 Good evening everyone Thank you for being here and for being a part of this very important conversation with our national expert in athletic performance and overall well-being With mr. John Underwood. My name is Andrea Salazar and I'm the Youth Prevention Associate Director with the San Antonio Council on Alcohol and Drug Awareness Or we're all also known as Sakata Sakata has worked with the Bernie ISD community and school district for the past few years And we're very excited that tonight's event involves Bernie ISD and the community as a whole Before I introduce mr. Underwood I'd like to thank the community foundation of the Texas Hill Country whose grant funds are making tonight's presentation possible I also would like to thank the PTOs from Samuel Champion High School and Bernie High School for their partnership and their generosity with tonight's event And a very special. Thank you to Bernie ISD for supporting Sakata's prevention programming in the Hill Country for the last three years Lastly, I'd like to thank you parents and community members for being here and for everyone watching via live stream And now I'd like to introduce our speaker Mr. John Underwood is the director and founder of the Human Performance Project He's a former NCAA all-american coach advisor of two dozen Olympians guest commentator for ABC's Worldwide Sports and a consultant to major sports federations like the NCAA NHL and International and US Olympic Committees So I'll turn it over to mr. Underwood. Thank you Thanks so much we we spent today at one of your high schools and We talked to over a thousand kids and it wasn't just for Athletes although we have specific programs just for athletes we we we did this for the whole student body So that was 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders and tonight in this session. We were going to talk You know to really get perspective of like what the program is about what it can do what it can add to To the school school district in community and and that's we have I see we have we have parents here We have we certainly have I hope parents live stream and that we have some probably some coaches and some student athletes even here tonight and and also some school administrators and and teachers so This program tonight I sort of took what we showed today And I just want to take my time because I showed so much in the short time. We had At school about an hour I want to take the time to to explain it so that people can see hopefully the merit of Going down this road to to get really to give kids the best information to make the best choices And and to be honest with you I think that's the that's the purpose of what we what we need to do for young people nowadays Give them the best information to make the best choices To be honest with you we're still at the mercy of of people making those choices and From adult perspective, that's a whole different perspective than the perspective of kids because they They're not in the same place in their development. So anyway, I just want to give you a background I spent a lot of time in my education for human performance in Europe and was actually the first foreign student at the sport Institute of Finland and It was a really a special place to learn because it was one of the best think tanks for human performance and physiology in the world And I was going to work with that with the elite athletes and I came back In the late 80s and ended up in they had just opened the Olympic training center in Lake Placid and Lake Placid is in the northernmost part of New York and hosted the Olympics twice and so I went to work there and with athletes and coaches and and Mostly winter athletes at that time, but now it's it's for all different sports and I went to work Doing scientific studies and physiological tests on on athletes for performance And I also did a lot of the education and the topics for education were everything from nutrition to To recovery to the best things we knew at that point in time and we certainly know a lot more now But it was it was a good life. That was the first 20 years of my career I've now been working for 42 years and so this is 22 years on my own with human performance project But it was preceded by 20 years in this with Olympic sport and and I coached I actually had 28 Olympians that I worked with coached or advised and it was seven different sports, which is a little bit different from people coach a sport and so I enjoyed that life and it was it was interesting and I said today when I was talking to some of the kids in and we're at another high school tomorrow same thing full student body I had four years to help athletes get ready for one day. That's that's a neat project by itself and And I also said to those young people today, you know The more time you spend the better you get that's for sure And there's a statement down here at the bottom by a famous Russian the father of Russian sport Matthew of he said the single biggest factor in development time and There's a million ways you can spin that you can spin it that you run out of time And the day comes that you have to perform or you waste your time or a million other scenarios So I often when I talk to young people, I try to make them realize even though you're young And you think you got all this time you're gonna run out of time and that's a good perspective to have so So another thing that we did is this year rather than just go to a school and make a presentation Then you go away and just you know, maybe somebody remembers something from it. You hope We actually made a program called project 1440 there's 1,440 minutes in a day and we give sound bites to school. So everything from morning announcements. You might have one on one on You know sleep nutrition pot alcohol stress all these different topics we've delved into And you know, maybe somebody hears something and it's a reminder or a wake-up call or they say, oh, you know, really wow I can't believe that's true But it helps them maybe have a new a new way to think about what they do and and actually this this statement I always try to drop on not just student-athletes, but anybody is everyday matters and counts Sooner or later and and I think that's a that's a good place to start for this for the for this session You might not be able to see this in the picture Hopefully you can it says time equals life and you know if you really think about it if you waste your time you do waste your life and I I'm not trying to pick on your generation because we have some you know some young people here But man, I'll tell you that the amount of things that you kids burn through that have no payback or payout It is pretty hard to imagine and and I'll give a reference to that because I've had five kids of my own Man, there are so many distractions To staying focused and staying on a project and being motivated to see it through because You run out of time and I can't believe the amount of things that you kids Juggle and keep going It's it's it's a challenge anyway So so anyway, that's something and and I think this is another this is one of our posters for athletes And I think you can you can see here It's you know eventually at the clock winds down maybe something you cared about or wanted to do or achieve or Planned or invested in time effort and energy and all of a sudden the day comes and on that day you got to go in with how you've prepared and a lot of times you wish oh man I could I should have put in more time doing this and or doing it better or but the day comes and At that point in time, maybe you start to realize every day mattered and every day counted And I think that's something that we really need to spend more time on You can't just go in and wing it it's probably not going to always come out in your favor So so anyway the time you take to prepare is important. I also said if you want to see about time This is probably the two greatest examples of time Couple Olympics ago the men's downhill and men's Olympic downhill First gold medal to 10th place was separated by 5,700 of a second So a lot of times I speak and I once was speaking and there was a guy and he had The finish of the hundred meter dash and he had a sound for each person crossing the finish line Which was sort of neat and it sounded like one sound, but this would be the same way first through 10th They say that if you want to see what 5,700 of a second is they say close your eyes and open them back up That's about 5,700 sub a second. That's the difference between the winner and You know who remembers 10th. Maybe they maybe the guy that was 10th. So so when here's another one This is track cycling. This is a thousandth of a second separating a gold and a silver medal I have a whole bunch of examples of this from maybe 15 sports and when I talked to athletes I show them all because it's it's sort of a neat reference But what's the difference so maybe something somebody did that the other person didn't do Maybe an extra hour sleep. I'm not kidding you because we've started to really quantify What are some of those? fraction of a percent Things that matter and count on that day when you're going to do the thing so that you're not 10th All right, so so that's something to think about But we have now taken and we have access to these think tanks and physiological centers and training centers Worldwide we we meet with this group called ASPC. It's the Association of High Performance Training Centers of the world I've spoken there many times what we do is we take mental and physical performance studies and we say you know This isn't just for athletes. This is for anybody this this will cross any barriers music art dance you name it and and academics for sure So why don't we take this and show everybody and and then have specific programs for for athletes to so we've published some stuff Here's just some of those publications and we keep them short Most of them are around 20 pages. You know you give somebody a book and maybe they'll Flip flip a few pages and read some of this stuff But you make them about 20 pages long and you actually you know, it's you know as a coach I used to tell athletes, you know I'm gonna help you but you need to read these things and understand them especially the ones on diet and And sleep I can honestly say this you want to see the country of the worst for those two topics. You're in it Probably, you know as modern in modernized nations. There's only I think one country that sleeps less than we do and that's Japan We actually know that they came in like 545 for five hours and 45 minutes of sleep and and as far as diet you know, we're way near the bottom folks and Athletes can't perform if you don't take care of all of them and the new our new manual is this mental wellness Manual, you know one out of five kids that are in those middle school high school ages now have mental health related issues and You know, when do we get on that page? We need to be on that page, you know chronically so we also do coaches super clinics to educate coaches and We have an amazing leadership program that's run by former Navy SEALs and it's it's as far as I'm concerned It's as good as it gets Who uses our program lots of people we've been to hundreds of colleges mostly the major colleges Just just some examples of the project. We work with three professional sport leagues been to a lot of those programs over the years and We have worked with Super Bowl champion teams that came from Near the bottom to the top in a couple years and teams that never won that won I mean, it just it's you start thinking okay. Why do people seek out this information? Because if you add science to performance Everything starts to go up and I don't care again. What venue that is. We also have done programs outside of sport world Actually spent a significant amount of time helping set up the Navy SEAL human performance project And it's still called that to this day HPP just like our organization name Far as I'm concerned that's the most important thing that I ever did in my life was to become involved with that and to Work with some amazing people to make those guys the greatest Fighting force and warriors on the planet earth. So we built laboratories on both coasts for SEALs to do scientific studies It went scientific I guess I can say this I've said it to lots of people before that it was like a testosterone contest it wasn't really training and The longevity of Navy SEAL operators was was a pretty short thing a lot of guys with injuries and syndromes and You know now, you know that that is an amazing program So anyway, that's a picture of the lab and when you start thinking about how good they are at what they do it's got lots to do with What they are and who they are and their chemistry and their brain and bodies, but also It's spun off now to projects in lots of different countries too, and that's what we do So so that's some of it. We did a short stint with Top Gun Which is which was a neat