The competence center for
neurocentric performance improvement
in professional sports
Hello and a warm welcome to the BRAINERQi® website. My name is Michael Erhart – neurocentric sports coach, mastermind, and chief nerd of our innovative NEURO PERFORMANCE CENTER. What my team and I focus on is, on one hand, complex neuroscience, and on the other, easy to understand: Everything we humans do is controlled by our brain. Even every motor movement begins in our brain. From there, commands are sent to the body, muscles, and so on. In traditional training, people practice sports movements through constant repetition of this motor process with the goal of improving the movement pattern – and ultimately athletic success. But if the brain controls everything, shouldn’t we therefore – first and foremost – train the brain and improve its control of the body? Yes, that’s what we do.
Michael Erhart
Improvement of Body Motor Skills
When talking about physical movement, a distinction must be made between voluntary, deliberate, conscious movement — such as bringing an espresso cup to your mouth or launching yourself with full power out of the starting gate in Kitzbühel downhill skiing. These moves, linked to conscious thinking, are primarily initiated, coordinated, and controlled in the frontal lobe of the brain, located at the front above the forehead.
However, during downhill racing on icy slopes, it only takes a few moments before all subsequent motor movements become involuntary, reflex-based actions, because the speed of the descent is much too high for conscious thought. From that point on, our cerebellum mainly takes over the command. The same happens in all fast sports and life situations — especially those demanding a high level of body motor skills — motorcycle racing, mountain biking downhill, tennis, soccer, and so on. Or to stick with the example of the espresso cup: When a table-mate accidentally bumps into you in the café while you are bringing the fragrant cup to your mouth. Up to 90% of motor activity then occurs reflexively in the brain!
Voluntary, conscious movement can be greatly optimized through intentional brain training — primarily through mental exercises, simulations, or disciplines like LifeKinetik®. What we at BRAINERQi® focus on is the systematic improvement of reflexive body motor skills, and thus up to 90% of what really matters when hurtling down a slope at 140 km/h or racing side by side in motorcycle racing at 250 km/h. Using individually tailored, neurologically based training programs, we activate, train, and optimize brain regions located deep within the head (such as the parietal lobes, occipital lobes, cerebellum, brainstem) to make reflexive motor responses faster, more precise, and safer. For noticeably and measurably more success in sports!
Improvement of Brain Performance & Endurance
Once the brain regions responsible for quick, reflexively automated movements are on the top level, athletes feel the effects clearly. Therefore, neurocentric training — often called neuroathletics — has rapidly gained importance in elite sports. It’s been recognized that the brain, with its capability to control the body, often presents improvement potential — and can even be the weakest link in training progress. We have never encountered an athlete who couldn’t improve in some aspect, even if it’s just a small detail. In the race for milliseconds, centimeters, or every single point, success or failure is often decided by tiny details, because the top athletes are closely matched in today’s sports.
Once Part 1 of our work is completed — when the brain controls the body faster, more accurately, precisely, and safely — our focus shifts to optimizing the brain’s endurance.
Traditional sports nutrition primarily aims at fueling muscles efficiently. However, the brain — depending on scientific sources and the level of exertion — may consume 60% or more of our body’s energy and nutritional intake. Few consider this, but at BRAINERQi®, we dedicate our highest attention to supplying the brain with the perfect »fuel«. If the brain perceives a deficit or fears insufficient energy due to ongoing physical strain, it automatically reduces physical performance to guarantee its own supply—since the brain is the highest authority in the human system. It’s always the brain that commands slowing down or even giving up.
Special Expertise in Motorcycle Racing, Soccer, and...?
In principle, our neurological expertise benefits every sport. However, in line with our philosophy, we always strive to provide our clients with the best possible professional performance. This requires intensive engagement with a sport, understanding it in detail, and delivering targeted, high-quality input — not just experimenting blindly. Thus, collaborations with our team are typically very intensive and demanding.
Currently, our two core competencies — prioritized — are motorcycle racing (primarily road racing) and soccer. Of course, we are happy to expand our portfolio to include other sports, especially those with similar challenges for athletes. We also see great potential in alpine skiing, where a Swiss superstar demonstrably exemplifies how productive neurocentric training can be.
Support for »Unexplained« Form Slumps—Topic PCS
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of our work involves seemingly inexplicable performance slumps and sudden drops in performance — particularly in our core sports of motorcycle racing and soccer. Nearly always, they share the same cause—and athletes or their coaches may not realize it.
Through our anamnesis sessions, where we trace back step-by-step to the point where form, feel for the motorcycle, or joy in header was still present, we almost always find a point where the athlete’s head was subjected to a blow or high acceleration forces. More severe impacts to the head often leave tiny traces, even if no diagnosed traumatic brain injury or loss of consciousness occurred. But suddenly, physical movements are no longer as precise and smooth, reactions are slower, concentration quickly diminishes, and so on. The next fall, crash or collision — whatever it may be — is virtually preprogrammed. These impacts are again associated with high forces acting on specific parts of the brain (e.g., the midbrain at the top, the brainstem). These tiny traces from the initial impact, with subsequent hits, develop into small scars, which after another blow to the head become significantly larger — suddenly, nothing fits together anymore: no feeling in movement, no sense of the sports equipment, no precision in motor skills, disrupted muscle tone, and so forth.
Within our BRAINERQi® team, besides Mastermind Michael Erhart, two Doctors (an internist and a neurologist), a Doctor of Chiropractic, another internationally renowned neuro trainer, and a manual therapist are engaged with this topic — especially with how we can quickly restore the fitness of a professional athlete or their brain and central nervous system, thus treating the seemingly inexplicable slump in performance at its origin: the brain. The neurological term for this is PCS — Post Concussion Syndrome. We also operate our own HBO overpressure oxygen chamber (hyperoxia) on-site, as well as a therapy station for oxygen deficiency (hypoxia).
Click here to open a PDF with our therapy concept.
Development of Neurocentric Training Tools
In addition to creating training programs, we invest a lot of time, expertise, enthusiasm, and resources into developing neurocentric training tools. From relatively simple but highly effective devices for our BRAINERQi® BALANCE and VISUAL ACADEMY, aimed at improving the vestibular and visual systems, to eye training tools for corporate health promotion, all the way to what is probably the world’s first NEURO MOTORBIKE SIMULATOR: In this setup, motorcycle racers sit on a racing motorcycle and are remotely guided by a coach into leaning angles and different riding positions, where neurological tests are to be completed. Based on eye movement analysis, neurofeedback via EEG (electroencephalography), HRV (heart rate variability), and other measures, we identify potential for neurocentric improvements in training or even neurologically-based therapy, such as for PCS. We also have the concept for a Ski-Cross simulator floating around in our minds.