Listening and reacting to your body.

One of the most crucial elements of athletic success is the ability to listen to your body. This may sound a bit strange; however, improving this learned attribute will enhance your development of technical competence, body awareness (balance and coordination), sport performance, and decrease the likelihood of injury.

 

Your body provides your brain with regular feedback that you may or may not be aware of. The body is equipped with a number of sensors that constantly provides information back to your brain for processing. For example there are sensors in your muscles and tendons that tell the brain what type of forces are being exerted onto them. There are sensors in the heart and lung that relay information to the brain of the stress on the cardiovascular system. There are also sensors in the joints that provide information as to the location of the body’s limbs. In conjunction the eyes, ears, and tactile senses also provide a constant flow of information to help you make more informed decisions.

 

Your job is to process the abundance of information you receive from the body every second and how you are going to act on it. Some actions are taken in a reflex form and therefore do not require processing but the rest are all processed by you. A lot of your decision making will become automatic with learning (experience) and the processing time will be greatly reduced. Are you aware that you are making so many decisions when you are competing/performing?

 

You can influence how your body reacts to the information. To improve this ability you need to start listening and understanding your body so that you can learn how it needs to be treated under different situations, stimuli, and stresses. Begin this process in your training environment listen to what you body is telling you on the inside and what is happening on the outside. Simply start by becoming more aware of the stresses on the body and how you typically respond to them. For example when changing direction (reacting to the ball/puck), how do you manipulate your body? Is it an efficient reaction to the stimuli? Was it too slow, did you alter the body’s direction/speed quickly, safely, and under control? If not then there are some areas that you can work on.

 

The ability to process this information, make correct decisions, and then execute the correct decision is a skill set that is not easily or quickly learned but with time can be a valuable and powerful tool towards your athletic success.

Craig Dalrymple

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