The Hidden Connections Between Movement and Mental Strength You Need To Know

From the moment that Jimi Hendrix first laid hands on a guitar, he was virtually inseparable from it. He is renowned for never having any formal training at all, but he would play guitar before, during, and after school. Walking the streets or in the car,

He would even fall asleep whilst playing the guitar. When he started performing, he spent years sleeping in free basements or empty bars with rats just so he could spend more time performing. And he eventually became One of the most famous artists of the 20th century

due to his amazing talent. but what unites him with stars like Serena Williams or Michael Jordan, or even Leonardo da Vinci, or how about the best heart surgeons on the planet? Yes, I know it's obvious, the incredible abilities of their motor cortex. The rather sexy part of the brain that is most responsible for movement.

And what's really cool here is there's no evidence that any of these brilliant movers from history

may have had Even slightly bigger than normal motor cortexes. In fact, they were completely average sized, just well-trained and maintained, so whether you are interested in art, sport, music, acting, or woodwork, a well-tuned motor cortex is essential

and I'm also very fascinated by the link between physicality and mentality in how physical capabilities can be linked to our mental capabilities. So hello and welcome to the Growth Mindset Podcast,

Where we'll be learning about all of that as well as things like what causes disruptions to our motor cortex functions and reflexes from things like diseases and drug use, and how can we maintain the best motor cortex function through our whole life.

And yes, this topic may sound like neuroscience, which it is, but growth mindset has a big relationship with things like excellence in sports, music or arts, and there are lots of lessons behind deliberate practice that will make a ton of sense. If you know how the motor cortex region of the brain actually works in a practical way.

So stay tuned.

How the Motor Cortex was discovered

If you like dogs or animals, You might not enjoy the next bit around how the motor cortex was discovered. It was in fact found way back in 1870 by Fritch and Hitz, who removed parts of the skulls of dogs and then electrically stimulated different bits of the brain.

They were very surprised to find that with a jolt of electricity on one side of the brain, you could make muscles contract on the other side of the body, and there must have been some really weird people to visit for Christmas. anyway, The first detailed experiments in humans were in fact, done completely voluntarily by epilepsy sufferers who were having brain surgery.

And they let the scientist, while the Penfield or reveal the Penfield. I don't know. either way I've got it wrong. these epilepsy sufferers let him just have a fiddle about whilst he was all up in their brain anyway, which is nuts.

And he would genuinely just stimulate different parts of their brain and ask the awake, that's right. The awake patient, what they felt in different parts of their body. And if that sounds like a rogue and ridiculous experiment. Well, Vilder Penfield managed to be the first person to accurately map all of our motor neurons by 1948.

and he was able to draw the famous Homunculus Man based on those experiments. And that's truly incredible and laid the foundation for modern neuroscience as we know it. And the relationship between neuroscience and behavior. So if you are ever asked to contribute to medical research, just be grateful.

It's not someone fiddling about inside your brain. What a time we live in to be alive,

The areas and functions of the motor cortex

right? So let's just fill in some more detail of exactly what the motor cortex is and what it does. It has. Three areas with slightly different roles. The primary motor cortex

is the doer, or perhaps more accurately the messenger. It's the part that actually fires the neural impulses that control the execution of movement. and that will go down any of the motor neurons in the body.

let's consider an analogy where we have a house to build.

The primary motor cortex

We'd be telling everyone what to do as and when they have to do it in the moment. The messaging system.

Then we have the pre-motor cortex, which is the planner and coordinator

that decides what to actually do. It's active before the execution of movement. And in our house analogy is the person that decides to get the house built.

Then there is the supplementary motor area or SMA that helps the initiation of movement sequences, like say, throwing a ball or playing a G major chord on piano. It Is essential for our movement sequences that require things like timing in a specific order of execution. So in our house building project, it's like the architect who designs the house to be built and the order of what goes where, when,

Like you need to lay the foundations first, then the bricks, et cetera. And whilst we are in the specifics, I should also give a big shout out to the basal ganglia and the cerebellum that really help with the finer details of movement and fluidity of movement. They could be considered like project managers that just keep things running smoothly

And whilst we're here, let's just go properly specific. The basal ganglia is great at behavioral patterns and cognitive routines whilst the cerebellum is more into the timing and accuracy of those movements. Now, finally, last thing I promise,

It's that we have the prefrontal cortex. Now this is generally where we do things like decision making, planning and social behavior. And whenever your motor cortex is active, you need to have really good coordination with your other wider planning domains and decision making.

