Episode 5: The Vestibular System's Hidden Role in High-Performance Athletes

Discover why the vestibular system, a crucial set of organs in the inner ear, can significantly impact athletic performance, balance, and movement. Learn how fine-tuning this system can lead to rapid improvements in stability, flexibility, and overall coordination, as well as reduce spinal tension.

In this episode:

• The role of the vestibular system in balancing and spatial orientation
• How vestibular dysfunction affects elite athletes and dancers
• Simple tests and drills to assess and enhance vestibular function
• The misconception of BOSU balls as proprioceptive tools
• Relationship between vestibular health, postural tension, and movement quality
• Case studies demonstrating quick progress with targeted vestibular training

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction to the powerful vestibular system

01:53 - The importance of understanding vestibular health for performers

02:22 - How the inner ear regulates balance and spatial relationships

03:07 - The impact of vestibular dysfunction in elite athletes

04:17 - Common signs of vestibular system issues and their effects

05:09 - What is the vestibular system and how does it work?

08:18 - The vestibulo-ocular reflex and its importance for focus during movement

09:12 - How delayed reactions reveal vestibular deficiencies

10:06 - Rapid and effective training methods for the vestibular system

11:43 - The connection between balance, eye focus, and performance

13:06 - How vestibular assessments help guide training, especially in young athletes

14:46 - The significance of reflexes in movement and performance

16:00 - Common signs of vestibular dysfunction in gymnasts and dancers

17:41 - Practical examples of vestibular influence on flexibility and strength

19:11 - The impact of vestibular training on spinal tension and movement range

22:37 - Success stories of rapid adaptation through vestibular rehab

25:09 - Functional movements to train the vestibular system effectively

27:45 - Signs of vestibular issues in gait and posture

29:21 - Using Romberg’s test as an assessment tool

32:21 - The importance of moving the head and eyes during balance training

33:17 - The essential role of vestibular skills in everyday movement and athletic performance

Resources & Links:

• The Vestibular System: Your Body’s Secret Weapon - Yuka’s clinic on the vestibular system
• Romberg’s Test Demo 
• VOR (Vestibulo-oculo Reflex) Demo

Connect with the Hosts:

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do it again. Do it again.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Performance Rewired, a podcast for movement experts seeking to unlock the secrets behind optimal performance using a brain-based lens. I'm Nikki Bybie.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And I'm Yuka Segira. We're master neurotrainers and performance coaches for elite and professional athletes and dancers. And we'll be sharing insights, tools, and a little behind the scenes of what we do. And if you want alternatives to more and more reps, this podcast is for you. Welcome to Performance Rewired. This week we're going to talk about the vestibular system. This is Yucca. And I'm Nikki. And this is, I believe to me, this is one of the most powerful and kind of mind-blowing systems. If your turns as a dancer or gymnast feel consistent, your balance disappears under pressure, under different situations. Uh and it could be your vestibular system, which is the system along with your eyes and other things that are controlling your balance. So we're going to talk about where balance actually comes from, why balance issues aren't necessarily strength or core problems and may not be fixed with many, many weeks of those types of things, why there might be tension in your spine if you have vestibular issues, and then how to train it. So did I get all of it?

