Using Smell to Improve Performance in Sports

Imagine this: You step on the court, lace up your shoes, and take a deep breath. Suddenly, a specific scent hits your nose (maybe it’s a sharp burst of peppermint or something else) and something in you immediately shifts. Your focus sharpens. Your body relaxes. You feel ready. Not because of a warm-up or a music playlist, but because of smell.

Sounds surprising? It shouldn’t be. While we’re used to thinking of performance as something driven by training plans, nutrition, or mindset, we often forget (or we are not aware) that the nervous system influences everything behind the scenes, and smell is one of its most powerful and often overlooked entry points.

Most athletes work tirelessly to train their muscles, discipline their minds, and sharpen their tactical strategies. But how many of us ever pause to consider how our environmental inputs, like smell, might influence everything from reaction time to recovery? This is applied neuroscience in action!

Here’s the fascinating part: smell is the only sense that has a direct, fast-track connection to the brain’s limbic system – which is responsible for emotion, memory, and autonomic regulation (like heart rate and stress response). It bypasses the usual filters, making it one of the fastest, uniquely powerful, ways to influence our mood, stress, and physiological states.

In this post, we’re going to uncover what makes the olfactory system such a unique player in sports performance, how certain scents can help you tune your nervous system almost like an instrument, and why using smell to improve performance might be the missing link you didn’t even know you needed.

Whether you’re an athlete, a coach, a therapist, or simply someone looking to understand how the body and brain work together on a deeper level, this is a tool worth adding to your toolbox.

Key Takeaways

• Smell is a direct line to the brain’s emotional and regulatory centers – Unlike other senses, smell bypasses the thalamus and connects straight to the limbic system, allowing it to influence mood, memory, focus, and pain perception almost instantly.

• You can use smell intentionally to improve both performance and recovery – Stimulating scents like peppermint and citrus can sharpen focus and energy before or during training, while calming scents like lavender and chamomile can support nervous system downregulation post-exercise or before sleep.

• Smell can also be used as a diagnostic tool – Changes in movement quality, tension, or pain after exposure to scent can reveal nervous system sensitivity, cranial nerve responsiveness, or sensory integration issues – offering insights into how the brain is processing threat or overload.

• Smell supports multiple cranial nerves simultaneously – By engaging both the olfactory nerve and the vagus nerve (indirectly), scent creates cross-effects on breath, heart rate, muscle tone, and cognitive control, making it a holistic tool for athletes, coaches, and therapists.

• This strategy is simple, scalable, and accessible to anyone – Whether you’re a high-performance athlete, a youth coach, a massage therapist, or a parent, using smell to improve performance is an easy, low-cost way to support the body and brain in working more efficiently and calmly.

Why Smell Deserves a Spot in Your Training Toolkit

When we think about athletic performance, smell rarely enters the conversation. It’s easy to dismiss it as something that belongs to memories, mood lighting, or scented candles – not to serious training. But that’s a missed opportunity, because smell isn’t just sensory background noise, it’s a neurological powerful tool hiding in plain sight.

Unlike other senses, smell has a unique and direct connection to the parts of the brain that regulate how we feel, move, and recover. The olfactory system sends information straight to the limbic system – the part of your brain that governs emotion, memory, and automatic functions like heart rate and stress response. That’s why a scent can instantly bring you back to a specific moment or make you feel calm or energized without any conscious effort.

Even more interesting? The olfactory nerve (Cranial Nerve I) is the only cranial nerve that skips the usual processing hub (the brainstem) and goes straight to the brain’s control centers. In simple words, this direct line means that smell has the potential to influence your mental and physical state faster than any other sense.

So whether you’re preparing for a high-level competition, managing recovery, or helping your athletes regulate energy and focus, it’s time to recognize this sense for what it is: a powerful tool for nervous system optimization. If you’re serious about improving performance, smell deserves more than a passing thought (or shocked wondering – which is  the most common reaction, at least in handball world, when we see players and teams that are utilizing the power of smell), it deserves a permanent place in your toolkit.

The Brain Science Behind Smell and Performance

Think of your brain as a high-speed control center. It’s constantly scanning, responding, and adjusting to keep you functioning at your best. Every second, it’s interpreting data from your environment: what you see, hear, touch, and feel. Most of these sensory signals take a longer path through the brain’s relay station (the thalamus) before reaching their final destination. But smell? It takes the fast lane.

Smell takes a shortcut straight into the brain’s emotional and regulatory centers, making it the fastest way to shift how we feel, both physically and emotionally. That’s why a single inhale of a certain scent can immediately bring you comfort, alertness, or even a sense of calm, often before you’ve had time to think about it.

Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes:

• Smell can trigger powerful emotional memories stored in the hippocampus and amygdala, sometimes before you’re even aware of them.

• It can influence your breath and heart rate by indirectly activating the vagus nerve, helping to regulate stress and bring the nervous system back into balance.

• It also has the ability to impact pain perception and motor control, shifting how we experience discomfort or how freely we move.

This makes using smell to improve performance not just a curious trick, but a tool that roots from how your brain is wired to function. Whether you’re calming pre-game nerves, resetting mid-session focus, or improving recovery, you’re not hacking your system – you’re working with it, intentionally.

