Episode 2: Unlocking Movement Mastery - The Power of the Cerebellum

Discover how understanding and training the cerebellum can dramatically enhance coordination, balance, and agility—especially for dancers, gymnasts, athletes and movement enthusiasts. Join us as we explore the brain's tiny yet mighty structure that controls precision, muscle tone, and error correction in movement. In this episode:

• The cerebellum's core functions: accuracy, balance, and coordination
• How cerebellar drills improve trunk control, eye movement, and limb precision
• The significance of right-left limb balance and strategies to assess imbalances
• Simple assessment tools: RAPS, heel-to-shin, and eye tracking
• Practical drills for cerebellar training to boost athletic performance 
• The impact of cerebellum health on muscle tone, and posture
• Relationship between cerebellar function and neurological conditions like hypotonia
• How to tailor training programs based on cerebellar assessments

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction to the cerebellum's role in movement
• 00:48 - The cerebellum and trunk control: a dancer's story
• 01:06 - Coordination in sprained ankles and brain-body maps
• 02:07 - How cerebellar function affects angular vs. smooth movement
• 04:11 - The ABCs of the cerebellum: accuracy, balance, coordination
• 04:43 - Error detection and correction: refining motor plans
• 05:13 - How the cerebellum acts as a project manager in movement
• 06:40 - Signs of cerebellar imbalance: stiffness and angularity
• 07:09 - Regulation of muscle tone and reflexive postural control
• 07:49 - Roadside cerebellar tests and eye coordination drills
• 09:16 - Personal gaze stabilization exercises and their benefits
• 10:24 - Zones of the cerebellum: vermis, intermediate, lateral zones
• 11:21 - Assessing limb control and fine motor skills
• 12:57 - The importance of bilateral training in dance and gymnastics
• 15:23 - Assessment tools: diadochokinesia, heel-to-shin, circle drawing
• 18:13 - Recognizing cerebellar deficiency: slow and flailing movements
• 20:22 - Foot and leg coordination tests for balance and power
• 23:01 - Posture and muscle tone: cerebellar contributions
• 25:23 - The spinocerebellum and eye convergence in sports
• 27:27 - The cerebellum's neuronal density and metabolic impact
• 28:52 - Practical outcomes of cerebellar training: better coordination, balance, and strength
• 30:39 - Tailoring cerebellar drills for individual imbalances
• 32:42 - Recognizing and addressing hypotonia related to cerebellar lesions
• 33:04 - Final thoughts on the tiny but powerful cerebellum

Resources & Links

• RAPS (Rapid Alternating Pronation / Supination) also known as diadochokinesia, the ability to perform fast alternating movements

Connect with Nikki and Yuka!

• Yuka - IG:  @levelupneuro
• Nikki - IG: @bybee_nikki

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Performance Rewired. We are talking about the cerebellum today, and you are listening to Nikki, and I am here with my co-host, Yucca. Yuka. Okay. Hi. Perfect. And today we're going to talk about an area of the brain that is so fascinating. It is really coordinating so much of our lives without us recognizing the power in it. And when you find someone who responds well to cerebellar drills, which we will talk about, that is going to really enhance a lot of what is going on in a movement setting. So I wanted to start with a little story. I had this beautiful dancer who was very wiry. And like every single thing that she would do, even just setting up for say a first or second position, just looked a little bit like the straw. Was it the straw man? Yeah, the straw man.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Like from the Wizard of Oz.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, just a little bit like a scarecrow. A scarecrow. That's what I'm thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know my verbiage. Okay. So she looked like a scarecrow. And I was like, oh, this is so interesting. Like every time we move her, there's a lot of motion. And I started thinking about like what is going on. And I immediately thought, trunks, trunk control. Okay. What can I do for her trunk control? And I went for a cerebellum drill, did a little shin to heal test, and had her run that really quickly as we were like getting set up for class the next day. And lo and behold, she looked like a different dancer. And it that is why we love neurotraining so much, is because I would have, you know, 10 years ago been given her crunches and this and that to try to make her stronger. But it's not that she's not strong, it's the coordination of things. And then Yuka, did you want to share a story? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, actually, I was thinking often when because you probably see sprain, a lot of sprain ankles, right? Sprain ankles is like the like across the entire population, right? People like is the most common injury. Um, and when that happens, right, our proprioceptor, because of the inflammation, like damage to the tissue, all kinds of things, our ability to control and have a good map, like a brain-body map of that joint, very often is diminished.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So, like, and yet, and because, and also because most people don't actually properly rehab a sprained ankle because you're like, oh, it's just a sprained ankle, whatever.