unknown 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Did you miss anything? Here's the main points. Awesome. So we'll talk a little quick, quick update, life updates. Um I'll go. I got back last weekend. Actually, I was in Utah. Nikki lives in Utah, so it was so close, but so far. Exactly. I went, yeah, my sister and I basically chaperoned our dad or took our dad. He wanted to go to Zion National Park and then Bryce Canyon National Park. Uh, and we're like, you're not going by yourself because he's 89 and he's, you know, pretty healthy, but yeah, but we're like, you're not first he actually wanted to drive there, and then his doctor was like, yeah, maybe not so much. Um, so anyway, so we took him. My sister had actually been to those places before, so she was our guide, which was fantastic, but they're it's uh mind blowing, like these plates. Nick, you've been, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah. Like it's I was actually speaking of the vestibular system. So number one, I like it is the scale is dizzying. Like literally, like I felt, I don't know if you experienced this, but I felt like in looking, and this is at Bryce in particular, because there's this place where you look out onto this like vast canyon, and like my I could feel my brain like trying to figure out and process like the scale of things and how big it was, and how where how I which is actually part of the stibular system, it's actually your ambient system to figure out like how your relationship to the earth and gravity. And and then also I have gotten like seriously afraid of heights. Oh yeah, I don't know what it is. And your 89-year-old dad is like, isn't this a fun adventure? No, well, I don't, yeah, he I almost feel like he was almost more well, he didn't go out on this one part, which was a little bit sketchier. Anyway, highly, if you ever get a chance, like I I would say of any of like national parks and things that I've been to in the US, like these just were and my dad has also traveled a lot to a lot of national parks and everything like that. He's like, these were just like an another level. Um yeah, amazing. Yeah. So that's my update. Super fun. Um and highly recommend. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

My update always has to do with something broken in my life that's been fixed.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

So well, that's good that it's fixed.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

This week I had um a screw in my tire, and I drove around on a day. I like was like, let's take my chances. And so I just was like really heavily scheduled. When I noticed that I had a flat tire. Well, I didn't notice my car told me. And I was like, Yeah, maybe it's just a little flat. So the next morning I got a drover of the tire shop. There, they filled it, you gave me a thumbs up. I was like, actually, I see the problem right here. This is there's something in here. So, you know, it turned into a little longer process. And then once they had my car in there and they were working on it, they were like, hey, um, your engine belt is like cracked in several places. And I had noticed my engine didn't sound like it was running super smooth, but you know, like I just was busy with life. Yeah. And he's like, It's like near breaking. Do you want us to change that? So the good news of the week is I got a screw in my tire that took me to the shop and they helped me save my engine before I had a real problem, which I'm really grateful for because you know all the appliances in my life and the fall broke at the same time. So I don't really want to repeat that going into summer.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good. Um, no, it's nice when, and especially hopefully they're always telling the truth when they're like, oh, I found something else. I feel like that happens to me when I go to the dentist.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

Yeah. I I don't know, please believe them, but I believed this because I was like, I had noticed my engine not sounding real smooth. Got it.

unknown 5:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

All right. Speaking of smooth, um, do you want to talk about what the heck is the vestibular system?

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Oh, yeah. What the heck the vestibular system is, it's the inner ear. And it's really helpful in like Yuka said, having us kind of orient ourselves and our relationship to the earth. And when you have um something going on in your vestibular system, you might get car sick. Um, this is just like common things that we experience, like maybe a little motion sickness, like Yuka said, you might climb to the top of a high something and then feel a little bit uh disoriented or nauseous, and you're trying to orient yourself. And that has to do with uh how our inner ear is functioning. It's not necessarily dysfunctional, like a lot of us are out there, very functional people, uh, very functional performers, even high, high performers. And then we still sometimes will go through vestibular um things, and that's totally normal. It's totally fine. You'll be fine and functioning. But if you want to optimize performance, looking at your vestibular system can really unlock a lot of power for you to gain with just a little bit of effort, effort that you might be actually already making and putting time into other things like a little extra crunch session for yourself or you know, squeezing your abs on some kind of like apparatus, which may not be getting you the results that you're looking for because it's not the abs.

