In this solo instructional video, concussion‑recovery veteran David Brimacombe explains why most people with post‑concussion syndrome (PCS) fail to improve not because they lack effort, but because they try too many interventions in the wrong order. Drawing on his own experience of seven concussions over two decades, he argues that recovery requires a clear, sequenced roadmap rather than a collection of “silver‑bullet” fixes. He uses a mountain‑hiking analogy to illustrate the value of a mentor or guide who can point out the most impactful actions, order them correctly, and keep the recovering brain’s limited energy focused on the 20 % of efforts that yield 80 % of results. Brimacombe outlines three core benefits of mentorship: clarity (identifying high‑impact, low‑energy actions), proper sequencing (preventing symptom provocation by doing things at the right time and dose), and confidence (building capacity through small, incremental wins). He cautions against the temptation to add multiple supplements, diets, or therapies simultaneously, emphasizing that the brain’s reduced ATP production demands gradual, purposeful change. The video concludes with a call to seek experienced guides—whether coaches, recovered peers, or professionals—to provide the map that moves a person from point A to point B without unnecessary detours.
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Most people in their PCS recovery don't fail because they're not trying hard enough. They fail because they're trying too many things in the wrong order. And that gets them to start back at square one. For me, my recovery didn't start to take hold until I added one thing. Guidance. Hi, and welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective. My name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I learned one of the most important things you need in your concussion recovery is a roadmap to take you from where you are to where you want to be. Let's begin. Now, what does most people's recovery protocol look like? And for me, it was exactly the same. I would look online, a new supplement to try. I'd add it. Maybe it didn't work as well as I thought it would. It wasn't that one supplement that was going to change everything. So I stopped it and I went right back to the start. I tried a new diet. I tried a new exercise routine, a new protocol, a new type of therapy. And guess what? None of them had the same effect that I thought they would. And so for me, I would always just go right back to the start. It was the circuitous route of my recovery. Start one thing, realize it wasn't the end-all be-all, and then start back at the beginning. I lacked something that would take me from A to B. It wasn't that I didn't have the information or the wherewithal to understand what I needed to do. The problem lied in understanding what I needed to do, in what order, and to what degree. Now, understand that if you go ahead and go from nothing to a lot of anything, whether that's exercise, a new diet, a new type of protocol, your body's going to resist. Okay? Even if someone who's in a healthy state, it takes small changes in order to implement something. So in my case, if I were to go from taking zero supplements to adding 4 or 5 in a morning stack, my body would find that hard. to take in, to adjust to that new level of input. So a lot of times I'd just stop, I'd reset and say, well, I guess this isn't for me. It was another confirmation of my belief that I could not be healed, that this was not something that I was going to recover from. And again, that belief comes from seeing results, from seeing positive impacts of small changes. And I wasn't seeing that. So my biggest problem to begin with, and for many of you, this might be the same thing, isn't that you don't have the wherewithal, the understanding, the information. It's how do I actually apply this in an order that is going to benefit me? Now, everything started to change for me when I stopped asking, what can I add? What's that new supplement, that new routine that I can add? And I started asking and thinking, now, who has walked this path? Who is 5 years ahead of me that I can seek guidance from, that I can ask questions of? Because those people, again, they've seen what's ahead. I, I kind of think of this in, in the analogy of hiking up a mountain. Okay, we know we want to get from the base to the summit, but there's multiple ways of doing it. You can go without a map. And going without a map probably implies that you're going to take a very roundabout way. Okay. And you might end up actually where you started, as opposed to if you get a map. In this case, if you find someone, a guide, a mentor, a coach who has gone and walked this path, they know the treacherous cliffs that lie ahead. Okay. They know the way to actually expedite the process. And when to slow down. But instead of going in and around in a circle and ending up with very little, if any, progress, they're moving you forward. Now, forward doesn't have to be perfectly linear. Sometimes you have the high days and the low days, but overall, the path and trajectory is moving up. And