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 citrus. And something in you immediately shifts. Your focus sharpens, your body relaxes, you feel ready. Not because of a warm-up routine or a music playlist, but because of using smell to improve performance.

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 that the nervous system influences everything behind the scenes. And smell is one of its most powerful and often overlooked entry points.

I first became fascinated by this topic through my studies in applied neuroscience. The more I learned about how the brain processes sensory input, the more I realized that using smell to improve performance isn’t some fringe idea. It’s grounded in how we’re wired. The olfactory system, responsible for processing smell, has unique properties that make it unlike any other sense.

Most athletes work tirelessly to train their muscles, discipline their minds, and sharpen their tactical strategies. But how many of us pause to consider how environmental inputs like smell might influence everything from reaction time to recovery?

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 including heart rate and stress response. It bypasses the usual filters, making it one of the fastest ways to influence our mood, stress levels, and physiological states.

In this post, I’ll unpack 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 this approach might be the missing link you didn’t even know you needed.

Key Takeaways

• Smell has a direct line to your brain’s emotional and regulatory centers, bypassing the usual filters and connecting straight to the limbic system. This allows it to influence mood, memory, focus, and pain perception almost instantly.
• You can use scent intentionally for both performance and recovery. Stimulating scents like peppermint and citrus sharpen focus and energy, while calming scents like lavender and chamomile support nervous system downregulation after training or before sleep.
• Smell can also serve as a diagnostic tool. Changes in movement quality, tension, or pain after scent exposure can reveal nervous system sensitivity and how the brain is processing threat or overload.
• Multiple cranial nerves respond simultaneously. By engaging both the olfactory nerve and indirectly the vagus nerve, scent creates effects on breath, heart rate, muscle tone, and cognitive control, making it a holistic tool for athletes and coaches.
• This strategy is simple, accessible, and scalable. Whether you’re an elite athlete, a youth coach, a therapist, or a parent, using smell to improve performance is a low-cost way to support the body and brain in working more efficiently.

Why Smell Deserves Serious Attention

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 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, known as Cranial Nerve I, is the only cranial nerve that skips the usual processing hub in the brainstem and goes straight to the brain’s control centers. This direct line means that smell has the potential to influence your mental and physical state faster than any other sense.

I’ve observed this in my own work and training. There are days when everything feels slightly off, when focus wavers or energy lags. And sometimes, a simple shift in sensory input, including scent, creates a noticeable change in how the body responds to movement and challenge.

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. Using smell to improve performance isn’t about adding complexity to your routine. It’s about recognizing what’s already happening and learning to work with it intentionally.

The Brain Science That Makes This Work

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, called 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 comfort, alertness, or 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 rooted in how your brain is wired to function. Whether you’re calming pre-game nerves, resetting mid-session focus, or supporting recovery, you’re not hacking your system. You’re working with it intentionally.

I find this deeply meaningful because it reminds us that performance isn’t just about what happens in muscles and joints. It’s about what happens in the nervous system, in the brain’s interpretation of safety and threat, and in the subtle signals that shape how we show up in any given moment.

Five Practical Ways to Use Scent

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, a coach helping athletes regulate intensity, or a therapist supporting nervous system healing, smell can become a powerful part of your approach.

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

Pre-Training Scents for 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, which boosts alertness and supports respiratory function. Citrus scents like orange, lemon, and grapefruit are uplifting and energizing. Eucalyptus clears mental fog and supports deeper breathing.

These scents activate the sympathetic nervous system, the part responsible for preparing the body to take action. That’s exactly what you want before a game, lift, or sprint.

Picture a sprinter taking 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. This isn’t imagination. It’s the nervous system responding to sensory input.

Between Sets: Assessing Nervous System Response

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 two or three times. Then re-test the same movement or skill.

Notice if there’s a change. Does the movement feel smoother? Is pain reduced? Do you feel more focused or grounded? If things improve, it tells you something important: the nervous system is responsive to sensory input and might be in a state of heightened threat perception or overstimulation.

This kind of insight gives coaches another lens to understand what the body is trying to communicate. Using smell to improve performance isn’t just about feeling better. It’s about gathering real-time information about an athlete’s state.

Post-Training: Cueing 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 nudge toward the parasympathetic state, also known as “rest and digest.”

