Breathing for junior athletes and how we can best support as sporting parents - 'A conversation with Jack McMillan'

In this episode Breathwork Specialist and Performance Coach Jack McMillan joins Gordon MacLelland to discuss breathing for junior athletes and how we can best support as sporting parents.

During the conversation they discuss amongst other things:

• Breathing = Performance and Wellbeing
• Why breathing matters for young athletes
• The use of breathing in managing pressure and anxiety
• Bridging mental health and performance
• Control v Chaos in modern sport
• Top tips for parents and young athletes
• The transfer of breathing skills to improve performance beyond sport

Jack McMillan is the Founder of Optima Performance, the UK's leading provider of breathing training for elite sport. Jack has worked with over 3,000 athletes across professional sport including Great Britain, WSL academies, the Premier league, and EFL. He specialises in teaching breathing science and stress resilience to junior athletes, coaches, and parents, helping young performers manage pressure, optimise recovery, and build lifelong self-regulation skills.

 Links to FREE EBOOKS: 

 Breathing for Junior Athletes: 

https://www.optima-performance.co.uk/Breathwork-E-Book-Sign-Up 

 Sleep for Athletes: 

https://www.optima-performance.co.uk/sleep-e-book-sign-up- 

Transcript

Speaker 0:13

Welcome to season seven of the Parents in Sport Podcast. I'm your host, Gordon Maclelland. I'm delighted to be joined today by performance coach and breathwork specialist Jack McMillan. Jack, thank you for joining us on the show.

Speaker 1 0:26

Thank you for having me, Gordon. It's uh absolute pleasure to be here.

Speaker 0:30

So today's topic, probably a little bit different. I'm not going to describe it quite as mainstream uh yet, Jack, but I I think it's getting there, uh it's getting there a little bit more. We're gonna talk about uh breathing for junior athletes, what it means for us uh as sporting parents. Uh Jack, uh just before we get underway, do you want to just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 1 0:55

Well, my journey started as an athlete myself, uh going through the academy system, receiving a scholarship, and then I was fortunate enough to receive my professional footballing contract here in England with Knotts County Football Club, and that was over 10 years ago now. Um, and in the last 10 years, I've been on quite a journey to get to where I am now. Uh, I'm now the founder of Optima Performance, um, and we're a holistic performance company that worked directly with clubs, athletes, parents, players, um, to achieve or to find ways of achieving their optimal versions of themselves through more specific holistic modalities um such as breathing. So, yeah, we're really fortunate enough to work with um thousands of athletes all over the world. Um, and now we're sort of trying to transfer our frameworks and modalities into ebooks, into education, uh, into courses as well. So it's been quite a quite a um an interesting journey, which I'm sure we'll get into. But um, but yeah, it's great to be here.

Speaker 2:04

Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, thanks for sharing that. I think it's always nice to to have that lived experience, let's say, of of going through it, but also living life on the ground, which is is so relevant. You know, I think we we all have I know have spoken offline. You have lots of people who can sit and talk good ideas, but the practical realities of of what we see on the ground can often look very different, uh, very different to that. And you spend loads of time with with young athletes um running your sessions on breathing, which are hugely popular. I mean, everywhere you go, you hear people saying good things about it. What are some of the things you're seeing with that? Because I'm guessing for young players that they'll never in a lot of them will never have even considered this part of performance.

