It was the summer of 2006, and a group of my high school football teammates attended a football camp at Penn State University. This is where I first crossed paths with Erik Harris (outside of competing against each other on the field), a student-athlete from New Oxford High School in Pennsylvania. While I attended the camp with a group of teammates, Erik came on his own, so we ended up hanging out quite often and getting to know him. Whether it was participating in drills, stopping by the pool in between sessions, or eating at the commons before and after practice, we made sure to include him in as much of it as possible. Erik was an extremely likable guy, and he came across very genuine. I think everyone knows the type of person who you just meet, but somehow it feels like you have known them for much longer – that was Erik at that camp. Physically, it was clear early on that Erik had a natural ability to compete and play at a high level. It’s not every day that you come across someone with such natural ability and an incredible work ethic, but that’s Erik. His play was so great that he caught the eye of one of Penn State’s football coaches at the time, Mike McQueary. Mike was crazy about him – he had Erik demonstrate drills, he verbally praised him more than any other defensive back at the camp, and he called Erik out in front of the entire camp to do 1-on-1 drills to shut down the best wide receivers. It was a huge deal for a camp attendee to receive such a spotlight. It meant that Erik had a high chance of being recruited by Penn State and eventually receive an offer. But, I’ll never forget a conversation we had while eating lunch one day at the commons. It was towards the middle of the camp, and Erik told us about a talk he had with Mike. Mike pulled him aside and asked him about his 40 yard dash time. Erik responded with something to the tune of “4.6”. Mike seemed less than satisfied with this response, Erik said. During the ensuing days at camp, it was clear Mike’s interest in Erik completely dropped off. He no longer pursued Erik the way he had leading up to that discussion. From our perspective, it was a terrible thing to witness, because we knew a 40 time isn’t everything. There are plenty of tremendous athletes who can’t touch a 4.6 40 time, yet still have really great careers. It was clear Erik was one of the most gifted athletes at the camp, and deserved to receive an offer. But for some reason, the coaches decided that his 4.6 40 time meant he could not play at Penn State, and would not receive an offer. Given Erik's highly competitive nature, you just knew being overlooked only added more fuel to his fire. The ensuing year, interest to play at Division I schools on a big stage dramatically decreased. In the end, Erik would eventually attend California University of Pennsylvania, a division 2 school. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! Settling for a Division 2 offer was not the first time Erik had to battle through adversity over the course of his life. He was one of five children, and grew up in a single parent household with no father figure. He was used to living with a chip on his shoulder, and that chip certainly carried over to the field. Erik continued to demonstrate his abilities when, in 2010, he was named First Team All-Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (All-PSAC). He followed up those accolades with a second team selection in 2011. Only 1.6% of ALL college football players make it to the NFL. For Erik, a division 2 player, those prospects became much less. By most people's standards, it would be foolish of him to even THINK of a career in the NFL. But Erik isn't most people. After graduating from college, Erik didn't receive any invitations to NFL tryouts and was not drafted. He started working as a "corn mixer" at the Utz Chip Factory. The drive to continue playing football at a higher level was still very much there - it just wasn’t yet his time. “You see what life can be if you don’t make the most of your opportunities,” said Erik during an interview special about his life path (see full video here: https://www.raiders.com/video/safety-erik-harris-untraditional-road-to-the-nfl). This realization came from Erik after some self-reflection of his current situation - extraordinary athletic talent being used to stir corn at the local chip factory. One year after starting work at Utz, Erik decided to go back to school, continue training for a football career, and took a part-time job working the night shift at UPS. The goal? “To give this thing one more run.” That next year, Erik paid $80 to drive up to Buffalo, New York for a tryout with a Canadian Football League (CFL) team, the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Erik would make the team and be a part of the team from 2013-2015. Eventually, he was able to make such an impact in the CFL that his name reached the front office of the New Orleans Saints. The Saints invited Erik to try out in February of 2016. That same day, they offered him a position on the team. He had finally reached his goal of making an NFL roster, but his journey was only just beginning. The first year with the Saints, Erik tore his left ACL and meniscus, requiring season ending surgery. Yikes. But what was his mindset? “Another opportunity to grow as an individual.” Once again, Erik would overcome all odds and battle back from the surgery. Eventually, he worked his way back on to the field and earned substantial time playing on special teams and defense. This comeback would eventually lead to another NFL opportunity with the Oakland Raiders. After playing most of 2017 on special teams, Erik earned more snaps as a safety in 2018, which led