Athletes & Sports Team Coaches

LBP gives an edge to athletes in school and in sports...

• • Academics improves for athletes in the same way it does for all users.

  • Athletic ability improves due to the nature of superior balance training.

  • Injury reduction benefits for all because of direct proprioception improvements.

There are certain characteristics that all successful athletes have: the ability to evaluate information and make the right decision quickly, excellent balance and control of their bodies, good timing, the ability to execute quick, precise movements and excellent peripheral vision. All of these processes are dependent on keen visual function and superior proprioception. (Proprioception can be defined as the awareness of movement and body position combined with the psycho-motor control necessary to execute the brain's instructions to the body.) It is sometimes also defined as the body's joint positioning system. Effective proprioceptive processes are dependent upon the ability of the brain to integrate information from all of the sensory systems including feedback from muscles and joints, vision, the tactile sense (touch/pressure), and the sense of balance (vestibular system).

Learning Breakthrough stimulates the brain and refines sensory integration, spatial awareness and the sense of balance. These tools not only help players to gain the edge necessary for success, proprioceptive training also reduces the incidence of ankle sprain and speeds the rehabilitation of ACL injuries. (1See Italian soccer team study reference below.)

Small improvements in athletic performance often require huge improvements in brain efficiency (neural network processing). For example, if a person throws a ball to a target at four meters distance, the release window for the ball leaving the hand is eleven-one-thousandths of a second. If the same target is moved to eight meters distance the release window decreases to one-quarter of one-thousandth of a second. The brain requires 64 times as many neurons to fire at precisely the right time to hit the target at eight meters as it does at four meters. It becomes immediately apparent that in order for an athlete to perform at higher levels, he or she must be able to develop increasingly larger and more efficient neural networks. The question is: how can an athlete improve the neural efficiency of the brain?

The difficulty level of Learning Breakthrough training products can be adjusted to challenge any athlete. By increasing the difficultly level of the activities, the brain is forced to develop more advanced, efficient neural networks. As neural efficiency improves, athletic performance increases...naturally.

University coaches in particular like the additional benefits that derive from the program being a powerful academic aid. The program helps players meet their academic minimum requirments, improve grades generally and boost graduation rates for teams as a whole. Learning Breakthrough offers you a new way to maximize your own performance and the performance of your team. It helps teams play smarter, reduce injuries, and improve efficiency.

1 Prevention of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in soccer: A prospective controlled study of proprioceptive training, A. Caraffe, G. Cerulli, M. Projetti, G. Aisa, A. Rizzo, in Knee Surgery, Sports, Traumatology, Arthroscopy, chapter 4, pp. 19-21, Springer-Verlag 1996. (This study compared a test group of 600 male soccer players who were involved in a proprioceptive training program that included balance therapy, with a control group of 300 male soccer players who received no proprioceptive training. The incidence of ACL injury per team in the control group was 1.15 injuries per year. The incidence of ACL injury per team in the test group was .15 injuries per year.)

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