TPM #285: How Brain Science Can Help Us Be Better Parents, Coaches And Athletes.
Black Friday for the brain comes more than once a year if you know where to look!
Imagine if we saw an ad promoting a product that can improve our mood and ability to focus while reducing incidence of anxiety and depression?
If this product was promoted like a beer ad, where everyone is having a great time because of their favorite beverage, it would be difficult to meet demand. What if this product had a Black Friday sale regularly and the cost would be $0?
Many would ask about the catch.
“What’s the catch?”
“Is this a pill?”
“What are side effects? “
The magic pill that can help us with our mental and physical health is understanding how the brain works.
Let’s look at 2 examples:
1. Our brain is conditioned to take us to the easy route.
While most may think that the reason we don’t get enough daily physical activity is laziness or lack of motivation, studies have shown that in fact our brain may be at fault. In 2016, Matthieu Boisgontier, then a postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium, noticed a disturbing trend. Even though copious amounts of money and effort poured into campaigns and research encouraging people to adopt active lifestyles, nothing improved. Global physical activity levels were, and still are, abysmal. Teaming up with longtime friend Boris Cheval, a postdoctoral researcher in health and exercise psychology at the University of Geneva, the duo set out to determine why people may have the desire to exercise regularly, but struggle to follow through.
It’s the “exercise paradox,” Cheval told The Washington Post in 2018.
Their study in 2018 looked at trying to understand the paradox. They found that the brain has an automatic attraction to sedentary behaviors. The explanation for the findings are not necessarily routed by laziness but rather from an evolutionary perspective, avoiding activity minimizes the body’s energy costs. This minimization was useful during evolution because it provided an advantage for survival.
If we understand that our brain will also push us to take the easy route, to rest, then that makes it easier to understand why we or our kids don’t want to be active.
It also gives us some incentive to find some fun in the activity.
Of all the benefits of sport participation, regular physical activity maybe it’s most important. If it’s fun to play, fun to go to practice then we will go right through the stop sign our brain gives us in trying to get us to conserve energy.
2. There is no substitute for regular physical activity when it comes to brain health.
If better focus, mood, confidence, happiness all see like worthwhile pursuits, then we will want to understand how regular physical activity impacts our brain. Don’t take my word for it, Dr. Wendy Suzuki is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at New York University. She is also Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at the Center for Neural Science at NYU. Dr. Suzuki’s research over the last number of years has studied this effect of exercise on the brain. Both the effect of short-term exercise and long term.
Her work has shown that as little as a few minutes a day can change cognitive function and have impact on mood as well as impact the incidence of depression and anxiety. Our energy can go up as well as our focus.
The value of just a few minutes of vigorous movement cannot be understated. As coaches, this changes how we plan our practices. Parents, this changes how we view the level of movement we and our kids get daily.
One of the greatest gifts we can give our kids is the understanding of how moving can change the way they feel about every-thing!
Dig into Dr. Suzuki’s work, and apply just a few minutes of her findings into your day. It’s well worth it don’t you think?
The cost?
A little bit of knowledge on how the brain works!
Call it “Black Friday for the brain!”