Reducing Sub-Concussive Impacts in Football

Sub-concussive impacts are repetitive but less forceful impacts to head are now a concern at all levels of football.
Every coach has observed players in the perfect position to make a block or tackle an opponent but fail immediately at impact. Too often sub-concussive impacts jar the players head and in a split second, interrupting a player’s cognitive skills which can momentarily hinder the ability to anticipate an opponent’s actions and perform the appropriate motor response such as completing a block, properly playing of a blocker when on defense or finishing a tackle.
When motion to the head takes place, the brain can undergo immediate biochemical changes that disrupt normal activity. Research on how visual and sensory performance may influence a football player’s ability to anticipate an opponent’s actions and create appropriate motor responses, reveals “a link between level of visual and sensory performance and head impact bio mechanics”.
Research reports contracting the neck muscles prior to impact has the greatest influence on reducing rotational acceleration because it effectively couples the head with the torso meaning in order to move the head the whole torso would have to move as well.
Learn how the  “Hulk Shrug Technique” utilizes a shoulder-shrugging motion which allows the neck’s stronger extension muscles to stabilize the head thereby enabling the head, neck, shoulders and upper back to act as a solid single unit during football impact thus functioning simultaneously not as separate individual units by Dr. Donald Chu (bio) PhD, PT, ATC, CSCS, Sports Performance and Sports Medicine Specialist.