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The sport of rowing not only requires physical strength, but it requires an equal amount
of mental strength. Just like all the parts of the body are physically
working together, all parts of the brain must work together as well.
The seemingly simple stroke requires equal physical power and mental power.
This starts with thousands of hours of practice on the water and on the ergometer, forming
MUSCLE MEMORY. While the exact mechanism is unknown, it has been shown that the formation
of muscle memory is caused by an increase in brain activity.
First, let's start at the cellular level. The brain and brain stem, known as the Central
Nervous System, communicate with the rest of the body, the Peripheral Nervous System,
through messengers called neurons. Neurons connect to each other at synapses.
These neurons pass messages along by electric signals, or action potentials, caused by a
sudden flow of sodium ions, which are also found in salt.
There are two types of neurons that connect like telephone wires all over the body.
Afferent Neurons send information from the Peripheral Nervous System to the Central Nervous
System and Efferent Neurons send information from the
Central Nervous System to the Peripheral Nervous System.
So now back to rowing. The first time a novice rower tries to take a stroke, she must consciously
think of the six steps: arms, body, legs, legs, body, arms.
This thinking process occurs in the Frontal Lobe of the brain.
Here, the Primary Motor Cortex sends this message of arms-body-legs-legs-body-arms,
down from the brain, to the spinal cord, to the motor neurons in various parts of the
body. These motor neurons connect to the muscles
by a neuromuscular junction. The motor cortex is helped by the cerebellum
and the basal ganglia which help coordinate the various body parts to act together.
Right now, the act of rowing is stored in the Prefrontal Cortex, the location of our
short-term or working memories. As more and more strokes are taken, the neurons
form a tighter and tighter circuit as the synapses conform to fit more closely together.
Slowly, the originally robotic rowing develops into a smooth and coordinated stroke.
Now, the rowing motion will start to move from short-term memory storage in the Frontal
Lobe to the long-term memory storage in the Hippocampus.
This will allow the rower to keep taking strokes over, and over, without actively thinking
about the arms-body-leg process each time.
So now we have the basics of a stroke, but it is not quite perfect yet. [Coaches yelling].
Auditory information goes through our ears
to the Primary Auditory Cortex, located in the Temporal lobe.
This is translated by the Wernicke's area and sent to the Cerebellum.
The Cerebellum sends the adjustments down from the Central to the Peripheral Nervous System
After making the correction, the body sends
signals back up from the Peripheral to the Central Nervous system where the new, corrected
stroke is entered back into the working memory. However, the rower must now keep consciously
thinking about the change until the new stroke can move from the Frontal Lobe to the Hippocampus to overwrite the
incorrect stroke that was previously stored there.
The Occipital Lobe works to take in visual information that the rower observes of the
athlete in front of her. This is important in rowing because a key
element to a fast boat is all the rowers matching their strokes together.
The Primary Visual Cortex processes this information from the eye and sends it to the Cerebellum,
which repeats the same process as demonstrated with the auditory cortex.
The Cerebellum also works with the Parietal Lope and the Somatosensory Cortex to help
the rower adjust to proprioception cues. This helps the rower adjust each stroke to
the environment depending on rain, wind, the rate of rowing, and the balance of the other
rowers in the boat. With every stroke, the brain constantly takes
in ALL this information and adjusts, and the muscle memory stored in the brain becomes
closer and closer to that perfect stroke. This is where all the early mornings and the
hundreds of thousands of kilometers of practice come into play.
Because of all the repetitions of the stroke, the neurons have become very tightly wired.
And because of all the correction processing, this wiring is close to perfect.
So during a race, when the brain is on overload from the crowds, pain, and pure exhaustion,
the stroke can still be executed because that the brain is tightly wired to do so.
So let me wrap it up. Conscious thoughts in the Frontal Lobe form action potentials that
are sent from the Primary Motor Cortex to the muscles.
This information is temporarily stored in the working memory of the Prefrontal Cortex.
After enough practice and repetition, this information is entered into the long-term
muscle memory in the Hippocampus, which leads to a better execution of the stroke under
pressure. See? I told you it was simple.