How musical instruments can improve your sporting achievements

We all have our own types of music we enjoy. Music evokes all manner of emotions so much so that a whole field of science called Neuromusicology has been founded and built to study the effects of music on our nervous system.

Countless studies have shown that listening to and even more so playing an instrument has striking effects activating every known part of the brain. Listening to and playing music can make you smarter, happier, healthier and more productive.

Brain scans show musicians have bigger, better connected, more symmetrical, more sensitive brains with superior working memory, auditory skills, and cognitive flexibility than non- musicians.  Areas of the brain responsible for motor control, auditory processing, and spatial coordination are larger too as is the corpus callosum which are the nerves responsible for transferring information between the brains’ two hemispheres.

How does this affect your sports play?

Most of us are dominant in one side of our bodies, we may have co- ordination in one plain of motion and use one hand, foot first more than the other. Having proficient communication between right and left brain hemispheres (cross lateral control) allows us to capitalise on the benefits of each.

The left side is able to scan the incoming information quickly, see patterns in their opponent’s behaviour and deduce logical action. The right hemisphere has more spatial awareness and creativity. It is more intuitive and can come up with innovative ways to tackle an on- coming issue. This combined flexibility with improved motor accuracy is lethal in multi - directional sports.

Training your non -dominance side is advisory, being able to satisfactorily alter between your dominant and non- dominant side serves in helping reduce injuries of over use in your dominant side.

We play heavily on our non- dominant limbs also to help get us in position to strike even though we may not realise it. For example we can use the weaker leg to decelerate as we space ourselves accurately from our target. There has been some excellent observations made too that training the weaker side actually improves the stronger side, balance and co- ordination.

Getting back to music, many of us have already experienced listening to music before we take our field position. Music induces changes in the types of chemical hormones released. We can become calmer, more focused and able to deal with pressure more suitably. Studies into music frequencies and their effect has made significant inroads into performance too suggesting matching music tempo to the output you desire e.g. music holding a count of 80 bpm (beats per minute) for a warm up. It is important though to note I feel that we all have different needs before we step into the arena and choosing what you need at the time may well dictate what you listen too.

We now know that music awakens the entire brain improving cross lateral communication, by introducing regular music to our lives and even taking up learning an instrument we can accelerate our sports learning and abilities and double our sporting enjoyment! Sounds like a winning combination.

For more info check out

https://hearinginstitute.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/How-Music-Affects-the-Brain.pdf

https://training-conditioning.com/article/a-tale-of-two-sides/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/can-music-make-you-a-better-athlete

For booking an appointment with me check out

https://www.holisticfit.co.nz/

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