What Should I Be Looking For? Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of our “What should I be looking for?” series. This week we are diving into everything sensory processing.

Sensory processing is how your brain interprets information received from your senses.

There are 8 senses that provide us with information about the environment. I’m sure you’re aware of the first 5 (sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch), but there are 3 more: balance and movement (vestibular), awareness of your body in space (proprioception), and awareness of your internal states (interoception)¹.

Examples of interpretations:

1. Sight - lights (bright? dim?)
2. Smell - scent (pleasant? unpleasant?)
3. Hearing - sound (loud? quiet?)
4. Taste - flavor (salty? bland?)
5. Touch - texture (smooth? rough?)
6. Vestibular - balance and movement (dizzy easily?)
7. Proprioception - awareness of body in space (running into things?)
8. Interoception - awareness of your internal states (do you know when you have to use the restroom? does it “hit” you all at once?)

How does the brain handle and organize all of that input?

Modulation is the brain’s ability to monitor and regulate information in order to generate an appropriate response to specific stimuli. Think of modulation as the thermometer in the refrigerator. The thermometer keeps everything in the fridge at a certain temperature. If it notices it’s getting hot, it will kick on the cooling system.

Two key neurological processes that drive this modulation are habituation and sensitization.

Everyone benefits from habituation. It’s the brain’s ability to filter out stimuli once it recognizes them as familiar.

For example, when you put on clothes, you stop consciously feeling them after seconds. Your brain knows that clothes are a familiar sensation, and those sensations get screened out.

Now, if your habituation didn’t kick in, it would be difficult to concentrate on anything else because all of your attention would be on your clothes. Think of that feeling as a pebble in your shoe, or that sharp, stiff tag in your shirt that’s constantly scratching you!

Sensitization is the brain’s way of classifying stimuli as important or potentially harmful, and generating a response accordingly.

Habituation and sensitization work together to produce functional behaviors.

Using the clothing example:

• Too much habituation - might not notice when the tag is cutting into their skin
• Too much sensitization - might only be able to wear certain fabrics. Everything else is distracting to them because it makes them feel uncomfortable.

Back to the senses and our athletes.

When we talk about our athletes and their sensory processing, we need to understand the types of sensory processors in front of us. Winnie Dunn’s sensory processing framework² is highly respected and is considered a cornerstone of modern Occupational Therapy.

In her framework, she organizes sensory processing responses into 4 quadrants³.

1. Sensation Seeking - The brain needs increased sensory input before the body notices it. These individuals have an active regulation strategy; they seek out this input.
   
   You might notice this individual gravitating toward bright lights, loud music, or constantly touching things.
2. Low Registration - The brain needs increased sensory input before the body notices it. These individuals have a passive regulation strategy.
   
   Because of this, you might notice this individual missing cues that others notice right away. This individual might be quiet, slow to respond, or seemingly unaware of their surroundings.
3. Sensation Avoiding - The brain does not need much sensory input before the body notices it. These individuals have an active regulation strategy; they will remove themselves from overstimulating environments.
   
   For example, they may avoid school dances because the music is too loud.
4. Sensory Sensitivity - The brain does not need much sensory input before the body notices it. These individuals have a passive regulation strategy.
   
   For example, even though they are easily annoyed or distracted by noise, they tend to sit back and “power through” or complain rather than leave.

Now, what does this mean for your athletes? Do you need to categorize these athletes specifically according to this model? Absolutely not.

Although I think it’s important for you to understand some of the basic neuroscience around sensory processing, you do not need to be an expert.

What is important to recognize here is that there will be differences in sensory processing on your team, and the goal is to be open, observe, and adjust. As you get to know your athletes better and recognize the signs of each sensory processing type, you’ll be able to come up with solutions that will benefit your athletes year after year.

You might be thinking… okay, I get it… But what happens if I have a sensation seeker and a sensation avoider on my team?! They need opposing environments to feel supported.

You’re right, there are times when what one athlete needs and what another athlete needs are at odds.

In those specific instances, my advice is to do what you can that supports the greatest number of athletes. Then, for that athlete who might need something different, be creative and either find a personal solution or give them space during practice to get what they need. For example, a quiet corner for water breaks.

It’s much easier to talk through specific case studies. So, if you’re struggling to come up with a solution, reach out! I’d be happy to talk it through with you.

Now, for the regular reminders before we get into what you should be looking for…

Attuning your attention to these types of behaviors is a skill you’re continuing to strengthen (because you’ve been following along with the posts!), and like any skill, it’ll feel uncomfortable at first (think about the first time you stepped in the weight room!).