Speaker 1 2:55

Definitely, it it's becoming um more of a hot topic now, I think, just with like media and also being inspired by other professional athletes seeing them do such practices. But it all stemmed from my own lived experience as a as a player. I used to struggle with pre-performance anxiety, and you know, even 10 years on, I would argue now players are more under pressure than I was 10 years ago with the external world we live in. So we try we translate breathing as a practice to not just elevate them on the pitch, but also off the pitch, how they manage life, how they manage maybe exams, um, different anxieties that are thrown at them through the external world and pressure. So the workshops have become hugely popular. We've, you know, we've worked with over 70 clubs um in the last two seasons, and we continue to do that. And the the translation that I feel like gets to buy in is the link to performance because a lot of the time when we speak about mental health and managing such things like anxiety, it's it's sort of tunnel, it is sort of put over on one side in its own sort of circle, and then performance is completely on the other side where we are trying to engage both and we we sit within that intersection between well-being and performance. Um, and the sort of three pillars we work on the most at Optima is our three pillars are sleep, mental health, and performance, and the interchangeable links between all three, because if we sleep well, that's going to influence your mental health, and your mental health ultimately is going to influence your performance. And return on that is performance impacts your mental health, and your mental health ultimately impacts your sleep. So, this interchangeable sort of framework that we live by at Optima allows us to deliver workshops around those three areas, but with breathing at the center of it all, and how that is navigate, how that is helping you navigate life in that mental health section, but then also translating that to performance on the pitch, how how we breathe as athletes is influencing not just our mental state, but our physical output, our endurance. And as an athlete, I was never told how to breathe properly. Um, when I work with players now, as you've just mentioned, they I will ask them, you know, has anyone ever told you how to breathe before on the pitch? And there'll probably be one hand that goes up that says, Yeah, my dad said in through the nose and out through the mouth, and that's it, you know, that's as far as it goes. And we know then, I know then, ah, well, you know, there's a long way to go, but it's a great place to start because they're fresh. Um, and they they're typically in some sort of habitual breathing pattern already, which unfortunately, and parents listening may have already experienced this, but it's typically a dysfunctional breath that that kids do have. Um and that just becomes that comes through habitual breathing patterns that are that have been adopted over time without guidance. So we sort of go in, we we look at that, and then we look at how we can give them practical tools because I was definitely a visual practical learner when I was a player and a young junior athlete as well. And the the way I learn is by doing it. So our workshops are super practical. You know, we like to bring in sort of like quite an immersive experience. We use silent disco headphones, we use eye masks, and we allow them to really feel um the breath and feel it rather than me just present a presentation. Um, and that way they get to remember it and also experience because the best buy-in in these workshops that we deliver is always the experience, and they're gonna remember that feeling rather than just what was on a PowerPoint presentation.

Speaker 7:01

Yeah, and I think that sticks out uh uh a lot. I think that immersive experience, I think the other one you touch on, which we've certainly seen a lot over of of crossover over of relevance, is this idea that when you're able to link it to performance or even link it to outcomes, you know, it's it's all very well, as you say, that that we present information and it just sits there. But actually, unless they can see what the point of this is, and it's the same with parents. Well, the reason that we might support this way or we might make this choice is this is what you may see in a performance element. If you don't add the performance element, it then just becomes a lot about well, what what's that? Well, well, who's this that's talking to us? There has to be a a link to those things. I often think that holistic development piece gets lost in that in that intersection as well. Everybody's suddenly now starting to bang on about holistic development where we've been talking about it for uh a decade, but not holistic development in a in a way that it's just a word, but actually that it's linked to performance and the reason that you need to develop these traits and the reason that they're useful and when you can use them and what does that actually look like. And I I think that's huge, and uh, it doesn't surprise me then that if you're crossing over those bits um that it's having such an impact. Um, I guess the the breathing techniques in terms of importance, I mean yeah, I think you've touched on a couple there breathing during a game, I think probably breathing prior to a game. You know, people often throw up nerves, don't they, and how they're feeling pre-perform and stuff. Um why is it why is the breathing so important? Are we thinking are we seeing it as a way to not take that away but just make it more comfortable?