unknown 7:27

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Do you want to go into a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Yeah, so uh yes. So you're it's a reflexive system. So I can kind of talk about how the little tiny structures in your inner ear communicate with the rest of your body. Cause this, I think of, I don't know why, but for some reason when I learned when I was learning this system, it so number one, it was I I remember like in the class, this is one of those pivotal moments. Like I remember in the class when I got this explanation I'm gonna give you right now. Like I remember where I was, and I remember raising my hand. I was like, can you say that again? So basically, so these little do we have, and you may have heard of people that get crystals that like dislodge from the place where they're supposed to go, and then that causes vertigo. Um, so we have these teeny tiny canals. There are three, we have three on each side. They look like little roller coasters that are um 90-degree angle orientation to each other. Those are filled with fluid, and then they also have these teeny, teeny, tiny little hairs. So when the fluid, so if you imagine a hula hoop filled with water, and then there's little like the little beads that make noise or the hair that make that moves, when we turn or rotate our head or move our body with our head attached, hopefully, uh the fluid moves, the hair moves, those little hairs are basically nerve endings that then send a signal to our brainstem, which then is going to help our brain process, okay. Oh, she just moved, like I just bent over to pick something up off the ground. We better quickly turn on the muscles down the back so she doesn't land on her head. So that's how it works. And it's and it's so it's a signal that starts from the inner ear, travels to the brainstem, where it's kind of the control center to some degree of the vestibular system, communicating also with the cerebellum and the eyes, and then all of that together, like instantaneously, is sending a signal down the posterior chain primarily, which we'll talk about why that's important and interesting, um, to keep us from hitting our face on the pavement. Um, and you'll notice, so like like again, I was with my 89-year-old dad, and he was taking pictures. So, one of the things that you can when this that reflexive reaction is delayed, right? So he would like tilt his head up to shoot his camera up high, and then he would kind of bobble. Um, so that is a dysfunctional vestibular system, right? That reactivity has slowed down. Um but for elite athletes, it's not just about oh, balance is something that people lose when they're older. Like with elite athletes, just as Nikki was saying, like we can just do a little fine-tuning um and and get quite amazing results from this system because um one of the ways I learned about it, it's like it's our ambient or our peripheral system to help us understand where we are in space. So super powerful.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Yeah. I love that, Yuka. Thank you. Um it's actually, I think, my very favorite system to work in just because the payoff when you have someone who responds well are so huge. And there are situations where people aren't quite ready for vestibular work, even if they are high performers. We see that. We see people who, when we give them vestibular um assessments, they don't respond even well to the assessment. That typically, you know, um just means that we have some other skills that we might want to enhance before we enhance vestibular skills.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yes. So it it's it, yeah, it can be extremely quick acting. Um, and typically, like a lot of the other drills, like all you need is your thumbnail in your head.

unknown 11:19

Right?

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Something to look at in your head. And uh and again, same thing. It's my it's one of my favorite systems because it's so I feel like yeah, I'm not sure. Well, yeah, just because it's balance, it's extensor tone, it's extensor function, it's reactivity. Um and uh that's how I use it a lot, actually. So we could talk about the one of the main reflexes, which is the vestibuloar reflex, which you can kind of hear it has to do with the eyes. Yeah. And so what that is, if I am looking at uh, I think I don't know why this example comes up, but like if I'm look, if I'm talking to somebody and I want to kind of keep my eyes on it, or actually pirouettes would be the best example, right? So I keep my eyes on the spot that I'm looking at. As I turn my head to the right, my eyes are gonna move to the left. They're stabilizing and they're fixating on the thing that I need to stay focused on while my head, while my body is moving. And that is the key function of the vestibular system as a whole, but with the vestibular ocular reflex, it's when my head is rotating in whatever direction. Um, can I keep my eyes focused on the thing that I need? Right. So you cannot spot without it.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Um I I sorry.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

