Your reaction speed plays a crucial role in everyday life. Whether in the office, where quick thinking is required, in sports, or even in gaming – you benefit from quick reaction times everywhere. This article will give you tips for improving your mental and physical reaction speed.
Table of contents
1. Improve physical reaction speed - Tips for athletes
Do you love a sporting challenge, want to get even more out of yourself, and improve your reaction speed? Whether it's boxing, sprinting, or soccer, in almost every sport, you'll perform better the better your reaction time is.
Often, an athlete's reaction speed can determine victory or defeat . For example, a soccer goalkeeper has an average of 0.3 seconds to judge where a penalty kick will go . The speed of the kicked ball is approximately 130 km/h.
This is where the best possible reaction time is required! In addition to an optimal supply of micronutrients for your brain , there are even more tips on how to improve your reaction speed. When exercising , two environmental signals are particularly important, to which your body and mind must react quickly.
First, there are the audiovisual signals , things you see or hear , such as the starting gun in a 100-meter race. Second, there are the tactile signals , things you touch , like a grip in boxing. In both cases, it's important to react quickly.
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2. How to improve your athletic reaction time!
In addition to physical fitness, which is a basic requirement in elite sport, the processing of environmental stimuli is crucial for reaction speed.
The processing of stimuli can be trained to improve reaction speed. This particularly includes audiovisual stimuli, as the US ski team has already used.
Since they came up with this trick and trained based on certain stimuli, the team has achieved significantly more victories at the Olympic Games! [1]
In a long-term study conducted by the team, the focus was primarily on improving visual stimulus processing in order to improve the athletes' reaction speed.
Vision, and thus the eye's ability to process stimuli, became a key focus for the team to optimize reaction time. Want to work on your reaction speed a bit, but aren't a member of the US Ski Team? No problem! With these tips, you can easily do it from home—almost like the pros:
1. The reflex ball.
This special ball primarily trains the body's visual signal processing . The ball is not round and therefore always bounces in different directions. Your task is to estimate as quickly as possible which direction the reflex ball will bounce and then catch it.
This is extremely frustrating, especially at first, because you're guaranteed to catch the ball very rarely. But the more often you repeat the whole thing, the more likely you'll catch the ball, thus shortening your reaction time.
This exercise will help you improve your reaction speed, and you'll feel the effect as soon as you return to your regular sport. Guaranteed!
2. The forest run.
There are other ways to improve your reaction time. Are you more of a gym-goer? Then try taking your next run to the woods. And I don't mean the nearest city park, but a real forest.
The uneven ground , branches, and stones place a significantly greater strain on your visual and tactile signal processing , thus improving your overall reaction time. This not only trains your reaction speed, but also strengthens your endurance, cardiovascular system, and immune system.
3. Play video games.
Sounds too good to be true? Video games can also improve your reaction speed. This is due to the necessary hand-eye coordination and the ability to quickly follow what's happening on the screen.
This has now been proven by a study conducted by Sapienza University in Rome. The study aimed to determine how hand-eye coordination could be improved during surgical procedures.
The surgeons were allowed to test games of their choice on the Wii. Originally intended for the operating room, the study shows that video games can improve reaction speed. [2]
A few minutes a day are enough. We recommend spending the rest of your free time on more active hobbies. Are you interested in anything that improves your performance?
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3. Improve your mental reaction speed - Tips for office heroes
But not only physical reaction time can be improved, but mental reaction speed can also be improved. And this is where the real crux of the matter comes in: faster mental reaction time can't be trained through exercises like sports!
Reaction speed can easily be improved through exercise; it only requires specific training. Unfortunately, the same process can't be replicated with the brain, because the speed between stimulus and response cannot be improved by comparable exercises.
The only remedy is to optimize the neurotransmitters produced in your brain. These can improve communication between synapses and thus accelerate the transmission of stimuli.
These "chemicals" are produced in the brain and are mostly derived from plant substances . These are ingested through food and then converted into important neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, for the brain.
Are you unsure whether your brain is sufficiently supplied with neurotransmitters to ensure optimal reaction speed? Then learn more about how you can compensate for this potential deficiency and improve your reaction speed!
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4. How can you improve your mental reaction speed?
In principle, anyone can easily improve their mental reaction speed and thus enable faster thinking and retrieval of information.
In any case, your brain is the most important component you need to optimize for improved reaction speed. Your thinking system requires various chemicals in the brain to maximize its potential.
These chemicals can be increased through active ingredients in food and supplements and can thus improve your reaction speed.
These active ingredients include citicoline , brahmi and ginkgo , which improve communication between synapses and ensure that your focus increases and your mental reaction speed is improved.
You can use this ability to your advantage both in sports and at work. Perhaps the most important substance for improving your reaction speed is the amino acid citicoline.
As a study from the University of Utah has now shown, citicoline can improve both psychomotor skills and attention. [3] A test group of 30 healthy men was given either citicoline or a placebo for four weeks.
After four weeks, various tests were conducted to determine whether the citicoline could improve reaction speed.
Various tests concerning attention and motor speed showed that the citicoline group significantly improved their test results. This makes citicoline the best supplement for improving reaction speed.
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5. Improve physical and mental reaction speed with citicoline
Citicoline is an active ingredient that is partly responsible for the production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain. This neurotransmitter is extremely important for communication between neurons and thus for the transmission of information and stimuli in your brain .
If your brain isn't sufficiently supplied with acetylcholine, you'll experience difficulty concentrating and reduced reaction times. Your brain simply functions more slowly. Taking citicoline can help compensate for this acetylcholine deficiency, as it's a precursor to this important neurotransmitter.
Are you interested in the substance's effects and its impact on your brain? We are too, so this article about citicoline contains even more fascinating information.
Citicoline is such an interesting supplement for improving your reaction speed for another reason. Citicoline, also commonly called CDP-choline, can reach your brain without detours or time-consuming conversion processes.
It directly crosses the blood-brain barrier and can exert its effects. A large-scale study from the University of Rome focuses on the effectiveness of citicoline. [4]
Citicoline was administered to over 1,500 test subjects to improve their overall mental performance. The test results confirmed the substance's effectiveness on reaction time and reaction speed.
This benefits you both during sports and at the office. A study by the Biomedical Research Center in La Coruña, Spain, shows that citicoline can do even more for your mental performance. [5]
The study tested the memory of elderly people who took citicoline for several weeks. They performed better on cognitive tests in which they were asked to recall information received days earlier as accurately as possible than the control group who had not received citicoline.
Do you want to improve your memory and reaction speed? You definitely don't need medication or complicated, time-consuming exercises.
6. Conclusion
Everyone can improve both their physical and mental reaction speed. Professional sports have long known that good reaction speed can mean the difference between victory and defeat. But when it comes to mental performance, good brain reaction speed is also very important.
This is primarily influenced by valuable herbal active ingredients such as ginkgo, brahmi, and citicoline, but also by vitamins such as vitamins B5 and B12. That's why we developed FOCUS to support your mental performance.
7. Sources
[1] http://www.visualfitness.com/ski/ski_team.html
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26179181
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15106147
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9203170
[5] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057372
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