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A Quick Breathing Test

We’ll do a breathing drill with a full body rotation as a range of motion assessment. Feel free to substitute other assessments if you wish.

We are really testing 3 things here. Don’t bother moving your feet in between. It should take about 30 seconds if you are familiar with the assessment. We’ll test:

A normal breath
A deep inhale
A full exhale

NOTE: If you have low back pain when you rotate your body, either pick another assessment or another experiment.

Initial Position

Find a spot on the floor that you can return to repeatedly and use tape, a floor board, a carpet stain, etc. to make sure you can return to the same spot and orientation for every assessment.
Stand tall with your feet together with shoes or feet touching.
Put your hands out in front of you, index fingers extended away from you, thumbs up and your remaining fingers interlaced.
Your elbows should be locked. It should feel like you are pointing a gun at something in front of you with the space between the tops of your thumbs as the site.

Warm-up and Baseline Assessment

Without moving your feet (no shifting or lifting) rotate your full body to the side of your choice.
The relationship of your head, hands and shoulders should not change as you move – i.e., you should keep sighting over your thumbs and your elbows should not bend.
Move at moderate speed with minimal tension, until you reach a point where you can hold the position for at least 2 seconds.
Note where you are pointing – perhaps a landmark on the wall or in the distance.
Do 2-3 more rotations until you are consistently pointing to the same spot each time.
The spot where you are pointing is your assessment result.
Note: At this point, we’ve eliminated any assessment variation due to warm-up.

Perform and Assess Your Breathing

Inhale normally
Exhale normally.
Reassess (see below). Note the result.
Inhale as deeply as you can
Exhale normally
Reassess. Note the result.
Wait 10 seconds
Reassess. Note the result.
Exhale deeply
Reassess. Note the result.
Done

Reassessment

Repeat the Point and Shoot Assessment

Rotate to the same side as your prior assessments.
Note where you are pointing relative to your baseline assessment.
Enter your result on the form below and submit.
- Rotate more = Better
- Rotate less = Worse
- No change = Same
- Significantly more = Much better
- Significantly less = Much worse

Because everyone is different, it’s impossible for anyone to predict your results. However, we suspect that there was little change with your normal breath and some changes, better and/or worse on the deeper inhale and exhale.

If you saw no change with a normal breath, it’s because that movement didn’t reach a level of importance to your brain

What we do expect is that you saw a number of changes in your range of motion from various breathing activities. The changes in breathing were evaluated by your brain and reflected in a change movement. If your range of motion decreased with any of the breathing, it may be holding back your running performance. Our Respiration training could be the answer you are looking for.

I comfortably ran 40 miles on my 40th birthday, after a year away from running

I have been a runner for quite some time. I’ve run and finished a number of marathons and ultras when I lived in California. I did triathlon for a year also. Then I moved to Colorado – new town, new job, higher altitude and I stopped running for over a year. As I grew closer to my 40^th birthday, I decided I wanted to use that milestone as motivation to get back in shape and start running again. My goal was to run 40 miles on my 40^th birthday.

While I’ve had a history of successfully completing races, I’ve also had a history of injury. Even though I have had several coaches and done extensive strength training and my running have taken their toll throughout the years.

I found Dr. Grove Higgins and Pat Marques at Human Performance and Rehabilitation through a referral from a friend. Immediately, I could tell something was different. Both of them quickly embraced my goal, but instead of immediately starting running and strength workouts, we first worked at overhauling my running form and rehabbing a neck and an Achilles tendon issue. Perhaps the rehab was the most unexpected. Where in the past, most of my injury recovery was based on the RICE protocol, Grove and Pat were using improved movement to heal my injury and prevent recurrences. I was able to make progress while injured!

