessments, the BET group consistently outperformed the control group. Specifically, the BET group was faster (P = .02-.04) than the control group during the 30-15 Intermittent Fitness Test, the directional phase of the repeated sprint ability random test, and the soccer-specific reactive agility test. The BET group also made fewer errors (P = .02) during the soccer-specific reactive agility test than the control group. Finally, the BET group responded faster (P = .02) on the Stroop test and made fewer (P = .03) lapses on the psychomotor vigilance test than the control group.
Conclusion: The inclusion of BET during the preseason seems more effective than standard physical training alone in improving the physical, cognitive, and multitasking performance of professional football players."
Brain and Body Endurance Training.
✓Improves endurance by reducing the perception of effort, which is associated with the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex ACC. Lazy effort-based decision-making is related to damaged ACC.
✓Enhances visual and audio responses.
✓ Injury prevention by reducing overloading of the musculoskeletal system while allowing increases in training load.
✓Increases accuracy and speed in decision making tasks for a longer amount of time.
✓Greater capacity for resilience to mental and physical fatigue.
✓Fewer errors due to sharper focus.
✓ Adapts and increase their performance during sporting competitions.
✓ Increases Physical, Cognitive, and Multitasking Performance.
Why we are using the Japanese abacus for BET training
As a stand-alone tool, the Soroban abacus has a proven track record for whole brain development.
"Significant improvements were observed in the cognitive parameters of concentration, memory, perceptive attitudes, and creativity after the intervention, using the abacus, with respect to the control group. It is demonstrated that a calculation program based on the use of the abacus for 8 weeks has beneficial effects on the cognitive capacities of concentration, immediate auditory memory, perceptive attitudes, and creativity. In addition, the benefits of using the abacus to improve cognitive attitudes are reported.
Conclusion: The present study carried out in children aged between 7 and 11 years, had two main research questions. Firstly, it was intended to find out whether there was a relationship between AMC training and cognitive skills. Regarding the relationship, it was found Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 83 12 of 14 that the experimental group participants improved their concentration cognitive abilities, immediate auditory memory, perceptive attitudes, and creativity. In terms of assessing whether AMC training improves students’ mathematical skills, the findings suggest the effectiveness of the use of the abacus in learning calculation, due to the higher EG scores compared to the CG’s in just 8 weeks. These results are an advance for both the field of education and clinical practice since they reinforce the important role of the abacus for working in the classroom, and outside it, in order to achieve benefits at the psychological level that are useful for better academic achievements.