Your ability to observe your athletes, make adjustments, and notice patterns comes straight out of your ability to challenge your own assumptions. So if you haven’t read the post on challenging your assumptions as a coach, or worked through the reflection guide, start here BEFORE anything else.

Two things before we get into it.

1. We are not diagnosing anyone. We’re observing behaviors and adjusting based on what we see. If a parent shares a formal diagnosis, great. You’ve got a head start on what that athlete might need, but you still have to do the observing, because if you’ve met one neurodivergent person, you’ve met one neurodivergent person.
2. Everything below is a starting point, not a prescription. Every individual is different, and I don’t know your context, so take these and adjust them to fit your athletes and your environment.

One last thing. I’m only pointing out behaviors that might go against what you’re used to seeing. Every single person has strengths and areas for growth, and every team is better for having a variety of brains on the team.

Observation > Questions/Reflections > Adjustments:

Sensation Seeker

1. Your observation: The athlete is constantly fidgeting. They’re jumping up and down, spinning the ball, or pacing aggressively while waiting in line during a drill.
   1. Questions to ask: Are they still paying attention while they’re moving? When it’s their turn, can they jump in, pick up where the drill left off, and do what you asked? Or are they distracted and pulling their teammates’ attention with them?
   2. Possible adjustment: Normalize the behavior. Pull the athlete aside and let them know it’s okay if they need to get energy out that way. Together, create a simple agreement: they can move their body however they need, as long as they’re not distracting teammates, and they won’t get in trouble for it.
   3. Possible adjustment: Give the whole team a designated pre-drill body prep moment (60 seconds of jumping jacks, arm circles, whatever makes sense for your athletes). In doing this, every athlete gets a chance to shift into “ready mode,” and the sensation seekers who need it most don’t stand out.
2. Your observation: The athlete craves hard physical contact. They dive on the floor when it seems like they don’t need to, seem a little reckless, and go harder than the drill calls for. You’re starting to worry they’ll hurt themselves or a teammate.
   1. Questions to ask: Does it seem like they recognize how hard they’re going, or does the intensity look accidental to them? Are they constantly having heavy physical interactions with teammates off the court too, like bumping into people, slapping backs harder than the moment warrants, or being described as “heavy-handed”? Do you notice this pattern in other parts of their life?
   2. Possible adjustment: Build in proprioceptive input before drills. Proprioception is your body’s awareness of pressure, weight, and where your limbs are in space. It grounds a sensation seeker’s nervous system so they don’t need to seek that input through reckless play. Practical ways to give it in the middle of practice:
      1. Wall pushes (30 seconds of pushing against the gym wall) during warmups
      2. Palm pushes (pressing both palms together and holding, or against a partner’s palms)
      3. Self-squeezes (firmly squeezing their own arms, patting themselves on the legs)
      4. Hand squeezes (making a tight fist for 5 seconds, releasing)
         
         In my experience, athletes who get proprioceptive input before a drill give their bodies the sensory input they need. As a result, it reduces their need for physical contact.
   3. Possible adjustment: Teach them to name what their body needs. Instead of correcting them for going too hard, ask “Do you need a wall push before you go in?” or “What does your body need right now?” Over time, the athlete starts recognizing their own state and asks for what they need before you have to intervene. As a bonus, this builds self-advocacy that carries into the rest of their life, not just sport.

Low Registration

1. Your observation: This athlete seems to be a step behind everyone else. They might look lethargic or checked out. You say something, and it seems like they miss it, or it takes them a second to catch back up. In a drill, they miss the cone (they step on it on their sprint), they miss a cue from a teammate on the play call, or they’re just a beat behind the play developing around them.
   1. Questions to ask: Skip trying to assess from the outside whether they’re “paying attention.” That framing can quickly turn into judgment, and we want to be curious first. Pull the athlete aside and ask them directly:
      1. “I noticed that when we start, you’re a little bit of a step behind. Is it the way I’m explaining the drill? Are you confused about anything?”
      2. “Do you have any questions about what we’re doing?”
         
         Where the conversation goes will tell you a lot. Sometimes they know exactly what to do and are just missing the environmental cues. Or, you might find out that they are having a hard time focusing or paying attention. You never know; that’s why we stay curious.
         
   2. Possible adjustment: Prime the nervous system before the work starts. Heavy work is one of the fastest ways to do this. Heavy work is an activity that provides deep pressure to the joints and muscles, which alerts the brain and prepares the nervous system. Examples you can build into a warm-up:
      1. Push-ups
      2. Medicine ball slams
      3. Bear crawls
      4. Resistance band work
         
         In my experience, these movements also support the overall athletic development of every player on your team. You may already include some of these activities as warm-ups. But now you know how it can also support the sensory system.
         