When we moved to strength training, it was also different than anything else I’d ever experienced. I learned that I had vision and balance deficits that were not only affecting my running but were limiting my training capacity. After intense portions of a workout, we did vision/balance drills that dropped my heart and breathing rate and let me do more work. The same drills became part of my running warmup. I even did them mid-run to restore energy and form. We also spend less time on traditional weight room exercises and more on training loaded movements that were specific to my running goal. And while we did those workouts, we spent a lot of time focused on posture, form and integrated breathing, so that it would carry over to my running.

I have to take a brief aside here. Some months after my 40^th, I went back to California and worked out with my old strength coach. We were doing back squats with 135lbs. He commented that my breathing was “weird” because I wasn’t bracing with my breath as he’d taught me, but was instead breathing in sync with my movement, exhaling on the way down as my lungs compressed and inhaling as I returned upright. Despite his concerns and to his amazement, I knocked out 65 reps. His only comment then was that I wouldn’t be able to move the next day. Actually, I felt fine. He was a little upset that the student now knew more than the teacher.

Back to my goal. Leading up to the run I was able to be conservative in my mileage. We were trying to balance injury risk with appropriate preparation. One mental asset I was able to leverage was that I had done the distance before, not recently, but I had the experience. So I never did a training run over 20 miles and many were considerably shorter. This is much less mileage then I had done in training for my ultras. However, I felt well prepared and confident.

On my birthday, the plan was to run 16, two-and-a-half mile laps around Washington Park in Denver. I had a number of friends there to run with me and support me and plenty of hydration and nutrition available. I’d also made the commitment to myself to fix issues as they popped up during the run and not let them turn into something more serious. I would stop, walk, do mobility or sensory drills as needed so that I could get back to enjoying my run. This proved to be a lifesaver a couple of times. At mile 25 I started to have sciatic nerve pain. I stopped, did some mobility work and nerve mobilizations and was able to continue without issue. At mile 30, I really felt like I wanted to quit. I made an adjustment to my nutrition and sent some of the people who were running with me ahead. By changing my body chemistry and reducing some of the well-meaning sensory input from my friends, I was actually able to cruise the last 10 miles with some of my best splits of the day, even though I really felt spend just before that.

Afterward, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment and had enormous gratitude to Pat and Grove. Pat participated in the run and was a huge source of knowledge and accountability throughout my training. The next day I felt surprisingly good and shared a video of me doing “ass to ankles” air squats with Pat.

Summary

I was an experienced athlete with good coaching, and, yet, I’d never experienced training and results like those made available to me by Pat and Grove.
I was amazed at how much of a difference improving my senses, movement, posture and breathing made to my ability to train and perform
I loved being able to fix problems as they came up. I lost no training days because we were able to work through and around any issues I had. And, on the run, being able to correct problems as they came up made a strong finish possible.
I suffered less and enjoyed the run more than similar runs in the past. I felt great in the days afterward and had less joint pain and muscle soreness than I would have imagined.

Jerry McCauley II

Finished my first marathon! – despite a slow, painful start to my training.

I was training for a marathon and had hip pain every time I ran more than five miles and for days afterward. After working with Grove and Peter, we’d determined that my glute medius wasn’t activating. The structure of my legs and my favorite running shoes were contributing! We determine which individualized drills worked for me, how to know they were working and how to know which shoes would work for me personally. The next day I had a great 16 mile training run, with no pain! I could feel my glutes working and the only mild soreness I had afterward were the glutes that I apparently hadn’t been using for some time. I can’t wait until they do their workshop!

Katie Abbott – Boulder, CO

I wanted to feel better, now I ride better!

I’ve been a pretty high-performing athlete in 3 different sports. I was on the US Junior National Team as a gymnast and competed at a high level in college. Facing years of work with an uncertain selection process to compete at the Olympic and world championship level, I decided to switch to motorcycle racing and advanced to one of the top 5 riders in the US. The economics of the sport became prohibitive so I became a coach and took up Enduro mountain bike racing to feed my competitive spirit. While I still feel I’m improving in the sport, I’d likely be ranked in the top 100 riders internationally.