Speaker 1 9:04

Yeah, I think look, inevitably, nerves are always gonna happen. Um we're only human beings, and it's that external reality that we live is constantly uh influencing our nervous system and how we navigate daily life. And a lot of the time, young athletes in particular, their nervous systems have been compromised in some way. And when I talk about the nervous system, I'm talking about this sympathetic drive, which is almost your gas pedal, which is your most people would know that is the fight or flight or freeze response, which without realizing it acutely, most athletes are in some sort of sympathetic state before they step out onto the pitch, which is actually a good thing. But there is controlled sympathetic state, and then there's uncontrolled. And that uncontrolled state, pre-performance, is what typically we see with a lot of athletes. Um, and again, unconsciously, they're not conscious, they're not aware of this, and also parents are not either all coaches of how they are preparing for their match that they're about to step out onto the pitch for. So the pre-performance aspect is all about managing um your breathing rate, your heart rate, which ultimately is influencing the nervous system, the nervous system state that you're in. And in turn, that's influencing the brain and that's in influencing your decision making and where your thought process is before a match. Because a lot of players, especially young players, well, it even older players I work with as well, we spend a lot of our time in our predictable future. And pre-performance, we're trying to predict that future. So we're constantly thinking ahead, ahead, ahead. Well, 80% of all thoughts that we have are negatively wired because that's how we survive on planet Earth. So typically we feed ourselves, you know, uh what-ifs uh always come into play. And it's about actually bringing your mind and body back to the present moment, pre-performance, to enjoy the process, to notice it, but not necessarily need to become those thoughts and to not necessarily embody them. So pre-performance is probably the most tangible um effect you could have on an athlete if they manage their mind and body. And you know, there's so many opportunities pre-performance to lock back into your breath to allow you to feel the present moment again because we get lost in thought. Um, and that's where when I was 10 years old, I remember not even getting out of the car. I would refuse to play football because without realizing it, I was stuck in my my sympathetic fight or flight or freeze. And at this time, I was always freezing. And my my dad, you know, uh, he's been a coach all his life, he also played the game. He didn't, he didn't understand, and he, you know, he admits now he didn't understand what was happening at the time. It was, come on, you know, you'll be fine. As soon as you get out there, you'll be fine. And there's a there's a process that needs to happen between that freezing and you'll be fine, uh, that we can intervene and we can give the the young athletes the tools to uh feel okay, and that's all it is. You know, we're not trying to avoid anxiety, we're not trying to avoid pre-performance nerves, but we're giving athletes tools in their box to manage. And I think that's the key here. It's giving the athletes the tools that they have the confidence that they have the tools in their box that they can manage a high pressure situation. Um, and training and it's trainable, which is what we do. Um, so that's where breathing comes into play because the breath is influencing both mind and body interchangeably. So it doesn't stop. You know, we take over 20,000 breaths a day, and every breath that we're taking is influencing our nervous system over time, so it's this sort of like um snowball effect, and we can rewind that snowball, and if we know how to manage functionally our breath, we can almost like put a cap on um any sort of like little tipples over the edge that we have that when nerves turn into anxiety, which is ultimately going to influence our performance.

Speaker 13:24

Yeah, I tell I tell, I mean, obviously, the as you say, you've alluded to there, there's nothing wrong with being uh nervous. That that shows you sort of getting prepared and ready. And I'm guessing there's times during games and competition as well where you need that moment to centre yourself back to where you actually are, maybe perhaps following an error, or maybe perhaps before taking a penalty or running down a to do your vault, there are just those moments, aren't they? Even before you get into the arena, whilst you're actually playing, where actually this just allows you to have control of something you do?

Speaker 1 14:02

Yeah, yeah. Uh in performance, there's so many ass like nuggets of time in the in a game. You know, in a in a typical junior match, if they're playing 60 minutes, the ball is probably only in play for about 40 of those minutes. So little nuggets of five, 10 seconds of time that are spread out through the game, worth of moments that they can try and regroup, you know, because everyone wants to work as hard as possible. Their heart rates are in the red zone, they're panting, you know, their mouths open and they're gasping for air and they're trying to hold on. And when those decisions are made, or you know, they might have misplaced the pass or they've missed the penalty or something, obviously emotions do take over. It's just part of our, you know, our brains and how we're functioning, especially the age groups as well that we work with. So definitely the nuggets of time and with the right tools in their box, they can start to be aware. Um now I won't go into too much detail, but there's been a couple of situations this year where I've been approached by parents to work with their junior athlete, and the the feeling of panic or hyperventilation that happens to their uh to their athlete where they've had to be removed from games because they are out of control. And it's not because they are not fit enough. We all know that they are fit enough to play 60, 80, 90 minutes, whatever time they play. But it was the the uncontrollable breathing basically spiked them so much that they went into a complete oversympathetic state, and the hyperventilation was uh prevalent and it was very noticeable, and it was almost spiraling them into a state of panic, and they couldn't control that. Um, and staff intervene, etc. And I do work with staff as well to train them on how to intervene safely with breathing because it's really important, but yeah, like it's more prevalent than we think, um, especially when we add the emotion on top of what as well as the physical, um, it can be hard to control sometimes.