'cause you don't wanna just be. Initiating movements willy nilly. You have to have thought about them.

And the fun fact from this is that because the motor cortex gets your prefrontal cortex involved, this is why exercise and physical activity can help keep your decision making capacity healthy because it gives your prefrontal cortex a nice workout and it increases blood flow and use to the area.

Hopefully you didn't just die of boredom, and if that sounded like a lot of white noise to you, then basically you just need to know that movements have a bunch of different processes behind them with specific parts that decide what to do. Other parts that decide how to do it,other parts that help not mess it up.

And finally a part that communicates what to go and do.

Mentality and Physicaly Link

And if you're really wondering why I'm talking about neuroscience and movement over directly talking about psychology, well, as I said, physicality and mentality are intrinsically linked. Movement and exercise really help boost creativity and our ability to frame problems positively.

if you have a hard conversation whilst walking. It's been proven that you'll be much less likely to end in an argument and it'll be easier to find more positive solutions to the problems that you encounter.

And in general, the more capable you are physically, it can be a really good indicator for your mental faculties. Of course, that does sound super ableist, and I should say it's not always true, like Stephen Hawking was completely disabled and able to make incredible breakthroughs in science.

Gandhi starved himself almost to death and was as weak as it's possible to be. Yet his strength of mind held power over an entire nation. However, movement. Capacity is still a brilliant leading indicator of mind health.

And one of the reasons for this is that it is really hard to imagine ourselves thinking different thoughts. Even though we know things like being tired makes us irritable, or if we're hungover, we are more easily confused. But we still feel an intrinsic attachment to whatever mind is thinking is all that we could be thinking and we forget how much better our mind could be.

But if we see our movement. And it's maybe a bit off. We feel completely comfortable with the concept that we could train our body to improve our body, and we forget how much that principle applies to our mind as well. so this is why I'm asking you to trust me on the fact that this is actually really important for just general psychology as well.

Motor Function Impairment and Physical Rehab

So before we go into optimizing physical performance and reaction times, let's discuss what blocks performance And of course, also blocks our mental abilities. And we'll start with impairments. like the real obvious issues with the motor cortex

It can lead to loss of coordination and weakness or even paralysis and these are three main reasons that you may have heard of a stroke, which is when you have an interruption of blood flow to an area in the brain, a traumatic brain injury, often from things like a car crash, or if you're a boxer, that gets hit in the head a lot.

And then there is Neurodegenerative diseases, conditions like a LS or multiple sclerosis that progressively damage your motor neurons. Now, none of these things are fun in the slightest, and there is sadly no cure for a LS or multiple sclerosis. And it's also unlikely to make a hundred percent recovery from a brain injury or a stroke.

But physical rehab or even electrical stimulation, like transcranial magnetic stimulation, can genuinely help the brain find new pathways to control movement by leveraging the brain's plasticity. In terms of what actually happens during physical rehab, it will start with an

initial assessment of where you are at and goal setting, and then a lot of motor skills and strength exercises to practice different movements, however basic or advanced they might be to get your coordination back. You could start incredibly easy.

like perhaps picking up different size rings and putting them on the correct pole all the way up to Things like single leg pistol, squats, juggling and funky stuff with balance balls.

also communication can be really important And task for people with language difficulties. 'cause of course the motor cortex controls how you move your face and make language And then even doing things like memory and problem solving games Now at this point, it might not sound that relevant to you, but I think it's interesting that if you do have any problem, it can be relearnt as an adult

The important thing here is even if it's already good, It can still be improved. for a different example, my partner is Portuguese and perfectly fluent in English. She can read books in English. She can talk to me for hours. But she became a language translator and suddenly found that as a whole nother set of levels.

Of excellence, she could push herself to further or more directly when it comes to movement. I became a mountain guy in the Himalayas and in general, mountain guiding sounds like walking some hills, maybe carrying some heavy stuff.

But the really advanced Nepalese guides can walk up cliff faces in their flip flops carrying 30 kilos on their back Whilst a normally proficient human will be on all fours, just trying not to die. and we all think that we can walk up a hill

and we really don't think we need to practice doing that anymore, but you can still take it to so many levels further, if you wanted to.

