Discover Simple Neuroscience Body Hacks that Easily Increase Personal Performance, Accelerate Physical Results and Relieve Pain Welcome to the Z-Health Neuroscience Body Hacks Webinar! Because our webinar will be fast moving, we want you to have some idea of the science, assessments, and tools that we ll be using before we begin. Regardless of what type of athletes or clients you are working with, here are the basics that you need to know. 1. The Pain-Performance Continuum If you look at any individual who is in pain, we know that the pain is going to influence their movement, and movement (especially if it is more stiff or guarded) is going to influence their performance. So one of the things that we start with in Z-Health is the idea that we must address anything that is causing an athlete to have pain or a decreased range of motion, because it will negatively affect his or her performance. The important neuroscience concept to know here is that pain does not live at the tissue level, such as the elbow, knee or shoulder, but that it lives in the brain. All modern neuroscience talks about this, and the way it works is that there are nerve signals being sent from the body up the spinal cord to the brain, and it is the brain that interprets those signals to determine if there are any perceived problems in the body. It is the brain s response to these perceived problems that we feel as pain, which we refer to as an action signal in Z-Health. However, there are two important things to note about pain: 1. Pain, when it is created, is simply a signal that tells us our brain would like us to take action. In other words, it is saying, Stop doing what you re doing, or do something different. 2. The brain s interpretation of the signals it is receiving is not always as accurate as we would like, and it can often perceive tissue problems when there are none. Pain may be present in these situations, but it is not useful in helping us create new, more y action.
2. The Threat Neuromatrix The way that we begin to help people understand this is to say that the brain runs a kind of background program - like a computer program running in the background while we are working on other things that helps maintain the overall integrity of the system. In the human brain, the background program is called the Threat Neuromatrix, and it is basically a threat detection program that is constantly evaluating all of the environments we live in: both the external environments we find ourselves in, and our internal body environment. When the brain senses something that may be potentially dangerous, it will try to get you to avoid that thing. That could be an injury in your heel, so it creates pain to encourage you to avoid walking on that part of your foot. But that can also be something external like a bad work environment, so each morning when you wake up and are getting ready to go to your job, your brain creates a host of responses (some researchers call these symptoms) to discourage you from going to work: low back pain, a headache, fatigue, etc. Most people believe that ongoing pain is caused by problems in body tissues: muscles, joints, tendons, etc. But what we re going to tell you and show you conclusively is that isn t always the case. Your (or your clients ) pain can have much more to do with the external environments and stressors that our brains have to deal with than it has to do with tissue damage. 3. The Neural GPS Here s how we deal with all of this in Z-Health. We use an analogy of a GPS system to talk about the brain and the signals that it receives. The brain is the base unit of the GPS; it s the one that does all the computing. The satellites that feed information to the GPS are the other systems of the body, primarily the visual system, vestibular system (aka the inner ear and balance system), proprioceptive system (aka the body s 3D map), and the respiratory system. In order for the GPS to work correctly, all of the satellite systems have to be sending the same information to the central unit. If they don t, then the GPS can t determine where you are, what is happening, and it will cause you to slow down or stop entirely if you get lost. If you ve ever had carsickness, that is an example of the satellite systems giving incorrect or differing information to the brain. In this situation, your eyes are saying one thing to the brain, and your inner ear and balance system are saying something different. In most cases the brain uses pain to signal a mismatch of the satellite systems, but if pain is insufficient to move us to action, then the brain may also use some other responses, such as nausea, dizziness, fatigue, stiffness, weakness, digestive problems, or others. Our goal in this webinar is to give you a test drive experience of Z-Health training in action, where we will help you feel what it s like to have your brain and body firing on all cylinders.
