Your brain is important too. If I’m honest, probably more important than your body. It controls everything. Everything your body does is an action or a reaction from your brain. Signals sent up, and a response sent back down. So, it’s not only vitally important to take care of it, but it’s also important to understand just how much it does.
I firmly believe, and the science also suggests, that neuroscience is only going to become a bigger part of health and fitness. The fact is that your brain controls everything, that includes your exercise and fitness. Any movements you’re performing are due to communications from the brain. Now, usually this almost seems like a natural thing, it just sort of happens without much thought. Where it becomes more noticeable is after an injury, or some time off. You begin to see just how much influence your brain has. You need to retrain your brain.
What do I mean by that? Well, after an injury or a layoff, once you’re given the all clear, your muscles and bones should be fully healed, right? Then why is it that you can’t do what you did before, or when you go to do something, you get a feeling of pain or your body tries to resist? A lot of the science is now suggesting that that’s an issue with your brain, and not your actual ability. So, you’re still physically able to do the action, but your brain is protecting you. It’s remembering when you got injured doing that before, or it’s concerned, due to your inactivity, that you’ll overexert yourself. So, now, you need to retrain it. You need to reassure your brain that those movements patterns are safe again. It might take some time, but it’s essential if you want to progress on.
I’ve also touched on mental health before, and I will go into it in more detail another time, but again it’s another area where you see the influence your brain can have on your life, and how vital it is to take care of it and treat it effectively. Thankfully, the seriousness of mental health issues, and how to treat them, is becoming a more widely accepted topic of discussion and consideration. We still have a long way to go, but at least we’re paying some attention to it now.
Your brain is an amazing thing. It’s basically a supercomputer. And much like a supercomputer, sometimes it gets viruses or some of its files get deleted. So, you need to take care of it, you need to fuel it, and you might need to update the software. A lot of what your brain does is a natural reaction to stimuli, or anticipation of stimuli, but occasionally it gets its wires a little crossed. Think about your brain, because it’s certainly thinking about you. See you next week.
Dan Miller
Body Fuel Personal Fitness Trainer
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