March Madness may be over, but competitive sports continue to be a daily fixture in our lives. One such competitive sports manga title that recently got readers talking is none other than Furudate Haruichi’s “Haikyuu!!”. It is a manga that focuses on teenagers playing volleyball competitively in high school. You know how sports teams have certain pre-game rituals/speeches to get themselves going? Wait until you see what one team in Haikyuu!! does to kick some butt and how it involves a bit of neuroscience.
In Volume 4 of the manga, the main team of the story, Karasuno High, played a practice match against the Nekoma High School Volleyball Club. Both teams were rivals in the past, but have become terrible over the past few years. Yet there is a lot of renewed hope for them due to the special talents both schools have acquired. When the time came for both Karasuno and Nekoma to collide, Kuro Tetsuro, captain of the Nekoma squad, chanted a somewhat trippy speech to get his team pumped up, most especially his setter, Kozume Kenma. It went like this:
“We are the body’s blood.
Flow smoothly
And circulate oxygen
So the “brain” functions normally.”
Kozume was considered to be the most important player (brain, heart, and backbone) to the team. Despite the apparent strangeness of the pre-game words, they worked to perfection as Nekoma beat Karasuno once more. Everyone on Nekoma formed amazing synergy with each other to make sure Kozume was at his absolute best on the court.
How does this relate to real life? Blood flow helps stimulate the brain, which helps send signals to the rest of the body. Of course, there are problems where we can get too stimulated or rarely stimulated. Infants and children tend to have low levels of blood flow. A big problem is how youth react to certain types of stimuli. Too much and too little blood flow can cause all sorts of health complications.
Kozume was considered to be an outcast. He arguably has a brain considered to be somewhat mature because of his analytical nature. If it weren’t for Kuro (who he knew from his childhood days), perhaps Kozume would have been completely introverted. You can say that he had low levels of blood flow and playing volleyball helped to increase it. Hey, exercise does wonders for blood circulation. However, that doesn’t mean it totally helps in the mental aspects with regards to the nature of competitive sports. That’s where Kuro and the rest of Nekoma comes in. They understand that Kozume is the key to their success. Kozume’s teammates help to reduce extremely high levels of blood flow that Kozume may experience because of mental stress in order to keep him a lean, balanced, quiet yet cunning player.
Throughout history, there have been many “brains” behind significant events/operations/companies/projects and if they weren’t functioning properly, everything would fall apart. People can’t always do things alone. Everyone has to have help at some point to succeed. The “brain” has and can process the information you need to take that next step in life as long as you show respect and empathy towards that person. It’s funny how at times we are preached to celebrate individual accomplishments, yet not totally appreciate the group effort.
To quote the Daila Lama, “We pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.”
Every “brain” needs a “body” to support its weight and vice versa, right?
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