Scroll Less, Perform Better!

Athletes the mind body connection is real don't ignore it ! This week we dig into how pre-game scrolling hijacks motivation, dulls focus, and undercuts team connection. Using Neuroscientist  TJ Power’s DOSE model as a guide, from his book The Dose Effect, we share practical swaps that protect brain chemistry so your mind matches your body on game day.

• why dopamine drives effort and focus
• how short-form feeds deplete motivation
• denorphin as a warning signal after over-scrolling
• oxytocin, trust, and face-to-face connection
• serotonin, sunlight, and steady confidence
• endorphins through movement and laughter
• a 30–60 minute pre-competition phone fast
• active replacements that rebuild chemistry
• intentional phone use as a tool, not a habit

Make sure you like, share, and subscribe

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Plan B podcast, Athletes Supporting Athletes. I'm your host, Coach B. If you're new, welcome. Okay, make sure you like, share, and subscribe. Okay, so who am I? Well, no one's exciting, bit of a has been athlete. Well, I was a former pro athlete. Now I work in sports psychology. I have my own sports psychology practice, CoachBperformance.com. You can go check that out. And I am continuing to build on my love of research, doing my doctorate in elite performance. Elite performance, human performance. Still trying to work everything out. It's going to be going for a long time. Anyway, I created this podcast because athletes are a huge part of my life. And one of the things I did learn in my research is that the person that athletes like hearing from most are their peers and other athletes. So this podcast is built on the idea that the most powerful thing that we can do for each other is share what you've actually lived through. Not textbook theory, not coaching manual, just real talk from people who have been in the sporting arena. So this week, I want to have a conversation about something that literally every single one of us does. But hardly any of us think about how it's affecting our athletic performance. And I'm and I'm focused on athletic performance because this podcast is for athletes, but it can also impact your performance when you're doing an exam, performance when you're studying. I'm conscious of it because I'm no longer competing as an athlete. And I have to limit my social media, social media, and I got rid of my personal social media, even though I loved it. Like I loved making reels. I made stupid reels all the time. For my own enjoyment, I saw it like as a creative outlet. But okay, it was time wasting, and I didn't realize how much it was impacting my brain chemistry. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about our phone, specifically scrolling. Scrolling for athletes in the change room, scrolling in the warm-up area, scrolling on the bus to the game, scrolling right up until the moment someone says, and most often than not, it's coach, you're on. Get ready to go. And what do you do? Oh, you chuck your phone away. Or you do it like 10 minutes before. It's too late. And here's why it's too late. I started really thinking about this properly after reading a book called The Dose Effect by TJ Power. Now, if you haven't read this book or you don't know of it, go ahead and get it. Because TJ, the author, is super cool. He is a neuroscientist. And what I love about him is that he doesn't come at this from like some ivory academic tower. He went through his own struggles with his phone, with his mental health, and he figured out the science behind why he felt the way he did. And that's what we're all about here at the Plan B podcast. It's about lived experience first, and not in all cases, but definitely today, science to back it up. So today, I am going to walk you through what's actually happening inside your brain when you scroll before you compete and why it might be costing you more than you realize. Right, so let's start with the basics. TJ Powell's whole framework is built around four brain chemicals, and he calls it DOS. And that's an acronym for the four chemicals in the brain. D-O-S-E. So the first one, okay, we all know that this one. D is for dopamine. This is your motivation, motivation chemical, right? It's what drives you to do hard things, to, you know, push through the last rep when coach says on the track, you know, one more 200. To chase down the ball when you probably shouldn't have been able to reach it or get to it, or to chase down a defender, dopamine is what gets you off the start line. O is for oxytocin, your connection chemical. This is what you feel when you're tight with your teammates, when you trust your coach and you're feeling like you belong somewhere. It is what we like to call the bonding chemical. So touchy-feely, good bonding chemical. Oh, we feel good. Okay. Did you know, by the way, that your self-massage, you can actually produce your own oxytocin just by giving yourself a self-massage? Okay. Like, you know, when you need to go sore shins, like start massaging your shins, and that will actually produce oxytocin. Make you feel good, make you feel better. S. It's for serotonin. That's the chemical, brain chemical, that keeps us calm, steady. It's the feel-good chemical. And it's linked to being outdoors to go to our gut health and just to feeling settled and confident in ourselves. So it's a chemical that tells you what you need to hear before you're about to perform, which is you got this, mate. You're all right. You're gonna you're gonna do this. Okay, that is