Sensory before Motor
I want to talk about the importance of the phrase sensory before motor and what that means. There are 2 different aspects to this principle to discuss.
The first is the fact that information from the nervous system comes up the spine into the back of the brain and then goes forward. I learned about this during lectures on the brain's fuel, which is glucose and oxygen. Bottom to top, back to front is what we were told about the path into the brain.
When you look at the diagram below you can that the path first travels to the sensory cortex before the motor cortex. So sensory before motor is anatomically true due to its placement.
It makes sense that the quality of your movement depends on the quality of the sensory inputs the brain receives. How accurate the inputs are from your vision, proprioception (body awareness) and vestibular system (balance and spatial awareness) will have an enormous influence on the quality of your movement.
It is not at all unusual to have areas of decreased somatic awareness. Thomas Hanna coined the phrase SMA, which is sensory motor amnesia. SMA occurs when we lose the somatic connection to our muscles and certain areas of our body. In other words, we are literally less aware of how they feel.
Stiffness and/or lack of mobility is often the result of SMA and is a protective response from the brain to dial down the feedback from that area so you don't walk about in chronic pain or discomfort all the time. Have you ever had a massage and said - jeesh... I had no idea there was so much tension there! (wherever there may be)
Having a lack of somatic awareness runs the risk of poor performance or injury. That makes sense. If the sensory input to the brain isn't accurate, whether it is a poorly mapped joint, or a lack of sensory awareness, your movement may be compromised.
Benefits from doing a sensory warmup
Wake up your body! Simply brushing or touching your body increases and improves your sensory inputs which will lead to improved proprioception.
Improved coordination & reaction time. When you warm up the body it increases nerve conduction speed. Always good, especially for athletes. (Dancers are definitely athletes!)
Reducing risk of injury. When the brain receives accurate sensory input it will minimize the risk of compensatory patterns that lead to injury.
True story: This past fall I was working with a PBT dancer who had tweaked her ankle in rehearsal and was appropriately apprehensive about how much to do on it. She didn't want to make it worse.
I watched her walk and while she wasn't limping, she was quite cautious in her gait. She sat down on the floor and we did approximately 30 seconds of brushing lightly all around the ankle and foot. Very light, soft strokes. I then had her stand up and walk again to reassess.
She stopped after a few steps and with a grin said - it doesn't hurt! I was as surprised as she was! We went on to do some ankle mobility drills and ended our session. That was a powerful lesson to us both on the sensory before motor concept.
Does it always happen like that? No. What I will say is using applied neurology strategies often feels like magic, and I'm happy to be adding them to my toolbox of training techniques.
That experience prompted me to shoot a quick 4 minute sensory warmup that could be used as a warmup example. My advise is to take 1-4 minutes before your regular warmup to do a quick sensory warmup. Pick and choose - vary the movements - take the essence of what it is designed to do and enjoy!
To your success,
Deborah