Breaking the Performance Barrier

One of my mentors, gym owner, and head football coach, Dan Fichter, took over the winless Irondequit Eagles, and rebuilt them into Section Champions and state semifinalists in just two years.

Did I mention that he hasn’t had an athlete involved in a noncontact injury in years?

He primes every single athlete's nervous system and vision with neurology based warm-ups before every practice and every game.

Every single professional athlete spends countless hours practicing drills and movements to train the muscles. But the brain and nervous system play just as crucial of a role in athletic performance, so why not train them as well?

Not every athletic movement is purely muscle memory (which is actually cerebellar memory), and an athlete's success is largely contributed to their ability to react quickly. Reaction time includes the the time it takes for the brain to recognize a stimulus (i.e. a defender or ball coming at you out of the corner of your eye), then the time it takes to process that stimulus, and then finally the time it takes to send the necessary signals to the muscles telling them to react accordingly.

Not only does this improve overall performance, but it also greatly decreases the chance of injuries as serious contact is avoided and limb positional awareness is increased, thus lowering the frequency of strains and sprains.

How is your nervous system? Have you done any vision training? Do you have any recurrent injuries? These can be addressed with a few minutes of dedicated training daily.

Are you willing to put in a few minutes

daily to increase your vision, reaction timing, and decrease injuries? Your ability to see more players, react throw and receive better would mean more wins for the team, It may be the difference in a championship title, or a college recruit.

For more information about how to improve your performance at the neurological level, check out our NeuroPerformance program or ask me a question personally.

- Dr. Rueckert