serotonin. Now, E is for endorphins. And as athletes, we need this one in buckets. This is your natural painkillers. Now, these kick in during physical effort. And they're also present during laughter. So, you know, in one of my podcasts, I talked about, I think it was the last one, I talked about allowing people to cry as well as laugh when things don't go well. Because you guys at that with the, I think it was episode, episode three with uh Nicholas Love when we had disappointment about allowing yourself to be unhappy, release those emotions, but also laugh, because laughter, when your body feels alive, is when you're also releasing endorphins. But this is the thing that really hit me with what TJ talks about in his book. These chemicals, okay, it's not new. None of this is new that we're talking about. It's just that we don't connect them to the phone. Okay, it evolved over 300,000 years ago to help us survive. So our brains developed. Then when we're living in tribes, spending 85% of our time outdoors, 85%. Can you imagine that today? That would be so cool. Doing physical, demanding things every single day. The system, our our brain chemistry system just worked beautifully. Now, fast forward to today and how our lifestyles have changed so dramatically. And they've changed faster than our actual biology. So today, we spend less than 7% of our time outside. We sit more, and I know I'm conscious of that. Like I'm sitting right now at my desk, and I've had to put less walking mat underneath my desk in my office because since I've started doing my PhD, all I do is sit all day, read. And I'm just realized, geez, Belinda, you really have become sedentary. So, but that's what's happened to us just in general. We sit on our butts. Yeah, and sad thing is also we're isolated more. But we we don't we think we walk around this little device in our pocket, and that has practically hijacked one of the major chemicals in our brain. Okay, it's taken one chemical hostage. And which one? Which chemical is that? Well, it's dopamine. Okay. Now, this is where it gets really relevant to us as athletes. TJ Power explains in his book dopamine is so critical. And I have just really read what he said, and I'm translating it back to us as athletes. But in his analogy, and I really liked it because it was very interesting, he talks about imagining that you've got a factory going on in your brain that's producing dopamine. And throughout the day, the factory is manufacturing this dopamine for you. But it only happens when you do something effortful. So when you train, study, cook, go for a walk, work in the garden, when you're actually like being active, brushing your dog, walking your dog, your brain goes, oh yeah, pretty great. Nice. And as you are depleting it, the dopamine, it's also, because of your being active, it is also replenishing it. So effort in, reward out, the brain factory that's creating this dopamine is replenishing it all the time. Contrast this to what happens when you're on TikTok, reels, shorts, or whatever you, whatever you're doing on the phone, and but it's mainly in short-form scrolling. What happens there is that you are depleting dopamine and you're not replenishing it. And how does that make us feel? Well, we know how it makes us feel. We just didn't know where it came from. It makes us feel flat, unmotivated, lethargic. Just can't be bothered. And there's another brain chemical, which we I discovered in this book, which I really didn't know what it was, and my pronunciation of it may not be on point, so I apologize. It's denorphin. Okay. Now, this chemical releases during those intense scrolling sessions without a warning signal, and it creates discomfort. That, you know, low, empty, slightly depressive feeling you get after you've been on your phone for too long. So that is actually called denorphin. And apparently that's like, you know, when there's a fire and the places and the smoke alarm's gone off. It's literally denorphin is like the smoke alarm or the carbon denoxide or carbon denoxide, carbon monoxide alarm that literally goes berserk and says, stop. You have to get off your phone because you have completely depleted your dopamine. So that's uh there's a chemical called denorphin that that that breaks glass and saying, stop, stop. Do we listen to it? I don't think so. And why I'm sharing all this today, it's not to bore you. It's not to give you a science lesson. It's because I want you to win. Because this is a killer for athletes. All of this chemical imbalance is a killer for athletes. For athletes trying to perform, we need our brain in balance. And that would be what scientists would call homeostasis. Okay, that's what everything's level. So when our dopamine is spikes really fast from scrolling and Denorphin is like going crazy saying, stop, and your brain crashes to your normal baseline to compensate. You don't go back to normal, you go below normal. So let's put this in the world, let's put this into our world. Let's step out of science world for a second. Let's put this back into the sporting arena. Think about this in context of competition. You're in the changing room 45 minutes before a game or before you're about to compete in a running race. You're nervous. So what do you do? Well, you pull out your phone and you scroll for 20 minutes and you watch highlights, have a laugh at some memes. So you get a little bit of that, you know, happy feeling from the memes because you're having a laugh and random videos, and it kind of feels like you're relaxing, but you're not. Because