
Recent news from NOS highlighted the experimentation by AZ & PSV with specialized brain training for athletes. While I’ve discussed cognitive trainers on SportBrain before, could this be the revolution in training we’ve been waiting for?
Read more: Brain Training in Athletes: The Next Game-Changer?A Look Back at Training Techniques
Over the past 50 years, the methods to enhance athletes’ performance have seen radical transformations. The quest for optimal training techniques, especially in elite sports, is never-ending. For instance, young footballers now embrace ballet training for improved balance, while professional runners train at high altitudes to outperform under regular conditions. The mental dimension of training has also evolved. From the old “bear with it” attitude, athletes are now resorting to techniques like hypnosis and visualization.
Rising Importance of Cognitive Skills
The new dimension in sports training is “Perceptual-Cognitive Skills” – basically, how our brain reacts to rapidly changing scenarios common in team sports. Over the past decade, this subject has gained substantial attention. Research now delves deep into how athletes learn and the significant role our brain plays. I had the privilege of contributing to a study by the University of Maastricht on cognitive training’s impact on professional footballers. Renowned Dutch neuropsychologist, Lot Verburgh, inferred that talented footballers excel in maintaining alertness and suppressing involuntary movements. Furthermore, international studies, like the one by Swedish researcher Vestberg, found that top-tier footballers performed better in specific brain tasks compared to their counterparts at lower levels. These studies are merely scratching the surface.
America’s Lead in Brain Training for Athletes
The U.S. is undeniably at the forefront of brain training initiatives. Numerous enterprises, like Intelligym, Axon Sports, and Neurotracker, offer targeted brain training sessions for elite athletes. These training modules, largely computer-based, challenge athletes with pattern-recognition tasks and puzzles, often tailored to their respective sports. Beyond sports, adaptive brain games are utilized in sectors like military training and education, enhancing reaction times and concentration respectively. The market even offers devices like Halo Neuroscience headphones, designed to accelerate the brain’s motor learning.
Innovative Training Tools like SMARTGOALS
SMARTGOALS introduces a fresh training approach. These are small gates with LED lights that light up as athletes dribble or pass through them, engaging their cognitive skills while they practice.
NOS Article Insights and Future Prospects
Referring back to the NOS article, today’s youth are avid gamers, a trend AZ scouts cleverly use to test new players using Neurolympics. This game crafts a brain profile based on the player’s in-game performance, predicting if they have the potential of legends like Ronaldo. As exciting as these developments are, one must remain discerning. The real question is the tangible effect of brain training on actual match performance, a topic still shrouded in mystery. While many studies validate the benefits of brain training, their credibility can be questioned if backed by the selling companies. Will brain training truly lead to moments as thrilling as this?