I’ve been very fortunate to have some good coaching, support and mentoring along the way. I learned a lot about how to train, develop skills and take care of myself physically. The Olympic Training Center (particularly the Russian coaches), the California Superbike School and now Grove Higgins have really contributed to my success as an athlete and a coach. Gymnastics is all about skill progressions. Unusually, we also use skill progressions at the school where I coach motorcycle racing (most people just ride to learn). Additionally, the school exposed me to sensory training and particularly the value vision skills bring to your performance. Grove has helped me bring it all together, by understanding neurology in view of what I’d experienced as an athlete and coach.

I went to see Grove on the recommendation of another pro mountain biker, Kelli Emmett because I wanted to feel better today and when I’m older. High-level gymnastics pushes your body to the limit every day. You are pretty much continuously rehabbing injuries and I had my share. At one point I had shooting pains in my back and legs daily. My back was still chronically nagging me and I wanted to see if I could do something about it. As many athletes do, I’d gotten good at compensating for movement restrictions by using muscles that weren’t intended for the purpose. That, in turn, caused muscle tightness and movement restrictions. Grove taught me to use the correct muscles again. He then used strength training to lock it in and improve my coordination – move well first and then add load. Of course, we did some sensory work as well to reduce threat and increase my mobility.

The results are terrific! I feel better than I ever have (partly because you never really feel good doing gymnastics). Old injuries don’t bother me anymore and I’m moving much better. I’m able to get in better body positions for cornering in my racing. And, I’m generating more power on the bike. I’m able to breathe better because of improved chest mobility and that’s helping my performance as well.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been able to transition successfully from one sport to another (and coach) has been my ability to distill the skills needed to be successful and learn them quickly. I find that many others are just hoping to gain those skills by time on the bike, and aren’t progressing as quickly as they could. Grove has broadened my view of skills to include sensory, breathing and movement skills. I like that this is the approach they are taking for each sport at NeuroAthlete. I’m looking forward to NeuroCyclist when it’s available.

Gerry Signorelli – Colorado Springs, CO

I walked a half mile in 7:50 minutes, six months after being told I wouldn’t walk again.

Peter and I played Division 1 lacrosse together in college and hadn’t seen each other in many years. We ran into each other a few years ago. I had just suffered a severe infection to my spinal cord, which required significant surgery to cut out the infection and fuse 7 vertebrae together. After recovery and six eight months of rehabilitation, I had little strength and had been told that I would not walk again without assistance of a walker or crutches. Peter had been working in the area of neuroscience-based performance and rehabilitation. He and Grove were working with wounded soldiers at the time. He gave me a drill to do which immediately improved my hand strength and function. I had just been told that it might take months to make that kind of progress. I bought in! We agreed to work together over the phone with occasional in person sessions. Within six months, my pain had reduced and strength and flexibility increased. I was able to significantly reduce my meds and, incredibly, I was walking every day. I even walked a half mile in 7:50! I’ve continued to improve, and since have played golf, shot baskets, swum, cycled and sailed, with much of the progress coming through my daily application of the brain science Peter taught me.

I know he and Grove are working to bring the same knowledge that benefited me to athletes in many sports, starting with running. While my experience may not seem directly relevant, I can assure you it is. My takeaways from my experience would be this:

Brain science matters more than you can imagine to everyday life, athletic performance and injury recovery and is not at all commonplace – my results came after some of the best medical and rehab care available.
Peter and Grove are great teachers – the fact that we were able do most of this over the phone required great communication skills. I can make progress on my own because they not only suggest what to try, but spend as much time explaining why things work.
I liked the immediate feedback I was able to get from my nervous system. We did drills where we didn’t know how well they would work for me personally. I was able to do an immediate assessment. The drills that assessed well always gave me improved function.

I haven’t run in many years but was a pretty good middle distance runner at one point. With my newfound understanding of the impact of brain science on performance, I can see clearly how this program will benefit runners. I wish I’d known this stuff when I was competing.

Doug Frey, Framingham MA