Soccer is not just dribbling, shooting, playing, and scoring goals. It takes concentration, performance, focus, and determination. As an amateur player, you must be tired of knowing (and hearing) this.

So, let’s talk about something that might be new: how some brain exercises help develop and maintain these skills. And, consequently, improve performance in soccer.

Brain gymnastics, as some experts call it, emerged a few years ago. Research carried out by the Karolinska Institute, located in Sweden, proved that professional soccer players’ brains have more refined executive functions than others. Their cognitive faculties have an expanded capacity for decision-making and planning.

Can we consider this information accurate if playing soccer stimulates the brain, among other benefits? Would exercising gray matter help improve soccer performance? According to research, yes.

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How Brain Gymnastics Can Improve Soccer Performance

According to Predrag Petrovic, a neurologist and one of the research authors, an individual cannot be a good player if they don’t have well-developed brain activities.

In other words, the difference between a champion athlete and others is mind control; focus, concentration, and agility of reasoning are essential skills for an excellent performance.

The good news: it’s possible to improve executive function through training, that is, stimulating the brain. According to Howard Gardner, an American psychologist, body intelligence (motor skills), spatial (game vision), and logico-mathematics are the brain functions that make the difference in the performance of football players.

Taking the mind out of the comfort zone implies a greater speed of reasoning, agility, and problem-solving ability. With a few daily exercises, anyone can improve skills and develop essential executive functions to achieve good performance, whether in sports, professional or personal life.

Exercise Your Brain To Improve Soccer Performance

To improve your football performance, we have separated some foolproof tricks for your brain. See what they are:

Peripheral Vision: Many of Pelé’s brilliant moves, such as the team’s fourth goal in winning the third championship in 1970, were related to the king’s vision of the game. In other words, the ability to perceive, in seconds, what is happening around us. This expanded visual field awareness can be considered a gift known as peripheral vision. However, it can also be practiced. Want to develop ace eyes?

• Shake your fingers on the side of your head, not looking at your hand. See the fingers just out of the corners of your eyes. You can do this all the time while reading, on your phone, or even working.
• Stimulate Your Night Vision: When taking a shower, turn off the light. It may sound crazy, but activities in the dark aim to stimulate the rod cells located in the peripheral retina.

Quick reasoning: The faster your reasoning response, the better you perform on the field. After all, a football match requires speed and agility. One of the ways to develop quick thinking is through board games and math challenges – which can make our minds faster and more agile. Want to practice reasoning?

Try something different. New, never-before-tried activities stimulate the brain and help create new neural connections;

• Train your memory: Try memorizing phone numbers, street names, recipes, and other information about your routine.

Good Breathing: Correct breathing through the abdomen reduces the effects of stress on the brain and helps in proper cognitive functions. It reduces fatigue and tiredness and makes running easier.

• Practice square breathing: more than just inhaling and exhaling, it’s important to pause before each of these actions;
• Practice lying down belly breathing: place your hands on your abdomen and count as you breathe to create a rhythm. Inhale, mentally counting to four and exhaling simultaneously, always through the nostrils.

Focus and Concentration: These are essential items for any athlete. Being prepared mentally is as essential as being technically and physically prepared, avoiding distractions, and controlling emotions. Concentrate and develop your focus daily, with small exercises in your routine.

• One of the recommended exercises is listening to music and trying to identify the instruments in the ensemble.
• Look for foods that can bring back some childhood memories.

Mental Agility: Knowing the exact moves at the right time leads to good plays, and what ensures this is a mental skill. Some exercises help the brain’s executive functions work properly, such as:

Dress or undress with your eyes closed: it may seem pointless, but this exercise improves coordination, increases the union of the right and left hemispheres, improves fine motor skills, makes mental maps of the existing distance from button to button, about how to close the zipper, where to insert the arms.

Learn five words in another language: it doesn’t matter which language or if every day is different. To improve mental agility, learn 3 to 5 new words daily.

When we put the brain into action, the results are visible. In addition to improving your performance on the field, it can change your game setup. It’s just a few daily exercises.

Final Words

Want to add some more to your routine? How about changing your usual route through the supermarket aisles, writing with your non-dominant hand, or changing the location of familiar objects you usually pick up without thinking? All these are vital to maintaining and improving your soccer skills.