   3. Possible adjustment: Add vestibular input (the vestibular system is your inner-ear balance system and also boosts alertness). Fast directional changes, jumping jacks, skipping, sprinting drills, spinning, anything that gets the head moving through space.
   4. Possible adjustment: Add alerting cues into drills themselves: claps, whistle patterns, flashing targets. These force the brain to snap into focus for low-registration athletes.
      
      Important caveat: those same cues can be actively overwhelming for a sensation-avoidant or sensory-sensitive athlete on the same team. Use them where they help; don’t use them if you feel they're not helpful to the team. This is the moment I flagged in the intro: sometimes what one athlete needs is at odds with what another needs, and the coach has to make the call.
      
   5. Possible adjustment: Let the environment do some of the work for you:
      1. Enhance visual contrast on your equipment. If it’s a green field, use bright neon orange cones that pop off the surface. On a court, use whatever color contrasts hardest with the floor. Novelty and contrast help the sensory system register cues.
      2. Pair verbal instructions with physical touch or visual demonstration. Multi-sensory cueing (giving the same instruction through two or three channels at once) makes it much more likely to land. This can also be overwhelming to some athletes; you make the final call. Trial and error helps.
   6. Possible adjustment: Insert short heavy-work bursts during practice when the energy dips or when practice is slower. Ten to thirty seconds of push-ups, high knees, or a fun wrestling-type game.
      
      One example: two athletes stand on one leg, arm’s length apart, hands linked at the wrists or elbows. They try to make each other lose balance without touching each other’s body. It’s fun, it’s heavy work, it’s balance training, and it re-alerts the whole team.

Sensation Avoider

Not every sensation avoider opts into sport at all. The ones who do are usually managing the environment with strategies like the one below, taking themselves out of the overwhelm for a moment so they can come back in ready.

1. Your observation: Between drills, this athlete removes themselves. They slip off to the corner of the gym, step out into the hallway for a minute, or find a spot to sit alone. During the drill or the game, they’re engaged. The moment there’s a break, they need to isolate.
   1. Questions to ask (first for athletes): Ask: “I noticed when we break, you go off by yourself. What’s going on? What are you experiencing that’s making you want to be somewhere else for a minute?” Their answer will tell you what’s overwhelming, whether it’s the crowd, the noise level, someone talking loudly, or everyone gathering right by the whistle or the buzzer.
   2. Questions to ask (for yourself): Is what they’re doing actually bothering anyone? If the answer is no, the adjustment might simply be to normalize the behavior for the rest of the team.
   3. Possible adjustment: Normalize taking space. Create the space intentionally, whether that’s a corner of the room they can go to, permission to step into the hallway, or a designated quiet spot. Let the rest of the team know: “This is just what this player needs to be at their best. It’s the support they’ve identified for themselves.” In my experience, when the athlete no longer has to hide their coping strategy, everything else about their engagement improves.
   4. Possible adjustment: Turn down or redirect the sound sources you can control. Point the speaker in the other direction. Turn the horn off. Make an agreement with the whole team: “I’m going to blow my whistle twice instead of once long,” or use a visible timer everyone can see so nobody has to be surprised by a loud cue.
   5. Possible adjustment: If you need eyes on them (safety, insurance, whatever the reason), don’t ban the space-taking; redesign it. Create a corner of the room they can retreat to inside your line of sight. Let them wear headphones or earplugs when they’re there. Give them the tools to decompress within the environment rather than needing to leave it.
   6. Possible adjustment: Provide predictability. Share a visual schedule of practice or the game plan ahead of time. Sensation avoiders (and honestly, most athletes) handle challenges much better when they know what’s coming.
      
      In my experience, the most useful version of this is making unpredictability itself predictable. Before a road trip:
      “We’re going to this gym. Here’s how it usually goes. They take us to the locker room; we get ready, find the training room, and warm up. Now, when we get there, the bus driver might not know exactly where to go, so we might have to ask for help. The training room might not be set up yet, so we might have to wait. We might have to switch the order of what we’re doing.”
      
      Even flagging that things might go sideways lets the athletes brace for it instead of getting blindsided.
      
      This same move works during practice too. If you know the gym is going to be extra loud that day, tell them upfront: “A couple of teams are sharing the space. It’s going to get noisy. I’ll do my best to drop the curtains, and every time we huddle we’re going to get in close, so I’m not screaming.”

