AASP Newsletter - July 2018

Wes Sime, PhD, University of Nebraska (Emeritus)

Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (APB) is a burgeoning area of interest for the beginning and more advanced practitioners seeking to provide objective indicators of training progress by helping the athlete learn how to modulate physiological activity for maximal performance as well as optimal recovery. Precise instruments are available to measure heart rate, respiration, muscle activity, skin conductance, skin temperature and brainwave patterns (Dupee, Werthner & Forneris, 2015). These instruments can be used for assessment; or they can give an athlete rapid and accurate "feedback" information, resulting in “Aha” moments and later as confirmation that awareness of anxiety or shifts to more well-regulated mental states is accurate or not. Changes in thinking (negative vs. positive) and emotions (confidence vs. fear) are reflected in physiological changes, and using APB instruments helps the consultant identify and address such concerns. Over time, with a transfer of training effect, the desired changes in control of complex psychophysiological processes can transmit directly from training into competition without any continued use of the instruments (Schwartz et.al., 2016). For highly skilled athletes, anxiety, calm feelings, composure and confidence are usually easy to detect. However, the refined skill is to get the athlete on “cruise control” for automaticity according to their desired state of preparation or anticipation of the start of competition (Sime, 2011). Further, a conditioned skill for an athlete to develop through mental training is to be able to go from highly excited states to calm states rapidly; especially when rest, recuperation and recovery is essential for performance.

How to get started utilizing APB in your practice

One of the easiest ways to gain expertise in APB is by apprenticing. I have facilitated many eager practitioners who already have the academic background for applied sport psychology but seek out the mentorship of local APB professionals (“biofeedback’rs”) to observe and practice. The goal is to learn how to integrate biofeedback and/or neurofeedback training into their practice smoothly and efficiently. After I presented a workshop on this topic at the 2017 AASP Annual Conference in Orlando (Developing Intense Focus of Attention and Mental Stamina), a graduate student contacted me to help him find a practitioner whom he could apprentice with in the San Francisco Bay area. I was able to “hook him up” (no pun intended) with Eric Peper, an esteemed professor at San Francisco State University, a scholar and practitioner who does mostly wholistic health training with biofeedback. Ironically, Eric and I got started in the health field with academic credentials before the spawning of many graduate programs in sport psychology. Thus, we had no formal training, but had to pick up both the APB and the Sport Psych skills by self-learning and apprenticing. More formal methods of systematic learning for APB can be found among the various online and live workshops offered by the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB), the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA), or affiliates who meet their standards for quality continuing education. There are very few academic programs that actually teach the basics and the advanced skills in APB, and this is why apprenticeships are an essential step in getting started.

Using APB to explore mind-body connections

A comprehensive understanding of psychophysiology includes an orientation to the mind-body connection as well as the up/down relationship of physiological “feedback” that occurs as a result of self-regulation of emotions during performance (Bertollo et.al., 2013). It is critical for all practitioners to understand that heart rate (HR) and respiration (RR) are inextricably linked in the form of coherence and synchrony during optimum performance (Morgan & Molina, 2017). When the coherence of the HR/RR connection is disturbed and displays asynchronous patterns, one can predict that the athlete is overwhelmed by pressure or excitement and may be vulnerable to choking or injury (Choudhary, 2016).

Skin conductance and hand temperature are useful reflections of disturbed sympathetic nervous system adaptations as well. It is no fluke that warm and dry hands are the hallmark of the confident and composed athlete, and that cool, cold, damp or wet hands are the antithesis thereof.

There is also finite control of muscle contractions, measured using EMG. These are illustrated by the alternating sequence of “full on” versus “fully relaxed” and somewhere in between; with smooth modulations in flexor and extensor muscle actions. This is typically the hallmark of what we judge to be graceful and highly coordinated sport performance.

Additionally, brain wave activity is finally becoming a modality that can be monitored and coached not only before, but during actual practice performances in some sports such as golf and tennis. Dan Landers and Debbie Cruse were two of the original researchers out of ASU to identify essential brainwave patterns characteristic of optimum performance (Crews, & Landers, 1993). More recently, Debbie has designed a user-friendly and relatively inexpensive system, Opti International, to help athletes identify ideal versus unwanted brainwave states. Her system provides both assessment and training to achieve a “quiet brain” accompanied by vivid imagery and targeted focus. A second device is the Focus Band. Graham Boulton designed this extraordinarily stable system, which is relatively free of movement artifact (a problem with in vivo work with athletes). Finally, Quiet Eye was originated by Joan Vickers almost twenty years ago. This instrument objectively measures random shifting of eye gaze by using a miniature, Bluetooth enabled camera, built into the frame of eye glasses. The camera tracks micro movements of the pupil and can detect exactly where the eyes are looking. By referring to a red laser beam that is representative of the eye movement patterns, practitioners can detect if an athlete’s eyes are fixed on the target in the 2 -3 seconds before a free throw or a golf putt. Errant shots are found to be associated with a wandering fixation around the target rather than directly on the target. A practical and less costly version of the Quiet Eye system (which was around $20K the last I checked), is the Right Eye system, developed by AASP member Melissa Hunfaley. It is worth checking out especially for baseball, tennis, hockey goalie and other sports that demand extra-ordinary visual perception and quick reaction time.

