by Mandy Wintink

I’m a retired ultimate frisbee player. I played competitively in Halifax and then Toronto and competed at the National level winning a Gold Medal and twice a Silver at Canadian Ultimate Championships. I have played with some of the best players in the world, at their time. Team sports, and ultimate in particular, have provided me with some essential life skills. My experiences in sport have greatly contributed to my ability to succeed in academia, science, business, and as a good social human.

I follow a newsletter by a Canadian ultimate gear company, VC, founded and run by Adriana Withers. Even though I don’t play any more, Adriana’s newsletter is one of the newsletters that I still read. This means a lot because I genereally DESPISE all newsletters and my jammed inbox. But I trust what comes out from VC and I’m even more impressed with Adriana as a business owner. She has been an advocate for gender equity and introduced gender non-binary frisbee gear. A little less than a year ago, I spotted an ad on VC’s newsletter about a new podcast they were sponsoring, called Share the Air. I was immediately intrigued by the ambitions of sharing stories about identities, issues, and communities that exist within and alongside the ultimate community. I listened to their first 2 episodes and then immediately reached out and asked if I took could sponsor them, as the Centre for Applied Neuroscience.

I had never sponsored a podcast before and selling this as a marketing opportunity to my team back at the Centre for Applied Neuroscience was not easy. None of them played frisbee and couldn’t really understand why I thought this made sense. But to me it was clear. Ultimate is an amazing community of interconnected humans, most of whom are intelligent, educated, and aware people. Or at least trying to be. They help each other out and support each other on and off the field and across teams, not just as team members. The ultimate community is an interesting one, unlike any other in sport I have encountered. They are good people trying to be better.

But what does that have to do with neuroscience? Well, from my perspective, learning about neuroscience can help ultimate players not only make sense of their own experiences on and off the field, but can also help them make sense of their teammates experiences or the players they coach. And the more we know about ourselves, our brains, and those of the people around us, the better I think we can all be.

Neuroscience offers another opportunity for us to connect, just like ultimate does. And the more human connection we can create, the better I think the world will be. And THAT is why I wanted to support Share the Air podcast.

It’s been an absolute pleasure watching from the sidelines as hosts Tulsa Douglas and Louisa Neves and producer Tim INSERTLAST NAME work to share the voices that need to be heard.

You can find them online:

Instagram: @sharetheairpodcast

Twitter: @sharetheairpod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SharetheAirPodcast

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/share-the-air/id1567951914

Team bonding is such an interesting concept. The psychology research shows that some things make it more possible, like having a common goal, dealing with adversity, and sharing positive feedback. But what's going on in the brain during team bonding? Well that's a bit more complicated and not well studied. One thing worth noting is that connectedness is important to bonding and to success. Our brains feel connected when we feel similar to other brains. 

One of the neuroscience ways we refer to this is "coherence". Coherence is the synchrony between two brains and can be a way one brain predicts what the other brain is going to do. Imagine having greater coherence with your teammates? In other words, imagine your brain being able to predict what your teammate's brain is planning or thinking. Well, that happens when we spend lots of time together on the field and get to know our teammates at meals and while socializing, all of which will synchronize our brains. 

The by-product of that synchrony is that we might then react quicker to our teammates' actions, which most certainly will result in higher performance. There are many other elements of team bonding and many other elements of neuroscience that likely make this complex experience happen. But being in sync with others is certainly part of it! 

We often hear that positive feedback is better than negative feedback to teach someone to do something new. With positive feedback, the brain’s reinforcement system is activated, which produces both rewarding neurochemicals and rewarding feelings and, in turn, leads to a motivation to do that thing more. This is known as positive reinforcement. With negative feedback, the brain’s punishment system is activated, which involves stress and can involve defeat and even shame. Positive reinforcement results in quicker and more stable learning whereas punishment, and especially too much of it, is less effective in getting the change we want out of someone.

Imagine being the captain or coach and you’re trying to get your team to play harder defence. Yelling at them to play harder D would be punishment and is going to be less effective than using the positive reinforcement model where you point out the player who IS playing hard D and then explain exactly what that player is doing well. Using positive reinforcement will not only keep the player playing hard D, but that player will also serve as a proxy for what all the other players should now be motivated to mimic. Essentially, the others can feel the rewards of that positive feedback offered, vicariously. 

So yes, the applied neuroscience approach would say it’s good practice to use more positive feedback than negative! 

Visualization is a powerful mental skill that the brain can use to enhance performance. It's a practice that you and your brain can do off the field and it's known to improve a variety of in-the-game skills, like basketball free throws, soccer penalty kicks, gymnastic routines and… likely many elements of ultimate!

Basic visualization involves closing your eyes and imagining yourself doing a specific skill, like running an offensive play, laying out with good form, or practicing a throw. When you’re visualizing you’re activating many of the same areas of the brain that you would activate if you were actually doing that thing in real life. 

The reason that visualization is so powerful is that, from your brain's perspective, you ARE doing a skill... and the more the brain practices something, the more automatic it becomes. Just like practicing a play or a throw over and over again on the field, it gets easier. The same thing happens when you practice in your brain using visualization.

When we establish a routine — whether it’s a warm-up routine, the superstitious way we put on cleats, or the foods we eat the night before a tournament — our brains work more efficiently and calmly.

Efficiencies are important for the brain because they conserve energy and free up space for our brain to do more complex thinking when faced with uncertainty, like responding to the flow that evolves after a play in ultimate. Routines are also calming and soothing for us and our brains because they give us predictability and reduce the stress and adrenaline, neurochemicals associated with uncertainty. 

An applied neuroscience tip is to establish routines that you can later rely on to calm your nerves before a big game. Like the rituals of cleating up and all the parts of a warm-up. Also, getting the routine of our plays down is a good, efficient way to make brain space for the in-the-moment actions needed to respond to the emerging play! [Routines may be superstitious but regardless, the brain likes them!]

We all know what it's like to pump ourselves up for a big game. Being able to get into our optimal zone can make a huge difference to our performance. Pumping ourselves up is a neurological experience led by our brain. It consists of activating adrenaline and the stress hormone, cortisol, through the 'fight or flight' system. Adrenaline and cortisol engage our muscles, change our oxygen intake, focus our brain on the goal, and strengthen our memory - all good things to help us succeed at defeating our threat, or in this case, our opponent. Self-talk, music, and team cheers all do this. 

This kind of arousal is an intense experience for our nervous system. Too much can cause us to perform poorly. Over-aroused muscles become tense and hands become jittery, which can lead to dropping a disc or being less nimble in a cut or a throw. Our brain becomes too narrowly focussed and we could lose spontaneity and creativity in our play. Our stomach might feel nauseous and we might have to go to the bathroom. We could even start to panic. 

Knowing how to manage this arousal can improve how we perform. First, we need to notice when we are over-aroused. Checking in regularly with our body, on and off the field, is a good way to develop the kind of body awareness needed for optimal performance. If we realize we are over-aroused then we can invoke a second strategy: deep breathing, which will activate the part of the nervous system that is in charge of relaxing us. Elite athletes and performers of all kinds learn how to manage this system so they can be properly engaged and play at their peak performance.