unknown 2:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

But what I have found when there is a gymnast or a dancer or somebody that comes to me and they're like, Yeah, my ankle is just like painful. It's all this weird stuff. The x-rays, MRI don't show anything. And then one of the things I'll do, and we'll talk about this towards the end or a little bit later, is I'll do a coordination test for the healthier ankle and then the affected ankle. And very often their level of coordination, the precision that they can manage is worse on the affected side. And so when that happens, right? Yeah. And so in the brain, and it's like complicated wisdom, understands that you don't have control of a joint. One of the things it might do is throw up a protective response, which is pain, which we'll talk about some other episode. Um, but just by doing coordinated movement, um, complex movement with the ankle, it actually helped improve their uh function, right? And then can reduce the pain as well. That's so yeah, cerebellum super, super, super powerful. Um, we were just talking before that we could talk forever about it, which we won't, but yeah. Uh anything else that you want to add at the top here? And then otherwise I'll get into function of what it actually does.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Um, I mean, no, we can go on.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Okay. All right. So cerebellum, tiny but mighty. Um, so the things, so the easiest way to remember the key things that it does are ABC, so accuracy of movement, balance, and coordination. And so for an artistic athlete, for a gymnast, for a dancer, those are sort of important things. Yeah. So accuracy of movement, and it's the precision of the movement. So um, and error detection and error correction. So one of the big things, so we talked in the first episode about how the frontal lobe has the master plan or and initiates the movement. So it's like the I'm the architect, I'm the CEO, this is what's supposed to happen. And then it sends that plan down the body, right, to the muscles, through the spinal cord. It also sends a copy of that plan to the cerebellum. So you can think of the cerebellum as like, uh, if we're talking like architect, like the foreman or the project manager, right? So they're the ones that are like, is the plan that we actually did meeting what the architect designed? And so it's detecting, it's getting signals back. So let's say uh the thought, the the idea that I or the example I thought of was like, you know, if you're like little kid and they're trying to draw inside the lines, yes. Right? And sometimes that doesn't happen, right? So that watching with your eyes, watching the coordination and what's happening with the hand, the cerebellum's job is to kind of refine the movement so they can draw within the lines. Yeah. Right. So that's just kind of a nice example. Um, or like in a dance class where you have a mirror, you can see what you're doing. You don't have to be able to see what the errors are, you can maybe feel the error, but particularly for dance, like you can see what the error might be or what the alignment might be, and then you the part of the cerebellum's job is to reflexively correct things. Um, so it detects errors compared to the plan that the frontal lobe set out, and then it corrects them. Um so super, yeah. So and what Nikki was saying, that story at the beginning, when someone's cerebellum is not behaving well, or not that's a really bad way of saying it's not, it's not it's a knotty cerebellum. It's good, right? It doesn't really choose to behave when it's not when it needs to be upregulated, right? Or if there's an imbalance, right, then some of the things you will see is yeah, just the sort of stiffness, lack of coordination, um, movement looks really angular as opposed to smooth and like curves and efficient. Um and then a couple of the other big things that it does, one, and this is how I use it a lot, is that it it regulates muscle tone of your extensors, so like your spinal muscles, right? Think of postural muscles, what's called proximal extensors, so like your delts, so extensors that are near the middle of the body, glutes, hamstrings, um, like posterior deltoid, your lats, stuff like that. Um, and uh pot like reflexive postural tone. So it's working super closely with the vestibular system, which is your inner ear balance system, um, to help coordinate. Um, oh, and one thing, actually, one last thing. So the roadside, not that anybody has ever done this, but those roadside DUI tests. Oh, yeah. Those, yeah, those are primarily cerebellar tests because alcohol diminishes the function or degrades the function of the cerebellum, right? So if you try to touch your nose, that's like a highly accurate thing that you have to do. And if you no longer have that very precise error detection and error correction, you're gonna like hit your lip or whatever. Which I've actually also had clients do who were completely sober. So they claimed. Right, right. So they claim, yeah. Well, they sometimes they were children for not drinking. But yeah, like when they can't actually accurately touch their nose, like okay, that's that's so that's a cerebellar test, right? So the things that they do roadside. So that's so it does a lot. Um, I think those are the big ones. Did I miss anything?