The Cerebellum: Your ‘Little Brain’ plays a huge role in movement, Pt. 2

Two neuroperformance drills to activate it with movement

In the previous blog post introducing the small but powerful cerebellum, I spelled out several incredibly important roles it plays. One easy way to remember the key functions:

Accuracy

Balance

Coordination

In this post, I’ll introduce ways to activate it through simple exercises you can do anywhere, any time, and share some guidelines on how to use them.

Training the cerebellum turns the lights up

By doing specific exercises designed to activate the cerebellum, we’re effectively turning the lights up on the neural highways between your brain and body.

It’s the difference between driving down a road that’s well-lit vs one that has an occasional dim light. If it’s dark, or maybe not well paved, what happens? You drive more slowly, maybe you’re a little tense, gripping the steering wheel more tightly.

Why? Because your ability to assess the world around you and make quick and accurate predictions – the key function that helps keep us alive – is diminished.

You can still make your way, but your performance isn’t optimal; it may take you longer to get where you’re going and you might be more tired when you get there. 

Instead, if there’s plenty of light, the road is smooth, and there are clear markers or road signs to tell you where you are: You’re moving with more ease, and you’ll get there faster.

This is the crux of Neuroperformance Training

This kind of leveling up is what brain-based training and rehab is designed to do. We all would rather be on the autobahn instead of a country road, and the right drills can get you there. One path: Activate the cerebellum!

What kind of movement activates the cerebellum? 

Because it’s involved in precision and error correction, we want to do movement that:

• Requires a high-level of coordination

• Requires a high-level of accuracy and specificity 

• Includes a balance challenge 

Two Awesome Neuroperformance Exercises

These are two of my favorites because they’re easy to do anywhere and anytime.

FINGER CIRCLES & ANKLE FIGURE 8S

I love these not only because of their ability to upregulate the cerebellum, but because we get bonus activation given how much the brain ‘pays attention’ when we’re using our hands and feet.

Why the hands and feet? They’re critical to our survival, so there’s more neural real estate dedicated to them (especially the hands). So when we do something with our fingers, toes, hands or feet that demands our focus, larger chunks of the sensory and motor areas of the brain light up.

So we get greater activation because of what we’re moving, PLUS cerebellar activation because the drill requires a great deal of precision… together putting up some bright lights for our movement highway.

Before doing them, use the Assess - Reassess process to measure the impact.

When to Do the Drills

If you’re athlete where precision, coordination and control of your hands and feet are important, do them:

• During warm-up for practice

• During practice if you’re doing specific drills or skills that use your hands or feet a lot or if you’re working on something new.

• Just before you’re doing something that requires a lot of balance and coordination (e.g. if you’re a gymnast, do this before a routine on beam, bars, pommel horse, pbars, etc.… you get the idea)

Remember, you’re not only turning on the lights for your brain-to-hand and brain-to-feet neural highways, you’re also increasing overall balance, coordination and midline stability by activating the cerebellum (I’ll write more about this in the next post).

A Bit of Cerebellum Trivia

Since I’m using the highway analogy… Roadside DUI tests are actually cerebellar tests as alcohol will diminish its function. So you could also walk forward or backwards toe-to-heel on a line, or close your eyes with your feet together then try to touch the tip of your nose with the tip of each finger (sounds easier than it is even if you haven’t been drinking).

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to harnessing the brain for maximizing potential. There are dozens of drills to activate the cerebellum and other brain areas that can unlock better performance. And I’d love to help you find MORE… flexibility, balance, power, speed or help you be free of limiting pain and stiffness. 

If you want to keep learning about the power of Neuroperformance Training, add your name and email below & follow me on Instagram. For coaching and clinics, you can reach me at levelupneuro@gmail.com or contact me via this form.