Broadcast 3/7/2010 at 1:31 PM EST (76 Listens, 83 Downloads, 1788 Itunes)
Rob Kall Futurehealth Radio Show Podcast
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Using biofeedback and neurofeedback to help athletes enhance their athletic performance.
Vietta Sue Wilson's bio:
Sue is a retired professor of York
University, where she taught sport psychology, coaching, and
self-regulation courses. Her experience includes Biofeedback and
Neurofeedback in a medical center, counseling center, businesses, and in
schools. For years she ran a program with her graduate students who
assessed and trained executives in large organizations including
pharmaceutical , paper products, electronics, accounting and the
financial industry. Dr. Wilson has served on the Board of Directors for
both sports organizations and biofeedback organizations. more
Read this chapter in the Textbook of
Neurofeedback, EEG Biofeedback, qEEG and Brain Self
Regulation by Sue Wilson Electroencephalography and Sport; Review and Future
Directions
 CDs,
DVDs, MP3s available by Sue Wilson:
Optimizing
Performance and Health (software)
Peak
Performance Periodization: integrating skills considering timing and
context
PTSD
of Losing 4) Nothing
Succeeds Like Success; How to Use Psychological Skill Training with or
without Neurofeedback
Notes from the interview
sports psychology
equipment vs. old ways based on
psychotherapy....
reason she started using equipment--
can
measure if athlete was stressed or not with biofeedback with equipment.
Can
find out what's really going on, head or body-- even monitor on fields,
in swimming pool.
The minute you know what's going on, you then
have a chance to change.
Sports worked with
over 40 years
I've worked with archery through entire alphabet to yachting
objective
is not therapy, it is "what is it you need to do?"
It's
performance whether boardroom or ski slopes.
First, is there a
physical component to the task.
In board room-- smaller muscles like
speech. Learn to control muscles when under stress- nervous, happy.
Common
feature is through control-- do through focusing attention and staying
calm. Easier with neurofeedback.
During practice, mind wanders,
your quality goes down.
A lot of work on attention control when
bored-- main feature found with athletes-- not the stress problem, but
how to stay focused.
techniques--
Gold medallist skier-- staying
relaxed and cue word to remind himself to stay calm. Found out what
worked by using neurofeedback to see what words and ways worked, made
him calm and relaxed.
details of neurofeedback
still somewhat
of an art.
EMG muscle biofeedback can take one or two sessions
ADD
can lead to trouble, in certain parts of the competition, paying
attention. So his brain is too slow. It can take 20 to 40 sessions, but
we average ten sessions for most athletes.
Example:
Kevin
Evans has one arm, is a para-olympic archer. Has given up a lot of
family time and money to become the best in the world.
All you have
to do is find out what is not working.
Not sure when to put bow
down.
I put the equipment on him-- found that one pattern in his
brain came up, he'd miss the bulls-eye. When I saw that brainwave, I'd
tell him to put the bow down. He went on to win the world para olympic
archery competition.
Sprinters; can identify brain state that
enables sprinters to get off the start blocks fastest.
Sailing:
using biofeedback computer games, teach them to pay attention longer
Tennis:
Have to pay attention for 30-35 seconds. Watch the ball. That's how
long a rally is.
Long distance swimmer-- he goes 18 minutes. He
has to pay attention for the entire 18 minutes.
You've got to
learn to control your body, then your attention and your arousal.
Everybody
things they should be relaxed when they perform and that's not true.
They better perform better if they're excited and wanting to perform HR
and respiration are up. Muscles need to be relaxed. I train them to be
excited. I want them ready to go.
We train them in those
conditions-- trying to stay in control when you're excited.
I
have them do wall sits, get their heart rate way up and then pay
attention.
Standard approach or protocol.
start with
breathing, heart rate variability, heart rate deceleration
Hope to
deliver that in ten sessions.
Ones that need to fine tune-- like
olympic athlete-- will need 20 sessions.
When Tim Harkness
worked with gold medalist from India, did 150 sessions-- was first to
win gold medal for India.
I do ten, under impression olympic
athletes get about 20 sessions.
Most of the benefit comes in the
initial part of it when they see that they have control over their
body. There's an "aha!"
What about making this available in
schools, with non-licensed people providing training.
We have
made this into a medical process. If you have serious attention deficit
disorder or neurological problems, but if you are using it for sport, I
think we could put it into the school systems.
In my province in
Canada, they use heart rate monitors to show the effects of tobacco on
the body. there's no reason why we couldn't do that with our biofeedback
neurofeedback training.
a lot of the athletes have attention
deficit disorder.
These are tools. It depends on what you use
them for.
It was illegal to take a blood pressure from a healthy
adult, in the 1960s. A physican had to be somewhere on site because that
was a medical procedure.
Assessment protocol she's developed.
has
a database for athletes.
Wants to develop small biofeedback
unit with markers for caution, for healthy athletes and coaches.
describes
equipment she uses-- thought technology.
working on experimental
project with reaction time and has worked with joint angle monitor with
gymnasts.
How do you stop old sport habits? Used EMG and found a
particular pattern when the athlete got it right, and used audio to
reproduce the sound.
Pressure: equal pressure while shooting,
for example.
Kayakers-- get slight rotations. Went to kayak
store and bought a level-- simple, low cost biofeedback.
Thermal
biofeedback- using temperature as an indication for recovery-- people
who don't have good blood flow have cold hands and tend to keep that
way. I have them practice temperature at home. Have them demonstrate
that they can do that for recovery.
People with cold hands who
cannot learn how to warm them up tend to have the emotional
characteristic of the inability to let go. They are driven. Temperature
is the one that drives them crazy. They can't move their temperature
until they truly let go.
distance people, who require very long
attention spans, have to be driven, have to have great dedication.
If
they don't want to work, this kind of stuff won't work.
How to
address, with sports psychology, people who don't want to work?
Parents
inculcate into children need to work.
Parental support and good
coaching, good leadership can help
They don't come to the sports
setting with all the skills.
Side effect of biofeedback is that
it become part of their routine and then you can show them that they are
improving.
A good coach will give you exercises and drills that
you will be successful.
What have you learned from your 40
years of experience?
A clinical psychologist told me, "I want
your job."
I have to pump up the tires. Your people come
and their tires are pumped up and all they need are guidance and
direction on where to go, how to work.
When you're working with
young people and they get excited... it's real, life, has emotion,
excitement, success, failure, it's all built in. You're living in. You
better be prepared to be involved.
Heroes; Got to be a chance to
be a speaker with Sir Edmund Hillary, gave a talk on Quantum mechanics.
One of her athletes was in a "ghetto" and she would pick him up
to do boxing. His mother, living in projects, had four healthy,
functioning kids who were doing well. My heroes are what I'd call
everyday heroes.
Whether you're climbing mountains, being
parents or an athlete, it's understanding that we're all in this
together.
quantum mechanics demonstrate inter-connectedness.
Sir
Edmund said I couldn't do this without other people helping and
supporting me.
Bottom up. True athletes come out of it knowing
that someone else helped them. They didn't do this alone.
Olympics
for financial gain, fame, etc.
I miss the olympics where it was the
underdog-- the person who had a dream to be the best that they could be.
There are still athletes or groups like that. When you get someone like
that, as a coach, it's joy.
The athletes
coach, massage,
trainer.
Reach Sue at viettaw@yahoo.com
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