In my last blog, I announced the NOT SO SIMPLE TASK concerning introducing the importance of CHRONOTYPING to training plans, competitive and academic performance and the ability to focus, learn and perform daily life tasks.
As I stated in the previous post, “Sleep loss or deprivation can have significant effects on performance, motivation, perception of effort and cognition (cognitive skills) as well as numerous other biological functions. Monitoring sleep-quality and quantity CAN BE USEFUL FOR EARLY DETECTION AND INTERVENTION BEFORE SIGNIFICANT PEFORMANCE AND HEALTH DECREMENTS ARE OBSERVED.”
Hopefully I have presented viable evidence of the importance of sleep to success in academics, athletics and biological functioning. Another factor for consideration in improving learning, cognitive functioning, athletic performance and social interacting IS THAT OF CHRONOTYPING.
Regardless of whether you read this in the Bible or remember it from a sixties song “adapted” from the Bible, THERE IS A TIME UNTO EVERYTHING… OR, in terms of rest, study, training, competition, nutritional supplementing, test taking or learning, there ARE bodily cycles within the day THAT ARE OPTIMUM times for performing physical and mental tasks.
I will leave the “definitive” word to expert Sport Physiologist/Coach Henk Kraaijenhof with his statement below:
“One simple factor might already help us
here: it’s called chronotyping. Are you a morning-type or an evening-type, a
lark or an owl? Do you wake up fresh and sparkling, full of energy and
wanting to train before breakfast? Or do you need time to wake up, warm-up and
preferably train late in the afternoon. And of course there are people to whom
it does not make a difference when they feel best, no extreme morning- or
evening-types. “
“But why is there no chronotraining which would research
the effects of different times of training in relation to the adaptation
to training? In other words, it would answer the question: does it matter
when I train?And I can answer that question for you now: YES, it does…and probably to quite a large extent.”
How many high school athletes do YOU know that train BEFORE school each day? I know many swim teams, both club and school, that have their elite kids train BEFORE SCHOOL each morning YEAR ROUND (okay, they get a month or 3 weeks off each year) I am also aware of many Football programs that have their athletes lift weights in the morning BEFORE SCHOOL.
So, why am I bringing this fact up when the blog is supposed to be focused on CHRONOTYPING? SIMPLY BECAUSE THIS ROUTINE WILL GREATLY AFFECT THE STUDENT ATHLETES INVOLVED in regards to sleep deprivation, disruption of Basic Rest Activity Cycles, disruption of regenerative and adaptive needs and disruption of ability to focus, learn and cognitively perform in the classroom.
BASIC REST ACTIVITY CYCLES (BRAC), introduced in Henk’s Chronotyping article as a type of ULTRADIAN PERFORMANCE RHYTHM, can best be explained by the quote below from the last (third) article attached to this post (Basic Rest Activity Cycles).
“To put it simply, fast brainwaves correspond to states
of alertness and focus. Slower brainwaves correspond to states
of imagination, daydreaming, or simply sleepiness.
“It turns out your brain needs to go into the “slow”
state once in a while. Staying 100% focused for several hours
straight is unsustainable, if not flat out impossible.”
Think about the last sentence
from the quote above…then answer this question: “Have you ever had to teach
students who simply cannot focus on the task at hand? Whether you are a coach
teaching lifting technique at 6:15 A.M. OR
a Math instructor of a SECOND PERIOD class who is explaining differential
equations to student-athletes who arose at 5:00 A.M. and lifted and conditioned
for 1 hour before school even started, DID YOU NOTICE some could focus, learn
and perform while others “were in a fog”?
Do YOU think that students
will eventually “get used” to the schedule and ADAPT so that they can focus and
perform to the best of their ability from 6:00 am until after their afternoon
practice?
In addition to the various body-mind rhythms that control
the timing of optimum levels of mental and physical functioning with
levels of “wandering”, daydreaming and lethargy, there is also the growing
problem of electronic overstimulation and it’s impact on teacher-student or
coach-athlete communication. The first of the THREE articles I have attached
below concerns this IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY
ON ATHLETES’ BEHAVIOUR (yes, behavior can be spelled that way IF you are a
Brit), THINKING AND LEARNING BY
Peter Thompson.
THIS MAY EVEN BE IMPORTANT TO PARENT-CHILD COMMUNICATION
methods! EVEN IF YOU DON’T TAKE THE TIME TO READ ALL OF IT, PLEASE BE ON THE
LOOK-OUT FOR “THE DISTRACTED MIND”, A BOOK COMING OUT IN 2015
BY NEUROSCIENTIST ADAM GAZZALEY AND PSYCHOLOGIST LARRY ROSEN.