Speaker 16:12

Yeah, no, absolutely. Uh, one thing you talked about earlier, and it's just got me thinking about where you say nervous systems compromise. Do you think nervous systems are compromised more today than they've ever been, but also because of the wider impact of tech and society as to where we are today?

Speaker 1 16:31

Absolutely. I think you know, I was I'm 28 now, so I 10 years ago I was a scholar. And you know, if I was a scholar now, I believe there's more support. So I think you know, you think about that high challenged environment, as long as there's high like a high level of support there, it's a it's a really great space to be in. But what 10 years ago for me it was high challenge but low support, and I think that's where the I I struggled, but now it's a different type of challenge because social media when I was a player was not it was not in my hand 24-7. Uh Instagram was only something that was slowly starting to be introduced, but it wasn't as prevalent as today. And I think definitely your nervous system without realizing it is is being compromised because every bit of information we receive on a daily basis is influencing us, it's stored somewhere in the mind or body. And I think that's where phones and distraction and pressure is translated in different ways now, and that basically adds to the pressure that a junior athlete is under without them realizing it because it's not necessarily a tangible pressure, it's intangible, and that's where sometimes I think it gets overlooked and sort of brushed to the side, is because this is all adding to their psych, this is all adding to the pressure of being a junior athlete. It's as it's as competitive as ever, uh, and that pressure does translate into yeah, compromised nervous systems. Um it's it's definitely um it's definitely there for us to see.

Speaker 18:14

Yeah, do you think that sort of increased exposure to narratives, information is then hijacking the thought process, in so much that it's it's just there's just too much there's just too much going on that it's so hard to stay ultimately grounded. But I think this applies- I mean it moves on, I guess, to what we're talking to next, that this applies to other areas of life, doesn't it? You know, you may even think yesterday to being on the golf course, and I have uh still find it incredibly difficult to block out previous experiences of shots played at certain holes, certain moments at certain stages, when actually it just needs one golf swing for that ball at that point in time, irrelevant of what's gone before. But I can imagine for young people if it's just clouded information, information, video, video, video, that these pictures could have loads going through the head when they're trying to ultimately just focus on a couple of elements.

Speaker 1 19:19

Yeah, I think the the the TikTok brain uh is real, like uh and uh you know it's I laugh because I I you know it's it's it's sad because what we're doing to to the younger generation is shortening their attention spans, and we see that you know, I work with with athletes, not just in football across different sports, um, senior and junior, and yeah, attention our attention spans are always being compromised because of short form content that we just wipe up and we see something else. And you know, after two, three seconds, if if our mind is not captured, we'll just swipe again. And that is continuously adding to the amount of information that we're bringing into the body and mind. Um, and yeah, you're right, you know, your familiar past of that golf shot that you've taken is um, without realizing it, of course it is. It's it's influence in your predictable future. So, you know, what what's what sits between your familiar past where your you know, you know, your your memories, your traumas, your experience live, and that predictable future is the present moment. And the ability to perform that golf swing with a sense of relaxation and a sense of flow can only happen in the present moment. And that's what we also teach people to do. And it's it's a hard concept, you know. As you know, you know, you'd be a PGA tour champion if uh if we could always hit the shot in the in the golf flow, right? Um, but it's it's just part of the practice to allow them to see that. And um, and yeah, you know, uh so much information now. And I think even when we're delivering, we I try as much as possible to to keep the information to a minimum actually, and allow them to continue to be guided by the physical practice because it allows them to switch off. One of the biggest um one of the biggest uh feedback, um like continuous feedback we get on our sessions is I didn't think about anything. And that to us is is the beauty spot. That's the sweet spot because what they are what they've then practiced is the present state. We think so much about the future, and they'll arrive in there, they'll arrive in the room and we'll start the session, and their minds, their body will be there, but their mind will not be there. It takes time. And I always say, you know, your body's actually arrived in the room by now, but we need to give the mind time to catch up and arrive as well. And that's for for adults as well as juniors. So that's also another way how we frame it to allow them to bring their mind and body connected. Um, and we use obviously practices to do that as well.

