A 37-year-old active-duty male special operator was referred to me a few years ago who described an intangible feeling of slowing down, particularly in more visually stimulating environments.

He was preparing for his retirement, and finally had time to start addressing some issues he ignored or “rubbed dirt on” throughout his career.

There was no specific injury, no clinical symptoms, and he was still performing at a high level. In fact, he was still deploying. But he knew he wasn’t at the level of performance he was capable of.

We worked together and made some progress, he was grateful, but I was unnerved. In a profession where every millisecond counts, and speed must be met with precision under the most extreme conditions imaginable, we can’t be passive about any feelings of slowing down.

I knew he was just the tip of the iceberg, and frankly, I felt like I failed him because I lacked the knowledge as to why he might be susceptible to this feeling, and I lacked the skill to develop this capability at the highest level. I wanted to make sure that he had every nanosecond of an edge possible.

I now know that his intangible slowing down during conditions of sensory chaos was likely due to the years of repeated subconcussive exposures. The cumulative impact of these exposures can negatively affect emotional control, memory, and sensory processing speed.

He had a lot of subconcussive exposures throughout his career, including low-level blasts, direct hits to his head, rapid decelerations, and oxygen deprivation with underwater training.

He still had strength and speed and is highly skilled, but his processing speed of sensory information had been chipped away at. You put in a lot of time and effort to develop your strength, speed, and skills. But as a tactical athlete you also need fast processing of the sensory information for situational awareness.

You can be the strongest and most skilled on earth, but if your situational awareness processing speed is a millisecond too slow, you might not get the chance to create that output.

We can’t mitigate all subconcussive exposures and maintain readiness, but we can mitigate some exposures. We can also maximize time between exposures, and prioritize sleep after necessary exposures in an effort to decrease the negative effects of repeated subconcussions.

Our brains are highly plastic. The ceiling of potential might change, but we should always strive to be at our ceiling of performance. Whether that’s with strength, speed, emotional control, memory, or sensory processing.

How many subconcussive forces have you been exposed to?

How do you train emotional control, memory, and sensory processing speed for performance?

If we train these areas proactively, what new level of performance is possible?

There is still no perfect solution to this issue, but we can address this in a way that is proactive, valuable, and impacts performance and long-term quality of life. We don’t have to accept an intangible slowing down.

You can learn more about subconcussions and proactive training of the sensory systems for situational awareness at subconcussiveconsult.com.