Why you might be a bit Uncoordinated

But then this leads to the question of, so what if you happen to be a bit uncoordinated now it turns out there's actually a ton of possible problems here besides your genetics. yet people always first blame their genetics, which is of course, very fixed mindset and not very helpful.

So we can go through a list of reasons why you might be slightly less coordinated. The first is actually just physical fitness. If you have poor flexibility or low muscle strength or poor muscle tone, You're really much more likely to have bad coordination, and this actually makes complete sense when you think about it, even though you may not have heard it before.

And unsurprisingly, things like yoga or strength training will improve your coordination. Then there's lifestyle, bad sleep, significantly reduces your coordination. Also, just having an an active lifestyle Is actually quite detrimental.

So any parents that have kids with a game addiction could in good faith, explain that your child Could have much improved coordination and reaction times if they go to bed on time and spend some time running around outside.

it might not sell them, but it's worth trying it anyway.

Then there's nutrition. Dietary deficiencies, especially vitamin D, vitamin B or magnesium can again affect nerves and muscle health. So you should eat your fruit and veg if you want to be able to move well,

then there are psychological factors. Just stress and anxiety have a massive impact. I am sure we all know how much like a big dose of panic can affect our coordination, When we see someone incredibly attractive or we have to give a speech and we suddenly become unsure of ourselves completely, and we feel like we're just a bunch of strange limbs that are absurdly difficult to move well. In the same way that that happens, with short-term stress.

there's actually a link between just the long-term impacts of stress in general on our coordination, which I found really surprising. Perhaps more obviously you'll have physical issues like vision and hearing. These are of course essential for balance and coordination, so it is worth checking regularly your eyes and ears. And the reason I went through that list is hopefully it reminds you that before you blame your genetics, it's really worth checking.

Just all of these basic things, if you want to move well or to be able to think well

Developmental Variation and mindset

And now lastly, we do have some developmental variations. So as kids, you'll notice some people will take longer to achieve certain coordination milestones and perhaps be slower at learning things. But That doesn't mean that someone can't get better in the same way that I had verbal dyslexia as a child and was just terrible at English class.

And now my job is writing and recording myself speaking. like sure, writing might take me longer than other people, But I can still enjoy doing it. And in the same way, you could be a bit uncoordinated, but it shouldn't stop you. I have a friend with Dyspraxia who was certainly a bunch of limbs his whole life and never really looked comfortable in his body, but he loves basketball and now he plays it as a decent level.

Sure he didn't get there instantly, but he worked on it and he got there. And you can still become a dancer or an artist or a musician if it interests you.

and it might even be really helpful for you to work on those weaknesses deliberately.

How alcohol and Marijuana impact brain Health and Coordination

Now having gone through all of those things, we should really highlight the importance of drugs as well, because this is another thing that we might not expect has such huge impacts on us. And I'm specifically just gonna focus on alcohol and marijuana for now as they are the most widely used and generally speaking, have the biggest impact.

In the short term, if you take alcohol or marijuana, we all know that they both make you a bitter hand coordinated. it's not news to anyone. Slurred speech, dodgy hand-eye coordination. tripping over yourself. Bad driving. But now let's talk about long-term use.

Chronic alcohol use leads to brain damage, including motor cortex atrophy. In fact, it's sadly a pretty much linear relationship between the amount of alcohol you consume in a single day and the number of brain cells you'll lose that day. So the bad news is even one drink has an effect.

And if you drink a lot of alcohol, the long-term effect is alcoholic, cerebral degeneration, which becomes a permanent issue with balance and coordination. And things like the tremors and shakes of an alcoholic can be a permanent problem that nobody wants.

Then when it comes to marijuana, it can usually be less severe, but can still result in some pretty noticeable loss of movement ability and slower reaction times,

In fact, the biggest risk for people is if they start using marijuana early as the brain is still developing until you're 25.

If you consistently smoke weed or any other form of cannabis, that can really impact on your brain circuits and reduce your abilities for fine motor control and reactions. So a weed habit is kind of bad for anyone, but a young person who is serious about sport really shouldn't be going anywhere near it.

Sorry.

the good news is, as we've learned with rehab, the brain still does have some plasticity if you push it. The first thing when it comes to recovery from either alcohol or weed related issues is of course, to stop using them again, sorry.