No, no, no, go, go.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

I um, and I'm sure you have as well. I have dancers who come in and when I'm assessing them, it takes them a second to separate the eyes from the head motion, which I always find fascinating. It doesn't happen often, but I do have people that I see that I when I start my vestibular ocular reflex assessment, um, their eyes are moving and they have to stop and and usually they giggle because you know they're smart and they're high performers, and they'll say, Oh, I don't know why I keep moving my eyes. But it's letting me know where their skill level is, even though it's a skill maybe they're even learning as I'm watching them. Yeah. Um, it's letting me know how developed that reflex is. And it gives me a gateway to really make a lot of progress with most of those clients because those clients, um one in particular that I'm thinking of, she came in and her mom was concerned about core strength. And actually, this is two. Um, they both came in and they were concerned about core strength. And when I looked at their VOR and their vestibular system in general, like they really had a difficult time separating their eyes from their head motion. And so, of course, we spent time on VOR drills and we got good results. And sometimes, you know, when you're working with kids, I'm sure you work with kids too, you guys. Yeah, um, the the parents they can't understand when they're looking at their child and they're, you know, they look very loose, unable to support themselves, maybe. And they the model has been, you know, go for the core. That model in our society has been available, and the thought that we've used for so long that it's hard for the parent to sometimes understand, like, actually, this is the gate to get to where we want. And you can do as many crunches as you want, and this body, until it gets the right reflex kicked in, is gonna continue to struggle. Often those dancers don't make it very far in my experience. They usually quit, which, you know, I mean, we all have like maybe some kind of um baseline talent for all these activities that we try when we're young. But to me, it's a little bit heartbreaking when I get the ones who really love dance, and this is maybe the reflex that needs to be worked on. And then the parent is like, well, we're gonna go to a strength coach. Actually, Yuca, didn't you have something like this happen recently? Do you want to share that?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah. So um, I've been working with a gymnast and she has she has trouble kind of generating power in her run. Let's just say like the alignment is just a little bit or a little bit and also a lot of bit off. Um, and so I had been working with her and she was also starting to work with a strength coach on lower body strength and stability and several weeks of seeing this coach twice a week, like there has been no change. And so the things where we think about, oh, it's a muscular, you just need you just need to do like glute work or clamshells or crunches or planks, right? But if the reflexive system that is orienting you to the earth, to movement, to spinning, to jumping is a little bit off and perhaps not sending enough signals down the posterior chain, like no amount, or not no amount, the strength work can absolutely help. I'm not saying that doesn't help, it can absolutely help, and it can actually contribute a little bit. But if the if the kind of the higher order system, which is I think we generally what we talk about, right? The system that is actually telling the muscles what to do, if it is not getting good signals to tell the what muscles what to do, the muscles aren't going to do the right thing. Yeah. Um, right. So so that's why, and again, like thinking of the vestibular system as this really holistic system that even like all of the planks, which also I kind of feel like it's always weird that abdominal work is done parallel to the floor, where gymnastics actually there's a lot of stuff where you're not actually upright. But um, we don't do a lot of like quote stabilization work while we're standing. Uh anyway, that's a whole other thing. Anyway, so so vestibular system, super important. And and I feel like it's yeah, like kind of a if you know how to access it, if you have a healthy one, if you can, and again, for elite athletes, if you find like it can get down to like, oh, you have one canal that's not functioning well, yeah, and you tune that canal, like the single canal, then like things can change. So absolutely. Yeah. So really quickly, so so just examples. So we I talked about spotting, like where does the re where do the reflexes happen? And a lot of it, the easiest one to think about is spotting, like, or what I'm running down the runway towards the vault table. The vault table is not also bouncing up and down while I'm running. That's a vestibular system that's helping you. Um when I'm pirouetting standing up or in a handstand, keeping things focused there is also the vestibular system. That's a vestibular ocular reflex, also. Um yeah. So anytime where we are moving and something the world has to say clear, that's your vestibular system. And so for gymnasts, one of the clues that it's not working well, one big one is if they get dizzy during skills, which there's a lot of like a lot of momentum, a lot of big like vestibular demands. And so uh that's one clue. Uh, and then the other is yeah, that same that kind of like the the the athlete that you're like, she needs core work. Yes. Right. It's very likely vestibular slash cerebellar, as opposed to like she just needs to do more crunches and planks.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