here's the catch. Neurologically, you have just burned through a chemical that you need to perform, your dopamine reserves. You've spiked and crashed, and now your motivation chemical, the thing that's supposed to drive you to compete at your highest level, is now not just depleted, it's now at minus. It's minus zero. Okay, so it's sitting below baseline. And you just put down your phone and the coach goes, right, let's go. And you're supposed to be switched on, focused, and ready. Guys, you're not. And all that training that you did during the week was for nothing. All that physical work you just undid because you were not cognitively preparing properly and you were ill-disciplined and you couldn't put boundaries on when you stopped using your phone. Well, I'm giving you boundaries today based on the research and science from a neuroscientist, okay, from TJ Power and his book, The Dose Effect. Let's pay attention because this could make a huge difference. And we want you to get rid of that flat feeling, that sluggishness. Okay. We want you to not blame it on your bad warm-up or not being in it today, because that's garbage. If we really be analytical about performance, I wonder how many times of it is actually just the phone. So I'm going to share something a little bit personal because, you know, we don't have a guest today, so I'm just going to share a little bit about me. Thank God I didn't have a phone. You know, I would have been complete head case. And just because I think I have the addictive personality. And for me, before competition, I used to read a book. So what was I doing? But I was doing an active, it might have been city, but I was doing an active cognitive activity. So I was actually building more dopamine. So while I was getting in this in the zone, I wasn't depleting my dopamine. And I get it, we all get nerves. Uh pre-competition anxiety is normal. But there's a difference between managing pre-competition anxiety and avoiding it. Scrolling on your phone is avoidance. It feels like coping, but it's actually your brain running away from discomfort. And you reach for a quick dopamine to fill the gap. But it it you don't it doesn't fill it. Like it ends up kind of feeling empty. So yeah, in his book, TJ talks about this exact pattern. We feel stressed. And I I'm hoping some of you are like reflecting as I talk and go, yeah, you know, I felt this. Well, I'm pretty sure we all have, but we just didn't really pinpoint to that tiny little device that, you know, we crank our neck down and stare at all day. We feel stressed, so we reach for the phone. The phone numbs the stress temporarily, but the stress doesn't go anywhere. It just sits stagnant in your body. And now you've lost your dopamine reserves on top of it, and you're below zero. So I've seen teammates do this all the time. And there's no one looking at each other, there's no one connecting, which brings us to the second chemical, oxytocin. When you're on the phone and you're depleting your dopamine, you're also not connected with anyone, no eye contact, no physical presence, no shared energy. So it's not just about team spirit, okay? This is actual brain chemistry. Oxytocin, the second brain chemical that TJ talks about, creates trust, reduces anxiety, and makes you feel like you belong. And even if you're an individual athlete, okay, talk to those around you. You cannot get these guys from a screen. And that's what the biggest takeaway today. Be mindful that when you're on your phone, you are depleting dopamine and you're lowering oxytocin because you're isolating yourself, you're in your own little world, your motivation is now below baseline, and your sense of connection with your teammates and your environment, so you're no longer receptive to what's coming at you, is weak. This is not the recipe and the solution for a good performance. This is a disaster. Okay. So you're probably thinking, oh, my brain hurts. Yeah, so does mine, okay? Because I've got to get my head around it. And I want you guys to be super successful. And there's something that you all are on all day long. Okay, I have four kids. I like my phone too. And my husband's on his phone as well. So, but we've got to be conscious of it when it comes to performance. And I know it's not all bad, okay? Because there's a lot that we can get from our phone. I'm gonna get to that in a minute. So it's this is not supposed to be about doom and gloom. This is about what we need to do and practical swaps before competition. So, number one is phone fasting before competition. We want to have fresh dopamines, so no scrolling. You need to protect your dopamine, your current levels. So that means cut off, fast from your phone, whether it's 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or the whole journey to your athletic venue, put your phone away. Okay, put it in your bag. Number two is replace it with something effortful, okay, that builds dopamine. So go through, go for a walk, read a book, play with a Rubik's Cube, do a word find, do some drawing, do anything. But don't go on your phone because we just talked about it. It depletes your dopamine. You need your dopamine to perform. So put it away, do something active. Okay, even if that's just doing some deep breathing, that still takes effort. Okay, so you're actually stimulating dopamine rather than draining it. Number three, okay, let's connect with the world around us and our teammates. And if that means you don't want to talk to each other, that's okay. Just observe. Observe your environment. If you're feeling