Non-Physiological Technical advances in the field.

The Interactive Metronome is a timing and pace assessment instrument that determines how well the athlete can keep up with an arbitrary pace consistently over 1-5 minutes. The pace is usually set at 1-per-second of exercises (such as hand clapping). There are 14 exercises to assess repeatable actions, each one calculated to illustrate average deviation from perfect timing. Talented athletes can stay consistent within milliseconds from perfectly timed pace. While the Interactive Metronome does not present a physically demanding set of exercises, in order to keep up with the exacting and repeating cycle of movement at or near 1-per-second, requires that the athlete’s brain be highly focused and free of distractions that might precipitate hurrying or slowing mechanics. There is also a golf device called the Tour Tempo (Novosel & Garrity, 2011), which assists golfers in assessing their swing tempo. Novosel and Garrity determined through decades of empirical research that in golf there is an ideal swing tempo from the point of take back, to the top of the swing, all the way down to contact with the ball. Essentially, the best players in the world take back the club to the top of the swing at a rate almost twice as long as from the top of the swing to the ball strike. Deviations faster or slower are associated with errant shots.

Notably, these systems are only effective in accordance with the degree to which there is transfer of training effect to get the athlete to quiet the brain, rid extraneous thoughts and emotions, and focus on the task at hand.

Additional information on APB and more sophisticated systems and software packages are provided by practitioners including Pierre (Red) Beauchamp, Margaret Dupee, Tim Herzog, Leah Lagos, Ben Strack, Gershon Tennenbaum, Lindsay Thornton, Harry van der Lei, Penny Werthner, Sue Wilson, and Len Zaichowsky. All of these sport professionals have some affiliation with AAPB, and many of them are members of AASP as well.

References

Bertollo, M., Bortoli, L., Gramaccioni, G., Hanin, Y., Comani, S., & Robazza, C. (2013). Behavioural and psychophysiological correlates of athletic performance: A test of the multi-action plan model. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 38(2), 91-99.

Blumenstein, B., & Weinstein, Y. (2011). Biofeedback training: enhancing athletic performance. Biofeedback, 39(3), 101-104.

Choudhary, R., Triveti, V., & Choudhary, S. (2016). Effect of heart rate variability biofeedback training on the performance of track athletes. International Journal of Therapies and Rehabilitation Research, 5(4), 166-174.

Crews, D.J. & Landers, D.M. (1993). Electroencephalographic measures of attentional patterns prior to the golf putt. Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise, 25(1), 116-126.

Dupee, M., Werthner, P., & Forneris, T. (2015). A preliminary study on the relationship between athletes' ability to self-regulate and world ranking. Biofeedback, 43(2), 57-63.

Novosel, J. & Garrity J. (2011) Tour Tempo: The short game and beyond. Lawrence, KS: Tour Tempo, LLC.

Morgan, J. S., & Molina M. J. (2017). Effect of heart rate variability biofeedback on sport performance, a systematic review. Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback, 42(3), 235-245.

Panchuk, D., Vickers. J. & Hopkins, W. (2016). Quiet eye predicts goal tending success in deflected ice hockey shots. European Journal of Sport Science, 17(1), 93-99.

Schwartz, S. M., Collura, F. T., Kamiya, J., & Schwartz, M. N. (2016). The History and Definitions of Biofeedback and Applied Psychophysiology. In S.M. Schwartz & F. Andrasik, (Eds.). Biofeedback a practitioner's guide (pp. 3-23). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Sime, W. E. (2011). Sport applications of biofeedback. In M. Schwartz & F. Andrasik (Eds.), Biofeedback: A practitioner’s guide. New York: Guilford Press.

Vickers, J. (1996). Visual control when aiming at a far target. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22(2), 342-354.

Wilson, S. V., Sime, E. W., Harkness, T. (2016). Sports. In S.M. Schwartz & F. Andrasik, (Eds.). Biofeedback a practitioner's guide (pp. 3-23). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

The July 2018 issue of the AASP Newsletter includes the following articles:

• President's Message: AASP Progress, Prospects and Strategic Planning
• Writing and Submitting Your AASP Journal Manuscript: The Inside Scoop
• What's Your 'Handle'?: Ethical Issues and Considerations for Title Use When Using Social Media
• Integrating Psychophysiological Training into Sport Psychology Consulting
• July & August Diversity Month Announcements

Click here to return to the full list of past AASP Newsletter issues.