the Raiders to sign him to a 2 year, $6.5 million extension (not bad for a corn mixer)! And then there was last Thursday... ….29 years removed from his father abandoning his family, ….13 years removed from being told you are too slow to play at Penn State, ….12 years removed from being told you are not good enough to play at the division 1 level, ….7 years removed from being undrafted, ….6 years removed from working at the chip factory, ….5 years removed from working night shift at the UPS store, and ….3 years removed from a potential career-ending injury. Erik Harris not only started for the Oakland Raiders, but had two interceptions and a touchdown. It goes without saying, but there is are a lot of lessons one can take away from this story and apply to our daily lives. I personally love the fact that he took all of the failure, hardships, and adversity, and turned them into opportunities. In the face of adversity time and time again, he just kept putting one foot in front of the next. With his relentless pursuit of his dreams, Erik held on to hope when most people would just shut it down. He refused to let society dictate his future, becoming an inspiration to many. I challenge you to take this story and apply it to your life. Some 29 years from now, I look forward to hearing your story :) Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
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This week's blog was written by our Clinical Director of Neuro Therapy, Leah Zinnert. It's a really fascinating piece! National Geographic recently came out with a documentary called “Free Solo,” about how Alex Honnold became the only person in the world to climb the 3,000 ft wall El Capitan without a rope or other safety gear. An article written about the climb stated that: “Elite climbers have pointed to Honnold’s unique ability to remain calm and analytical in such dangerous situations, a skill that Honnold has slowly developed over the 20 years he has been climbing… There are other climbers in Honnold’s league physically, but no one else has matched his mental ability to control fear.” His ability to remain calm in these high-risk situations intrigued scientists. So much so, that they actually conducted a functional MRI of his brain. This type of imaging shows changes of blood flow that occur in the brain when a person is performing a certain task or exposed to a certain stimulus. Essentially, what is activated (or not activated) will light up during the scan. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! The amygdala, the part of the brain they were especially interested in studying in Alex, is a part of the limbic system. It helps us to interpret and process emotions. It helps us to identify threatening stimuli and regulate our fear response. What they discovered in Honnold was interesting. When they exposed him to stimuli that, in you and I, would most likely cause a fearful response, it generated nearly no response in Alex’s amygdala. His brain remained in the parasympathetic (rest and digest) state instead of being driven into the sympathetic state that would occur in the typical person. But how? One hypothesis could be genetics. Some people are just wired to be more ‘chill’ than others. Some of us are better at remaining calm in stressful or scary situations. Or perhaps it’s a result of his training? Has the repeated exposure to scary situations given him the ability to actually train and control his responses even at the deepest levels of the nervous system? Maybe it’s a combination of both. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what if your amygdala was the opposite of Alex Honnold’s? What if it was OVER active (which studies have suggested would cause the amygdala to be larger than normal)? Could it signal a fear response in a situation that may not be appropriate, which would increase anxiety, fear, and even pain levels? And what if we have the ability to train our brains to interpret stimuli differently? Here are 5 tips that have been proven effective at training (and shrinking) your amygdala, so you can be more in control of your fear response. 1. Face your Fears Avoid Avoidance. Is there something that your fearful of? Often, repeated or controlled exposure to these things can help decrease fear, help you to manage anxiety, and stress. If you’re unsure of how to do this, talking to a professional can help. 2. Breathing It all starts with the breath. Ever been stressed out, feel like you can’t control anything happening around you? One thing you can always control – your breath. Try this exercise to drive your brain in to chill mode:
3. Meditation/Mindfulness The goal here is to increase focus and calm. There is a lot of information you can find online about best strategies to initiate a meditation practice if you are unsure. https://www.wikihow.com/Meditate or App’s such as Headspace or Calm can be helpful. 4. Exercise It has long been proven that regular aerobic exercise helps to release endorphins, which naturally stabilize mood, decrease anxiety, and decrease stress. Not sure where to start? Pick something simple that you know you’ll enjoy doing! 5. Why are you fearful? Take some time to explore why you may react or be more sensitive to certain stimuli. Once you are more aware of the WHY behind certain behaviors, they are easier to manage. Do you know someone who would benefit from training their amygdala? Send them this article! Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! Note: This article was written by Premier Neuro Therapy co-owner Zach Michael and originally appeared as a guest post on Erica Suter's blog at ericasuter.com. Erica is a strength & conditioning coach and performance consultant that trains soccer players throughout the Baltimore, MD area. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! The brain is basically your overprotective mom in high school (no that’s not the beginning of a yo momma joke – Erica made me promise I wouldn’t tell any of those in this article). It is going to do whatever it can to protect you. Maybe some of you had a mom that was both protective AND very well connected in the community. It seemed like no matter how sneaky you tried to be, she always found out what you were really up to. Somehow, she was able to use her network of spies to make sure you stayed out of trouble and grew up into the great young guy or girl you are today. If you challenged what your mom thought was safe too much or too often, it’s likely she brought about forms of punishment. Things like no more cell phone, no car keys for 2 weeks, or no video games for a month. It didn’t matter to your mom that “no cell phone” meant you weren’t able to coordinate your weekly study group. Or that “no car keys” meant you wouldn’t be able to get to offseason workouts. And it didn’t matter that “no video games for a month” meant you weren’t going to be able to develop your Call of Duty (or nowadays Fortnite?) skills. In other words, Mom didn’t care very much about your performance. What mattered to mom was that you were safe. Now, Erica asked me to write an article on how the nervous system might affect your clients’ ability to run a 20 yard shuttle faster from one day to the next, and so far, all I’ve done is written 274 words about my mom (love you, Ma!). But the same thing that matters most to your clients’ Mom (their safety) is what matters most to your clients’ brain. The brain uses its network of spies (the sensory nerves) to sense threats and respond to keep your clients safe from them. For the brain, a threat is anything that it doesn’t consider “normal”. Basically, it is constantly receiving input from the sensory nerves and asking “is this normal?” If the answer is no, it starts going into ‘overprotective mom’ state. And just like Mom, it doesn’t care nearly as much about your clients’ performance as it does their safety. So if the brain is overwhelmed by many different threats at once, it will direct energy and resources to taking care of the threat, potentially affecting your clients’ performance. There are a number of “threats” that can cause nervous system function to change from one day to the next. For example, as I’m writing this article, it’s 1:00 PM. I’ve consumed nothing today but 3 cups of coffee, a piece of bread w/ peanut butter, a protein shake, and a few glasses of water. Last night, I slept about 8 hours after drinking 3-4 alcoholic beverages. This morning, I got a quick, intense workout in. My stomach is starting to rumble a little bit, I’ve got a dull headache from the 3-4 alcoholic beverages (welcome to the ripe old age of 28), and I’m feeling a bit thirsty. In other words, the brain is sensing a few threats. It isn’t happy about my nutrition, consumption of alcohol, and lack of water. It’s re-directing resources, trying to get me to take action (grab something to eat, dummy). Instead, I’m on a mission to finish this article, but let’s be honest, my writing performance is suffering (what am I even saying right now??) Similarly, if I were getting ready to run a 20 yard shuttle, it’s likely my athletic performance wouldn’t be ideal. My brain is using precious bandwidth to think about when it’s next meal will be and wonder why the heck I choose to poison it every now and then with alcohol. Therefore, it’s much harder for it to dedicate energy to the task at hand, and a number of performance factors suffer, including:
If any or all of these are being impacted by the nervous system, it’s expected that a decreased level of performance would follow. In order to fully optimize nervous system performance, all factors must be considered, including:
A simple strategy can be employed, considering all of the factors:
For trainers, this is a no brainer when it comes to the physical stressors. It’s what you do. You know a midfielder will be required to run 5-7 miles during a game. At times they’ll need to sprint, shuffle, and cut with power, speed, and quickness. So you design a training program that will allow their body to meet and exceed those demands (I know I’m oversimplifying here). By doing so, you are both forcing the body to physiologically adapt (add more muscle) and de-sensitizing the nervous system to the idea that such rigorous physical demands could be considered a threat. Basically, it’s like bringing your mom along slowly to an idea that she considered threatening to your safety in the past (I don’t know, sending you off to an out-of-state college?). The challenge for many trainers is going beyond the physical. I challenge you to not only strive to optimize your clients’ performance physically, but neurologically. In order to do so, all of the above factors must be considered, and we’ll need to ask ourselves questions like:
Asking questions like these will help you take a more well-rounded approach to nervous system optimization and give your clients an added edge when it’s time to perform. If you’re already asking and answering these questions in your own training philosophy (or even have a few ideas), I’d love to hear about them. Comment on the blog or shoot me an email at [email protected]. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
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About the AuthorEvan Lewis is a nationwide leader in Neuro Therapy and founded the Baltimore area's only specialist Neuro Therapy facility. Archives
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