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Uh I don't think so. I mean uh maybe a little bit about the eye coordination, but it wasn't, but it does really connect with the eye. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Um, so any visual drill, like when I'm doing a smooth pursuit, like following something side to side, up and down, whatever the shape might be, it's help and then it's helping coordinate the smoothness and accuracy of that. So there's a very specific part of the cerebellum, which Nikki's gonna talk about, that is dedicated to one of the functions that that portion does is control of the eyes. Um, so helping track something smoothly.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, you're welcome. So um, yeah, I'm actually working on my gaze stabilization on my left eye currently, as as we are recording this. Not not in this very moment, but um I've had a little bit of left issue on or eye issue on my left side, and my gaze stabilization on my left side is very obnoxious. And I discovered this a couple months ago, and then I started working on it in a couple different ways, and I started to do um a couple new things, and the other day I checked my gaze stabilization and it was so much better. So yeah, I was like, oh, I haven't even been looking at the looking at it the way I had a couple of weeks ago, and it's already improved. So um, and my movement's improved too. I feel a lot more confident moving now that I've taken some action towards improving that. So the part I'm going to talk about is the zones of the cerebellum and how they impact movement. And there are, you know, we can look at this in different ways today. We're gonna look at this as three parts. Actually, really everything here, first of all, I'll just say we always compare right to left when we're looking at neurology because what we're looking at is there's there a balance or an imbalance between right and left. And if there is an imbalance, how big is that imbalance? And do we need to fill a gap in order for us to get better performance by improving one side or the other? So, with that said, we have the center of the cerebellum. If you're looking at the back of the head and you could see through the base of the skull, there's a little tiny area there, and the vermis is it means worm, and it looks like the shape of the worm, and it's right down the center. And that's really in charge of trunk control, neck control. Uh anything that's on the midline is gonna be enhanced if we look at the vermus and do something that targets vermous activity. And then there's the intermediate zone that just sits adjacent to the vermis, so we're just going out laterally towards the size of the body when we get into the intermediate zone, and that's gonna be more of limb control, and then there's the lateral zones, which is more fine motor skills and kind of encompasses everything together, but really helps with the fine motor skills as well. So, like Yuca said, um, something that might be working on the lateral zone of the cerebellum would be having a child color in the lines, or having an adult try to cut a straight line on a piece of paper. Because even if you're an adult, cutting a straight line on a piece of paper can be quite difficult, and that would be the lateral zone of your cerebellum. And then compare how good is your right hand at cutting that, compare it to your left. And then you'll slicing vegetables. Or slicing vegetables, yeah. And then you'll see if there's a big deficit between your right and your left lateral side of your cerebellum.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah. All right, you're and for most of us, right? There who if we're left or right hand dominant, uh-huh, because we've spent so much of our lives doing things on that side, your dominant side, your your lateral cerebellum proficiency is going to be much better. And you know, one thing that I think about in terms of ballet class, so the right, so I don't know how if this is how you teach, but like typically you start your supporting leg is the left side, and you're like your working leg is a right side, right? So it's like right cerebellar because you're doing all kinds of like right specific stuff with your right side. So you're marking it once, right, in your head, right, when the teacher gives the combination, and then you do it again. So basically the right side is always getting, or very often getting double the input that the left side is. Um, and then when you go to center, like it sometimes is even more, right? Because you may do like, right, you mark it like two, three times even sometimes, right? And so you're doing this, right? Right, right. So I don't know if when you teach, do you do you start on the other side or do you make it even?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