Calming scents that support this shift include lavender, which reduces anxiety and lowers heart rate. Chamomile is calming for both body and mind. Frankincense is grounding, centering, and emotionally stabilizing.

These scents can be used during stretching, breathwork, massage, or even while driving home after a game. The key is consistency. Over time, the nervous system learns to associate these scents with safety and recovery.

I’ve found this particularly valuable for athletes who struggle to “switch off” after intense training. Their bodies are still running hot, still in performance mode, hours after the session ended. A calming scent becomes a signal: the hard part is over, and it’s time to restore.

Evening Rituals 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 tense during the night, or have trouble switching off after intense training.

Simple but effective pairings include lavender while doing foam rolling or light mobility, chamomile while meditating or using a breathwork app, and frankincense during journaling, gratitude practice, or breathing exercises.

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.

Using smell to improve performance also means using smell to improve rest, because rest is where performance gains actually consolidate.

Try a Scent Circuit

Some coaches and therapists are experimenting with “scent circuits,” where different scents are used strategically at different points in a session.

At the start of a session, peppermint or citrus helps wake up and engage. Mid-session, neutral or grounding scents maintain focus. During cool-down or post-treatment, lavender or chamomile helps reset and recover.

This kind of layering helps athletes stay present and regulate energy levels without relying only on music, caffeine, or external motivation. It’s about building internal regulation skills through consistent sensory cues.

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 a stimulating scent and have them repeat the movement afterward. If there’s a noticeable improvement in range of motion, comfort, pain level, or coordination, it tells you something important: their nervous system is responsive to sensory input and could be in a state of heightened threat perception.

This kind of response could indicate cranial nerve responsiveness, especially the olfactory nerve and its impact on emotional and sensory processing. It could reveal a dysregulated nervous system that benefits from either upregulation or downregulation. It might point to sensory integration challenges where the brain isn’t efficiently organizing input from the body.

If things improve after inhaling a stimulating scent, 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 deepens it. Using smell to improve performance gives you another lens to understand what the body is communicating. And for coaches, therapists, and athletes working through persistent pain, that insight can be a game-changer.

The Neurology Explained Simply

To really appreciate the power of smell in performance, we need to understand two key cranial nerves: the olfactory nerve, known as Cranial Nerve I, and the vagus nerve, known as Cranial Nerve X.

The olfactory nerve 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 and heading straight into the limbic system, the area responsible for emotion, memory, and instinctive responses.

What makes it special is that 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.

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.

It regulates heart rate, breathing, digestion, and the body’s ability to relax and heal. It 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 nerves at once. That’s where the real power emerges.

When both nerves are engaged, you get a multi-layered response. Emotionally, you see mood regulation and mental focus. Physically, there are shifts in breath, heart rate, and muscle tone. Cognitively, you notice improved clarity, regulation, and body awareness.

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, the body can move with more ease, clarity, and trust.

Who Benefits from This Approach

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.

Athletes

Whether you’re competing at a high level or training for personal goals, your ability to focus, regulate emotions, and recover efficiently makes a huge difference. Smell can prime your mind and body before a big training session or competition. It can reduce fear responses during high-pressure situations or recovery from injury. It can 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 routine, or breathwork practice.

Coaches

Coaches are managing energy, focus, and nervous system states across entire teams. Strategic use of smell can shift the emotional tone of a training session, whether you need to fire up or wind down your athletes. It can support individual regulation, especially for athletes prone to anxiety, distraction, or emotional swings. It can 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.

Therapists and Practitioners

Touch already has a profound impact on the nervous system, but combining it with smell can take sessions to another level. You can diffuse calming essential oils in your space to create a safe, grounded environment. You can use scent to help athletes and clients drop out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-repair mode. You can 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.

You can create bedtime rituals with calming smells like lavender to signal “it’s time to rest.” You can use scent alongside story time, stretching, or quiet music to wind down after training. You can 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.

A Tool Worth Exploring

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.

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.

I encourage you to experiment. Pick one scent and one context, whether it’s peppermint before training or lavender before sleep. Use it consistently for a week and notice what shifts. Pay attention to focus, mood, movement quality, and recovery.

You might be surprised by what you discover. The nervous system is always listening. The question is whether we’re intentional about what we’re telling it.

This is applied neuroscience at its most practical: simple tools that work with the brain’s natural wiring to support better performance, faster recovery, and deeper well-being.

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