To note: You can’t prompt for everything. The goal is to keep the line of communication open so your athletes know you’re on their side. That’s what empowers them to come to you when they’re struggling (”It’s really noisy in here, I’m having a hard time”), and then you can respond with a real answer (”grab your headphones, grab your earplugs, take a minute”). You’re not stigmatizing their experience; you’re normalizing it.

Sensory Sensitivity

1. Your observation: The athlete is hyper-fixated on their gear. They’re pulling at their jersey, adjusting their socks, complaining that something feels wrong, scratchy, or itchy, and they can’t seem to focus on anything else. It really feels like they’re preoccupied with things you don’t think should be a distraction.
   1. Questions to ask: What about when you wear your regular clothes, what do you feel then? What specifically is making you feel itchy or scratchy? Is it all over, or in a specific area? I would start by targeting the tag area; usually, that’s the first thing that bothers a sensitive athlete. Is your gear too tight? Too loose? What clothes do you normally wear at home, and how do they fit on your body?
   2. Possible adjustment: Deal with the tags. If it’s the tag, tape it or rip it out entirely.
   3. Possible adjustment: If the fit is the issue, offer a compression shirt or compression shorts underneath the jersey. For some athletes, the even pressure calms the nervous system down enough that the looseness or shift stops registering as a distraction.
   4. Possible adjustment: Consider the detergent. Sometimes it’s not the fabric; it’s what’s on the fabric. You could switch the team detergent, or let this athlete wash their own gear with a detergent they know works for them.
   5. Possible adjustment: If you have the budget and it’s viable, get them a second set of practice gear they can rotate to on days when the primary set isn’t working. Not every program can do this, but if you have the room, it removes the daily negotiation.
2. Your observation: The athlete flinches when the horn goes off. They might cover their ears right before it fires. They jump nervously at whistles and other sharp sounds. If you’re raising your voice, their face scrunches up. You’re trying to talk to them, but they seem distracted by the noise level itself.
   1. Questions to ask: Is the reaction consistent, or does it get worse as practice goes on? Is it only on days when the environment is hectic? When you speak to them in a softer, lower tone, do they seem to calm down? Are they covering their ears more as the time on the clock approaches 0?
   2. Possible adjustment: Turn the horn off on the shot clock or the practice buzzer. You might be thinking… “but that’s how it’s going to be in the game, I want to prepare them for the game.” There’s a way to prepare them for game noise without saturating every practice with it. Run some drills with the horn on and some with it off. Predictability is the piece that helps. When they know the horn is coming during certain drills, their nervous system can do its best to brace for it. Not having the horn go off all the time gives their system a break.
   3. Possible adjustment: Normalize covering the ears. If they cover their ears when the horn goes off, that’s what they do. No one gets to make fun of it, and the moment it’s over, they take their hands down and re-engage. In my experience, this one adjustment does more than any noise-reduction fix, because the athlete stops burning energy hiding the coping strategy and can put that energy back into the practice.
   4. Possible adjustment: Replace or soften the sound source where you can:
      1. Use your voice instead of a whistle when the space allows it (not always feasible on a big field)
      2. During a game, athletes have to tune in to specific sounds (your voice, a specific whistle pattern) and filter out others. Practicing that discrimination is a skill in its own right.
      3. Use lights on the shot clock instead of the buzzer if the clock has both
      4. Two short whistles (”toot toot”) instead of one long, loud one

As always, here are your reminders…

I know it’s a lot to take in, so don’t try to use it all at once. Pick one observation that reminded you of an athlete you actually coach, watch for it this week, and try one adjustment.

Remember, it’s a slow process. Plus, your athletes’ brains aren’t fully developed. Expecting them to get it all “right” is setting them, and yourself, up for failure. Your goal is to continue to move them up the development ladder.

It’s a messy process; you’re not trying to catch everything; you’re building the habit of noticing.

We’ll keep adding categories over the next few weeks. Next week will be emotion regulation.

For now, remember what we started with: we’re not diagnosing anyone, and these are starting points, not prescriptions.

Let me know which observation sounded most familiar, and what you decided to try.

Make sure to download the guide below. It’s a tracker for your observations, questions, and adjustments.

I always love hearing from you. Let me know what you come up with.

Resources:

1. “Autism and Sensory Processing.” National Autistic Society, autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/about-autism/sensory-processing.¹
2. Dunn, Winnie. “The Impact of Sensory Processing Abilities on the Daily Lives of Young Children and Their Families: A Conceptual Model.” Infants and Young Children, vol. 9, no. 4, 1997, pp. 23-35.²
3. Cho, Macey. “Dunn’s Model of Sensory Processing.” OT Theory, ottheory.com/therapy-model/dunns-model-sensory-processing.³