Hey guys – sorry for such a long gap between posts! I’ve been really busy this summer running hockey camps, going to family reunions, and a bunch of other stuff…
Anyways, right now I’m at the Level 5 Coaching Clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota. So far it’s been a pretty good event – we’ve heard from a bunch of cool speakers. But the most interesting thing I heard today as about COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT… or in other words BRAIN TRAINING.
There is a company called Applied Cognitive Engineering that has developed a product called IntelliGym that consists of a complex series algorithms that can be implemented into a video game that will train your brain to react quicker to the recurring patterns in athletics. They have already developed it for basketball, and are currently designing a hockey version.
Evidently, this is the same technology the Israeli Air Force uses to train their fighter pilots… it’s kinda like a flight simulator, only it’s totally different… I know that doesn’t make much sense, but it’s hard to describe. Basically, they’ve implemented hockey patterns into a video game that has nothing to do with hockey… (the example they showed us was a little space ship fighting game – but the space ships moved in hockey patterns). So your brain is being trained to react more instinctively instead of intellectually, and your reaction times improve.
With the Air Force pilots, they saw a 20-40% improvement across the board… the basketball players showed similar results, and hockey is expected to do the same!
The players’ decision-making skills can be tracked, and improvement within the game can be monitored. The game gets harder and faster as the player improves…Like I said – this stuff is REALLY cool. I thought I’d share the link so you can check it out for yourselves.
http://hockey.intelligym.com/
I’ll keep you posted on what I learn tomorrow… ENJOY!