5 Practical Ways of Using Smell to Improve Performance

Let’s move from theory to practice. Smell isn’t just something to appreciate in passing, it’s a tool you can actively use to support training, performance, and recovery. Whether you’re an athlete looking to improve your performance, a coach helping your athletes or your team regulate intensity, or a therapist aiming to support nervous system healing, smell can become a powerful part of your approach.

Here are five practical, evidence-informed ways of using smell to improve performance, each simple enough to try today.

1. Pre-Workout Scents to Boost Focus and Energy

Just as you warm up your body before movement, you can “warm up” your nervous system too, and smell is one of the fastest ways to do it. Inhaling specific stimulating scents can increase alertness, wake up your brain, and help you feel more mentally dialed in before training or competition.

Some of the best pre-performance scents include:

• Peppermint – boosts alertness and supports respiratory function

• Citrus (orange, lemon, grapefruit) – uplifting and energizing

• Eucalyptus – clears mental fog and supports deeper breathing

These scents activate the sympathetic nervous system, the part of your nervous system responsible for preparing the body to take action – perfect before a game, lift, or sprint.

Real-world example: A sprinter takes a few inhales of peppermint oil while doing mobility work before a race. They feel sharper, more awake, more engaged, and notice their breathing deepens naturally.

2. Between Sets: Use Smell to Assess Nervous System Responsiveness

Here’s a surprising use for smell: you can use it as a diagnostic tool during training. Introducing a scent between sets or during movement work can reveal how your nervous system is processing input, and whether it might benefit from more stimulation or regulation.

Here’s how to try it:

• After a set or movement drill, pause.

• Inhale peppermint or citrus 2–3 times.

• Re-test the same movement or skill.

Notice if there’s a change: Does the movement feel smoother? Is the pain reduced? Do you feel more focused or grounded?

Tip for coaches: This is part from applied neurology that you can use in sports. If an athlete consistently improves after sensory input like scent, it may be a sign they respond well to stimulation, and might need more of it integrated into their warm-ups, drills, or recovery protocols.

3. Post-Training: Smell as a Cue for Recovery Mode

After a tough session, the goal is to shift from intensity to recovery, to help the nervous system calm down so the body can start to heal and restore. Smell can act as a gentle nudge toward the parasympathetic state (also known as “rest and digest”).

Some calming scents that support this shift include:

• Lavender – reduces anxiety and lowers heart rate

• Chamomile – calming for both body and mind

• Frankincense – grounding, centering, and emotionally stabilizing

These scents can be used during stretching, breathwork, massage, or even while driving home after a game.

4. Evening Rituals to Train the Nervous System for Rest

The nervous system loves consistency, and it learns through repetition. When you pair calming smells with a specific evening routine, over time your brain starts to associate those scents with slowing down, unwinding, and preparing for deep rest. This is especially useful for athletes or clients who struggle to fall asleep, feel tensed during the night, or have trouble switching off and calming down after intense training.

Some simple but effective pairings of scents are:

• Lavender while doing foam rolling or light mobility

• Chamomile while meditating or using a breathwork app

• Frankincense during journaling, gratitude practice, or breathing exercises

Why it works: This is a form of associative learning – similar to how certain music can make you feel nostalgic, or a game jersey can trigger “game mode”. Over time, these scents become neurological cues for safety, stillness, and recovery.

5. Bonus Tip: Try a Scent Circuit

Some coaches and therapists are starting to experiment with “scent circuits”, where different scents are used strategically at different points in a session:

• Start of session: Peppermint or citrus to wake up and engage

• Mid-session: Neutral or grounding scents to maintain focus

• Cool-down or post-treatment: Lavender or chamomile to reset and recover

This kind of layering helps athletes stay present and regulate energy levels without needing to rely only on music, caffeine, or external motivation.

Smell as a Movement Assessment Tool

When we think about smell, we often picture candles, essential oils, or mood-setting rituals. But in the context of movement and performance, smell can be so much more, it can actually serve as a diagnostic tool.

That’s right: smell doesn’t only help us feel better, it can also offer real-time insight into how an athlete’s nervous system is functioning. When used intentionally, scent can reveal how the brain is processing input, how the body is responding to stress, and where there might be hidden patterns of tension or dysregulation.

For example, let’s say an athlete is experiencing pain during a specific movement, like a squat, shoulder press, or lunge. You introduce them some of the stimulating scents, and have them repeat the movement afterwards. If there’s a noticeable improvement in range of motion, comfort, level of pain, or coordination, it tells you something important: their nervous system is responsive to sensory input and it could be in a state of heightened threat perception or overstimulation.

This kind of response could indicate:

• Cranial nerve responsiveness – especially the olfactory nerve (Cranial Nerve I) and its impact on emotional and sensory processing

• A dysregulated nervous system that benefits from either upregulation or downregulation

• Sensory integration challenges, where the brain isn’t efficiently organizing input from the body

If things improve after inhaling some of the stimulating scents (even slightly) it’s a sign that the brain has shifted its perception of safety or threat, allowing the body to move more freely. It’s not “magic”. It’s the nervous system feeling less overwhelmed and more supported.