Then when it comes to physically rehabbing yourself, you should definitely try a range of different exercises to stimulate your brain in different ways, and it can be super beneficial to try and learn an entirely new skill, an instrument or dance, or a sport like skating, surfing, tennis, soccer, even actually learning a new language that gets your mouth to do weird stuff or singing.

my top tip is probably the most practical convenience skill that you can practice at home anytime, which is juggling because that really improves hand eye coordination for anyone at any age. And you can practice it for five minutes And get a good motor cortex workout regardless of any other health related problemsbesides impairments of your hands and eyes. At which point then yes. Don't do juggling.

Reflexes and professional training

Anyway, I promised you I'd talk about reflexes.

So stay tuned.

So now let's talk about reflexes. There is a reason that the doctor might want to check them. as it can really help. Check generally your brain health levels If someone tests your reaction times to a sound based cue, that tests the connection between your hearing and the prefrontal cortex to recognize the cue and decide to engage the motor cortex,

And of course all the other parts of the brain involved in movement. Then if the doctor was to try a visual cue or a touch base cue, that will have the same effect for those different sensory parts of the brain. and you can get a good idea uh, specifically diagnosing different discreet issues with parts of your sensory system or brain.

By doing that.

and I'm sure anyone would be interested in how you can train your reaction speeds through focused training and cognitive exercises. Sadly, you can't get huge gains to reaction speed, As a lot of your speeds are basically tests of how quick your circuits fire and is kind of hardwired,

and actually most of the gains that you can get to your reaction times just come from covering the basics,

Like getting regular exercise, a healthy diet and sleep, and a low stress lifestyle. However, the other big areas for gains can be through automating your different reactions. So if you think about a professional tennis player doesn't actually have time to consciously think about where this high speed serve is going, or the boxer doesn't have time

To engage the thinking part of their brain to analyze the punch coming towards their face. they just need to duck it. when it comes to the highest levels of sport, you don't want sensory import going into the prefrontal cortex to start thinking about things.

You want to go straight to the motor cortex that can just initiate a movement And cut out all the conscious decisions and crap that you don't need. So for example, if I want to move my arm up in the air for no reason at all, I have to decide to do it to make it happen.

But if I'm reacting to a fly that's just coming at my eye, I don't consciously think about it. There's no time. I just close my eye.

And we all have many elements of subconscious movements. So if I want to go to the other side of the room, I of course have to consciously think about the fact I want to go there, but I'm not gonna overanalyze every single step.

Like the steps just happen because of I know how to do all that without thinking actively about them.

And the point here is that excellence in sport comes from a huge amount of training and repetition to automate as much of the stuff that can possibly be automated, and that will free up the thinking part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex to analyze your opponent for weakness or decide when to add a trick shot, et cetera. And in fact it's not even just reacting to the punch in the final moments as it comes towards your face or reacting to the tennis ball after it's been hit. a professional will subconsciously be analyzing everything about their opponent's movements leading up to the moment

where the ball starts moving, a professional will know what's coming, and that's how they can react so fast, even though they don't have to think about it.

Why 10,000 hours makes sense

and essentially what I'm talking about here when it comes to these reactions is muscle memory, although it's actually not your muscles remembering it's your motor cortex. but because you're not engaging your conscious part of your brain,

It kind of doesn't feel like it's your brain, which is why it got the term muscle memory

A muscle memory is why someone who's played the same song on guitar a lot can play the first few chords and just play the rest of them in a row. Or why a 70-year-old karate master can still beat the hell out of you, even though their actual reaction pathways

And physical strength might be lacking,

but they have so much inbuilt memory and processing that just happens on automation, that they'll understand every move before it happens. So the boring and obvious lesson that we get from this is that you should do lots of training.

The 10,000 hour rule has a reason, and it also highlights the importance At breaking things down into isolated movements if you want to do deliberate practice and then slowly building these things up into movement sequences. It's not just working on your backhand, it's working on a slow then a backhand dealing with like crazy fast serves

and then finally it's a good fast backhand whilst you are in the process of falling over, and yet you'll still be ready to sprint to the other side of the court in time for the return, et cetera.

If you can break up different skills and isolate them, you can automate them and then add them in into sequences of automated different things that can all happen together ever,

and that's how you become a professional that can do all these crazy things on autopilot.