project and But now we educate and if you think about educating this was this is in Nebraska this picture I remember I'm not specifically sure where it was but but when you educate young people If they don't know they don't know but once they know You hope that maybe they'll consider the way they're doing things or making some changes and this was actually a Day where they they bust kids in from a lot of those rural school districts and they didn't have enough seats in their gym So sort of looked like to say we did two sessions that filled your auditorium today So here's here's just a title page of our program We've looked into all these different things that affect performance everything from energy drinks sleep nutrition pot alcohol stress you name it and and tried to really give people some good information and sound bites on how they can do what they do better and I actually said today, you know when I go into a place we we send all these topics and And we hope that you know, they'll pick what they want so we can Deliver what you want and you know brain science and stress and sleep and alcohol marijuana Prescription drugs and vaping was what was what was you know? I discussed with with your people who set up the program and then I said, okay, let's let's talk about talents, too and and also about performance so that that's what we're gonna see tonight and and If you look at the human genome project, right? I can say this without any question. Everybody has something that they could be good at I'm not gonna say everybody could have something they could be great at but I'm gonna say everybody has something they could be good at And certainly talent if you look at 1% populations like Navy's feels and pro athletes and Olympians and Top musicians and artists and dancers. Okay, they got something special But let me describe it for you But then if you have those talents, you also have to invest in them And you know, I don't know if it's wise to put Poker chips on a slide with the gambling issues and addictions we have nowadays But I just thought you know there comes a time in your life and hopefully not when you're you know 10 years old where you got to put your poker chips on red or black Where you say, hey, you know, I'm pretty good at this and I think I'm gonna invest in it and put more effort into it and you have to sometimes make these decisions and And I look at you know, I think we could spend a whole night talking about Youth spore and you know doing that too early and you know, maybe You know Getting having a kid end up in something where you know, it would have been much wiser to go in a different direction And so we could talk about that but you do have to invest and you know What you have to work with is what you have to work with and if you look at those genetic studies that go back Grandparents great-grandparents great-great-grandparents. Somebody will throw you a gene that maybe you have the possibility to be good in Something where not everybody is good art music sports, right body type alone, right? I mean, maybe it maybe just you know, maybe you're born in your your six foot six and you know You end up the coach's team being a basketball player and maybe maybe you want to do something, but you just don't have the the genetic Predisposition for it to even take place But realize this some of these things are a gift and some are a limiting factor Maybe you got thrown that magic gene that you just have the wiring for music or the creativity For these things and you end up being not just good at something, but amazing at it that happens, too So so just let me give you some ideas It's believed and this is this is shared often with these studies They've done on Olympians and especially medalists because they're different than an Olympian There's lots of Olympians, but there's these rare people that win gold medals and what they found is that if you want to look at any Walk of life music art dance Sports all those things You could take a hundred kids and out of that hundred kids Probably eight out of a hundred Could maybe be some kind of a good not not just a good athlete, but a great athlete so I'll give you a scenario you have a school and a Magic class will come through and there's not just eight kids in that class that freshman your sophomore junior class that are amazing athletes There might be a mix of 20 25 30 and you may have some years where you win some stuff And there's going to be other years where you may wonder where the eight are All right, you know, that's a terrible thing to say But I'm just saying in the human population believe me There's people who have talent for all these different walks of life and if we're in youth venues were adults I'm a teacher. I'm a coach. I'm in any youth venue my Goal is to help the kids find out That's what they got to work with it's my goal to help them find it and Encourage them to nurture it as it is if we're a parent and and I think that's that's the best gift We have for our kids is help them find something. They're good at but also help them find something that they have a passion for that They love And that it's their their desire and their wish so so maybe eight out of a hundred people are One out of 13 people have some some something where they could be amazing not just good But that's not going to take you there every adult watching this on live stream We're here tonight could tell you a hundred stories of somebody who had amazing talents and did nothing with it or threw it away Or didn't care or or washed it away or got caught up in some negative stuff that ruined it That's just the way it is and that's one of the sad and tragic things about life is that here you had this thing that you could have done or been and and You know it didn't it didn't pan out so talent isn't enough and it's not going to take you all the way to the top You know I've met some of those people you watch on TV and I can tell you hey They weren't just talented they worked like you can't believe to get where they got and that's a good message for our kids too But over and over you practice and you train you put in the time effort and energy There's the three words time effort and energy and you stay focused even with setbacks and and problems and injuries and stuff and over time You can maybe be the one that makes it to the top and a book's been written about it I asked today in the first session with ninth and tenth graders Anybody who read the talent code was one adult in the back raised his hand and when I asked in the second group One adult raised his hand man. This book should be like required reading for Coaches teachers anybody in a youth setting because it really describes the process you have to go through and It's the same for everybody and it's all walks of life So interestingly enough if you want to read a good book Unlocking the secrets of skill and sports art music math and just about anything That's what the books about and there's some great examples And I think it'll hold up in any venue and you can't speed up the process. So be patient, right? So even if you're good at something you probably greatly underestimate what you're capable of and and I look nowadays and I say, okay, you know, you're good at it But you know with little effort here, maybe you could be great at it. Maybe you could be the best maybe you could be the best there's ever been everybody has had a chance to start somewhere and Maybe another thing to think about is what you could be if you really put something into it And never did I see it more in my life than when I started working with that Navy SEAL project and just the When you look at like all these people who want to be a seal and They train and they go and they take these special Former SEALs train them and say, okay, here's how you're gonna make it You got to do you know these guys are some of them train for a year or two years three years And then they go try out to be a SEAL and Some a few make it and a lot don't but if you really think about it the process for picking these guys is just so incredibly difficult and What they want is they want to find guys that just will not quit I mean, that's capsule summary, but they put you through a process where it just weeds you down to people Just won't quit so after you become a SEAL then you train for about two and a half years before you ever go on a mission or ever deployed and I Have guys that I work with that were former Navy SEALs into our leadership program They said, you know, there was nothing we ever saw in combat situation that we hadn't seen in our training And they're not just saying that that's the way it is. They're so highly trained and I say to kids like when I do talk to Athletes here we go How'd you like to train for two and a half years before you ever get to run out on a court or a basket or a football field? You think you'd care a little bit more about it. You better believe you would Why just because the investment alone imagine two and a half years before you ever get to do your thing Well, that's the difference. That's the difference. Maybe you'd go to do I don't know states I'll have these requirements you 20 practices or whatever. It's it's not the same so it was neat to be in that around that kind of a Venue because I really think that it shined a light on it for me of you know How highly it is to be selected into that process and how highly trained you are after that point in time? And you know when you're going through it and the sole purpose is to make you quit And you're fighting it mind body and spirit All day long through that whole process not to quit not to quit not to quit and I've seen And heard so many hundreds of stories of these guys that just succumbed to the to the trauma and quit and your dream is over and that's tragic and sad and And and pretty rough to deal with so so anyway you ring out on a bell and you're done and you quit That's it and most people are physically capable of Of making it through that process But up here, they're not capable and in here, they're not capable And then those are the same things that will fail you on a playing field or on a field of battle or any other place That's that's the difference. There's three sides to being at your best physical mental and something in here So so anyway, here's another model. It's not navy steel model. It's a model for humans Performance potential is up here. Maybe that's like where you could be All right, and we we could do that. We could talk about the classroom We could talk about, you know, the ballet class. We could talk about Music art learning a musical instrument guitar or whatever and then you have where you are on a day-to-day basis So there's where you are now performance actuality and then we have Some some people who are just, you know Where they are and they don't even care well Every generation not just these kids today have a percent of people who Maybe they don't care I have always said this to teachers and coaches What if you have kids who come to you and they don't care? Well, then it's our job to make them care Same thing as parents. It's our job to make them care Your life is pretty important not to care And you know if that if any of those adults fail in a child's life Then somebody else hopefully picks up the slack and and helps them realize that they need to care But human nature is this You know, you can live in the comfort zone You know humans have a built-in ability to be comfortable and if we're not comfortable We don't like it and that's ever I could give you a million scenarios for that including pain All right people want to be in this homeostasis or this comfort zone But if you really think about it Push through your comfort zone find out what you're really capable of man and and early you start that process Especially when you're a young person Your life unfolds All these amazing things maybe that you can do or be Happened and um, also if you if you don't care a lot of these people are into unhealthy behaviors I could say this right now looking at this slide. There's unhealthy people at the top. There's unhealthy people Where they are and there's unhealthy people who don't even care. All right, so that's it That's not going to just be people who don't care You've read the stories about famous athletes famous people who had it all and they they were involved in so many unhealthy behaviors that it all Went down the tubes. So so think about that too During your middle school to high school time You'll probably tap into 40 50 60 percent of your potential as anything And if you stay involved in the after maybe an athlete goes on to college Maybe you tap into 70 80 percent of your potential And then most all people will quit I know this from the sport world And a lot of people will never get to 90 or 100 percent very few people will reach their full potential in anything that they undertake um, and again Going back to matt v of famous saying Time will be the factor you just that the time the