that's what I found. I found that finding someone, finding someone that was ahead of me in my Recovery trajectory. Help me understand how I need to get there. Okay, they were basically pulling me up. Now, this is not always that easy. There's a lot of people online spouting a lot of things about, ah, this is, this is the end-all be-all. And it's funny, I see a lot of therapies that are like, if you do this, you will be healed. Okay, you have brain fog. You have cognitive delay. If you do hyperbaric chamber treatments, you will get rid of those. Well, that's not always the case, right? And I can tell you for a fact that it is a multifaceted recovery plan that you require. It is not one singular thing. You're not going to find that one silver bullet, that one supplement, that one routine, and it's going to make all the difference. Okay. Understand that your body takes time to switch, just like it was initially hesitant to go from a healthy state to, in your case, a recovering state. It is equally hesitant to go from that state that you're in, that status quo, that recovering state, to one back of a healthy, functional individual. It takes time. You have to switch it. You have to give it reason to do so. And it takes a specific protocol and in a specific order, in a specific amount for it to be effective. Now, you might be thinking I'm just here to push my own services. That's not the case. Again, you might like this channel, but you might not think of me as, as a coach that you want to work with. You might not see me as a person who's going to help guide you. That's fine. But all I'm telling you is you need to find someone. Okay. In those hardest days when you don't want to do what you know you need to do, who's going to pull you out of bed? Who's going to get you and do the things that you need to do that, you know, deep down you need to do? It's not always that easy to do it if internal motivation is your only guidance. You need someone else. So again, seek out people, look online, talk to those who've recovered. What were their first steps, their next steps, their last steps? Because I can tell you there's a lot of guidance to be gleaned. Okay, all you need to do is ask. Now I'm gonna give you three reasons why I believe everyone needs a mentor in their recovery process. Okay, the first thing I want to talk about is clarity. Understand that you have a limited energy capacity. Okay, your brain is an energy. consuming machine. When you're recovering from a concussion, it is even more so. At the same time, you are actually producing less ATP, less available energy stores in your brain. So that's a dual-edged sword. You are not only producing less, you are actually using more. So you need to be very cautious in terms of what you do in your recovery. You can't have wasted energy. You can't be trying any and everything. Hoping it works because you are wasting valuable energy. So you need clarity. You need someone who understands what are the highest impact items that I can be doing that can elicit the most change. I always think of Pareto's principle. 20% of your efforts will get 80% of your returns. If you are constantly doing all that other 80%, that is not gonna give you the results that you want. You are wasting precious energy. You need to focus on that 20% that's going to give you that 80% return. That is where you're going to see your recovery. The second reason why you need a mentor is for the sequence. Now, it's all well and good to know what to do, but when to do it is the most important thing. Again, you have a reduced energy capacity, so doing things in the wrong order or doing things that you don't actually need to do Will only cause you greater stress, greater symptom provocation. So doing things when you need to do them in the right order is what a coach or a guide is going to help you with. They're going to give you that sequence. They're going to give you that map that's going to allow you to get up that mountain quicker without wasted energy. And the third thing that a coach or a guide, a mentor, is going to provide to you is confidence. Now understand that to gain confidence is like anything else. It's a skill. You are not born confident or born with a lack of confidence. It is something that can be earned, can be gained. So how do we do it? Small wins create belief. Belief allows your body the tolerance, the ability, the safety to understand that I can do more. You increase your capacity, greater wins, therefore more confidence, more competence to do more. It is a small, slow cycle, but there is a way to do this in the right order, and a guide will help you with that. So I hope this video helped clarify the need for guidance, for mentorship in your recovery. Again, going about this on your own can work, but it can also cause greater stress, greater mental languish and fatigue from doing something that doesn't actually get you to where you want to go. A guide's going to help you get from A to B without having to go to C to D to E to F first. Okay. Thank you for watching and listening to the end. I appreciate you. I hope you have yourself a great day.
