Want to up your game?
“You don’t play football with your legs, you play with your head” Johan Cruyff
Do you want to start playing instinctively?
- Brain Training
- Physical strength and fitness
- The psychology of the game
Working on that competitive edge!
Most sports people work on their physical strength and fitness along with the psychological part of their game, but strengthening the body and mind connection through Brain Training, may be the most important element in enhancing the work of your coach and psychologist and enabling you to gain that competitive edge.
Some sports people who just ‘have it’ were born with the necessary body mind connection that enables them to play instinctively.
At Performance Breakthrough we develop areas of the brain that connect neurons and develop new ones to sharpen your reading of the game, reaction speed, ball control etc.
These connections of body and mind develop focused, co-ordinated, balanced and spatially aware players in any sport; naturally.
Most importantly, the improvements are permanent!
Click here to see the positive impact that the Performance Breakthrough exercises will have, for example, on your Golf game.
What the professionals say…
What impact can these structured exercises have on your ability in sport?
Read on to see how our balance and co-ordination exercises can help you to improve your game.
Golf – You’re about to tee off.
You’re standing over the ball, you want to have a clear head and be able to trust your swing.
What happens instead?
You start thinking about your shoulders, head, hips and feet position. You adjust your grip, check the direction of aim, try to tell your arms how much power you need to use to reach your target (without becoming tense)…and of course the little voice inside your head keeps repeating…Don’t sway your body and KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!!!
When you have to think about each element of your set-up it makes it very easy to lose concentration and make a mistake.
By developing greater physical focus by strengthening the connection between the eyes and the brain, the mind will automatically concentrate better and for longer. It will also mean that your set up and swing become an automatic movement as oppose to a thought process.
These traits, and many more, are all linked, in part, to a weakness in the muscles around the eyes. The programme exercises work to correct this weakness. The result is a dramatic improvement in concentration levels whilst at play, at work and at home.
Increase your accuracy, judgement of force, distance and timing in sport.
When playing Football, do you wait until the ball arrives at your feet and then look up to see who you can lay it off to OR are you able to read an incoming ball, look up to see who you can pass it to, receive the ball at your feet and execute the pass with accuracy of force and direction?
Would you like to be able to go one step further and judge the run of the player you are passing to so that he doesn’t have to break his stride when the ball arrives at his feet?
The Performance Breakthrough balance, co-ordination and precision exercises develop these skills from a neurological point of view; connecting the body and mind for automatic reading of the game rather than each movement being a thought process.
Perfect timing and rhythm is what we strive for in sport.
For example: – When playing racquet sports, accurate hand/eye co-ordination is vital in order to connect with the ball, shuttle-cock etc. We’ve all had that air swing!!
Our pendulum ball exercises train the eyes, hands and body to work in harmony to ensure smooth, accurate timing of passes and judgement of where other players are around you. The exercises also speed up your reaction time so that your mind stays calm when you’re under pressure rather than feeling stressed. Once the mind is stressed the body tightens making smooth accurate movements very difficult.
Do you see red?
Do you over-react to situations and then realise afterwards that you should have walked away?
When your body is already held in a tight, rigid manner the mind can be on constant alert…fight or flight. This can mean that we let little things annoy us, we can’t get them out of our heads and we add to them as the game continues. This makes us prone to explosive reactions to what others would see as a minor event.
The Performance Breakthrough exercise programme enables the shoulder, chest and upper arm areas to relax leading to a more relaxed attitude to life in general making it easier to ‘let it go.’
Remember, the programme doesn’t just help when we’re playing sport; it helps us read situations in all area of life i.e. relationships, home and working life too.
Do you find that when you try to listen to instructions from a trainer or coach that it’s difficult to process what has been said?
For example: – When you’re on the football training ground and the coach asks you to dribble the ball around the cones, missing out the 2nd and 6th ones and then sprint back to the starting point…. Do you stand back and watch a few of the other players complete the sequence first to make sure that you get it right?
If you have difficulty in this area it can be an auditory processing issue which means that you hear the first bit of an instruction but as your brain is processing it you miss the next bit.
The Performance Breakthrough exercises will improve the connection between your brain and your hearing ability in order to speed up the processing of the information being heard.
Do you also recognise these traits?
- Low concentration
- Easily distracted
- Forgetfulness
- Difficulty following directions
- Loss of self-esteem/confidence
- Anxiety
- Trouble focusing & tracking objects
- Sensitivity to touch – labels etc.
- Plain eater
- Sleep problems, difficulty getting to sleep
- Constantly “on the go”
- Talks excessively
- Aggressive behaviour
- Instructions repeated over & over
- Lack of empathy for others
