Why the Brain Savings Account Matters

Brock's Brain Savings Account analogy about CTE and Concussions

Every hit adds up.

For years, the conversation around brain health in sports focused primarily on diagnosed concussions. Today, research is increasingly looking at something broader: repetitive head impacts — including impacts that may never result in a diagnosed concussion.

Think of the brain like a savings account. Every athlete begins with something worth protecting. The goal isn’t to eliminate sport, movement, contact, or competition. It’s to be thoughtful about unnecessary exposure and to make informed choices wherever we can.

That means looking at the entire environment around the athlete: rules, coaching, practice structure, equipment, medical care — and the surface beneath their feet.

We may not be able to control every impact. But we can keep asking a better question: where can we reduce the cost?

The Science Has Moved Beyond Concussions

Concussion is only part of the conversation.

A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury caused by a hit to the head or body that causes rapid movement of the head and brain. 

But researchers are increasingly studying repetitive head impacts (RHI) — the cumulative exposure athletes can experience over many practices, games, seasons, and years.

In September 2025, NIH-supported researchers reported that repetitive head impacts in young and middle-aged contact-sport athletes were associated with early neuron loss, inflammation, and vascular changes, including in athletes who had not developed the characteristic pathology of CTE. 

That changes the question from: “Did the athlete suffer a concussion?” to a broader question: “How much head-impact exposure is the athlete accumulating over time?”

That is essentially the scientific idea behind the Brain Savings Account.

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The football program at Buffalo Grove High School outside Chicago eliminated full-contact practices in 2019. Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

The Force of the Hits Matters

A 2023 New York Times article by Ken Belson and Benjamin Mueller reported on research involving 631 former football players that found the estimated cumulative force of head impacts over a player’s career was a better predictor of CTE pathology than the number of diagnosed concussions.

The findings highlight an important distinction: not all hits are equal, and the magnitude and accumulation of head impacts over time may matter. Researchers caution that the findings cannot predict an individual athlete’s risk, but the study adds important context to efforts to better understand and reduce repetitive head-impact exposure in football. Source: Ken Belson and Benjamin Mueller, The New York Times, June 20, 2023. Read the original article

Zack Wittman for The New York Times

At Least 1 in 4 Former NFL Players Gets Brain Disease.

A major new analysis covered by The New York Times found that at least 24.5% of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had confirmed CTE.

Researchers identified 878 former NFL players who died during that period. At least 215 were confirmed to have CTE, establishing a conservative minimum prevalence of approximately 1 in 4 among this study population. Because the brains of most of the deceased players were not examined, researchers said the true prevalence at death could be higher. 

“The Brain Savings Account is the best analogy I’ve seen yet to help us conceptualize an athlete’s risk of developing CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).”

– Dr. Chris Nowinski, Founder of the Concussion & CTE Foundation

Every impact matters. The surface can influence how that impact is managed.

See how Brock shock pads help the playing surface manage impact energy—and how HIC, Gmax, and other testing methods measure performance over time.

View Impact Safety

Impact Safety

Preventing concussions in sports has become a national priority.

3 Points of Safety

When your athletes take the field you want to make sure they’re playing in the safest environment possible. That’s why we’ve identified the three primary points of safety that every field owner, parent, and coach should know before selecting their new field.

Learn what role your sport field plays

Not all surfaces meet the standards

The green areas designate the desired performance ranges of quality natural turf. The spokes indicate the performance results of the artificial turf field systems described in the center. When a field falls outside the desired parameters for natural turf, the spoke lights up red. Below is an example of test results from a traditional sand rubber field over stone indicating certain results in compliance and others results that indicate a shortfall in impact safety when compared to a quality natural or quality synthetic surface.

Product comparison of a Sand/Rubber 2" Turf field with no shock pad on a stone base, results for HIC, Critical Fall Height, Gmax, and Shock Absorption all fall outside of the recommended results.
Brock USA spoke chart key.

Brain Savings Account: Frequently Asked Questions

The Brain Savings Account is an educational analogy for understanding cumulative head-impact exposure. It encourages athletes, families, coaches, and field owners to consider how the force and frequency of impacts may accumulate across practices, games, seasons, and years.

The Brain Savings Account is not a medical test, diagnostic tool, or individual risk calculator. It is a framework for explaining why reducing avoidable head-impact exposure may be valuable, even when an impact does not result in a diagnosed concussion.

Repetitive head impacts are repeated forces transmitted to the head during sports, work, military service, falls, or other activities. They can include diagnosed concussions as well as impacts that do not produce immediate or recognizable concussion symptoms.

Head impacts may matter even when they do not cause a diagnosed concussion. Researchers are studying how repeated exposure can affect brain cells, inflammation, blood vessels, and long-term neurological health.

The force and accumulation of head impacts may matter in addition to the number of diagnosed concussions. A 2023 study involving 631 former football players found that estimated cumulative linear and rotational forces were better predictors of CTE pathology in that study population than reported concussion counts.

The Brain Savings Account cannot predict who will develop CTE. Research findings describe associations across study populations and cannot determine an individual athlete’s future diagnosis or personal level of risk.

CTE currently can be definitively diagnosed only after death through examination of brain tissue. Researchers continue to investigate biomarkers and clinical tools that may eventually help identify the disease during life.

The 2025 NIH-supported study found neuron loss, inflammation, and blood-vessel changes in postmortem brain tissue from young- to middle-aged contact-sport athletes. Some changes were observed in athletes without detectable CTE pathology, but the study was small and additional research is needed to confirm and expand the findings.

The “at least 1 in 4” finding means that confirmed CTE cases represented 24.5% of all former NFL players known to have died during 2016–2021 in the study population. Because most of those players’ brains were not examined, researchers reported 24.5% as a conservative minimum prevalence at death—not as a prediction for every former or current player.

The Brain Savings Account does not call for eliminating sport, competition, movement, or all physical contact. It encourages decision-makers to identify avoidable exposure and make evidence-informed improvements wherever practical.

Sports programs can reduce unnecessary head-impact exposure through thoughtful rules, limited full-contact practices, improved coaching techniques, appropriate equipment, qualified medical care, athlete education, and well-designed playing environments.

The playing surface can influence the forces involved when an athlete’s head or body contacts the ground. Surface design is one part of a broader approach that also includes rules, coaching, equipment, medical protocols, and practice structure.

A Brock shock pad is designed to help the complete turf system manage impact energy and maintain more consistent impact-attenuation performance as the field ages. The shock pad is installed beneath the turf as one component of the complete playing surface.

No, a Brock shock pad cannot prevent every concussion, eliminate repetitive head impacts, or guarantee protection from CTE. It is engineered to improve the impact response of the playing surface during head-to-surface and body-to-surface contact.

Field owners can evaluate surface impact performance through HIC, Critical Fall Height, Gmax, shock-absorption, and underfoot testing. Reviewing multiple measurements over the life of the field provides a more complete picture than relying on a single test result.

Schools and municipalities should ask for complete-system test data, applicable testing standards, results from both new and aged systems, maintenance requirements, warranties, and documentation showing how impact performance will be monitored throughout the field’s useful life.