Athletes, Somatic Exercises & Energy Management
About the Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Somatic Exercises & Energy Management
Competing in sports is an incredibly demanding process. As an athlete, you have to spend incredible amounts of time and resources in order to develop your body and mind to the level it needs to be so you can compete in accordance with your expectations. In my book Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns, I spend a great deal of time exploring how the demands of sport preparation take an incredible toll on an athlete’s mental and physical health outcomes. I discuss what this looks like through actual athlete case studies, but also diving into the science behind how sports can cause trauma on the mind-body connection.
But just as importantly, I also cover what types of approaches I used with athletes to both overcome the trauma from sports and transition to achieving peak mental and physical performance. Two of those approaches were somatic exercises and energy management strategies. For this issue of the Notes, I want to provide insight into the science behind somatic exercises and energy management, while also explaining how athletes can use these approaches to beat mental blocks and become the best version of themselves! Let’s begin by exploring what somatic exercises are, and the connection to athlete performance outcomes.
Part I. Somatic Exercises & Athlete Mental Performance
Let’s first begin by defining the word somatic. Per the authors Strean, W. B., & Strozzi-Heckler, R. from the article The Body of Knowledge: Somatic Contributions to the Practice of Sport Psychology, they state the following: “Somatics” comes from soma— the body in its wholeness. From a somatic perspective, the self is indistinguishable from the body. The attributes that make up the self (emotions, actions, beliefs, interactions, perception, ethics, morals, and drive for dignity) all emerge from the physical form (e.g., Strozzi-Heckler, 2003; 2007). We reject the assumption that there is a disembodied, self-contained self that is separate from the life of one's body. We acknowledge this idea as a radical departure from pervasive Cartesian discourses that have dominated and also posited a determinable, objective reality disconnected from subjective experience. Without the body there would be no possibility for tasting, hearing, smelling, and feeling. There would be no thoughts, reflection, or awareness. There would be no presence that would interact with others. Without the body there would simply be no basis for experience. The experience of living, then, resides in the “embodied self,” (a term that could be seen as redundant, if one were to adopt this point of view). From our living biological experience we form relationships with others and the world. In this way our bodies become the ground from which we develop and cultivate athletic performance.
So when we combine the word somatic with exercises, what is the underlying implication? When athletes go to work with most sport psychologists, they will exclusively focus on developing deeper levels of insight using more ‘logic’ based thinking processes. This approach is rooted in a psychotherapy technique called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is considered to be an ‘evidence-based practice’. But this technique is rooted in western-style medicine, which means that the traditional sport psychologist only operates in a silo, viewing the body merely as a platform for one’s head. The fact of the matter is that the body is an extension of our mind, and modern mental performance experts focus on trying to enhance this mind-body connection through somatic exercises. Why is this relevant for athletes? And why did I spend so much time focusing on discussing this in my book Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns? It’s because I have found that oftentimes many athletes are suffering from unprocessed trauma and remain very disconnected from their bodies in order to not have to confront the pain that they are dealing with. Somatic exercises help athletes process their trauma in a more effective manner and strengthen the mind-body relationship on a healthier level. Now that we have reviewed why athletes should use somatic exercises to enhance performance, let’s dive deeper into how they use energy management.
Part II. Energy Management & Athlete Mental Health
Part of an athlete’s job is to make sure that they have trained their bodies to withstand the physical demands of their sport. One of the ways athletes can be highly successful or fail miserably in this task, is through energy management skills. Through my work with athletes, what I have found is that while many of the performers I have worked with demonstrate elite levels of strength and explosive power through their physical training, they have below average skills at effectively managing their energy throughout the week. The reason this is important is because if you are not good at managing your energy, your recovery will be much slower. And if your recovery is slower, you will be more likely to get injured, and if you are more likely to get injured than you will find yourself without a job. So what is one way that athletes can effectively track this?
In Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns, I review the importance of tracking Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Since heart rate variability (HRV) reflects the time between heartbeats, it directly relates to the electrical activity stimulating the heart, specifically the sinoatrial node (the heart's natural pacemaker). Low HRV is associated with mortality, myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease, and congestive heart failure. When sport psychologists help enhance HRV, HRV in this case it is associated with improved autonomic nervous system balance. Research on athlete populations shows that following improvements in HRV, their sport performance outcomes improve while also reducing the risk of complex motor skills from being compromised. Interestingly, when athletes are exhibiting decreased symptoms of recovery, research has shown that there is a significant likelihood that there will be poor HRV outcomes. So what are examples of energy management skills and somatic exercises that athletes can use to enhance performance?
Part III. Brainspotting Mental Training, HRV & Biofeedback
One of my favorite somatic exercises that I describe in my book is Brainspotting. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy technique that utilizes the client’s field of vision to identify unresolved psychological issues. In Brainspotting we say ‘where you look affects how you feel’ and through this process clients have the ability to access the parts of their brain that traditional psychotherapy approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy are unable to do. This results in clients being able to directly address the true ‘underlying’ issue (which we refer to as a Brain Spot) that has created conflict allowing individuals to move from needing to constantly cope with their unprocessed trauma, to not needing to cope at all. Brainspotting can be used to help anyone who is dealing with mental blocks, the yips, psychologically traumatic events, chronic pain issues from injuries, as well as individuals who are trying to access deeper levels of creativity or cultivating mental flow states. Brainspotting truly is a textbook somatic exercise that sport psychologists can use to help athletes strengthen the mind-body connection.
In terms of helping athletes with HRV and energy management, one tool that can be used is Biofeedback. Biofeedback is a technique by which sport psychologists monitor and display what is happening in the athlete’s mind and their body’s physiological reactions. There are several different traits that sport psychologists and mental performance consultants can focus on in order to help the athlete with this technology. In the book Biofeedback & Neurofeedback Applications In Sport Psychology edited by Benjamin Strack, PhD, Michael Linden, PhD & Vietta Wilson, PhD, the authors give examples of where Biofeedback technology is used.
Heart Rate: Elevated heart rate may increase reaction time, while stabilization of heart rate may increase endurance, and cardiovascular efficiency.
Respiration - Improper respiration may lead to performance inefficiency or ‘choking’ and hyperventilation.
Muscular Tension - Excess muscle tension can inhibit movement speed, rhythm, timing & flexibility.
Sweaty Palms - An indirect measure of emotional reactivity and anxiety
Brainwave Activity - Athletes who learn to control brainwaves can enhance their ability to pay attention, control their emotions, and minimize a busy brain.
Peripheral Body Temperature - Measures blood flow or blood-vessel constriction in the hands and feet. Stress can cause the constriction or shutting down of blood flow, which inhibits recovery from strenuous workouts or minor and major injuries.
Usually when an athlete works with a sport psychologist during an actual biofeedback session, the athlete will have various sensors attached to different areas of the body. These sensors can range from clips attached to their ears, electrodes attached to their head, or patches attached to their skin (there are no needles, there is no invasive aspect to the procedure). These sensors will relay the information that they are detecting from the body to a computer, the computer will analyze the information (e.g. heart rate, body temperature, etc.) and then display what is actually happening in the athlete’s body during this feedback, while also providing information about when optimal body changes are occurring, which can come in the form of some type of reward (e.g. bell ringing, movie playing, etc.). Athletes can alter the results of the biofeedback equipment through deep breathwork that will help them accrue the benefits they are looking for. At the conclusion of biofeedback work, athletes can see a significant improvement in HRV, which in turn will potentially help enhance their energy management capabilities!
