Brainspotting for Combat Sports
Mixed martial artists are arguably among the most mentally resilient athletes in the world. They must process large amounts of information and make split-second decisions, all while enduring physical attacks from highly skilled and dangerous opponents.
Despite the significant risks to both body and mind, they continue to engage in the sport with passion and commitment. One key psychological trait these athletes often display is the ability to dissociate from intense pain. However, while they can do this at an elite level, like any human, the long-term impact of this mental strain eventually takes its toll.
Athletes competing in the UFC, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and other boxing sports frequently face what are known as shock-trauma events. These include severe injuries requiring surgery, such as broken bones or torn muscles, multiple concussions, and training at such intense levels that it compromises their immune system. Additionally, witnessing teammates suffer serious injuries is another layer of trauma.
When athletes go through the experiences, there are basic ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ systems in the brain that we all have from birth. These systems kick into high gear when we push beyond our personal stress limits. Some athletes might think they're nowhere near that limit, but the problem is that you can’t always tell when you're getting close.
No one knows exactly when they’ll hit their breaking point. When athletes do reach this mental state, it can happen suddenly and in a very intense way. One common symptom of this is called the Yips, a mental block that stems from unprocessed trauma. The Yips can cause athletes to freeze or experience sudden disruptions in their movement. To fully understand this, we need to explore the brain science behind the Yips.
The brain naturally processes experiences in a way that helps us learn from them and store the useful parts for future use. When an experience is processed well, it's remembered without the strong emotions or physical sensations that came with it. When we think about it later, we don't feel the same emotions or sensations as we did at the time.
This allows us to learn from our past without being controlled by it, and in sports, it means our current performance isn’t weighed down by past emotional or physical stress. However, trauma or intense negative experiences don’t get processed properly. Instead, they stay stuck in our system, like broken pieces that aren’t fully resolved.
Brainspotting
One of the most effective mental training methods I recommend is Brainspotting. This brain-based therapy uses a person’s field of vision to uncover unresolved psychological issues. This technique allows clients to access areas of the brain that traditional therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy, can’t reach. By doing so, clients can directly address the core issue (referred to as a Brain Spot) that’s causing conflict, helping them shift from constantly managing their struggles to no longer needing to cope.
Brainspotting is useful for those dealing with mental blocks, the Yips, traumatic experiences, chronic pain from injuries, and for individuals looking to enhance creativity or achieve mental flow states.
For combat sport athletes, who face challenges such as concussions, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), witnessing injuries, sport-related humiliations, and out-of-sport trauma (like car accidents or relationship issues), Brainspotting is an ideal intervention to help them process and overcome these difficulties.
Brainspotting is a mind/body approach, unlike other talk therapies, that uses eye positioning to access the neurological system in order to expand on positive experiences or clear unhelpful, negative experiences from the neural network.
Our brain and body hold trauma memories as a way to safeguard us from letting something bad happen again. Trauma is something that puts your body into one of the responses of fight, flight, or flee, and could be many things
Brainspotting for athletes
A blindside-hit
Physical/ sexual/ verbal/ emotional abuse
An embarrassing moment
Being yelled at by a parent or coach
Injury
Concussion
Seeing a peer get hurt
The brain cannot differentiate between physical or emotional trauma so they are held the same way in our brain. This is why mental health is a critical component of an athlete’s performance. It is also the reason that traumatic events from all areas or periods of time in life can be addressed for peak performance.
Trauma causes maladaptive neuropathways to develop and if there is no intentional and targeted work done to create a new healthy pathway, your brain will use the trauma pathway, which causes the athlete to lose their finely tuned and practiced movements.
Brainspotting is the tool that accesses the deep brain in order to clear the maladaptive pathways and memory networks associated with the trauma so the athlete can perform at their best; calmly, with excitement and trust in their training and ability.
Additionally, Brainspotting can enhance an athlete’s positive performance or help them get into a flow state for an upcoming competition by strengthening healthy neural pathways
Not only can we treat trauma, but we can also tap into your most confident and capable self. What we find is there are trauma spots and resource spots. Inside those resource spots you are able to see and feel the confidence and beliefs needed to attack your goals.