timeline stopped and you just didn't continue to develop so so anyway Here's some other things to think about. Why is it that when we perform in anything academically music art dance? sports singing bands Anything why is it that every time we perform? We don't go out there and have the greatest performance of our of our life wouldn't that be awesome every time You're on a race you run a new personal record every time you play basketball you score more points than the previous game I mean this it would it would be awesome, but it's never going to happen. So here's here's what we did We took sports where performance is performance like track and field running Throwing jumping swimming right so there's there's there, you know And we threw out performances that were affected by wind and rain and horrible horrible weather and stuff We got it down to a point where we analyzed their whole competitive season And we said okay, I know I know you know, what's your average percent? Of performance compared to your best you've ever done And there was a huge scatter of performances at 82 to 87 percent. So here's your best performance ever Here's your personal record the fastest you ever ran your race the farthest you threw the shot put fastest you ever swam anything like that And there's a huge performance Cluster at about 82 to 87 percent So if you think about this if I was going to send a team out to play a game Wouldn't it be cool that I could send everybody out there and at their worst they were going to all be at 82 to 87 percent Well, you know what would happen You'd win a whole bunch of games and you'd beat a whole bunch of teams that were way better than you or Didn't even belong out. You didn't even belong out there with them And um, you would perform it in a whole new level, but we don't always perform at our best And there's reasons for that so we started to look at what were some of those reasons And and then we also started to try to make people realize that you have way more control over that Then you would think And this is sort of more directed into our performance Program for athletes, but you put all that time effort energy in and all you care about is I had a pretty good game Or I did a pretty good performance or I did pretty good on the test Well time effort and energy alone should be the dictating factor in you Not accepting that you just want to be good Good isn't good enough when you invest all that time effort energy you want more out of it than that But because it's comfort zone you can fall back and say well, you know, we played pretty good Or you know, I But you sell yourself short That's the bottom line and I I just say, you know, why don't we bring out something better than that in kids And in order to do that you need to talk about it So anyway, that's uh, that's just something the single biggest factor in gains Or changing or tapping into more potential really Is more about your brain and central nervous nervous system than it is about Uh physical performance and here's a quote brain science Education is critical for understanding how mental and physical performance takes place All right, where is the understanding of what's going on in the brain and central nervous system? So that people have a perspective for how important it is That this is rested and ready to perform. It's called central nervous system readiness So here's some brain science. The first picture we could find of the the first attempt at an MRI machine It and it's sort of hysterical picture. It looks like a milking machine to me on top of the kid's head This is actually uh The first MRI machine it was the magnets weren't powerful enough to actually penetrate the thickness of the human skull So that they couldn't really see what's going on in the brain And as we've developed technology in in recent years, especially the last 10 years Which human performance now is has just it's unbelievable. We're learning from the brain This is actually a video and uh You have about this is 7 million neurons. All right, so 7 million neurons It sounds like a lot, but the average human being has 83 billion neurons neurons or brain cells So the average person has 83 billion brain cells and that's 7 million and when I show this and I think about this I think can you imagine that there's anything more amazing than the human brain? And to understand that when it's controlling everything you do Not just cognitive function thinking abilities, but like your brain controls your body Every athlete. I mean I can tell you this, you know Bodies don't get tired and and muscles don't get fatigued and and they just stop performing or they give out We used to think that the brain actually shuts down your body under the highest levels of physical stress So if you could tap into controlling your brain You don't think your performance would go through the roof. Of course it would So there's just an example of the power of the human brain and how amazing it is And I I said today to kids and this isn't just athletes I said look if you want a perspective on what to take care of the rest of your life It's right here Because once that's shot Everything sinks There's no way for mental cognitive function anything to take place after you have compromised the the brain And central nervous system. So what can we look into how about Sleep alcohol marijuana depressant substances the the effective technology on the brain neuro fatigue What happens when the brain gets tired? Performance goes way down in everything, but here's all these topics energy drinks moods stress hydration Blood glucose levels kid doesn't eat breakfast. He's going to school. Good luck trying to learn in a classroom You know how much edged how much of an edge does it take off? How much does it affect performance mental and physical? So there are some of the studies And then I said okay here. Let's let's think about this pre-k to 12th grade Pretty important time How important is it to you guys? I said it today to the kids in the auditorium, right? How important is it to you? Have you thought about it lately? Most important years of your life and preparing for young adulthood. They're not kids anymore Once you're in high school, you're not a kid anymore. You're a young adult And that's the way we got to talk to them and that's the way we should confront anything that compromises those four years Here's the development of a of a person Birth to age one you learn how to use your senses three phases of development Birth at age one to age 12 a lot with motor skills learning how to use your body and move and and and also Best time to learn language. That's absolutely for certain And then the third phase age 12 sixth or seventh grade to age 21 higher cognitive function adult Cognitive functions and skill perfection efficiency for an athlete are your skills continue to improve up to age up to age 21 Um So here you have a model of how what we all went through and the interesting thing is it halfway through this phase age six Um, a whole bunch of the wiring is already there So the wiring is there, but you haven't used it enough so that you can actually tap into using it and make progress So that's a simplification, but that's the way it is So 95 of the human brain is developed by the age of six But then you've got to condition it by using those pathways So just to give you guys some ideas and this comes from another huge project just like human genome This is human connectome the circuitry of the brain It's layered just like a computer chip or wiring is in a device which is amazing Um, but here are some of the initial things that we looked at this is actually Uh, the first pictures that came out of human connectome that were published and it was published in national geo and some magazines But I mean you start looking at these circuits These circuits are what you use to function as a human being and you use them the rest of your life from from that early age After you burn in those pathways and this is that motor area of the brain For movement how you use your arms and legs a quarter of that whole section is just for this to use your hands Find motor skills. All right, so if you think Parents might remember this your baby is uh, you know eating off his tray and he's a little Little tiny kid one or one years old or something. They can't pick up a cheerio. They can't do this. Yes They pick up with their whole hand something You learn how to use your body and a lot of that starts especially at that age of Of six one one to six and and beyond But here's those circuits of the brain and the final phase of brain development is 12 to 21 I showed you that and that's from the UCLA brain development study This is landmark study that actually proved that a brain continues to develop up to age 21 And after age 21, man, that's that that's what you got to work with And I tried to say to kids and I did today that you need to take some responsibility. This is a very important time to take care of The effort time effort and energy that you put into developing What you're going to be And uh, and that's that's that's important for all of us. So here's the study, excuse me This is four or five years old. This is 21 years old on the right. This is um This is at the yellow line Sixth or seventh grade hormonal onset or puberty Look how much orange comes into the picture or yellow comes into the picture after Sixth or seventh grade It's the single biggest phase of brain development of your entire life expectancy You know, all these things are important from birth till The end of the line But think how important this phase is and here's something else This is a time lapse of birth to age 21 as his brain turns blue. Unfortunately a different color The brain reaching greater and greater levels and abilities and capacities and and functions So that was something that people really need to think about how important that time is But here's one of the tidbits that came out of it. The developing brain age 12 to 21 Encurs far greater levels of damage than any other time of of your life So if you damage your brain during 12 to 21 You pick the worst time to damage it So if you had a massive a car accident and you got a massive head injury If you got multiple concussions, right? All of these states now with high school athletics You get concussions worst time to get a concussion 12 to 21 Um because the brain is highly susceptible to damage So that's something to really consider and I think everybody realizes that There's an inherent risk in hockey and football and some of these sports where if you get multiple concussions And cte and the movie concussion and all this stuff. It's it's it's pretty horrendous So here's some scans. These are scans that show show damage This is a healthy brain all views and here's a damaged brain Okay And if you look these areas that look like holes they aren't holes areas of decreased or lowered activity or structural damage And if you start to think about this, um, we now have a way to look at something and like like damage in the brain And actually quantify it and say wow, this is really bad or In the old days that you know, I mean, I think before we were able to do this You might say hey, that's probably not real good for you, but that really wasn't science. This is science So, um, let me just give you some views here's activity levels in the brain So you can see this red in the back. It's back Actually back here where your spine joins your your back of your your skull brainstem area That's your brainstem. That's that's what keeps you alive and breathing and and functioning Vital functions and here's somebody who there's so here's somebody that's not stressed You can see the thinking part of the brain is all blue Just the brainstem has always lit up and here's somebody who's stressed You can see how much stress they have so we can actually quantify activity levels in the brain And um, then we also from the human connectome project. We actually Started to realize that cells that fire together wire together And I talk a lot about this when I'm talking about addictive drugs, especially this opioid crisis that We actually create what are what are called neurotags and neurotags are actually cells that have Learned how to fire back and forth in a sequence We have neurotags for pain All right, so somebody who's in pain over a long period of time these neurotags burn in and their their brain has these These sense sensitized areas for for pain and a lot of other things So neurotags are good and bad. All right We now have neurotags for music and art and math and sports and dance and skills and languages and And and even creativity. This is actually one for creativity right here. All right, so that's the example How some people are very creative at solving complex, you know equations situations and so forth some people aren't We also have negative Neurotags drugs addiction obsession stress depression post traumatic stress for sure You know, there's a there's