A few weeks ago, our steady march through the tennis training techniques glimpsed in the Netflix docuseries “Break Point” featured an image of Ons Jabeur with an electrode attached to her head. “What is Going On Here?” and reader feedback eventually convinced me that it was a TENS device being used to treat migraines. This week, we are exploring a similar but different mental training technique that subsequently appeared in Season 1.
Iga Swiatek is shown lying on a mat with an electrode attached to her forehead. That appeared during a montage that focuses on her rigorous mental training. The WTA’s current #1 player employs Daria Abramowicz as her personal mental health and psychology trainer. While many other professional tennis players also pay attention to their mental fitness, Swiatek has taken it to another level.
A New York Times article in 2021 revealed that Swiatek sometimes wears medical instruments that measure her stress level by monitoring the activity of her heart and brain. That includes a device that measures brain wave oscillation to detect stress. That is certainly what she is doing in this particular scene.
“Break Point” doesn’t show any clips of the actual device Swiatek is using to collect the signal from the electrode. I am guessing that it is an electrocorticography electroencephalography (EEG) device. One possibility at the consumer level is the Muse 2 headband (<-Sponsored Link) that can be used to sense and record EEG brain wave oscillations.
To be clear, I don’t have any experience with that particular commercial off-the-shelf EEG collection device. However, one of my kids built one when she was in middle school using an Arduino and open-source software. She used it to measure brain activity when reading and while playing video games and reported that the data showed that the brain was more active when playing video games. In related news, that wasn’t a compelling conclusion for the Language Arts teacher who graded the project assignment.
Swiatek is known to perform cognitive warm-up exercises before she competes. The calming effect was first noticed by her mental coach when the player did her high school homework before matches. After she graduated, crossword puzzles and sudokus were substituted. Later in this sequence on “Break Point,” Swiatek is shown assembling a Lego set, which is an obvious next progression. For anyone who wants to replicate this part of the mental training, I am pretty sure the kit she is working on here is the International Space Station (21321) (<- Sponsored Link.)
If you want to kick your mental fitness training up a notch, perhaps EEG brain wave monitoring could enhance insight into your mental stress levels. Alternatively, the key to improved mental state when competing could be as simple as assembling Legos.
- The Brain Within the Brain of a Rising Tennis Queen, Matthew Futterman, The New York Times, February 7, 2021
- Brain Oscillations and Their Implications for Neurorehabilitation, Sungju Jee, Brain Neurorehabil, March 14, 2021.
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