The book is best described in
Thompson’s last paragraph: Neuroscientist Adam
Gazzaley and psychologist Larry Rosen’s ‘The Distracted Mind’, the first
brain book to approach the topic from both the psychological and the brain science
perspectives, offering a look at how our increasingly
saturated world of technology places potentially harmful demands on our brains,
with tested strategies for regaining our ability to focus and attend.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Impact of Technology on Athletes’ Behaviour, Thinking and Learning
A
colleague of mine was recently seated in a Starbucks in California, working on
his laptop on some necessary work-related business. A group of three teenage
boys seated nearby became interested in what he was doing and struck up a
conversation, of sorts. One asked him directly what he was doing and who he
worked for. On hearing the company name, “Hoka One One”, the teenager
immediately ‘disappeared’ into his smartphone, while his friends picked up the
conversation, while at the same time viewing their phones.
Very
quickly, the boys had validated Hoka One One, from their ‘Googling’, as being a
young entity but the most rapidly growing running shoe company in the USA and
they knew all sorts of other information. But the face-to-face conversation
with these teens didn’t grow that much, as each of them entered and then left
the conversation with no questions, just recourse to Google – they had all that
they needed from their phones.
The
thought of interacting with an actual Hoka employee, and a high-level one at
that, seemed to pass over their heads. My colleague was sufficiently intrigued
to ask them, “How many times do you Google?”, expecting an answer of several
times a day but they conferred and agreed that it was 10-20 times an hour.
This
appears to be very different from how much teens use their smartphones for
messaging, voice calls and the time. The British newspaper, The Daily Mail, published research in
October 2013 that put an individual’s phone usage, unlocking and checking it,
at an average of 110 times a day, with actual usage of 23 times a day for messaging, 22 times for
voice calls and 18 times to get the time. No mention of Google, or other search
engines.
I have noticed the ‘Google phenomenon’
with several of the athletes I coach. Away from the track, they look to their
phones to provide them with the information they need and for confirmation that
stated fact is ‘actual’ fact. But as Abraham Lincoln so succinctly stated, “You shouldn’t believe everything you read on
the internet.”
This search phenomenon doesn’t appear
to be a lack of respect for the coach but a greater trust in the technology of
the day. It is a reflection of the old quote, “If it's not in
the computer, it doesn't exist.” Nor, is this distinction between information, knowledge and wisdom
new. In 1835, Alfred, Lord Tennyson included in his poem, Locksley Hall, the
lines, “Knowledge comes, but
wisdom lingers.” This thought was echoed by T. S. Eliot in 1934
with, before the
computer age, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?”
When teens and young people would rather
obtain information and connect with their friends through messaging / texting
and social media on mobile devices than through face-to-face communication it
has inherent and implicit implications for the trust within the coach-athlete
communication and relationship. This dynamic development in information access
and communication is a challenge each and every coach will have to confront, to
find their personal solution.
Dr. Larry Rosen, a Professor of
Psychology and an internationally recognized expert in the ‘Psychology of
Technology’, offers valuable insights and advice for breaking the ‘IT lock’ on
our athletes’ brains. Dr. Rosen states,
“Our brains have a specialized mechanism, called the Default Mode Network,
which has been appraised as being operational during daydreaming, mind
wandering and other non-task-oriented behaviors.” If you are constantly and actively making
decisions about what to do through a smartphone or iPad, the DMN will not be
activated.
The importance of this is the DMN is
essential, as neuroscientists are beginning to understand, in keeping your mind
focused. As many of us have previously intuited, neuroscientists have begun to
show evidence that interactions with technology over-stimulate your brain in a
certain direction.
Dr. Rosen goes as far as prescribing IT
exposure for the developing brain. “I tell parents that children need to use
technology at a ratio of 1 to 5 meaning that for every minute of tech use there
should be an equivalent 5 minutes of time spent doing something else including
talking to people, interacting with toys that promote creativity (and mind
wandering) and doing activities that calm an overactive brain.”
He continues, “As the child gets older,
the ratio starts to change and around the time your child is a preteen the
ratio is usually about half and half. When technology becomes more prevalent in
the teen school and social life that ratio flips to 5 to 1 with teens still
needing time away from technology but also needing to connect with their
schoolwork and their virtual social worlds.” For those of us coaching athletes
into their twenties, we are seeing more ‘extended adolescence’ and wonder whether
this is a partial consequence of their current IT upbringing.
No consistent definition of ‘extended adolescence’ or ‘prolonged
adolescence’ exists in published research around the world. A
number of different terms can be found in both academic literature and popular
culture to describe similar and overlapping concepts. But the term ‘extended
adolescence’ is mostly used in the media and in daily interactions. It
describes a prolonged developmental phase of adolescence before reaching
adulthood.