comfortable and you want to talk to people, talk to like mic, make eye contact, have a laugh, share a moment, like talk about what's ahead. Or if not, talk about other stuff, talk about what you watched the latest movies. Like that oxytocin that we bit that we get from connecting with people is what can hold a team together under pressure. We can't build that through a screen. And you build it face to face when you're with other people. Number four, if you can, and this is like my go-to just every day, is get outside in nature and sunlight, even if it's just for a short walk. Okay, allow yourself to feel a bit of vitamin D, look at the sky, get some fresh air, just try and observe nature. And I I stole this quote, this line from TJ's book, The Dose Effect, and it's a great line. Okay, so I'm paraphrasing here, but the idea is this he says, see sunlight before you see social media. So on compet on competition day, that's golden advice. And to be honest, I hope after you've listened to this podcast, you don't even want to go on your phone on competition day. You just want to focus on cognitively being as strong and your brain chemistry as balanced as possible. So you can utilize all that physical training that you just put hours into. You want to be able to maximize that effect. Why on earth would you jeopardize that by neglecting the most important part of your performance, which is your brain? I mean, in my mind anyway. Physically, yes, super important, but your brain is just as important. So just to reiterate, this isn't an anti-phone episode. All right, it's not about dramatic overhauls. This is about small, practical tweaks. And that's what TJ talks about in his book, which I love. And his book has heaps more than what I've just said. Let's see our phone as a tool, just like lots of other things, like a roller. A roller is a tool to get rid of sore muscles. It's a great way to get off the concrete, to sit on. We can get rid of it, we roll on it all day. The phone is a tool. It's it's great for film analysis, it's great for staying in touch with teammates. It's great for listening to this podcast. So don't throw it away. That's what I'm saying. But let's be intentional about it. Specifically, like if you can, be intentional about it all the time. That's what I'm trying to do today. Okay. But I'm I'm a little bit older than all of you guys, way a bit older. And, you know, I have that a little bit more, you know, discipline. But for athletes, your brain, just remember, your brain is preparing you to perform. So pay attention to it and look after it. That window before competition is precious. And right now, a lot of us are spending way too much time doing the one thing that's scientifically shown to deplete the exact chemicals we need the most. So if you take nothing away from this podcast, just remember this. 30 to 60 minutes before you compete is not the time to scroll. It belongs to preparation, physical, mental, and chemical. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It really is insightful. TJ Power's book, The Dose Effect, it's written by someone who lived through his own struggles. And he came out the other side with all these science-backed tools that actually work. And that's why I love it. And I love it for the Plan B podcast because that's what we're about. We're about lived experiences and sharing those lived experiences. I'm hoping maybe one day, you know, he's he's very busy, he's very popular, you know, he's been on TED Talks. Maybe in his huge schedule, he might find time to come and elaborate what I just talked on, talked about today on how brain chemistry is so important for athletes. So I'm going to tag him anyway, just in case. But let's really pay attention. This whole podcast is about athletes supporting athletes. And if you've had an experience where you were really disciplined and you phone fast and you put in some parameters in place and you saw a huge difference, tell us about us or send me a message, leave a comment, because I would love to share it with some of our listeners. So it's not just me, you know, reading books and being interested in it. I'm implementing it into my own life right now. And I've had a I've cut my screen usage by 40% since the beginning of the year, since I got rid of my personal social media. I have like other social medias, which I see are tools for my business for the podcast. I mean, I do have one for my dog, uh, but I created that because I I when I lost my first dog, I didn't have any like memories. So I was devastated. So anyway, that's a personal thing. But I don't spend hours on it. I've decreased my screen time and scrolling by 40%. Imagine how much better you would perform if you put parameters in place around your own phone usage. Just have a think about it. All right, guys. Hey, hang around. Next week's gonna be awesome. We have with us a Cornell student, her name is Anya, and she is a rising star of sports management. So super interesting. She was creating sports management in high school, and she's now doing it at Cornell University. And someone like this is truly inspirational to show the multi ways that you can become involved in sport and get benefits from sport. It's not just about competing, it's about having sport in your life in whatever avenue that may be. So Anya's coming on next week, and I'm so excited uh to you know hear from her and hear her experiences. So join us next week. Hope you enjoyed today. Let's look after ourselves, but more importantly, let's look after each other, and I'll see you next time.