This approach doesn’t replace a movement screen or therapeutic assessment, it supports and improves it. It gives you another lens to understand what the body is trying to communicate. And for coaches, therapists, and athletes working through persistent pain, that insight can be a game-changer.

It’s a reminder that performance isn’t just about what the body can do, it’s about what the brain believes is safe to allow. And sometimes, one breath of the right scent can change that belief.

Understanding the Neurology: Why Smell Works So Fast

To really appreciate the power of smell in performance, we need to take a quick look into the nervous system. Specifically, we’re talking about two key cranial nerves that play a central role in how we feel, move, recover, and perform: the olfactory nerve (Cranial Nerve I) and the vagus nerve (Cranial Nerve X).

Cranial Nerve I – The Olfactory Nerve

This is your primary smell nerve. It’s unique among the 12 cranial nerves because it has a direct line to the brain, bypassing the usual relay station (the thalamus) and heading straight into the limbic system – the area responsible for emotion, memory, and instinctive responses.

Here’s what makes it special:

• It processes scent faster than any other sense processes information.

• It sends signals to deep brain structures like the amygdala and hippocampus, which shape how we feel and what we remember.

• This allows smell to shift emotional states very quickly, improve alertness, or even reduce the perception of pain, all within seconds of exposure.

That’s why a single breath of peppermint, for example, can wake you up, and why lavender can make you relax before you even realize you’re tense.

Cranial Nerve X – The Vagus Nerve

The vagus nerve is a central player in the parasympathetic nervous system – the branch responsible for rest, recovery, digestion, and emotional regulation. You can think of it as the body’s “brake pedal” after intense effort.

Here’s what it does:

• Regulates heart rate, breathing, digestion, and the body’s ability to relax and heal.

• Affects mental clarity, gut function, and resilience to stress.

• Though it doesn’t process smell directly, it can be indirectly stimulated by scent, especially calming ones like lavender or chamomile.

When you combine stimulating or calming scents with breathwork, movement, or intentional recovery practices, you’re likely activating both the olfactory and vagus nerves at once. That’s where the real magic in recovery happens.

The Cross-Effect: A Powerful Duo

When both nerves are engaged, either through stimulating or relaxing scents, you get a multi-layered response:

• Emotionally: mood regulation and mental focus

• Physically: shifts in breath, heart rate, and muscle tone

• Cognitively: improved clarity, regulation, and body awareness

In other words, using smell to improve performance is not just about feeling good. It’s about directly influencing the systems that govern your readiness, recovery, and resilience. And when these systems respond, even a little bit, the body can move with more ease, clarity, and trust.

Who Should Use This Strategy?

The beauty of using smell to improve performance is that it’s simple, accessible, and incredibly adaptable. You don’t need expensive equipment or complicated protocols, just a willingness to experiment and observe. While it’s easy to imagine this being useful in elite sport settings, the truth is, this approach can benefit almost anyone working with the body and nervous system.

Here’s how different people can make it their own:

Athletes

Whether you’re competing at a high level or training for personal goals, your ability to focus, regulate your emotions, and recover efficiently makes a huge difference. Smell can be used:

• To prime your mind and body before a big training session or competition

• To reduce fear responses during high-pressure situations or recovery from injury

• To support post-session recovery by helping your system shift into rest mode faster

Think of scent as part of your performance toolkit, just like your music playlist, hydration or nutrition routine, or breathwork practice.

Coaches

Coaches are not just teaching skills, they’re managing energy, focus, and nervous system states across entire teams. Strategic use of smell can help:

• Shift the emotional tone of a training session, whether you need to fire up or wind down your athletes

• Support individual regulation, especially for athletes prone to anxiety, distraction, or emotional swings

• Create pre-competition rituals that cue focus and readiness on a consistent, sensory level

Even just diffusing peppermint in a training room or giving athletes a scent roll-on can influence how they show up and perform.

Massage Therapists and Physios

Touch already has a profound impact on the nervous system, but combining it with smell can take your sessions to the next level. You can:

• Diffuse calming essential oils in your space to create a safe, grounded environment

• Use scent to help athletes and clients drop out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-repair mode

• Help regulate breathing patterns and emotional release, especially in clients who carry tension or trauma

Smell becomes an invisible co-therapist, supporting the work your hands are doing.

Parents of Young Athletes

Kids’ nervous systems are still developing, and they often don’t have the tools to regulate their energy or emotions after games or practices. That’s where scent can help:

• Create bedtime rituals with calming smells like lavender to signal “it’s time to rest”

• Use scent alongside story time, stretching, or quiet music to wind down after games, training sessions, or competitions

• Introduce smells before games to help with nerves, focus, or transitions

You’re not just helping them sleep better, you’re teaching lifelong skills in emotional regulation, recovery, and body awareness.

No matter your role, using smell to improve performance isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing things more intentionally. It’s about supporting the nervous system in small, meaningful ways that add up over time. And the best part? Once you start paying attention to the power of scent, it’s hard to unsee just how much influence it really holds.

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