TRAIN YOUR BRAIN — CHANGE YOUR

BODY
TB12
FEBRUARY 2019

In the pursuit of peak performance, too many of us zero in on the body and forget
about the brain. However, if you want to perform at a high level for as long as possible,
training your brain is not just a helpful add-on — it’s essential.

When we say, “train your brain,” we’re not talking about sudoku. And while mental
exercises like meditation, deep breathing, and mantras are essential to building a
winning mindset, right now we’re not talking about that either. We’re talking about
hacking the connection between your brain and your body from the ground up.

To do this, we start with the muscles.

THE BRAIN AND THE BODY ARE ONE

INTEGRATED WHOLE
Why muscles? The simple answer is that the muscles have a direct connection to the
brain.

If you’ve never thought about how your brain is connected to your body, it’s probably
because they’re connected very well. In fact, the brain is connected so seamlessly to
the rest of the body that it’s better to think of the brain and the body as one integrated
whole. The sole reason the nervous system can do its job is just that: everything is
connected.

People typically think of the brain as the control center of the body, and this is a pretty
accurate picture. But what’s essential to understand is that the brain isn’t just calling
the shots — it’s constantly learning from the rest of the body about what works and
what doesn’t and solidifying these experiences as muscle memory. This is important to
us because it means we can use the muscles to send messages directly to the brain in
a language it understands — trauma.

MUSCLE TRAUMA IS THE LANGUAGE OF MUSCLE

MEMORY

Whenever the brain gets out of its comfort zone, it experiences trauma. This trauma
activates the connections between the muscles and the brain and says to the brain,
“Hey, something weird just happened. Let’s change our approach so we can handle it
next time.”
At TB12, we know we can use muscle trauma to our advantage. That’s why we don’t
see “trauma” as a bad thing all the time. We break muscle trauma down into two
categories:

1. negative-unintentional trauma
2. positive-intentional trauma

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE TRAUMA? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

The main differences between positive-intentional trauma and negative-unintentional
trauma are the why and the how: the purpose and the way it happens.

Positive-intentional trauma, as the name suggests, is designed to help you. It’s

“positive,” which means it provides a benefit. And it’s intentional, which means it
doesn’t happen by accident. Ideally, a TB12 Body Coach has you in one of our
pliability training rooms and is deliberately softening your muscles to get them into a
pliable state.

Negative-unintentional trauma is also exactly what it sounds like. It’s what happens to
your muscles when you get tackled by a lineman at full speed or when you’re running
the stairs at Patriot Place and you miss one. Your muscles have the same exchange
with your brain:

Muscles: “Hey, what just happened?”

Brain: “I don’t know. I think we fell down some stairs.”

Muscles: “Got it. Let’s figure out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Brain: “I got it! Let’s make our right calf and hamstring really tight for the next week.”

Muscles: “That should work. We’re on it.”

You can see where this is going. The problem with negative-unintentional trauma is
that it’s not purposeful and we can’t control the result. Because it’s “unintentional,” it’s
also unpredictable; as a result, it’s usually also unbalanced. This means that when our
muscles and brain formulate their game plan, they leave out half their players and
don’t even use the whole field.

In a way, pliability exercises train the brain and the muscles to create a balanced game
plan. Because the trauma is balanced (both sides of the body getting the same
treatment), the muscles of the entire body get re-trained together to fire at 100-percent.
This positive-intentional trauma prepares the body to perform at its best and to handle
negative-unintentional trauma when — not if — it happens.

PLIABILITY TRAINS YOUR MUSCLES BY

TRAINING YOUR BRAIN
You might be thinking that pliability is just a fancy word for stretching or massage.
While both stretching and massage are helpful, pliability is a totally different ball game.

PLIABILITY IS ABOUT NEUROMUSCULAR RE-EDUCATION

Unlike massage, which is a passive activity, pliability training engages the muscles and
educates them to do something new. Stretching merely preserves and augments
range of motion, but pliability training actively strengthens connections between the
muscles and the brain.