That's exactly the way I see it too. And the the some of the dancers who have hold a ton of spinal tension, that's another signal that the vestibular system might be optimized and really enhance movement. I see that regularly where I've had dancers who literally have never bent as far back in a cambra as they have with me, and they'll be in their professional field. Like some of them have been longtime professionals and they've come and seen me, and then I'll give them a vestibular drill, and they'll access more range of motion through their spinal extension, which is cambra, than they've ever experienced in their entire life. And it's simply because there was a vestibular area that once we tweaked it, we got a lot more out of their bodies, and that is very thrilling to watch. It's very rewarding uh for us as coaches to see um you get major bang for your time off a little tweak to the vestibular system. I also was just thinking, I had a dancer come in um once, and her mom is a regular client of mine. And one day her mom started telling me that she had been standing on a bosou, like at the first 10 minutes of every one of her training sessions. She's a ballroom dancer. Wait, 10 minutes? Yeah, first 10 minutes of every session she was getting with her one-on-one coach, she was standing on a bosu. And I was like, I mean, I'd only seen this child once, and it had been, I think, two years since I had seen her. And so I was like, Well, why is she doing that? And she said, Oh, because he said that her ankles are weak or her core is weak, and he's trying to strengthen up her core. And I was like, you know, this could possibly be something with her vestibular system. Um, if you if you bring her in, let's take a look at her vestibular system because she might be standing on that bosu for a million sessions and still not get what he's after. And so there is maybe a way that we can approach this and get her dancing sooner in her one-on-one sessions, because 10 minutes of a one-on-one session for that kind of in my mind, I might is kind of I don't know, not that exciting for a kid that's 11. And so that functional.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