probably the greatest level of neurotag you have And then anxiety and pain and pleasure and all these different things You guys all know that with drugs, you know addictive drugs, especially you actually turn on that that pleasure Pathways in the brain and the brain remembers the memory of the high and that your your brain keeps Revolving back to it and it wants to experience it again and again So so anyway, we also can look at like how these pathways develop These dendrites that form if you use pathways these little spiny Projections on on pathways Matter of fact, here's here's maybe you're you're learning to play the guitar or you're practicing a skill you've never done Learning to shoot from the left if you're a basketball player or dribble with both hands or a million other scenarios And you practice and you practice and you practice and maybe after some weeks You say that oh my gosh, look now we have all these these connections that we didn't have before and we can do it easy It's autopilot. I don't have to think about it. I can come down the court and I can Do do what I do easily versus before it was all random. All right So that's how we burn in these circuits. Here's actually those brain synaptic density the amount of connections between nerve cells at birth Here's at age six and look at age 14 It's not even as good as it was at age six and I already told you this at age six It's all there and if you don't use it. Guess what happens You lose it use it or lose it. That's the great. That's the the the that's where the quote came from no So think of it by age six all the wiring is there if you don't start using it burning in those pathways You lose them. So what how do you lose them glial cells? um Somebody said to me some kids said to me once it's like ghostbusters When the bad ghosts come to take you away the these these um these pathways or these spiny projections and and these glial cells come and they just they get rid of them So you could you could think about pruning they actually call it pruning You got a tree and you you take away all the the stuff you don't use or the dead branches And you just that's the same. It's a great scenario. It's an analogy There it is right there use it or lose it at this age And that's a that's a pretty simple way to explain it, but that's the way it is So we also looked at these chemicals that are in your brain and the three biggies melatonin and serotonin and dopamine and You know melatonin is the one that runs that sleep wake cycle But um if you just look at the three Um these control all movement the initiation of human movement all related to it and also all cognitive function So if you're down on neurotransmitters Um, you're out. I mean it's not going to work. So here's something to think about Neurotransmitters are reloaded at night when you're asleep. This is eight hours of sleep And that's a scan specific to neurotransmitters. So if you get eight hours of sleep Your brain is loaded up with neurotransmitters You're good to go the next day for cognitive function and movement All right, if you get minimized sleep six hours four hours Look what look what you start the day with and I can tell you this right now We got a generation of kids And I can tell you this in what I see In first period assemblies Right because I was doing one today. I'm doing one tomorrow We got a whole bunch of kids and that's the that's their neurotransmitter levels and they start the day with that And it's not going to sustain you through a whole day of anything And I can tell you this by the time you get to practice it three o'clock Um, there's a scenario we're going to go over with that too. So you reload these at night During REM sleep. It's absolutely critical and pivotal to have neural fully loaded neurotransmitters If they're depleted, uh, like I said, you're dead in the water. Um, we also know there's accelerants All right, what would you think would happen to your neurotransmitters if you use a stimulant? If you over use a stimulant You'll vaporize and use up your neurotransmitters faster Ironically if you use depressants, the same thing happens You would think that if I use a depressant, I'll use up my neurotransmitters slower No, you'll still use them up faster. So just give you guys an idea. We've done a ton of work around sugar Um, I I was just in russia for four months and boy, I'll tell you my body cleans out from this sugar That's mixed into everything that we eat. Unfortunately And I I just feel so much healthier and then I come back and I it's mixed in everything But here you go sugar actually makes you up taken and these are estimates that was in brain A study that was published in brain magazine They they say you uptake and use up your neurotransmitters at a rate 350 times greater than normal All right, so if you have a sugar based diet, which a lot of kids do nowadays You know fruit loops for breakfast and candy bars and soda and all this other stuff You just use up your neurotransmitters at an incredibly increased rate Here's actually another slide just to give you some of the stuff from our sugar anti sugar program This is a kid a teenager that's addicted to sugar and you give them sugar and look what the brain does It lights up just like it does with cocaine or or meth or crack or anything They're addicted to sugar and here's a kid who's not addicted to sugar who's given sugar look at their brain All right, so once you sensitize your brain to sugar Your brain runs on sugar and that's not going to help you perform believe me And plus the fact that you actually will use up those neurotransmitters and then have no energy levels Or they'll be far below Those those levels that you could be at if you use a stimulant like caffeine It increases your uptake of neurotransmitters about 500 times And i'm not talking like having a cup of coffee in the morning or even two I'm talking people who drink caffeine all day long because they feel tired and drained and exhausted And we have now what 350 kinds of energy drink. Who's that made for not my generation? My generation was uh two two energy drinks coffee and tea And now we have all these energy drinks and kids rely on them and kids use them Well, they're not for athletes. So here's um some of our propaganda for athletes. It's not for sport I got a study I can show you with red bull that they gave uh swimmers red bull and they swam slower You know, I mean, that's a good one for people to see right there Um, it overstimulates the central nervous system. Use up your neurotransmitters and movements are depleted not accelerated Matter of fact, we found that people who use stimulants like caffeine all the time have very high levels of neural fatigue You dig yourself a gigantic neural fatigue hole that you can't come out of and they stay inflamed all the time So people who are in sport you're banged up and beat up and soren inflamed all the time because You use overuse stimulants like caffeine. So here's the actual truth on caffeine. I'll even throw it out here I'd rather be honest with you If you add a little caffeine it actually amplifies mental and physical performance. I'm not telling somebody to do it I'm not telling an athlete to do it But I'm saying this does caffeine amplify mental and physical performance without a doubt But at a level that's the equivalent of one to two standard cups of coffee 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine and performance actually goes up a little bit So think about that because people overuse it and once you overuse it you get overstemmed and it works the other direction We actually did some studies on seals at buds when they're going through that horrible torture process And they found that 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine equivalent of one to two cups of standard coffee actually amplifies mental and physical performance nicotine wicked stimulant Most addictive substance you can put in a human body more addicted than crack, meth opioids anything A lot of people don't know that nicotine has unbelievable lock on The craving sites in the human brain and the gratification sites in the human brain. It's the hardest drug to quit. That's a fact increases the uptaken Use of those neurotransmitters estimated 700 times So cocaine's at 700 times the most of anything they did in this that was in this original These projections was methamphetamine. They said increased the neurotransmitter use and uptake a thousand times So think about that Here now depressants these aren't simulants. These are depressants But the brain floods those neurotransmitters when you're used to drinking. So, uh, you know some adult is You know had a rough day at work comes home and every day they drink three or four drinks And the brain floods with those neurotransmitters whatever's left from their long day of work because you used them all day And it increases the uptake and use of neurotransmitters about 225 times and marijuana 100 times So, um, these are the examples of once you get hooked on substances. They don't help you They impact and hurt you. So, um, also looking at the brain, um, you know the electrical Um Measurements that we can look in the brain Here's normal brain waves and if you look, you know, these these EEG waves are How we can see if the brain is is working and functioning is it is it is it healthy? Is it abnormal? Is there something that um has changed those waves? So look, let's say right now everybody here is not under the influence of something and I hook up this this, um, these sensors on these different parts of your brain And um, your EEG is normal and it looks like this Or maybe we see that your EEG looks like Exhibit B abnormal that that you have It could be it could be anything it could be stress. It could be drugs. It could be depression It could be low blood glucose levels. Your brain runs on blood glucose. It could be It could be sugar. It could be stimulants. It could be depressants anything you name it So think about how We have normal Brain function and we have abnormal brain function another way to show it. So so then we could think about this. Okay None of us here are probably maybe we have an orthopedic surgeon here. I don't know Or an x-ray tech There's a broken leg and um When you look at this picture, you know, we we we know that that's a broken leg And uh, so now we can maybe start to think about broken brains Four of you is top looking down on top of the brain frontal like forehead view The thinking part of your brain, uh, bottom the deepest damage inside view and here's again those those those Roto scans if you look at this healthy and damaged brains. All right And and maybe start to take some of it into consideration. So there's a heavily damaged brain And um, here is a severe brain injury. So maybe this is from a car accident This is the here's the slide for wearing a seatbelt Or here's the slide for wearing a helmet if you're if you're a a ski or a snowboarder or Taking care of this because if you take wicked hard blunt trauma to the thinking part of the brain You can actually wipe it out and the rest of your life You would maybe be alive, but you would never come You know in back into consciousness or you'd have to be fed and taken care of and and you would You know if you'd be alive, but you you wouldn't have any brain function Um, here is uh, someone who's had a stroke I mean, I think everybody has seen somebody who's had a stroke and maybe if the stroke is here on the left side of the brain The right side the opposite side would be paralyzed. Maybe they would have um, you know Peralis facial paralysis or you know arm leg paralysis or so and so forth. Here's Alzheimer's um, brain degeneration And nowadays because people have a lot of people don't take care of themselves You can have this begin even in 40s 50 years old And and really have it accelerate as as you reach Advanced age. Um, here's some of those nfl and nhl Scans from head injuries in sport. Um, here's here's actually one from the nfl study. Look at the damage from Multiple concussions not a concussion multiple concussions and and you know, come on. Let's face it You know out of What 112 nfl players what like 110 or 111 had cte? I mean, you know, it's it's all out in the open It's an inherent risk of the sport now And we have to face the facts on that. Uh, here's some drug scans. Here's cocaine Here's methamphetamine, you know horrible drug structural damage, I mean just A lot of it's irreversible. Here's marijuana as you blow them up. They lose their resolution. Here's alcohol Here's opioids Here's heroin Right, which a lot of people who get hooked in the opioid Situation end up very quickly switching to heroin Here's seven years of opioid dependence and I talked to the kids today just quickly about it How did we unleash this one on our on our own kind our own people in this country? Why are we the only country in the world dealing with this? And there's an answer to all that but i'm not going to go into it now. It's