You know, I used to do that in the university because I thought a lot about that. And I have I haven't done that in a really long time. I probably ought to. What I usually do is make them do the bad side a couple more times than the good side. So if I'm going across the floor, I'll just say, okay, go back and do the bad side again. So they might have more reps on the bad side. So now I'm telling every on myself, I'm like, do it again.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

No, but there's a purpose for that, right? Is like we want, because the cool, the great thing about dance and gymnastics is that they're bilateral.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Right? That like they're not, you're not like baseball always swinging this way or always throwing with one side. Um, and I think that's the beauty of those activities, especially for little kids, for developing their brains evenly. Gymnastics, you do end up in the same with dance. Like if like if I'm doing a variation where I'm gonna turn the way that I want to turn, and so you get a little bit more on that way. But and then in gymnastics, like once you get to a certain level, you stop, hopefully not too much, stop doing things on your quote, like bad side. Um, but still there is very often an imbalance. Um, and sometimes, yeah, like I said, like the injury example where like this gymnast's like her circles, her ankle circles were always like, yeah, you see how they're like kind of more like a stop sign and not a circle. Um, yeah. Yeah, so we can actually go into like how we assess that. Like how what what do we do to see, like, okay, your left cerebellum or your right cerebellum, or your left lateral cerebellum and your right lateral. We won't probably get into that level, D. Fill, but like, how do we know that there's an imbalance? Um, and so we have like a standard set of assessments that we do. Um, I don't know if you want to talk about the ones that you like or that are like most telling.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, um, I do I do the wraps. Um Yuca's gonna say the real name of this because I know Timothy.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

It's just it's dysdio wait, now I can't say it. Dys diodonesia. Thank you. Which basically means what?

SPEAKER_01 15:47

It uh ponation supination.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah, you're basically making you're making like Latin. I was I was like, am I supposed to speak Latin here? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I think well I don't know what it exactly means, but it's basically like doing opposing things. Yeah. Right? Like that require opposing muscles and opposing, like basically opposing movements, but doing it fast anyway.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, and and actually, yes, because part of the cerebellum, like we mentioned, regulates muscle tones. So we're working antagonistic muscle um systems. So uh one of the ones that I use a lot, like I said, is called wraps. And you can do this with your hands, your feet, your feet, your feet, your elbows. Or both. Yeah, your out your shoulders. I haven't really done it with my elbows. My shoulders. And I think I think I just started writing joints in and I was like, I haven't done it with my elbows either, but maybe someone can. But your shoulders, and so what you're doing is if you place one hand out in front of you, let's say I have my left out in front of me with the palm up, like I'm going to receive some coins in my hand. I'll take the other hand and place it over the top and hover it. Now I have my palms facing each other, and I just start slapping my right hand onto my left and then flipping my hand to hit the back side of my hand. So it'd be back side of my hand, front side of my hand, palm, back, palm, back, palm, back. And what that is doing, like we said, is it's igniting the cerebellum on the same side of the body that I'm doing the up and down changing my hand motion on. I don't know if I describe that well. Should I try it again?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah. Yeah, so it's basically one hand, and the way I usually describe it is like one hand is the pan and the other hand is like the tortilla or the pancake.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And you have to just flip it back and forth. So you so the instruction is to go as fast as you can for, I usually do like five seconds, um, because that typically is enough to see if there's a difference. So you can try this, so five seconds as fast as you can and see, and it should be rhythmic and even and consistent. Right. Um, do you want to talk about like what it looks like when it's not when there's a deficiency?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