Speaker 21:59

Yeah, brilliant. And it it just that other walks of life thing I think is important here because you and I both know with the young athletes that that we spend a lot of time with and families that they've got lots going on that we've already alluded to just in society in general. But then when you throw in the mix of the pressure of exams, the pressure of other things that are going on whilst trying to also do uh performance as a young athlete adds to this and and you know breathing's hugely important in that state. We can we can transfer some of this, can't we? You know, man managing exams, revision, navigating that. Actually, this this crosses across a number of different pillars, doesn't it? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 22:41

I think the the human first approach when I work one-to-one with a human with with with with a younger athlete in particular, but even the older people, like it's the same concept. It's I'm influencing you as a human being, not an athlete. The athlete comes you know second, third, fourth. It's it's what's daily life, you know, they spend most of their time actually not on the pitch, you know. So how are we influencing them, how they show up as a son or daughter, or a boyfriend or girlfriend, or a father, uh a mother, whoever I'm working with, it's if if I'm working with a junior athlete, for example, and they are, I don't know, going through GCSEs, well, 80% of their minds going to be consumed by that. Football then or sport then becomes a relief for them at that moment in time. You know, it's almost like, oh, I can just go and play. And the daily lives of stepping into an exam or maybe an oral presentation. What's the one thing that we do when we speak? We breathe. And how we convey that information is how we breathe between sentences, between words, between how we public speak. And I've worked a lot on that myself over the last 10 years. Uh, you know, when I was 18, could I sit here and do this today? Of course not. It's it's it's through experience. But now what I do is I teach younger athletes how to public speak because it's a tool that they are going to need to translate into life after sport. And inevitably, if their career is a couple of years or 20 years long, there's still a life after sport that you need to prepare for. And when you're in sport as well, how you portray yourself to the media, how you work with your teammates, how you convey any information is really important. So that side of it as well is really important. And you can tell when someone's nervous because there'll be shallow breathing, they'll be high, it will be high in their shoulders, it will be short and sharp sentences because they they can't catch their breath to elaborate and feel comfortable enough. So definitely the pre-performance exam um sort of techniques are translatable for everyone to do. And it's teaching as early as possible them to be as mindful as possible. Now, the term mindfulness gets like thrown around all the time now, like everyone practices mindfulness, quote unquote.

Speaker 25:05

Um you mean like you mean like mental health as well, just gets banded around when actually half the time it isn't. It's it's yeah, exactly, exactly that.

Speaker 1 25:15

Um, and I think mindfulness is like another term that, yeah, I think you know, every other post on LinkedIn I see someone uses the word mindfulness. And for us, we look at it as a very practical thing, it's a framework that we can use. And the way we've coined it at Optima is can you observe your present state without judgment? Because when you start to observe your mind and body's present state from a different angle, you can understand what intervention you need to change that state that you're in. Well, a lot of the time, what we do is, like I was saying before, if if a if a young athlete's going into an exam and maybe they've not received their scholarship yet, and they know they've got to get English and maths uh as an absolute minimum, they've got to pass that. And the pressure's on from home, the pressure's on from the club, and they step into that room and they are, you know, shallow breathing, their heart rates through the roof. They're now, their mind and body is now spiking into that sympathetic, which unfortunately for us, that's where the sympathetic state is not a creative state. We are not relaxed in a sympathetic state. We we have tunnel vision, you know. Um, we we lose a sense of creativity and understanding where you are, the more you are aware of how your mind and body is in the moment, the more you understand that it can be changed if we have the right tools. And I think that observation piece is really important. So, yeah, I'm just trying to build, we're just trying to build mindful athletes because if you can be mindful of the present state that you're in, you can do something about it. Um, and I think that's the key here.

Speaker 26:53

Yeah, brilliant. Um, now but lots of people will be listening. We've sort of digged into, I guess, some of the things that underpin the work, a couple of basic techniques, chat, things that you think are really working with the kids out and about in the sporting world, even the simplest form that you know anybody just sat listening to this can just sort of take at home and start considering with their kids. And then obviously they then need to come and have a chat with you as well to take it to the next level. But what are we what are we thinking technique-wise, basically, for parents whose kids do maybe get overly worked up or they sense or can, I guess, um, relate to some of the stuff we've spoken about so far?