sad and tragic How many tens of thousands of people have died? This is deaths of opioids 1999. I'm going to speak about this in california In two weeks. I've done their state conference already, but the wave of death of opioids check this out. Here's by 2014 If that's not shocking and that's that's not enough reason that this stuff should have been yanked That's it's just it's beyond Any logic And yet it's still on the shelves. It's still being pedaled. It's just a little more controlled than it was. It's sad um I personally know two young people two kids. I used to babysit died as a result of this it's uh It hurts to talk about it and this is 2014. Guess how it is today It's worse than this by far. I think they stopped producing these these heat maps just because of uh It just makes it worse than it is. Um, how much can kill you? I don't know a grain of salt a grain of sugar on a table We'll take you out with with with these new ones fentanyl car fentanyl. I mean, it's it's incredible the potency of this stuff um You know, you you can't make this stuff up if you guys uh read up Go online and read up about the the the brick of car fentanyl that came into canada as computer printer parts And the royal come on canadian mounted police found it And it was enough of the drug to kill 50 million people And the population of canada's 39 million people That's how potent this stuff is And people mess with this and I said to kids today you're you mess with this you're playing with death You have no idea What you're dealing with And if you really think about it Brainstem when you take this stuff very rapidly shuts down And and and you're gone and that's it and the seriousness this this is so It's been so trivialized you know, you read about the Estimates of how many people have died as a result of that Just to give you an idea. This is some of the stuff we work on Combination 200 milligrams of ibuprofen and 500 milligrams of acetaminophen Those are over-the-counter nsaid is non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. You can buy them anywhere It's a leave an ad villain those things is one of the strongest pain reliever combinations found to be more effective than opioids by american dental association Surgeons you name it. I mean Where where is this? Why aren't people Why isn't this being prescribed? It's hard. It's hard to imagine That we could sort of saved a lot of lives But uh, anyway, that's something to think about next time you have pain and it's pretty bad Try this they call it the pain cocktail for most people and it works. Um, so stress How does stress help it doesn't Stress and stressors of the day accumulate from the time you awaken till the time you crash and go to sleep You've accumulated a whole bunch of stress Even structurally you've accumulated stress. I can tell you example you stand all day You know, some of you guys are teachers and coaches, right? You know what happens to people when you get structurally fatigued When you're rested you stand equal weight on both feet When you start getting tired you shift your weight, right? You do this and when you get real tired you start leaning against stuff That's what speakers do. I'm not there yet. So anyway, think about that stress and stressors accumulate We have these scans like I showed before on stress. Here's some stress calm There's the thinking part of the brain brainstem. Here's stressed There's panic level stress, right when you freak out when you you you shake when you You start breathing fast your heart's beating out of your chest. You've released all those stress hormones Um, and then there's beyond panic level stress. There's ptsd Stress that either resurfaces again and again and again and again and it never goes away And it's in an ancient primitive part of your brain called the amygdala And you'll never forget it and you'll never get past it And You know, we've dealt a lot with this in the military populations So expectations create stress. Yes Is it just coming from the kids? No, I will remind you parents that You can create An incubate stress for your child it's a fact Expectations with expectations, especially high expectations come stress. So I started to think, okay, where Do we provide a Sports psychologist for athletes. No, the coach is the sports psychologist And there's some coaches in this room right now and you know what i'm talking about You do the best you can to help kids get past where they are All right So you think about that is that Is it is it important that a kid learns some skills to deal with stress not suck it up or everybody's got to deal with this That's not going to help a kid suck it up. That's gonna that's that's that's worthless So what can we do we could teach kids usable skills that they can Deal with stress and that's got to be taught Well, that's what the emphasis of our newest project mental wellness for top performance mental or physical is So stress can come from expectations and a lot of times it's not fair But it's true. We had to deal with it too as adults stress comes from adults It does it comes from society Right to achieve to accomplish to you know, think of the educational system, right? Test scores and and all the stuff getting in the right school Winning starting being the best player Getting a scholarship, you know, come on That's what we got We need to reframe it. Yes, some people are going to excel. I showed you that already Some of it's genetic some of its motivation Some of it's that you care more you work harder for it But also think about this let's not add to it stress starts with a perception Stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from what's going on in your head. There's a a capsule summary So think think how we could reframe this for kids to help them get past where they are Because we have a lot of kids succumbing to stress And I can prove it with one statement one out of five of them 20 of kids today Have mental health related issues and most of them are stress related So minimize stress so we can maximize performance. They're not given out of texas state metals for stress You're the stress champion. It's not it Neither is any other state association, right? So how do we help kids with stress? We need to start to help them and I'll also say this that in 24 hours the goal is not to accumulate stress It's to reduce it as much as possible in a lot of this you bring upon yourself So if you're in here today as an athlete, I can tell you you have Stress related issues that you actually bring upon yourself. Nobody performs better under stress some people perform better than others, but There are no positive adaptations to stress We tried stress inoculation studies on navy seals and other populations And found that yes, you can accumulate and handle more stress up to a certain point But the ability to handle more stress. There are no positive adaptations And I can tell you that it becomes toxic And it will appear first your immune system And then and if you look at people who are stressed, they're sick all the time It's very hard to stay healthy and eventually it actually can end up You know, you can end up succumbing to it. That's just reality. So I would rather say that negative adaptations to stress have no positive impact And and we need to start to realize this for kids Also, we did studies on neural fatigue. That's if you want a definition neural fatigue It's coming up. Your brain is really tired your brain ramps up energy. It can actually You know, downplay energy levels too Of course, you want your brain to ramp up energy in the morning But you don't want to run out of energy like this every kid knows these these symbols They pop up on their phone many times during the during the week Neural fatigue Best definition your brain's exhausted We know that the brain has to be recharged. Unfortunately, we can't put a plug on it, but I can also tell you this Studies have been done now and here's some of them your brain boots up energy levels in the morning It's not like you hit the start button on your computer And you hear the hard drives going and your your brain just boots up and it's ready to go It takes time. So here's some studies. This is actually brain scan. This is waking at 7 16 in the morning This is at 8 30 in the morning. This is at 10 o'clock in the morning Brains boot up their energy levels and they reach a level of Performance at about 10 o'clock in the morning Especially with this generation of kids because they don't sleep enough and I'll document that in a second So sherry mott stanford did some studies and found that the brain builds up energy reserves or deficits over one to three days Well go with three Because I can tell you this right now They also speculate that if you have something important on a saturday and you get a good night's sleep on friday You cannot ensure that you're going to go out there and shine From a standpoint of your central nervous system function and readiness With one good night of sleep Go with three get good sleep wednesday night thursday night friday night and then You'll have enough cns reserves to perform So think about this. This could be a test It could be your driver's test because you want to drive around in your pickup It could be musical performance dance Anything a final exam your college entrance exams The the game that you play once a week or twice a week So think about how important it is that you understand this and athletes, of course This is huge, you know, I when I deal with NBA teams, I mean you think these guys are playing 100 games 100 games Well, you have to get you just get on a schedule and you know, you finish the game you do your recovery process You go to sleep. That's it. Best friend you got is sleep. So um neural fatigue the number one In consistent or random performance Suspect is neural fatigue. So if your teams goes in a slump and you start playing terrible and you're losing games Your stats have gone down the tubes, you know, guess what? It's probably not your body It's the connection between your brain, which is really fatigued and your body So that's an interesting one neural fatigue what we call now total quality movements All right, that's that's like making exact movements or how about this accuracy Consistency precision repetition biomechanics high speed decision making This is not a total quality movement here. That's an error. All right, so think about when somebody has these days where It's like dysfunctional skill levels Guess what the number one cessbook should be The central nervous system is very fatigued and you need to rest it up Here are some of the studies wakefulness and performance This is the brain boots up energy levels very quickly This is speed of mental functions accuracy of mental functions So look how fast your brain boots up energy in the morning just like if you turned on your computer But check this out reaches its peak at 10. Look what happens after 10 all of them start to tank Look at some of them are dramatic and look what happens in the afternoon. They go down the tubes So from one o'clock on we're in a school. What do you see with kids in one o'clock after lunch? Or maybe not just kids you're back at the office yet lunch, right? Your blood glucose levels go up get a little actually get a little energy surge And then all of a sudden you feel like somebody pulled the plug on you How many athletes I said today or people after school feel like you're going to practice at three o'clock and you're going I'm dragging so bad man. How am I going to make it through this workout? You guys have all been there right by three o'clock. You're going like oh, man I'm just I have no energy today Well, it's natural you can't keep it up there forever So nine o'clock 12 o'clock four o'clock and seven o'clock at night. Look at your energy levels down down down they go Mednick did a study in 2002. Check this out. Look what happens if you take a nap Wow The nap remember the nap when we're in kindergarten They gave us a little mat and you laid down on it and took a little snoozer Right, they do that with little kids. They're not going to give you a nap at school I told the kids that today and I was speaking for you administrators. They said look they're not going to give you a nap Sorry. Well, how about this? How about instead of a nap where you get 30 percent increase in alertness and from a 20 to 30 minute nap And you get a 40 percent increase in creativity after a 20 to 30 minute nap Guess what? 10 minutes of mindfulness does the same thing It's been proven don't think about anything for 10 minutes put your head down turn the lights out no sound no stem And now we've got schools that are actually having 10 minutes of mindfulness to start the second half of the day It's like half time Halfway through the day and kids respond Kids all of a sudden reboot their center nervous energy levels and they actually have a much more successful second half of the day What if you can take a 10 minute nap before