Training the brain - Athletics and neurotherapy

It should come as no surprise to anyone that your mental state has a lot to do with athletic performance. Athletes who are able to "stay in the zone" remain calm and focused under pressure, making them less likely to choke. For some, that's easy. For others (myself included), having to make the game-winning shot can incite a feeling of pure terror. And, aside from practice, there's nothing you can do about that, right?

Wrong! Athletes are turning to neurotherapy and neurofeedback to "train their brains." An article called Train Your Brain in October's GQ chronicled one writer's experience with neurotherapy with the California-based Elite Sports Performance (ESP) and showed how it can (and does) help some of the world's most elite athletes to improve their game, with surprisingly easy-to-understand results.

Essentially, neurotherapy reads the different brain waves in areas of the brain, determining what areas are most active and which are a little more sluggish. For the writer, once the results were interpreted, exercises devised by the staff at ESP helped him learn to control his brainwaves -- the feedback was in real time, so training his mind was simple and straightforward, although not exactly easy.

When applied to athletes, ESP says that neurotherapy "trains athletes to prevent mental blocks ... thus leading to fewer errors in performance. Through individualized programs, athletes prepare, practice, and most importantly, perform at their optimal level. Athletes also train to drastically improve reaction time under the most intense and competitive situations."

Their neurofeedback packages start at $5,500, including blocks of ten or twenty training sessions, so it might not be an appropriate measure for your daughter hoping to make the freshman volleyball team, but, for those hoping to become elite athletes, it sounds really cool. Have any of you tried this?