When there's a deficiency, there's like a couple of different things that I see. Often I see very slow um movement. It looks like they're really focusing to change their hand position, and it's it's a ton of focus and a lot of slow motion movement. And the other thing that I see is just like flailing, and sometimes the flailing is coming all the way up from the shoulder, so it looks like it looks like a floppy fish that's just like not quite in the pan at all times. And so, yeah, do you want to talk about what you've seen with that?

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, yeah. So I've also seen, right, where the other hand, so if I'm flipping my right hand back and forth, the other hand starts trying to do some stuff. Um, or it's like pom pom, wait, back of the hand, back of the hand. So it's not one like one side, other side, one side, other side. One side is like one, one, one, two, two, one. So it's not a rhythmic even, then like it's sort of confused. It looks, yeah, like flailing basically.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

And the side of the hand sometimes gets put in there. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

So it's yeah, so it's inaccurate and imprecise, right? So this is a cerebellum. Um, so and what's what's really surprising to me um is for gymnasts who their hands are super important, right? The coordination, everything. And I've had very high-level gymnasts have like pretty crappy reps. Okay. And you're like, wow, yeah. And so the distal, right? The distal, the coordination of this, these distal joints is is deficient. I'm like, well, just think of like, think of like when you have to grab the beam in a really specific way or the bars or whatever it is, like everything is your hands. And so, like, there's so much opportunity. If we just upregulate that function, your brain is gonna just have a much better sense of where your hands are and a much better control and precision. Um so yeah, so check your reps, check your students' reps.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Um, see what they look like, and you might be surprised. Check your own first, see what it looks, see what it feels like. Um and then the drip, yeah, go ahead. You can also do it with your foot.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

And to do the foot, you just look like a really mad person, and you just keep your heel on the floor and tap your foot as fast as you can. And you'll see that some people can't tap one foot at all. Like it just looks like their foot is sitting there and they're looking at their foot like what's going on, and we're like, you know. So that's again, if the foot's not moving rapidly and if it's not even getting started, then we know that you know we could use some cerebellar work on that side.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah, yeah. Or similarly, like the whole leg, like the knee is moving and the whole leg is trying to assist it. Um, or it gets really tired after like three seconds.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Or you see it happening in the other, um, sometimes you'll see their foot's trying to tap, but their hand is moving at the top.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

They're trying to get assistance from something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so it's basically like if you're really impatient and you're like waiting what you're waiting for someone, you're like tapping your foot like that kind of a thing. I also use thumper, but nobody from Bambi, but nobody knows what that is.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Right? What kind of thing? Nobody knows.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

I mean, because like Right. Like people of our age generally know, but I think like little kids have never, or maybe they don't see not even like little, but medium. Medium kid. Yes. People don't know Thumper. Anyway. That's sad. Uh I know. He's the best. Uh another another thing to test as I was mentioning actually like the the ankle circles.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Right. So because so doing nonlinear complex movement. So trying to draw a circle very smoothly or an eight, right? Or the alphabet. And some of these are like things that you might get in physical therapy to do this kind of movement. But the focus is on really, really high levels of precision and accuracy and sm and smoothness. So that is so that's so both of these things, like you can use them as ways to assess. You're like, well, how coordinated is your left ankle compared to your right ankle? Right. And so you can just have them do these, like the thumper tapping or do circles and eights. Um and and again, as a dancer as a gymnast, these are bilateral things. You need both sides to be even. So if one side is less coordinated, the consequence may be that they're just not going to get the same kind of power and strength out of that side, and then you now have an imbalance. Yeah. Right? Which over time, over repetition can lead to other things.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