practice? Right, you go there. You're having a bad day. You're dragging. You're out of energy and you can just go and chill for 10 minutes I guarantee your total quality movements are going to go way up And the quality of your training is probably going to be way better than if you don't Hit the deck for 10 minutes. So there's little time left in our culture for thinking about nothing The best way to transition from being awake to falling to sleep is also 10 minutes of mindfulness If you can pull it off and here's just one of our posters. How's your quiet life? I don't know. Maybe you don't have any Most kids don't have any, you know when their quiet time is whatever number of hours they sleep Okay, so think about it. We need time during even during our waking hours just to take a break It's got a huge impact How many minutes of quiet do you have to ask those kids today? And I'll ask the kids at the other high school tomorrow It's just just a something where you don't think about it. So sleep some sleep studies largest performance variable outside of training Training methods right and recovery methods is sleep and it's the number one recovery method Worldwide studies are going on on sleep right now. Sherry Ma at stanford started this whole thing She did the first studies on top level athletes at stanford on About sleep and it took off. So the single biggest factor in in how things are going to go tomorrow in anything is how much you slept And I think that for you parents stream in this or you parents here I can tell you this right now you want your kid to shine tomorrow Boy, make sure there's a bedtime and make sure they go to sleep because it has huge dividends There's now 110 different kinds of sleep disturbances. It's just part of being human They just did the largest sleep study in history six billion nights of sleep were analyzed and guess what they found out That um people aren't sleeping enough They they did this right after the study where they found out that trees were made of wood So, you know, you think you think about this It's you know, it's like we have minimized sleep to the point where most people just don't get enough sleep And for your parents Livestreaming this or are here tonight I want you to right now to think about when you brought the baby home from your baby home from the hospital and Then you went into this sleep death that lasted some years 16 hours a day humans are supposed to be up eight hours are supposed to be down. This is never going to change We've just tried to tried to shift things around. So it's 17, 18, 19 and this gets lower So again those neurotransmitters reload Got to do it. It's not going to happen during the day. It's going to happen at night when you're asleep Um, this is another quote if you're tired most of the time or all the time you just get used to being tired There's the quote for parents with Young babies at home and you're up all night and you're waking up five times and the quality of your sleep is trashed Because you don't go into REM or stay in REM We did a survey and found that the average middle school and high school kids are sleeping about six hours and 46 minutes a night Not going to help. It's not going to you can't perform at a high level. It's not going to pay dividends You're going to underperform just because of this because you have neural fatigue and you have no neurotransmitters And you're not going to be able to function. So um, eight hours of sleep Here's another study and you get an hour and a half less than your normal amount and your brain's alertness levels drop by 30% Since so many kids sleep six hours, let's look at it eight hours. Here's morning noon and night gradual decline in energy levels All right, and here's six hours, which is 25 less sleep. Look at morning to noon. It goes down gradually It's just you have a lower baseline and from noon till night it goes off the cliff And just about the time you go to practice for you guys that are athletes or you care about something after school When it's your time, right? You end up with The slows or no energy or You know the quality of your training is down here when it could be up here and you could be making progress So thinking how important sleep is so you can take your pick Um Gradual rapid decline and while you're asleep two other three other things happen You actually during the day take in information it goes to your short-term memory and you what we call rehearse it Hopefully the kids who saw something this morning were are rehearsing it and tonight if they go to sleep At night when you're asleep it gets encoded and sent to your long-term memory The second transfer in encoding happens at night when you're in REM sleep So if you study and you don't sleep it doesn't ever go on the hard drive save, you know So that you can recall it the next day. That's a simplification, but that's the way it is You download the information at night when you're asleep Also all training effect the majority of training effect takes place at night when you're asleep It's in conjunction with the release of human growth hormone and other training hormones that happen at night when you're asleep So think of going and doing a great workout, but then you don't sleep The money never goes in the bank. That's unfortunate. So you just did a great workout and you say hey coach I did a great workout, but you don't benefit from it or Movement memory you practice a skill. You have an incredible day at practice. You don't miss a shot You say to yourself at the end of the practice man. I wish I'd had a game today I would have scored 30 points right coach And instead it never integrates with the movement memory part of the brain in the motor cortex and your skills don't get better They stay the same or maybe some in some cases get worse So think how important it is that people make this stuff happen while you're asleep. Also sleep modulate your mood Now we have all seen somebody who doesn't sleep and they're grumpy the next day or edgy or You know their hackles are up for no reason right moody Well, that's what it does. It doesn't swing you towards positive circuits when you have Minimize sleep it actually swings you towards negative Thoughts impulsivity depression anxiety One of the biggest things with people who have depression is man You got to really start to do some sleep studies and find out if they're getting enough sleep All right, i'm i'm wrapping up here Academics just to give you an idea 30 loss of your thinking cognitive function if you pull an all-nighter Here's a study we did with our new hampshire life of an athlete program all High schools in state new hampshire go through our program Uh it's um the program is run through their state athletic association for all student athletes Kids who pull all-nighters have a gpa of 295 kids who who study and then go to sleep have a 3 3.20 gpa Again, there's the diagram of Loading the information to your long-term memory. Um, this is from sleep deprivation studies. We looked at for the navy seals Six hours of sleep at the naval academy in 2000. That's the gpa In 2001 six hours of sleep at the naval academy. That's all they gave them to sleep. That's their gpa They said it's ridiculous. They started giving them eight hours. Look what happened to the gpa So, I mean I can pull it pull like 50 studies and show you this here's the study that we we did Um, this is four five six and seven hours of sleep You know what we didn't do eight hardly any kids were sleeping eight It was uh 18 percent of kids that were sleeping eight hours or more So we went four five six seven look gpa goes from a two five to a three five what? So you want to be smarter. You want to get better grades. You've got to sleep. There's another one. Here's um Here's one from the stand for did and um a lot of the study has done also You see berkeley under five hours of sleep five to six hours of sleep seven or more the more you sleep The smarter you are Some enders here. I told you if you damage the brain between 12 and 21 It's the worst time to damage the brain. Here's a scan of a healthy 17 year old Here's a scan of a heavy alcohol using 17 year old Okay It's not a 50 60 year old alcoholic that's been drinking for 40 years. This is a kid's brain You can do a lot of damage during that 12 to 21 time frame Here's healthy top scan 17 years old health heavy alcohol using 17 year old Top and bottom healthy scan 17 years old heavy alcohol user 17 years old one year after the kid stopped using alcohol And what you can see is that surface damage has started to repair deep damages repairing But there's still a heck of a lot of damage you can damage your brain incredibly During that time frame of 12 to 21 years old Also, you're highly susceptible to addiction during that time when you're going through that vast incredible Surge of brain development Your brain is ripe for the picking of getting locked in on an addiction or Dating towards it. This is brain scans from the the famous study Susan taper did out in san diego with teenage alcoholics This is normal brain activity during a simple cognitive memory task Their brain sparks up all this energy level. These are kids who are alcoholics doing the same memory task Look at the how what they spark up That's cognitive damage in the pathways for cognitive functions for memory of kids who have been drunk so many times that That a lot of the damage is structural permanent damage So this dispels this was the first study that dispelled that hey, I'm young I can do this terrible damage to myself and it's no big deal. It's a big deal So, uh, so that's that here's some new studies We can now track if athletes have disturbance major disturbances to training effect The blue line is is training effect and if you look it should be going across this way And here's the disturbances one two three four five disturbances over a month And if you look at this one, this is new year's eve So this is drinking drinking drunk drinking drinking every time you consume alcohol If you're an athlete your system is so sensitive to these training and recovery and performance That it throws you into a tailspin And so if you really start thinking about it with this new system that we can detect disturbances to training We can see the same thing even from lack of sleep and some other stresses So if you have a decrease in these hormones that you knew you need to train and recover and perform Here's actually some testosterone levels of, uh, Navy SEALs rested Here's testosterone levels of guys that were drinking on the weekend Look what it does to your testosterone levels and, um, I put this on here because it's it's not a bad statement Females have 10 to 15 Males have 10 to 15 times more testosterone than females Okay, we produce way more 10 to 15 times more than females And what we found in fact was that guys when they had drank heavily Their testosterone levels males testosterone levels were like Female levels And so this this state I put the statement out here almost to like just say okay since there's no female Navy SEALs I said, you know, this this is what it does to you and it you know, this is not going to support any function Court of dollars major stress hormone is up for 48 hours after using alcohol Here's a study of all age groups 18 to 30 31 to 40 41 to 50 51 to 65 One drink and already your recovery metric starts to go down two three four five six seven eight drinks The more you drink the lower they go So anybody who drinks It's how much you drink sure it has an impact, but it starts with the first drink The human body is so sensitive to alcohol that if you take in one alcoholic beverage Your systems already start to tank That's that that's that right there shows that a metabolic poison doesn't really help you much And if you correlate how long these hormones are down Up to four days or 96 hours after intoxication How much do you lose the four days? You know, they have to go back up so that you lost the four days for them to come back up If you drink on a saturday they come back up on wednesday, but you lost all the training You were pure practice, you know Sunday monday tuesday and a wednesday and now you're back to be in the athlete We correlated that every time you get drunk You lose about 14 days. It's raining effect and Human growth hormone, which is the single biggest factor in muscle repair new muscle mass farming You know people putting on mass so you're a better athlete a lot of you guys. That's a major concern It tanks to the tune of 70 after getting drunk New muscle mass forming shuts down by two thirds Injury rate for drinkers is twice as high as for non drinkers That's from the ncie sport on football injuries the highest injury sports football Wide drinkers regular uses of alcohol 54% injury rate and non drinkers have 23 I'll tell you why they have no hgh. They stay banged up and beat up and soar until it turns into an injury This is what I do when I go into talk to these professional athletes You can't