4. What to Expect During the Webinar Obviously, we are going to moving fast to get through drills for all of these systems. But what we want you to realize before we even get to that point is this: The body changes at the speed of the nervous system! What that means is that your range of motion, flexibility, and strength can improve IMMEDIATELY upon doing a particular drill. Or they can also decrease immediately. Why? Because it isn t the muscles, joints, or connective tissue that controls any of those athletic attributes it s actually your brain. As your nervous system perceives less danger in an environment, it will guard your movement less, and you will see performance improvements (and pain decrease). But if we have you perform a drill that drives up the amount of threat that is perceived, then your brain will put on the brakes and your performance will decrease or pain will increase. Now, how would a decrease in performance be helpful? We have to remember that when we are dealing with the satellite systems, our primary job is DATA COLLECTION. We are trying to find out which of the satellites in your body need better information, and it is only through the reassess process that we can make this important determination. So as we go through the webinar, you ll check the box next to the drills that create a positive response (better range of motion, greater flexibility, greater strength) and those will become your high payoff drills; you ll want to do them very often. The drills that don t give a positive response will become your rehab drills, which will be practiced about once a day and will improve over time. Drill Name High Payoff Rehab Eye Circles Eye Spirals Gaze Stabilization Pencil Pushups Near/Far Hand/Eye Coordination VOR Drills VOR-C Drills Walking VOR Nasal Breathing Diaphragm Stretch Breathe Into the Tightness Visualization Other Drills:
5. Self-Assessment Basics There are a few things that we really insist on as you begin these assessments because these tests are often difficult to make objective. 1. Find a friend! - It may be best to go through the webinar with a friend or colleague at the same time, so you can watch each other s progress. 2. Pick your spot! - choose a particular spot in the room to stand, and make sure you come back to that same position each time you reassess. This will make sure that there aren t any subtle changes to your environment that could affect the assessments. 3. Take a picture! - you may want to use a smartphone or camera to take photos or video of your assessments; often, we see range of motion or strength improve, and the athlete doesn t feel a change, so the camera can be a useful tool for showing the athlete the change that occurs. 4. Pain isn t the measurement! - We are looking at body-wide changes in this webinar. One of the things that we know from neuroscience is that the basic rule of the human body is that range of motion always improves BEFORE pain goes away. So during the webinar, we are not overly concerned with whether the pain goes away or not. We are more interested in improving the range of motion by activating different parts of the brain, which we expect to decrease pain as we continue to move better. Self-Assessment #1: Range of Motion We test this by using an Active Range of Motion test. Perform each movement while keeping good posture. Be sure to test the same limb or range(s) of motion before and after each drill to ensure a reliable result. Also remember to warm up the range of motion before the initial assessment! 1. Arm up to the front (shoulder flexion) 2. Arm up to the side (shoulder abduction) 3. Scarecrow Position (shoulder internal/external rotation) 4. Trunk Rotation 5. Toe Touch Self-Assessment #2: Strength We use both muscle testing and strength exercises for our Strength assessments. Obviously you ll need a partner to do muscle testing, but it s ok if you don t have one. If you re by yourself, you can always just pick up a weight and do some curls or presses, or you can do bodyweight exercises such as squats, pushups, or pullups. Strength exercises can be graded by using a Rating of Perceived Exertion, or RPE on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is Extremely Easy and 10 is Extremely Hard. We generally want you to start with an exercises that is about a 3-4 level of difficulty so that it doesn t become too tiring as you continue to retest the exercise. A drill that is good for you will drop the rating down to a 2-3, while a drill that was not as good would make it feel more difficult, maybe a 5-6.
6. References There are a lot of systems out there in the & fitness industry, and sometimes it s hard to determine which ones are most appropriate for your training and your clients needs, or even which ones are legitimate. So we want to give you some resources that the Z-Health system is based on so you can explore further for yourself. If you have questions about these resources or any topics in the webinar, you can email us at any time at info@z.net. The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge is a fantastic book filled with scientific and anecdotal evidence of the brain s ability to change sometimes in unbelievable ways. http://goo.gl/hcsug See to Play by Michael A. Peters, OD addresses all facets of vision, including exercises to hone and condition peripheral vision, acuity, speed of focus, and more. http://goo.gl/bouo8y On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins is a new and compelling theory of intelligence, brain function, and the future of intelligent machines. Hawkins describes the memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness. http://goo.gl/y4ujyh Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie is the first book written for a general audience that examines the mysteries of the human balance system--the astonishingly complicated mechanisms that allow our bodies to counteract the force of gravity as we move through space. http://goo.gl/ttqa55 Why Do I Hurt? by Adriaan Louw, PT is a guidebook to why we have pain and how to deal with it. An easy-to-approach guide for anyone. http://goo.gl/jixjku R-Phase DVD & Manual by Z-Health Performance is designed to teach you how to rehabilitate your pain and injuries, restore normal range of motion in every area of your body (especially your joints), and perform the SPECIFIC exercises necessary to re-educate your nervous system--the control system for your, athleticism, and movement. http://goo.gl/x5q9yr