And that imbalance uh has a profound effect on muscle tone. Yeah. Because when we are imbalanced like that, you might see um, you know, just not the mobility that they actually have access to because of the imbalance between right and left on the cerebellum. Right. Yeah. Um, okay, so uh let's see. Do you we also talked just a little bit about, you know, that this also monitors trunk support. And yeah, you can do a simple thing like with the student I mentioned at the beginning, who looked like every time she set herself up, she was just like a noodle. Uh we did what's called a heel to shin. So I had her place the center of her heel standing up on the center of her opposite shin and glide the heel down the center of her shin and then back up. So she's drawing almost it looks like a parallel passe with a flexed foot, but she's staying on her shin bone. And we do 10 of those when I first start giving those, and we check, you know, how irritated is the hip flexor getting? What's the accuracy like? Are they able to stay on the center of the shin, or is there a heel wandering around, or does it skip or get faster? You know, so we're looking again rhythmically, is it good? Uh, is it stabilizing down the center well? And are things getting tired up in the hip? Are they able to tolerate that well? And then, of course, look right versus left. But after doing a drill like that, you can see I have seen uh dancers improve their uh control.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Did you that's so interesting that their hip flexors will get tired because this is a tiny movement, right? But that's a sign that something something is there's an inefficient and inappropriate level of activation somewhere, is it's trying to compensate and work really hard to coordinate this thing that should not be that hard to coordinate. Yeah. Right? Is that how you would say it? Yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah, so like someone with the hip flexor problem might actually have a cerebellar problem. Yes. Right? Because their body is guarding or is trying to over-control something that should be easier to control. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

So interesting.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

And do you want to talk about the convergence in the eyes?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, so so the way that I learned the the vermis, right, the middle part of the cerebellum, the worm, one way, so the thing that I learned of how to think about that and what you want to activate is spine and eyes. So it's called the spinocerebellum, it's in the middle part of the cerebellum, um, and it's coordinating spinal muscles, right, postural muscles, as well as your eyes. So when I'm when I'm like if I'm pirouetting and spotting, right, those your cerebellum is doing a lot to control when your eyes stop, right, as you're pi wetting and turning, or also like in a gymnastic setting, like actually quickly converging, which is the eyes coming together, focusing on something that you have to catch or land on, right? So beam floor, whatever it might be. And so that level of coordination of the of the eyes, like making sure that they're precise, that they're both moving together, a lot of that is coming from the cerebellum. Um and then yeah, so anything, so anything where you're doing, like as Nikki was saying, gaze stabilization, right? That's also a good frontal lobe one. Um but just having just staring at something and keeping your eyes fixed on that, that's a cerebellar stimulation, as well as just doing these smooth pursuits, so you're just following your thumbnail up and down, side to side, that's um another way to activate the cerebellum.

unknown 27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah. Um, and what's so cool about it this is as we're talking, I was just thinking as Yuko is talking about all the motions that we're getting from the cerebellum and the coordinations, is that the cerebellum is very small. It's like 10% of your brain mass, but it has about 80% of the neurons of the uh brain are there. And in comparison Which is crazy. Which is crazy. And in comparison to the cerebral cortex, it has about four times the amount of neurons as the uh cerebral cortex. So it metabolizes a lot. We I think we metabolize about 10% of our metabolism happens in our brain, but most of that metabolism is due to the cerebellum.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

But it makes sense, right? If 80% of the neurons are somewhere around there, are there. Yeah, so I it's like Manhattan, right? Where it's like super dense, super we could say powerful, I suppose.

