bioelectrical feedback

[vault3rb0y]

For those that are not familiar, bio-feedback is essentially a way to monitor your own body, and track things like heartrate, breathing rate, brain activity, then see it on a computer. It allows you to think or act a certain way, and control your activity levels.

In shadowing physical therapists and sports psychologists at Walter Reed Medical Center today, I was able to learn more about this technique of sports psychologist that is used by the head of "performance enhancement" for the Army's ACEP program. They even hooked me up, took a baseline, and had me think of relaxing thoughts to try to calm my entire mind and allowed me to monitor my stress levels when i thought of certain things. It's actually quite difficult to get it low!

Very interesting stuff, but I would like to pose a question for anyone who has any real experience with using this sort of thing (I'm not sure anyone does, but its worth a shot!) The head psychologist told me that there is evidence that by relaxing your mind completely, you can get the same benefit you would as if you were asleep, yet you are still conscious. In essence, you are recovering more fully while still awake. Has anyone ever used this technique, and found that they have any changes to their sleep habits? Or does anyone have any experience working with biofeedback as a way to relax your mind before or during practice/competition?

[bel142]

Yep, although it has a fancy name things like actively relaxing while using your own body information is pretty common. It also has had discussions in Sport Psychology/Physiology, with the idea of performance and anxiety.

Models of relations between anxiety and performance, there are a few...
Drive theory more or less suggests that arousal elicits the dominant (most well learned) response, the idea being that if dominant response is correct performance is enhanced or if dominant response is incorrect, performance suffers... Kind of a weak theory...

The Inverted U hypothesis is an inverted U on an XY chart explaining activation and performance as such as a U will go there is point that performance will suffer. This is a 'good' idea however there is no room for self reliance or cognitive appraisal. For example when I am on the runway, my heart is pounding, I am ready to go...

There are a few other theorys, which leads me to the one that probably has the closest to what you discussed above. The Catastrophe Model is the only interactive model to day (unless new research is out then by all means some one slap me with the paper) This takes into account activation, arousal, and performance, suggesting that there is a major drop off in performance with over activation. For example when I am on the runway, I find it very difficult to pole vault or have successful vaults after a new PR or a 3rd attempt make for a clutch position or metal. My heart rate is up too much my adrenaline is making me shake and if I loose composure performance suffers very quickly. This theory shows how even as activation decreases, detriments in performance have already occurred and it is much more difficult to regain performance.

VERY simple way to take what you are talking about electro-biofeed back to use...
When I can't sleep, using the clock next to my bed I will take my heart rate, figure out the BPM, and continue to control my breathing and thoughts to try and relax to get my heart rate down a bit. THEN if you really want to sleep fast (this doesn't work for me because I find it to be interesting) stair at a clock next to your bed, if you have one, count home many beats per minute... Then on the next new minute close your eyes and count... See if you can time your heart beat, by your own count, then when you get to 1 beat before a new minute open your eyes and see if you can catch the clock change... Do this 5 - 10 times sure enough you will be asleep quick....

What's that you ask? Yes I am a nerd...

[vault3rb0y]

It took nearly 2 months to get a response on this one, and it ends up from my teammate of two years. I guess next time i have question this scientific I'll ask Conroy over at the biomechanics lab instead