For athletic purposes, your brain is divided into three sections…

Analytical Brain - Emotional Brain - Athletic Brain

Cerebral Cortex… driven by your Analytical Brain and Emotional Brain

Cerebellum… driven by your Athletic Brain

Analytical Brain - Cerebrum
(Conscious Mind)

This substantial part of your brain, which accounts for 83% of its total mass, is responsible for the "how-to figure it out” analytics during skill learning, development, and practice. It also drives the inspired emotional motivation of the “want” and curiosity to solve problems. Your analytical brain includes four key areas that regulate cognition, attention, awareness, and consciousness…

          Frontal lobe processes complex thinking, decisions, planning, logic, and reasoning
                                      (Your competitive gene has a significant impact on this part of the brain.)

          Parietal lobe processes senses such as touch, taste, and temperature
          Temporal lobe processes sound, language, recognition, memory, and objects
          Occipital lobe processes light and visual perceptions of shapes and movement
                                        (The occipital lobe has the strongest connection to the athletic brain.)

Emotional Brain - Midbrain
(Subconscious Mind & Unconscious Thoughts)

The midbrain, often referred to as the "emotional brain," is the smallest brain region, accounting for approximately 6% of total brain volume. It regulates emotional responses and functions, including sleep, hormone production, energy balance, metabolism, and electrolyte balance. The midbrain processes sensory information from sight, sound, touch, thirst, and appetite, including "emotional” eating. 

Physical and sensory input triggers emotional responses as it moves downward from the top of the brain toward the brainstem and the athletic brain. This input also provides significant behavioral flexibility, encompassing emotions such as happiness, joy, anticipation, curiosity, trust, surprise (both positive and negative), disgust, anger, fear, and sadness, as well as primal emotions.

This mental and emotional flexibility, known as the cognitive control network, enables you to observe events and objects both within and outside your environment. (Memory recall: you are always both the object and the environment.) This flexibility is vital for emotional discernment, helping you distinguish between positive and negative, good and bad, winning and losing, safe and harmful, and love and fear.

Athletic Brain - Cerebellum
(Subconscious Mind & Unconscious Thoughts)

Your athletic brain is located at the back of the brainstem, ideally as far from your analytical brain as possible. In fact, it isn't even directly connected to your analytical or emotional brain. Picture your athletic brain encased in a protective bubble, isolated from all analytical and emotional information. Any data from your analytical and emotional brain must pass through the brainstem, the protective gatekeeper, before reaching your athletic brain. (More to come on Day 25 - Athletic Brain!) 

The part of the athletic brain called the cerebellum, often referred to as the “little brain,” shouldn’t be underestimated. Even though it makes up only 10% of the brain’s size, it contains 82-87% of all neurons. Of the brain's total 85 billion neurons, 70 billion are in your athletic brain! While you may be consciously aware of your intentions behind muscle movement, your athletic brain operates quietly within your unconscious thoughts and subconscious mind, enabling smooth muscle movement.