unknown 28:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

There's a lot that happens there. Um, yeah. Yeah, so it's it's just training that you see, right? Like Nikki said, like the next day this dancer came in and had had a different quality of movement. Um so yeah, so what are the outcomes that you might get from doing, right? If you have your group start or every hour, every 30 minutes, you might have them do a bunch of reps or a bunch of like ankle circles or some kind of anything that you do normally, but do it in a more complex nonlinear way. Like ballet is already, I think this is why like people say, Oh, go to ballet to improve your posture, whatever, I don't know, coordination, because it's so much already complex, nonlinear, right? A lot of things are um gymnastics is much more linear. Um, but the things that you could see as a result of doing this regularly, better coordination, right? Better accuracy of movement, better balance. Um, what else?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Less corrections, like, you know, when I'm in a group setting, I've given that wraps thing a couple weeks ago. I I just instead of correcting their fate turns like a ballet teacher usually would, I was like, I see some issues with their coordination, and I'm just gonna go for a cerebellar drill and then have them repeat the coordination of the foite turn. And so, yeah, 30 seconds of slapping your hand up and down, doing the flip-flap hand on the other hand. And I had the kids do their foite turns again, and they were, you know, mind-blown what just happened, how come they can perform better now? But um, so you can see it saves you time. I could pick every single dancer apart for the coordination, or I could just give something more global and have less repetitions with less corrections given out. Yeah. Or tell them to engage their core. Or tell them to engage their core for the billionth time.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Um, which we don't do. Yeah. Um yeah, and then yeah, so similarly, because and I the way that I use the cerebellum a lot, like in a gymnastics, like in a practice setting, is if I see that they're not getting the same amount of power or activation left versus right, then I'm like, okay, so you're gonna do a cerebellar drill, let's say it's your left side, because more typically it is the left side, you're gonna do a cerebellar drill on your left side. So just have them tap their foot like 20 seconds, all right. Go again. Yeah. And they may be straightened out, you might see a little bit more power, the tumbling pass might be a little bit straighter. So again, it's like these things that you might correct by saying, I don't know what you would say otherwise, like other than like go straight, right? And they're like, I don't know how to figure that out. But if it's because if it's a reflexive imbalance that they don't have control of, you're not necessarily going to fix it via voluntary kind of correction. Yeah. And so, so then this athlete would do that before they go, but then they may, like if they're working with us individually, they would get a program where they're getting a number of cerebellar drills for their left side that they do regularly. Yeah.

unknown 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And you'll see better balance and better posture, like we've mentioned, because that is part of the cerebellum's job is posture and balance. Um so.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Anything else to say now? I just Yeah, I think we're good. I think that's it. I mean, honestly, like we could go into way more depth because I like there could be like three episodes of the cerebellum, and maybe we'll come in, we'll go into a little more. So, yeah, if you have questions and you're like, can you dig into this more? Do you want more about assessments? Do you more about like what we would do with specific situations? Like, send us uh, what do we want? Like send us, yeah, send us a message on Instagram, is probably the best way to do it. Yeah. Um, because we're there fairly often. And so the link, our our respective uh profiles are in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Um, yeah, anything else other than that?

SPEAKER_01 32:12

We can um I think that's it. There's one other thing I just realized. Uh for those of us who run into the kid who seems like they're unable to gain muscle tone, there it's called hypotonia. Um, if you have someone you've been working with for a long time and that it seems like I don't know what why this kid just seems like to lack muscle tone all the time, that can be something connected to the cerebellum and a lesion in the cerebellum will lead to hypotonia. And so if you're aware of that, you know, you may be able to guide them into a different way of training if you have some tools behind you. Um, so that's you know, I've had that experience. I don't know. I think others have probably had that experience too, where you have a kid and you're like, I don't know, the whole class seems like they're gaining, and this one kid just is like not able to have that oomph of moving.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

I have seen that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Very, very classic, the way that you're describing, and then also that very stiff scarecrow like thing, right? And just via hypotonia. Yep. Yep. Yeah. All right. Um, so cerebellum tiny, tiny but mighty. Um, yeah, that's it for this episode. Uh, I hope you take away some things, let us know how it goes. Uh, and we look forward to seeing you again on Performance Rewired.