Shortly after the Portland Trail Blazers step off the court following practice or a game, they’re whisked into a “brain room,” where they watch DVDs with devices strapped to their heads that read the electrical activity in their brains. It’s a scene that might seem peeled from a 1980’s sci-fi movie.
This season, the Trail Blazers teamed up with a company called Neurocore that seeks to improve players’ health, focus and recovery through brain training. The company’s Neurocore Pro device, which is about the size of a pair of Beats headphones, uses low frequency waves during targeted 30-minute sessions to accelerate recovery by improving athletes’ deep, restorative sleep.
Neurocore founder Tim Royer believes this leads them to train and perform at peak capacity on the court.
“The brain room, where we’re optimizing the brain’s ability to be in the zone, is the next level in sports,” said Royer in a video posted to NBA.com. “The schedule where these players have to go 82 games dramatically compromises all of the systems in their body. We use our brain room with tailor-made approaches to optimize the brain, cardiovascular system, respiratory system and endocrine system.”
The approach that the Trail Blazers have adopted involves watching DVDs. When players are calm and focused completely on watching whatever show or movie is in front of them, the DVD will play through like normal. The second an athlete’s mind starts to wander off, the DVD will instantly stop playing, forcing players to refocus. In a sense, it’s sort of like a high-tech version of meditation, which has been increasingly used by athletes to build concentration as a supplement to their physical training.
“In 30 minutes, can do more than 2,000 reinforcements to the brain so that your body and brain can focus and recover at the highest level possible,” said Royer. “These elite athletes aren’t just good athletically, they’re also very strong mentally and they’re going to perform no matter how much pressure you put on them.”
Neurocore Pro may look similar to the Halo Sport, a headset manufactured by Halo Neuroscience that stimulates the part of an athlete’s brain responsible for muscle movement. The difference, however, is that the Halo is designed to be used during workouts, accelerating athlete performance when they’re doing bench presses, squats, running or cycling, whereas the Neurocore Pro uses low frequencies designed to prepare the brain for rest and recovery after a brief period of intense focus.
“Everyone says you need to sleep more, but just sleeping more doesn’t necessarily work. So being able to have technology that can help train their brain to be in the zone more times than not is huge,” said Dr. Chris Stackpole, the Blazers’ director of health and player performance. “Being able to teach them ‘this is what it feels like to be overworked,’ or ‘this is what it feels like to be too distracted,’ all of those little aspects will help them figure out what it takes to be at the ideal state more times than not.”
Called “neurofeedback brain performance training,” the DVD sessions measure a person’s neuroplasticity, which is a measure of the brain’s ability to change by forming new neural connections that can lead to permanent changes in how one responds and reacts to new situations or surroundings.
Neurocore says the 30-minute sessions teach the brain how to stop roaming out of focus, helping users to breathe more deeply and slowly in an effort to maximize heart function and blood/oxygen flow. In addition to sports, the device has also been used to tackle anxiety, ADHD and depression in adults and children.
By keeping athletes “in the zone” more often, the goal of using Neurocore is to teach the Trail Blazers how to focus more deeply and for longer periods of times, according to Stackpole. The hopes is that it will enable them to more easily slip into a flow state of peak performance while contributing to higher-quality periods of rest between sessions on the court.