She's not a surfer. Right, right. Because that's a hard yes, yeah, yeah. Because Yuka's gonna maybe talk to us for a second about Bosu's here in a second. But um, we can't, we I brought her in. She was losing ballroom partners. Um, she was very frustrated because she she's been training a long time. She's had a lot of coaching, but she was not getting the partner she wanted. And so we worked together. I gave her a program for her vestibular and her visual system. She had two systems we worked on, sent her out with five drills, um, told her to run them every Day, told her to put on a timer on her little phone so that she did it. And she, of course, you know, is in a normal 11-year-old, so it wasn't like an immediate like adaptation to this new little habit that she needed. But her mom said that one day she ran her vestibular stuff and then went into her session, and her instructor did not put her on the bosu. He didn't know what was going on. He just knew that she was moving so much more solidly. And then she realized, oh, he's not putting me on the bosu today. And then he told her at the end of that session, that is the best I have ever seen you move. So she got motivated by that and she started doing her drills regularly. And in six weeks' time, I think it was six weeks, it was not very long. She came to me, I think, in February. She had nationals in March. And then before April, her mom came in and said, the best, most wanted partner in the valley just chose her as her as his partner. And when she showed me the video of her daughter dancing, I said, Is that your daughter? And she said, Yes. But she moved so different than she had just six weeks before. That's amazing. I was like, wow, that's amazing. She's young, her system's, you know, really adapting quickly. And she is moving with much more confidence and much more um presentation than she had, even when I had seen her. She her presentation got much better and her balance got much better while we were working together. But like in the six weeks that I had not worked with her because she just took that program and went, you know, went full force into it. She had made a crazy amount of changes. It was really, really beneficial to see for me. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah. And that's like, I love that. Yeah, it's it's such a success story. It's so great. Yeah. And for for athletes, elite athletes, yeah, and then younger athletes and dancers, because I think we talked about before, because the system is still molding and changing, their brains are highly changeable. And so within six weeks, yeah, you can have dramatic changes. Like assuming they're doing their program, you know, four or five days a week, right? If you just do it like once or twice a week, you're probably not going to get any permanent changes. Um, you can get changes in the moment, but they're not right, just like anything else. You have to do it frequently, you have to do it with intensity. Um, so I'll say really quick because Nikki teased the bosu. Um so because so we want to train balance in a context that is how where we are, right? And so number one, you're not training your so balance comes from your visual system, it comes from proprioception, it comes from the vestibular system. But if you really want to train the thing that is at the root of balance, you need to be moving your head or you need to be moving your body with your head also moving. So those canals, so those stones are actually reacting. And so just standing on a BOSU ball is not, I don't count that as balance training. And in fact, I don't actually really count it as proprioceptive training either for ankles. Uh, there's a great study, maybe we'll link it in the in this in the show notes. But the the name of the study, and I'm I might get it a little bit wrong, but basically, uh unstable, like balancing on unstable surfaces is not proprioceptive training for ankles, basically. So interesting. Yeah, so this is like gonna go way off tangent, but but and yeah, anyway. So I don't ever use bosuvals for balance training, right? If anything, I'm gonna put them in a position that they may need to be in, and I'm gonna put a band around their ribcage and then yank them around, basically, because that is be now becoming a reflexive, right? They're training, we're training the reflex to stay upright when something is pulling you off. Um uh I'll give a quick example of actually of one of the things, one of the re ways that I use vestibular training a lot is one is flexibility, because again, when we determine what part of the system, one actually one, because it acts on the posterior chain. And so for like gymnastics and dance, right? We need mobile spine, mobile hamstrings, um calf muscles, the whole thing down the chain. And so because the vestibular system acts directly, communicates directly with those muscles, with that chain, uh, when we do a vestibular drill, you're gonna get muscle, like functional and tone changes uh in those muscles. And so for splits, for backbending, for bridges, things like that, it can be super powerful and again quite quick. And similarly, like I've run like programs where I mean, and these kids, they probably, I don't, I don't think they did the drills every day. I think they probably did them like three times a week, maybe four, and there was less than 10, like probably not much more than five minutes of activation, and they had changes like through the summer in their flexibility. Um, and then the other way I use it is for posterior chain function. Um, gymnasts are notoriously weak in their glutes and hamstrings. It's a very flexor and and I think it's also just the way that conditioning is done in many places, that they don't have great function in their glutes and hamstrings. Um you'd think, right? Like, oh, they must be so strong everywhere. Like, no. Um, and so if I see them run or walk, actually, one of the things is one of the signs of insufficient posterior or insufficient vestibular function is when, and you I see this a lot in gymnasts, I don't see it so much in dancers, but when they walk and their leg, there's no like hip extension. And so it's like, it's like if you had a stick figure and they just like stepped forward like this, like kind of like a bird, actually. You know how a bird when it goes like just has these like robot legs, um, and they don't actually push off their leg and their hip is not extending, that's usually a sign to me that they need vestibular activation. Um so if you're a coach or a parent and you see your kid and they look like they don't actually stride, uh, that's a sign.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Yeah. Well, and and I mean, just thinking about that image of a bird walking, like if you think about as we age, a lot of us shuffle our feet and you see a lot of decrease in spinal. There's like I mean, not to get too nerdy, we could say it's compensatory flexion, but we see that there's a lot of spinal tension in um older populations and so and that their balance is impacted. There's lots of signs here that we could work on vestibular skills, you know, based on just how we see older people decline and how their tension shows up and how that tension is a compensation to kind of stabilize them in a world that is looking less stable to them because of vestibular needs, perhaps. Right. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Um, should we talk about like maybe one or two drills? Yeah, let's do.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