Reactions that don't require your brain

Now, like me, you might be wondering if there are reactions that don't require your brain at all. Well, there are. If you put your hand on a really hot stove, it is a waste of time to try and engage the decision part of your brain or to even train your motor cortex to try and operate without you. Instead, your spine has enough processing power within it to move your hand away from a source of pain instantly, which is a really cool feature of the body.

to see if your body can do this Well, a common test that doctors use is the knee jerk patella test, where a doctor will use a small object to hit your knee, and your spinal cord will drive the reaction all by itself. And it can be surprising if you're the person having it done to you

because you'll see your knee moving involuntarily at about the same time that the pain actually arrives in your brain. Sadly though, you can't train your spinal cord to react to a punch coming your way or pretty much anything that nature didn't hardcode into it.

and it's really only pain related Because if it's a movement that requires you to see it, that's a pathway from your eyes that need to go into your brain before it can then get worked out. your eyes don't have a direct link to your spinal cord. But still, it's incredible to think that in the same way that you or I can walk on autopilot, every single famous athlete or musician in history has basically been able to do all of the core bits Of their skill that we admire of them so much, they've been able to do all those things pretty much on complete autopilot.

I just think that helps add a little extra appreciation and empathy to how like amazing they are.

and there's a great quote from the Navy Seals, which is actually stolen from a Greek philosopher. cus and that is that under pressure, we don't rise to the occasion, but we rather sink to the level of our training.

And the take home here

is that you can really push your body to do cool things by practice. And hopefully this section added a bit more color into how the brain and motor cortex works without sounding like a textbook and also highlighted how conscious and subconscious thought works.

and if I've done my job correctly, it might have inspired you to feel a bit more in control of your outcomes, both physically and in life, and to perhaps adopt more of a growth mindset

'cause I think that chat on reaction times really highlighted that you can improve both your physical and mental capabilities.

How physical movement affects mental thought

Now I have one more point around how physical and mental capabilities are linked. As we've repeatedly shown how connected the motor cortex is with the prefrontal cortex, where you make your decisions, it does really emphasize that movement improves cognition and decision making

'cause engaging in different movements really stimulates the use of our prefrontal cortex, which does increase blood flow and activity, helping it run more smoothly. And later this week I'll actually be highlighting how terrible we can be at making good decisions in an episode around decision biases.

But you can give yourself a massive help in life just through regular exercise. The other factor here is that it really helps with stress relief. Exercise releases, endorphins that are otherwise known as feel-good hormones,

and on top of the organic, natural, hormone based positivity vibes that you'll get. the general repetitive nature of sports, such as cardio or weights, can provide a therapeutic form of mental relaxation or activities like team sports or action sports

Will require your complete focus and that helps improve your attention span and control between our default mode network and the task positive network, which we covered in an episode recently that I'd really recommend. , and it did really highlight the importance of the default mode network

And how it's related to things like depression, anxiety, and A DHD.

Some other core benefits from exercise are neurochemical in nature. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, you've probably heard are increased by exercise and crucial for mood regulation and cognitive functions like attention span, and problem solving that we've already spoken about.

But there's also the brain derived neurotropic factor, which is a protein that supports the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses. And that's basically how we learn and create memories or get good at playing guitar or other movement sequences. So if you want to be like Jimi Hendrix or Serena Williams, or you just want to be better at life, you should practice, practice, practice, and also get outside and do some exercise every day because your brain wants you to.

Wrap up

So thank you for listening. If you have any questions, do you hit me up With a comment on your preferred app, or shoot me an at Growth Mindset podcast@gmail.com. Details are in the description. If you want to support the podcast, do look into our advertisers as to keep the show running.

Otherwise, you can share the episode with a friend. If you know any aspiring artists, musicians, or athletes. This episode should be an obvious one for them, but people that just want to do better in life should be maintaining their motor cortex and zen attitude. I.

And then of course, good reviews do help people find us. And with that life is too short for bad reflexes or telling ourselves that we are genetically just a bit uncoordinated when we can actually get better with practice. So be kind to yourself, talk to strangers and take up juggling.

Thank you so much for listening. Go you. Your consistency to reach the end of an episode is legendary, my hero. If you have any ideas or feedback for the show, I'm always interested to hear from you. You're the best studies show. We need time for information to sink in, so I'm going to give you a five second pause, silence to reflect on one idea from the show before you jump back into your busy life.

Ready and go.