drink You're playing a hundred games. You're playing what 83 games during the regular season Every night you're sore and banged up and beat up and you need all your body's resources to come To repair it So here's a study on rem sleep the deepest kind of sleep out of eight hours of sleep You get about one and a half to two and a half hours of rem with no alcohol They got two hours and 27 minutes of rem with two alcoholic beverages before they went to sleep It cut the rem down to 131 with four alcoholic beverages It cut it down to 58 minutes with six alcoholic beverages that cut it down to 31 minutes The more you drink the more it disturbs rem if you get drunk you get no rem sleep None of the restorative functions take place at night when you're asleep. That's a fact And you lose all that repair reboot rejuvenate restore Everything is shot This is actually 73 loss of the ability to burn fat If you use alcohol, so there's no way you're going to keep fat off You're not going to be lean you're going to keep body fat on because you don't have the ability to tap into burning fat as a fuel Because the alcohol blocks it. So that's a pretty good That's a pretty good sound bite too Marijuana I told the kids today that I didn't come here to get into a philosophical agreement or a debate about how awesome it is or not Lots of people think this is a harmless substance. So I'm just going to paint the picture for you. That's what I said So here's the science on pot just like this. How long does it stay in your system? Where does it go? Where does it deposit? What does it affect? So let's start out with this one because this is the kicker 80 to 85 percent of kids that are in rehab today teenagers that are rehab. They are there for marijuana and people think it's a non addictive harmless drug Well, go visit the youth rehab center where there's just teenagers and ask them. What's the drug that put you here today? An 8 to 8.5 out of 10 of them are going to tell you weed So it is a Addictive substance it's increased in potency since I was in high school. I told them today 1970 to 74 I told them my age, right? It's increased 300 in potency during that time Pot in those days one to four percent maximum thc and now teens to 20s It stays in your system 10 to 14 days. It used to stay in your system three to five to seven days now because it's so potent it stays in your system for anywhere from from 10 to 14 days and even with edibles and those things even now some people have reported as much as 20 days in your system So think about it's in your system and you use you smoke pot once a week It never leaves your system It will accumulate and continue to accumulate to greater and greater levels if you smoke it once a week on a friday or saturday night Then next week it's not out of your system yet, right? It takes 10 to 14 days and it's only set six days later and you smoke it again More accumulates and the next week you go on to a party and you smoke it more more accumulates And as it builds up in your system and receptor sites, it starts to create problems Where does it accumulate receptor sites for pot or in the brain the liver and the bladder? Okay, three three significant places. That's an all-body scan Here's in the brain. This is the famous NIDA tracer study Four different parts of the brain where pot deposits one two Three and four. All right, so let's see here's a picture of pot floresc in brain tissue That's a daily pot smokers brain You smoke pot once there's some specks of green you smoke it again There's more you smoke it again. There's more pretty soon your whole brain looks like this Even if you smoke it once a week, it's increasing all the time in your brain tissue Here's another view of it again floresc thc in brain tissue This is brain waves a person before smoking pot. This is brain waves after they smoke pot So this was the ha ha funny slide for today at the at the with the with the kids And you know, I just look at this and I say, okay If this is normal, we're all cognitive and maybe we're tired from our long day But we're all right now thinking we're not under the influence of anything And somebody smokes pot and it scrambles your brain waves like that Is there somebody here who believes that's actually going to help you? And especially if we're talking about high level performance, is this going to help you? And I'd have to probably Probably tell you that it's not And um So that's that's an EEG of the brain. Here's an 18 year old after three months of pot use Anomalies already on the way So think about that you just started but already look we've already got something happening Here's a 16 year old healthy kid. Here's a daily user 16 years old All these drugs are different, right? I mean we look at all these I mean if you looked at scans just for a certain substance You start to be able to say that's meth or that's crack or that's you know, there's there's a There's there's anomalies in in what these drugs do but look at the damage And here's a bottom scan healthy 16 year old look at the damage This is up in the thinking part of the brain right behind your forehead This is that area for movement pre movement and movement And then think that that's going to help you You think I haven't had these discussions with nba players nfl players people who cashed in their million dollar contracts because they couldn't stop smoking pot Summer in texas. Oh my god. That was in the paper this week, right? No offense Can you imagine it's got that much of a lock on you that you can't put it aside and you know after your career's overdue What do you want to do but they can't stop so think how bad it is These are brain waves and REM waves during sleep. All right So you go into REM and you restore repair rejuvenate reload reboot REM waves are so totally unique compared to any other brain waves Look what pot does to REM it slows down the brain waves All right, so you go from REM which is up here to what's called sub-REM And if you don't go into full REM sleep you release a hormone called somatostatin and somatostatin Is a hormone that actually is called growth hormone inhibiting hormone So growth hormone is how you grow your bones grow when you're young right you go through growth spurt first Then you start your hip puberty and you start putting on mass right you start getting jacked You put on five pounds 10 pounds 20 pounds you start getting you start filling out what they used to call right Think about that And you're smoking pot during those years when you repaint the picture you release somatostatin It's growth hormone inhibiting hormone. It shuts off the release of hgh So here's the first study 217 boys that smoke pot daily All right, and 220 boys who have never smoked pot and they track them until they're past age 20 So they're done with growth spurt They're past puberty and guess what they find this group on an average is nine pounds heavier and four and a half inches taller than the other group same ethnicity Same location same diet same everything But one group's in to pot and one's not so They they publish some studies about this and especially in boys You get this huge problem with growth Of your body systems during puberty Well, that's the first time anybody links somatostatin to these issues So the tracer study of deposit sites. What's with all this in the back here? This is the cerebellum. It's called the little brain All right, it's responsible for some pretty important things equilibrium balance muscle tone building from rapid alternating movements If you ever stand on one foot and put your head back some people just tip over they get vertigo Old people especially get vertigo because their cerebellum shrinks You know their cerebellum is this big and by the time they're really old 80s 90s Their cell problems like like the size of a golf ball, right? So your cerebellum is your gyroscope, right? It keeps you balanced and upright and You know like athletes in certain sports like figure skaters who put their head back and spin at that rate and Aerialistic go up in the air and spin all around gymnasts, right? You have to cerebellum training because you lose your You lose your bearings of where you are in time and space when when your cerebellum is all out of position So think about this pretty important for coordination But also the cerebellum is also responsible for all these functions And what it does is it coordinates with other really important parts of the brain So here's the cerebellum in the back and it's loaded with thc which all these yellow dots are the thc concentrations But here's the connection that breaks down the cerebellum and the motor memory part of the brain or the movement motor cortex of the brain and it creates confusion so that this can't this cannot coordinate with this And here's a cerebellum of a healthy non pot smoker here. It is in the back And here's a cerebellum of a pot smoker and what happens is your your cerebellum enlarges So people who smoke weed their cerebellums are enlarged And it's not because it's full in thc, but it's there So here's some other things your cerebellum is also important in attention focus inhibition abstract reasoning And what's called executive functions and if you wanted to ever figure out and we went through years where people said Hey, you know what if you smoke a lot of weed, you just you're not motivated You just don't care about what you used to care about, you know This a motivational syndrome was linked to pot back in the 60s and 70s with weak pot Well, they don't even talk about it anymore, but look at this executive function describes the processes that regulate self-directed behavior towards a goal How about this I don't care How about you know, you could have millions of dollars. I don't care. I want to smoke pot. I don't care Don't think that that isn't the connection right there. So here's the issue This is the white matter of the brain a lot of it's between the two halves of your brain And it's how the brain sends signals and communicates Um, it coordinates all the communication of brain regions and action potentials even the action potentials for movement So think of this, um, here's the white matter in a non pot smoker, especially here in yellow and blue Look what happens in pot smokers. You can see that it's atrophied or it's shrunken in size Or magnitude so so anyway, that's that's um about white matter one in five kids that are teen drivers Say they've driven under the influence of marathona and the third of them said it didn't affect their driving Who's the insurance policy under moms and dads the kids paying the insurance not usually What happens if your kid gets in an accident and they give them a test and he's under the influence That's for you at home streaming too, right? That's on you. What if they kill an innocent person? And they're gonna believe me. They're gonna check them when they when they have an accident. That's for certain That's that's something to consider Here's reaction timing a healthy young person's reaction time is about 186 thousands of a second less than a quarter of a second to react That's when you're rested. You got the neurotransmitters. You got good blood glucose levels. You rested You're ready to rock and roll. All right Here once a week pot smokers 300 milliseconds a third of a second three to four times a week pot smokers about 312 Daily pot smokers heading towards a half a second to react Well, you now you're in somebody's trunk And you had an accident or you hit somebody or you wrecked your car or you got hurt or whatever So think about it. Here's a MRI of a person in an MRI machine tapping their finger So you're in the dome. You're laying on your back and you're just tapping your finger at your side So um Here's a person finger tapping in an MRI They send a signal from that movement memory part of the brain down your spine out your arm tap your finger Here's a pot smoker not under the influence of marijuana, but have all the thc in their brain tissue Look one two three four five six different parts of the brain Have to relay that signal to different parts of the brain to be able to pull off something as simple as tapping your finger This is fast. This is the way you learned it This is now the roadblock and it's much slower. This is this is 186 000 so a second reaction timing This is 312 300 312 0.450 It slows down the ability to transmit a signal So think about that canadian driving study one joint of today's pot slows down your action time 41% it's a canadian in in driving study Uh two joints slows down your reaction time by two-thirds Not a good drug to use when you're operating a motor vehicle Fatal car crashes 2010 to 2014 Tripled Research is no increase in women in all age groups Washington state legalizes pot 2016 within a year their Fatality rate in driving accidents related to pot deaths doubles And you know by now it's probably tripled. So that's not a good. It's not a good drug for driving Vaping last topic and we're out of here People