During a pliability exercise, a TB12 Body Coach applies deep force to individual
muscles while you, the athlete, rhythmically flex those muscles. The deep force (50 to
100 Newtons) creates positive-intentional trauma, which sends a message to the brain
that something weird and unfamiliar is happening. The brain then does what the brain
does best: it learns. Specifically, it learns to keep the muscles long, soft, and primed
for movement.

As you stimulate the brain through repeated positive-intentional trauma in pliability

exercises, it takes less and less neural input for your muscles to fire at full strength.
This is what we call neural priming —essentially giving your brain a heads-up to get
ready for action. Whether you’re headed to the treadmill, the weight room, or the
football field, when your muscles are primed your muscles are that much more ready
to take on the negative-unintentional trauma that comes with activity.

YES, BUT HOW DO WE KNOW THAT IT WORKS?

The short answer is that the evidence supports it. Below are some of the details. Keep
in mind that whenever we say “soft-tissue mobilization,” we’re talking about what a
TB12 Body Coach does when they knead your muscle tissue with their hands or with a
tool.

 Pliability exercises — for example, dynamic balance exercises and soft-tissue

mobilization with an assisted device — have been shown to improve numerous
symptoms in athletes with instability in their joints.
 In 2012, a study of athletes with chronic ankle instability found that dynamic
balance-training exercises coupled with soft-tissue mobilization significantly
increased the athletes’ control over their ankles (including range of motion) and
reduced their pain.
 Soft-tissue mobilization through manual therapy has well-documented effects
on muscle tissue. It lets your muscles fully relax and helps your tissues to repair
and remodel themselves.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Pliability matters because it fills a gap in traditional sports training. The conventional
way to train is to focus on strength and conditioning, training longer, and lifting more as
you go. This almost inevitably leads to injury and rehabilitation, and the cycle repeats
until the injury is too severe to fix.

By training your brain to be a better handler of negative intentional trauma, pliability

ends this vicious cycle; it complements your normal strength and conditioning routines
so your workouts don’t put you at risk of injury.

CAN YOU DO PLIABILITY WORK YOURSELF?

Yes. The best method of pliability training is to have a TB12 Body Coach do a targeted
soft-tissue mobilization before a round of functional, low-impact resistance training.
However, if you want to go the extra mile, you can get a self-pliability device and use it
to work on yourself.

TRAINING YOUR BRAIN, TRAINING YOUR BODY —

THEY’RE THE SAME THING
At TB12, we help you train your brain from the ground up. Through targeted pliability
training, you can tell your brain what it needs to hear to keep your muscles in an
optimal state — long, soft, and primed for movement — so you can keep your game
strong. Talk to a TB12 Body Coach to learn how you can get your muscles and your
brain into the best shape of their lives.

REFERENCES
Schaefer, J. L., & Sandrey, M. A. (2012). Effects of a 4-week dynamic-balance-training
program supplemented with Graston instrument-assisted soft-tissue mobilization for
chronic ankle instability. Journal of sport rehabilitation, 21(4), 313-326.

Anguish, B., & Sandrey, M. A. (2018). Two 4-Week Balance-Training Programs for
Chronic Ankle Instability. Journal of athletic training, 53(7), 662-671.

Hoch, M. C., Andreatta, R. D., Mullineaux, D. R., English, R. A., Medina McKeon, J. M.,
Mattacola, C. G., & McKeon, P. O. (2012). Two‐week joint mobilization intervention
improves self‐reported function, range of motion, and dynamic balance in those with
chronic ankle instability. Journal of orthopaedic research, 30(11), 1798-1804.

This blog is part series based on the New York Times Bestseller, The TB12 Method by
Tom Brady. To learn more about the ways you can train your brain and your body,
read The TB12 Method and subscribe to the TB12 Newsletter.