The Last Untrained Muscle:A New Frontier for Human Performance
Catalysed by reading a paper from a Newcastle University researcher, Mel O’Connor has spent twenty years asking a question that elite sport had never thought to ask. What if the difference between a good athlete and a great one isn’t physical at all but perceptual? What if we could retrain the brain to process visual information faster, and what would that do to human performance?
He quit his job in the TV industry and turned down work on an Idris Elba film to pursue an idea that most people thought was impossible: that you could biologically rewire how fast an athlete sees.
Mel eventually founded Okkulo a training system using controlled ambient-light manipulation to accelerate perceptual and cognitive processing which helps athletes to see, think, and react faster in real-world environments. Perhaps most importantly, once athletes return to standard conditions, the brain retains the gains made during training.
The level of competition in top flight sports is so intense many have come to accept the concept of embracing marginal gains. However, the independent testing from Durham University has shown that the gains from Okkulo are not marginal. They represent great leaps forward in terms of peak performance and now those gains are being shown on the field in professional sports led by multiple teams in Major League Baseball.
Mel joins us to discuss the science, data and evidence base supporting Okkulo and the potential for Okkulo far beyond the pitch, into schools, hospitals and the future of human performance.