streaming are probably tired. How do you think I do? When you combust Even an aerosol or a liquid there's all kinds of end products and that's actually a time lapse picture of some of a vape unit igniting And I just say you've been warned. Think about this. We got into a project for norcal firefighters One of the leading causes of death. I think the major cause of death for firefighters is is cancer All right, and heart disease too and even using these respirators, which are incredible. They They get these toxins in their bodies, you know in the old days when a house burned it was wood and Nails, right now. It's polystyrene and chemicals and it's it's unbelievable What's in what's even in wood right as it burns? So anyway, we we found some studies Where you could actually cut loose all these toxins in a in a a person's body once they get in and it's very difficult And this guy in china dr. You had figured out how you can actually Get the the fat to release the toxins and then get these toxins out of your system And so we actually started an educational program for firefighters For norcal these guys who fight all these fires out in california And what they found is that within these These compounds that get in your system are heavy metals and I can tell you this right now. They're in all of these vape oils and And flavors and and you have no idea what's in this stuff Many of them come from china and and other places where there's no regular there's no regulation in the united states The fda has absolutely dropped the ball on letting millions of these devices out into the world and Everybody there was no there wasn't any scientific studies before they released them So, you know besides the opioid crisis. It's it's another huge debacle Heavy metals are environmental triggers for for lots of things, but one of the worst ones is cancer It sits in deep in your lungs. It sits in your Fat tissue in your body, and it's very hard to once it's in there to get it out So it's an environmental trigger it also if you look at people who vape they If they vape in a car your whole Wind shield and the windows in your car get this sticky film almost like it looks like your windows are dirty inside the car because in that exhale of that that vape You end up with this sticky residue Well, what do you think it does in your lungs at the point where you get co2 out of your body or oxygen into your body And your blood goes past and tries to to actually pick up oxygen and release co2 You have now coated that membrane with with that sticky film and I actually found a pretty interesting picture of Deep in the lungs this these avioli. This is this is pretty neat. Look at the blood cells. This is so cool Look you can see red blood cells right here. See them And you're coating This oxygen transport system with this sticky film so that it can absorb oxygen at the point of What we call gas exchange and they can measure this in people. It's called po2 It's it's it's a measurement of how much what percent of available oxygen in the atmosphere your body can take into your system You know what they found vape people Very low po2's lower than cigarette smokers All right, so you think about that and then think it's not doing your harm And if you ask people who vape, they'll tell you that they do have irritation and they do cough in the morning just like smokers do Uh, so think that that's not Some in some way harming your system. We don't have enough research Here's again pictures of lung tissue and the the blood rich areas where you take oxygen into your system Researchers found heavy metals in many of these aerosols Or the gases produced when they combust Um, if you look at this slide nanoparticles are known for penetrating deep into the respiratory system and reaching vulnerable sacks of lungs They just showed you a picture. It's awesome picture of it And you're going to put that sticky stuff in there and coat that area of your lungs and some of that stuff is going to stay in there So here I can tell you this the body will store many of these toxins in the cns Here's the ones we found with firefighters this lady Dr. Rita Elthorpe was the one who directed the study look at the metals that were in what these firefighters were breathing in, right? These are all Very toxic chemicals even uranium tungsten tim Tim chromium was one of the worst I know a whole bunch about chromium. I grew up in a town that was all from the tanning industry And that's you know, so many people in that town died from cancer from chromium. So here you go. Here's the list Here's the list. Here's what's in the harmless aerosol composition of these Oils fragrances tasty things that kids are putting in their body And then tell me that that's good to have in your body I actually today put here here. We got silver nickel tin Here you got chromium the one of the highest chrome cancer called aluminum copper Copal iron Zinc, I mean This is what you're going to fill up your body with and think that that's good for you All right, so I told the kids today until we know That's really not where you want to go That's it more research has to be done. It's being done right now There's a ton of studies being done worldwide right now on this because it's not just here where this is going on It's everywhere last slide You know, then you know, I had a long day too ready for this What you take in your body your diet's not is not just what you eat It's what you watch what you listen to what you read the people you hang around Be mindful of the things you put in your body emotionally spiritually physically remember You want to be the best at what you are? Don't just train your body train your mind train your spirit That's for any athlete. That's for anybody that wants to be anything of significance in anything The guys who make it physical mental spiritual there's there's a side to all those things Be careful what you take in And I think we got right now a lot of people that need to get on that page adults and kids And that's what we do we educate I mean, I'm I'm not here trying to To tell you what to do. I'm just saying If you take some of this into consideration, here's what happens you build healthy habits your body responds You stop doing the things that aren't good for you. Your body is amazing. It will actually heal. It will recoup It'll recover But the better scenario is that you don't do those things to yourself And I look at young people and say, you know what? Some of it you're not going to recoup the whole deal You start going down a path or a road and you get further and further and further from what you could have been or From health or any other aspect of your life And at some point time you can turn around and go back to the beginning But you may not get as far as you would have gotten if you had Not taken that side route. So I would like to come back and share with your school district And spend time, you know, we had an hour today. That's great. I appreciate the hour But like when you teach kids all the stuff, you know about these topics separately sleep power back diet nutrient nutrients and You can help people And and pot and alcohol and stress and I mean these these are things kids are Facing at unprecedented levels today We need to get on those pages and that's what we do. So I appreciate being here. I hope you learned something and you maybe take some of this in consideration We didn't even talk about the effect of technology on the brain We get a huge program on that about blue light and overstimulation of the brain from technology and kids checking the phone average of once every six minutes Every day and that comes up to 150 times a day and the neural fatigue did that digs you and there's there's so much But uh, thanks for being here Third time doing it today, but tomorrow we do two more at another school and uh, let's help kids Let's help them first of all be healthy and happy and grow up with some possibilities versus You know winnings way down my list believe me. I had enough of that the first 20 years So thanks for being here tonight and uh, thanks for tuning in appreciate it Now does anyone want to ask any questions if you have to go you can go but if you want to ask any questions I'll give you some short answers anybody Yeah Try we try to discourage as much as we can supplements again unregulated industry So much stuff mixed in with it that just isn't healthy. I think most state athletic associations have really discouraged Supplements and if you use any supplements, you certainly want to make sure that they're nsf certified meaning That they're certified for olympic sport. There's nothing harmful in it. They've done batch testing and studies You won't test positive for any contaminants and that's important because you know when when you look at an industry like the supplementary You got these, you know, uh, nitrous oxide expanders. You got stuff that's you know over stems like the You know the heart, um, you know, they've taken you know, ephedras off the market But there's new stuff coming all the time and in who knows who makes it and The mixtures aren't even batch controlled. I mean you could have something that's weak and you could have something A class action lawsuit in New York state right now Against some of the major supplement suppliers where there was none of the supplement in the supplement So they started testing stuff like you would buy for instance in a A chain store and they actually tested it and there was none of the what was supposed to begin the the substance It was just all fillers and everything else. So, you know, that's that's the safe one But I mean you have no idea of knowing just like you know with this The vaping you have no idea of knowing. So why would you want to go there? But uh, yeah, we discourage supplement use how about how about kids start eating good foods that produce incredible amounts of energy compared to eating you know lucky charms and you know candy bars and Drinking energy drinks, you know, I mean give your body Better sources of energy. It produces more energy. You know, we have diets. We have we have menus We we realize, you know, the kids aren't making meals. So what we did is we started making up Here's we actually took famous athletes favorite foods Lebron's miso salmon. I've got all kinds of cards with like what top athletes eat And you know, the best ones are very conscious of what they They're not eating fast food ever. They just don't they don't eat it. They would go like, are you kidding me? I actually did an all day coaches clinic once they get the end of the day and some coach raises his hand Here's his question. Hey, like, you know, if you want to eat fast food, like how many times could you like eat it and get away with it? I'm going like That's what you got out of today. I said, how about never You know, you know, when you just consider like the what's in it with sodium and fat and They say the american diet today is 22 teaspoons of sugar A half a cup of fat And two teaspoons of salt You know, is that going to help you? Yeah, I'll tell you go live in another country for a couple weeks and start to see the changes you'll feel just in yourself from eating Something that's not adulterated with all that It's uh, it's important Powerback diet's awesome And it's it's for cognitive It's about blood glucose levels that your brain and muscles run off your blood glucose levels That's not sugar, right? And it's got like how you put on mass how much protein you need when you're in this developmental phase of You know, kids are filling out You know, you don't need to start taking a whole bunch of extra protein and if you're not Mature enough to start to put on mass like kids a stick figure still that's not You know, your bones are still growing But you're not, you know, you got all these kids using all these protein powders at that point in time. It's not That's not good. And it's a stress on your body too. So Anybody else? Great So, uh, I I appreciate you coming out tonight. Thank you And uh, I have some some cards so you can look at our website on our website That's maximized too. We got 60 000 postings. It's been up for 20 years. So here's some cards up here I'll leave them on the chair And if you find a card that's not black it's somebody else's leave it for me because I sometimes get mixed in But um, you know, maybe give some feedback to the school or talk to some people who aren't here or You know, at the very least I'll tell you this I will give you you can download off of our life of an athlete Dot us website. You can download the power back diet the sleep manual And and a lot of other documents. So start there sleep sleep and nutrition I mean, that's a lot of room for improvement And we got a lot of kids who could be already up to another level if they would just change that And uh, so thanks for coming out. Appreciate it Thank you If they need more cards, then just let me know and I'll I'll uh, I have more in my bag here my bag of tricks