Soma NPT is the mobile cognitive performance tool designed to increase an athlete's physical and mental capacity.
Deliver data driven cognitive training with Soma NPT and ensure your success with Soma Analytics.
Brain Endurance Training (BET) is a deliberate form of
cognitive training that uses repeated targeted exposure to increased mentally-fatiguing cognitive load to condition the brain to withstand mental and physical fatigue due to superior psycho-physiological adaptations.
Research has shown athletes that performed Brain Endurance Training (BET) outperformed the control group physically and cognitively.
Brain Endurance Training (BET)and Football Performance
bet
control
Cognition
11 %
3.8 %
Agility
8.9 %
4.3 %
Repeated Sprint
10 %
3 %
Attention
42 %
No Change
Error Rate
68 %
21 %
Brain Endurance Training (BET)and Cycling Performance
bet
control
80% Time to Exhaustion Test
11.4 %
3.4 %
65% Time to Exhaustion Test
17.1 %
2.8 %
5 min Time Trial
2.5%
60 meters
1.8%
24 metres
20 min Time Trial
5.5%
550 meters
1.6%
135 metres
Brain Endurance Training (BET)and Dynamic Exercise Performance
Press up
Wall sit
Plank
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
53 %
131 %
46 %
Control Group
32 %
89 %
40 %
Prior Brain Endurance Training (BET)and Endurance Performance
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
24 %
Control Group
12 %
Concurrent Prior Brain Endurance Training (BET)and Exercise Performance
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
32 %
Control Group
12 %
Brain Endurance Training (BET)on fatigue and exercise tolerance in active people
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
176 %
Control Group
86 %
Brain Endurance Training (BET)to reduce fatigue
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
126 %
Control Group
42 %
How does it work?
Impaired Performance
Improved Performance
The overall desired outcome of Brain Endurance Training (BET) is increased mental capacity translating into increased physical capacity.
In order to achieve this, we must train the brain with targeted challenges, with enough intensity and frequency to create fatigue and therefore adaptations to fatigue. In other words, BET recalibrates the physical-mental relationship, allowing us to perform for longer before we reach the point of exhaustion and we decide to stop.
The cognitive tasks in Soma NPT deliver cognitive training in multiple layered ways by providing a variety of tasks to challenge different cognitive skills in different contexts.
These tasks can be interacted with directly via the app using, touch, voice, and heart rate response options.
Isn’t the training just causing
improvement in the task itself?
When we train a skill with frequency and consistency, especially when we train to the point of fatigue, we will undoubtedly improve that skill.
The point of the training is not just to improve the skill or get better at the task itself, rather the point of the training is to reap the gains we get from ADAPTATION to the fatigue we create with training.
For example,
You want to increase your upper body strength and stamina, so you begin doing 50 push-ups per day. In the beginning, each push-up is difficult, your technique is poor, and you fatigue quickly.
However, if you continue to do 50 push-ups per day, your technique improves, and after a month you can complete the 50 reps easily and quickly.
Yes of course you got better at the push-up, but because you pushed your upper body to fatigue each day, using the push-up, your overall desired outcome of improved upper body strength and stamina has been achieved.
In short, the tasks are the training tools that you use in order to achieve greater cognitive capacity and resilience – the higher goal.
Improving at the tasks comes with the territory of practice.
It is important to understand the difference between tools, such as a push-up, or a technology app (Soma NPT), and methodology, which is HOW we use the tools in order to create adaptations in the brain and body.
The Brain Endurance Training (BET) methodology focuses on using cognitive tasks with increasing load via intensity, frequency, and variability with specialised training modes to induce fatigue and heightened stress, and pressure in order to create adaptations.
We use data and feedback to ensure we are using the tasks with the right intensity and frequency to create adaptations in the brain.
If the challenge is not hard enough, the body and the brain don’t need to adapt in order to cope. (e.g., If we were to perform only 2 push-ups per day instead of 50)
This is precisely the reason Soma NPT and Soma Analytics work as a system to allow coaches to create sufficient loading in the long-term over many training cycles.
Soma Analytics is where the methodology of cognitive training is brought to the table.
Soma Analytics allows us to add intensity and variety to the tasks in Soma NPT with specialised modes, and gives us feedback via summary performance data so that we can ensure the training is loading the brain in a progressive and novel fashion.
The benefits of
Brain Endurance Training (BET)
Creates a larger capacity for mental and physical fatigue
Improves response speed accuracy
Improves focus
Increases mental toughness
Increases decision-making under fatigue
Reduces perception of effort
Increases pre-frontal oxygenation
Improves sport and exercise performance