Basically,
individuals in their twenties are taking longer to ‘grow up’ and move into the
traditional adulthood, with some making this delayed move well into their 30s.
Many reasons have been proposed for this developmental shift including
economics but technology and social media are frequently identified as the
major contributors. A consequence of this for adolescents of all ages is the
restricted, or absent, time, spent with adult role models.
This is
where the effective coach can play a fundamental role in assisting his or her
athletes’ social and performance development by providing a strong face-to-face
communication, that provides an appropriate role model, within environments
that are created to optimize experiential learning and problem-solving.
Certainly, the world of 24/7/365 mobile
IT access and social media is here to stay, and one thing we can be sure of is
that it will continue to change and change at an ever-increasing rate. As
coaches involved with athletes of all ages, we need to be in tune with the IT
and communication tools they are using right now. We need to understand how it
impacts them, how they think, what they relate to and how they learn, while
attempting to create the environment and context where situational competence
and wisdom can grow.
As I have said to the athletes I coach,
“Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in your fruit
salad.” Let’s strive for informed and knowledgeable but wise coaches and
athletes.
Advance Notice: Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry
Rosen’s ‘The Distracted Mind’, the first brain book to approach the
topic from both the psychological and the brain science perspectives, offering
a look at how our increasingly saturated world of technology places potentially
harmful demands on our brains, with tested strategies for regaining our ability
to focus and attend. The Distracted Mind’ will be released in Fall 2015.
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Timing: the ignored factor in training and performance: chronotyping and chronotraining.
We always assumed that in taking medication it would not matter when you take the pill: morning, afternoon or evening.But science proved us wrong: chronopharmacology is a relative new branch of science in which the timing of application of a medication is studied. Chronopharmacology is a new branch at the tree of chronobiology, the study of the rhythms in biology. An even newer branch is chrononutrition, which basically studies what the optimal timing is for food or nutritional supplements. Click on the rectangle to access the URL below it for graphic.
Ciracadian rhythm of the body clock http://helpingthebesttogetbetter.com/?p=873
But why is there no chronotraining which would research the effects of different times of training in relation to the adaptation to training. In other words, it would answer the question: does it matter when I train?And I can answer that question for you now: YES, it does……and probably to quite a large extent.
This might not be interesting for the recreational athlete, but for the elite athlete it is, In the end it might make a huge difference in efficiency of training, progress and performance. Since the elite athlete should be looking for that very small margin making the difference between winning and losing, between success and failure, between gold and silver.
One simple factor might already help us here: it’s called chronotyping. Are you a morning-type or an evening-type, a lark or an owl? Do you wake up fresh and sparkling, full of energy and wanting to train before breakfast? Or do you need time to wake up, warm-up and preferably train late in the afternoon. And of course there are people to whom it does not make a difference when they feel best, no extreme morning- or evening-types.
A simple guideline from experience and theory: train when you feel best.
The exception to this rule is when you are preparing from a tournament or for competitions at a certain given time. It would not be smart to always train in the evening while all of a sudden you have to go through qualification rounds in the morning or always train in the morning while your competition is late in the evening. You might have trouble adapting in time to perform at your best at a time that your body and mind aren’t used to.
Moment-time
curves at different time of the day (Pereira and Machado) http://helpingthebesttogetbetter.com/?p=873
I used to coach an elite female athlete who
was an extreme morning-type, waking up in the morning and ready to go! And
during day time you could sense and measure her energy slowly disappearing. At
the other hand, in the same period I used to coach an Italian athlete who was
rather an evening type: waking up late, go for a late and small breakfast:
coffee and a roll, then relax, wait for lunch, relax and train in the late
afternoon, seeming to gain more energy as the day progressed. Since I believed
in chronotyping, I coached them at separate times of the day. The first
mentioned in the morning and the second one in the evening. It made my working
days longer, but it was worth it!Implementation of this is not always as easy as shown above.
First of all many coaches deal with teams and we can’t just train every player at a different time. Secondly, we also depend on the availability of the facilities, suppose you’re a morning-type but the weight room is only available in the afternoon.
But still those who coach individual athletes have to think about chronotyping since a lot of effort and money is spent on increasing the small improvements in equipment, nutrition, training methods, etc. Training at the right time of the day, for that athlete might be even more efficient.
It’s not only the time of the day, but also the week of the month, think about the menstrual cycle of female athletes,. And also the months of the year, since adaptation to training is different in summer and winter, probably due to the effect of sunlight and the impact on the hormonal systems.
