Opti Brain is an evaluation app and what we can do is hook it up to collect and this happens to be a display of some of the brain maps. We can map several different frequency bands on the app. We mostly like to compare between or within a person; so we might have them in a resting state and then we might have them in performance state. We have them thinking one thing versus another, and we can start to look for the differences and see which ones create the most synergy or serenity if that’s what we are after. So the compare feature has been really helpful in the Opti Brain App.
Opti Train is the other app and has something called serenity in it which is going to teach you pretty much how to quiet all four of the brain sensors. It’s really a measure of efficiency in the brain. It isn’t a measure of relaxation.
Synergy is the other side and the one that’s for performance. It’s the final second right before you initiate motion that we like your brain in a synergistic state. People get there all different kinds of ways that’s unique to them.
30 years of research kept showing us this pattern of synergy that exists right before people pull the trigger and that is actually what is pretty addictive about performance.
People are often asking us, what are the strategies that I am supposed to be using in order to get into a place of serenity or synergy? The music in the videos are designed to help them figure it out for themselves.
We do help them and just like a teacher or a coach, they’ll come in and help the student or the golfer with what they might be thinking about, and in our early research, the cues that people told us they were using when they performed their best were target and feel.
So some people will do that; they’ll go and be more focused at the target or they’ll be more into the feel of the motion that they are doing, and that will help them lower into the music and get them into a good place.
I’d say the other half of the people have no clue what they are doing and that’s okay because the brain is still being trained: Neurons that fire together are wired together.
So, as long as they keep doing the trials and they keep lowering the music, they are learning to create that pattern in their brain. A lot of people are worried that when they get on the golf course, the pattern won’t be there, but that is not the case because they are training a pattern just like you do with your physical skill.
About half of the people have no clue what they are doing, but they are still training the brain and I think the reason is that the apps are training how you think. The teacher or the instructor or the person can come in with what you think and that’s kind of the window into your focus of your attention. In my research what I have seen over the years is that how you think is equal, if not more important than what you think.
So the app can teach you how you think.
One of our recent episodes with training was a lady who is a four handicap, very good amateur, a very successful business person who came because she was having trouble with the yips, chipping yips actually.
So, I did some of the things I normally would do with people in terms of behaviors and routine. I pulled out the headset and got her on the music. The music is just playing in the background and she is performing some chips. I couldn’t believe the change in her demeanor; she got very quiet, very focused and started chipping quite well. I think she only did maybe 15-20 chips, I asked her what she was doing because her demeanor was so different.
She says, “Well, I’m just lowering the music, that’s all I am doing.” I learnt the next day that she went out and played in the afternoon and shot 66. It was a pretty good story. I think she got in a place that I’m not sure she’d ever been in before, on the golf course and it helped her perform much better.
