Sports teams find creative ways to cross-train the brain off-field

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HOW TO TRAIN THE BRAIN: COGNITIVE TRAINING IN LACROSSE (US Lacrosse Magazine):

“Bon­nie Rosen has always been inter­est­ed in find­ing a train­ing method that extends beyond the lacrosse field. That pur­suit has tak­en her beyond the restraints of phys­i­cal train­ing in its entirety.

The Tem­ple women’s lacrosse coach uses vir­tu­al real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy as an alter­na­tive way to train her team, part of an inno­v­a­tive wave of cog­ni­tive exer­cis­ing that flex­es mus­cles oft-for­got­ten about — in the brain … the Owls fundraised to pur­chase 10 Ocu­lus Go head­sets last Jan­u­ary, then pur­chased one new­er mod­el — the Ocu­lus Quest — more recent­ly. The ini­tial “work­outs” last­ed 15–20 min­utes and hap­pened three times per week.

Tem­ple uses Neu­ro­Train­er, a neu­ro­science-based train­ing app on Ocu­lus, that turns games into cog­ni­tive train­ing ses­sions … there’s no proof just yet that VR tech improves ath­letes. There are ancil­lary ben­e­fits, though.

“I don’t know if I can say if there’s that pay­off,” Rosen said. “One of our goal­keep­ers, she was real­ly com­mit­ted to it last year. I don’t know that she saw the results from what she did in the Neu­ro­Train­er to on the field, but she def­i­nite­ly learned about herself.”

Anoth­er com­pa­ny in this space, FITLIGHT, “allows the user to enhance their exist­ing train­ing pro­to­cols by adding cog­ni­tive loads to it,” direc­tor of sales Rob Bouw said. “Com­bin­ing the visu­al and audi­tive stim­uli that the FITLIGHT Train­er offers to your lacrosse train­ing allows you to train your deci­sion-mak­ing process by mak­ing your brain (pre­frontal cor­tex) more efficient.”

News in Context:


How to pro­mote brain health at scale: Exam­ples in the work­place, K12 edu­ca­tion and con­sumer tech from Sharp­Brains