There are even shorter cycles like ultradian cycles, e.g. the BRAC or Basic-Rest-Activity-Cycle of approximately 90-120 minutes. It’s probably something we are all unconsciously familiar with e.g. in case of attention span in students or the duration of a workout.
Ultradian
rhythm: the BRAC (E.L.Rossi -The 20 Minute Break http://helpingthebesttogetbetter.com/?p=873
Now how do you know the chronotype of an
athlete?1. ask, observe, recall or measure when the athlete is performing at his/her best in morning time or evening time, one can look at training data like times, distances, weights, points
2. do the Horne or the Munich Morningness-Eveningness Questionaire or MEQ
In the past a lot of research has been done on the influence of time on mental and physical performance e.g. in case of shift work, sleep deprivation and jet-lag in industrial or military setting.
Also in Russia and the former GDR sport scientists have spend time to look at this, but in the West this factor seems to be ignored.
Now, like stated above, research is catching up again and in the medical field and in biology we start to see the impact of optimal timing of interventions. How long will it take before we in sports performance will pick this up too? My guess…too long!
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BELOW
IS A WELL-WRITTEN ARTICLE WHICH EXPLAINS THE BRAC OR BASIC REST TO ACTIVITY
RATIO IN A SIMPLE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND MANNER. BELOW THE TITLE YOU WILL FIND THE URL TO
ACCESS A WHOLE WEBSITE DEDICATED TO INFORMATION
ON SLEEP AND POLYPHASIC SLEEP INFORMATION.---------------------
Basic
Rest and Activity Cycles
“To put it simply, fast brainwaves correspond to states
of alertness and focus. Slower brainwaves correspond to states
of imagination, daydreaming, or simply sleepiness.
It turns out your brain needs to go into the “slow”
state once in a while. Staying 100% focused for several hours
straight is unsustainable, if not flat out impossible.
Each brain cell uses sodium
and potassium ions for electrical signals. After several minutes (or
hours) in fast brainwave states, the sodium and potassium ions become
“depleted” (for lack of a better word).
Studies have shown that the
brain can restore the sodium/potassium balance by going into slow
brainwave states.
Your body comes designed with
a clever mechanism called the “ultradian rhythm”, which is also known as
the “Basic Rest and Activity Cycle” or BRAC.
The BRAC repeats itself every
90-120 minutes. During the first half of the BRAC your brain is in a fast
brainwave state. You feel focused and alert. During the last half,
your brainwaves start to slow down. And for the last 20 minutes of the
BRAC, you will feel daydreamy, and perhaps a bit tired. This is good,
because it’s a sign your brain is restoring the sodium/potassium balance,
so that once the 20 minutes of rest are up, you’ll be able to
rebound back into fast brainwaves states.
As you’re reading this right
now, you are transitioning through a high or a low of your BRAC. If you
feel focused and alert, you’re probably in the first 70-100 minutes of the
cycle. If you feel daydreamy and are unable to focus, you might be in the
last 20 minutes.
“Understanding this Basic
Rest and Activity Cycle is one of the key elements to unlocking your
brain’s potential and sustaining mental energy levels throughout the day.”
– Optimal Sleep Series #6
You can take advantage of
your natural undulations in wakefulness. This is actually the origin of
polyphasic sleep, physiologically. When people are at leisure or in a
state of extreme stress they will naturally take naps when there is a drop in
wakefulness.
When you are sleeping your
body’s BRAC will manifest itself as stages of sleep. Instead of increasing in
brain wave frequency over the first half of the cycle it will decrease in brain
wave frequency (going from light to deep sleep) then rise and finish with a
period of REM sleep.
The uberman schedule is the
prime example of the Basic Rest and Activity Cycles in action under stress. The
ultradian rhythm locks in at 120 minutes and after some learned behaviour can
expand out into multiples of this time, 240 minutes (and in cases such as
everyman, 360-390 minutes).
Hopefully this helps you
understand the origin of the 4 hour cycle, as 4 hours is two 2 hour BRACs.
You can lock your ultradian
rhythm into any length within the natural BRAC range, so a 4 hour cycle is not
the only cycle you can have. You could train yourself to have a 3h cycle (2x 90
min BRACs), or a 3.5h cycle (2x 105 min BRACs) quite naturally.
The brain transits from a
Beta frequency state to an Alpha state at the end of each BRAC, and if you use
certain techniques, such as meditation, or WILD, or even just closing your eyes
for sleep, you can further sink into slower frequency brain-wave states, or
instead transition into REM. This may seem like an article of obvious
statements, but it paves the way to further investigation into the science of
polyphasic sleep!