I'll go, I'll go quick drill. What one? So this is actually one of the things that I use as an assessment. It's called uh Romberg's test, but a Romberg Plus, like the advanced version of a Romberg's test. And so I guess Romberg is the guy that's like, hey, if you make someone stand with their eyes closed, they fall over. That's a sign of vestibular dysfunction. And then he named it after himself. Um, all right. So the way that you can test this, and you can actually use this as a drill or as an assessment, um, and that is you can stand with your feet together, which is the easiest, like side by side, or stagger them slightly, or stand in a full tandem stance, which is like you're standing on a tightrope, your heel and toe are touching, your feet are perfectly parallel. And then you can just start with your eyes open and see can you balance there? Like, how well do you do? If that seems easy, then you close your eyes. Right. And then I typically test for 20 seconds to see like, are they swaying to one side or the other? Do they fall out of it or move their foot? And so for an elite athlete, they should be able to stand for 20 seconds without like their ankles can maybe shift a little bit and maybe there's tiny bits of adjustments. Um, but what is shocking, again to your point, where like you can have literally a professional athlete, a world-class athlete, and I've done this, like I was where I was a massage therapist in the Stanford uh training room. And so I wasn't technically supposed to be doing any neuro stuff, but sometimes I was just like, this is actually what you need. And so I would just kind of sneak it in. Uh yeah, like people who are top of the class and they would start falling over after seven seconds.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And I'm like, how, and yeah, so you can be an elite athlete and have dysfunction, but it's not great that a basic test that you know anybody should be able to do that you can actually pass. So so that's Romberg's. Um, and then the way to do it as a drill is you just stand there, right? You can move your head in different directions, like up, down, left, and right, hold it for, you know, eight, 10 seconds um to turn on your system. So that's one that I use as a drill as well as an assessment.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I use the same drill that you could just described. And I I use it as an assessment as well. And then other things that I use to determine vestibular, how well the vestibular system is working is sometimes just gait. You can see um when you're walking, often there there'll be signals that there's maybe some vestibular things to look at. Uh, one of those just being a tension and how left versus right tension or tone in the body is being held. And we can often see that just as you're walking. Like there's one side maybe holding a little more tone, and that is gonna be the side that we're gonna work the vestibular system on. Do you do that as well?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

You guys, yeah. So I'll test extensor function, like a gloop, like a single-leg gloopridge, or I'll do some, like if I'm with them, I can actually do like physical muscle testing. And if there's clearly one side that's deficient, then yeah, that's usually a sign that there's opportunity to upregulate that. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Yeah. And one of the things I've just been thinking about in regards to training, that you know, we we both know this innately now, that the error of training with your head and your eyes in just one place, you know, because that's not how we really experience movement in performance. So your eyes and your head are moving often. And in ballet, they often have us hold our eyes one place and try to balance with our eyes in one place, but that's not at all how you utilize balance in ballet. You're moving and spotting and turning. And so um, just that little piece of, you know, insight into how you're actually not training balance as well as you could be training balance is something to consider if you're a trainer.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Yes. Yes. I love that, yeah, exactly that. Like you, you, you are still training balance, but you're doing it only partially. Yes. So you're not taking advantage of the system whose job it is to help us balance. So yeah, so that's kind of we can wrap it up, I guess. I think uh yeah, we're at like 30 minutes or so. Um, but yeah, so the vestibular system, um, I actually I'll do a little plug. I do have a recorded clinic on the vestibular system. Um, so if you want to get a little bit more of a deep dive into that, I can add that to the show notes. Um, but is it is like again, like we said, it's our most favorite system probably to work with because A, I think it's just fascinating. And because the results can be quick, because it can improve things from balance to right reflexive stability to overall movement quality to posterior chain function to flexibility, right? It does so many things because it's so central to how we move. Um so vestibular system, everybody should be training it.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Everybody should be training it. It's really one that, like as we said, is super important for performance and just, you know, in general life. And we'll include at the end uh in the show notes, we'll include a vestibular drill. So if you are listening to this and you hop over to our show notes, it'll take to you to our YouTube, which is full of well, it's becoming full, it's not full yet. We're filling it with like neuro information so that you can try some of these things at home. So, key takeaway for today, if you are wanting to improve your balance, if you are one of those dancers who's being told that you have a weak core or a gymnast who is not getting a really great functional backline, um, and you're having trouble with the spine either being too loose or too tight, the key area that we might look at enhancing based on you know assessments would be vestibular. And those vestibular skills will really enhance, like we said, most people immediately, unless there's something more going on that we have to address first. But if you want better balance and more power and less tension, train your vestibular system.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Awesome. All right, and so we'll catch you. Yes, absolutely 1000%, and we'll catch you next time on Performance Rewired. Do it again.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

One more time, do it again. One more time, do it again. One more time, one more time, one more time, one more time, one more time.