Speaker 1 27:34

Um, I could be here all day, but I'm gonna simplify it. One thing that we tend to tell parents not to do is tell their child to take a deep breath, which is contradictory to everything we've ever learned. And when I was a player, my dad would be like, When I was frozen in the car and he could tell that I was in some sort of panic, it was take a deep breath. I was already breathing really deeply. I was already over breathing. Now, a lot of the times what we do is because that's always been a traditional thing, it's just like in the top of our heads, right? We just say, take a deep breath, you'll be fine. Whereas when we take deep breaths, we hyperventilate. And what a lot of kids are doing already is hyperventilating without realizing it. So, what is hyperventilation? It's breathing nor it's breathing more than the body's that the body demands in that moment. So typically someone's breathing rate will be mirrored by their heart rate. You know, typically, if the heart rate's up, typically they will be breathing fast, shallow, heavy, um, and it will already feel quite deep. Doesn't matter if they breathe through their mouth or nose. Now, 99% of the time, what will happen is when they're in that state of stress, they will breathe through their mouth. So even just identifying as parents how is your child breathing on a daily basis to understand are they helping themselves dampen the stress response that's coming into the body throughout the day? So if stress hits, how are they breathing? That's number one is awareness. What how is your child breathing? Are they breathing through the mouth on the inhale, or are they breathing through the nose? Because that in itself is giving them a different response.

Speaker 29:17

Now, when we might just interject, Jared, slightly, because I just want some clarification from you as the expert on this. Obviously, we see this technique of breathing nose mouth, different stuff everywhere. Even I'm guilty of it because I remember trying something once for running and I almost suffocated myself having got got down the hill. Well, actually, the reality is you've got absolutely no chance. Can I can I breathe this way? Now, I probably could have given it more. What what is the what is the actual science and practical reality of nose and mouth breathing? So it's all to do.

Speaker 1 29:56

A huge part of it is to do with your carbon dioxide, your CO2 sensitivity. Now, CO2 is a gas that is quote unquote a waste gas. That's what we've, you know, that's what we exhale. We inhale oxygen, we exhale CO2. Now, what happens is when CO2 rises in the blood after an exhale, so imagine if I was just taking you on the quick cycle of breathing, you breathe into, you breathe into the body, comes down into the lungs, we oxygenate the blood. That blood goes through our blood vessels and to the muscles. We oxygenate the working muscle. In return, a gas exchange happens, gives off CO2, it comes back into the blood, comes back into your lungs, and you exhale that out. Now, after the XL, your oxygen that was in the muscles is still working, which means CO2 is still working back into the lungs. Now, in your the back of your brainstem, not to get too technical, there are things called chemoreceptors. Now, I explain this to an athlete as have you ever watched the film Inside Out? Now, that's a great film to understand emotions in the mind. You know, it's this girl who has all these characters in the head. Now, at the back of all of those, there is a minion that is your chemoreceptor. And this tells the brain when CO2 rises in the blood for you to take your next inhale in. So this chemoreceptor is super sensitive in children because they have never one trained to improve their CO2 sensitivity, and two, because they always offload too much CO2 that we don't give the body the opportunity to strengthen our capacity for CO2. So hyperventilation will translate into a low CO2, uh high CO2 sensitivity. Whereas if we're always panting, we never give the body the opportunity to hold onto it to ultimately tell that chemoreceptor minion in the back of your head that you are safe and that the next breath you take in is not a short and sharp gasp. It's calm, it's controlled, and it's typically through the nose. So nasal breathing is the one way that we can breathe functionally, because when you use the nose, you breathe lower, slower, and deeper into the body. Our diaphragm, which is our main primary breathing muscle, is contracted more, and we pull in that air deeper into the body. And when you breathe through the nose, you breathe slower than if you breathe through your mouth. So if you were to think about how many breaths you're breathing right now, Gordon, listeners can't see, but your mouth is closed, you're breathing through your nose. That would change if you were to open your mouth. When we breathe through our mouth, we breathe higher, shallower, and faster. And your breathing rate is then influencing your heart rate, which is influencing how we're thinking. Are we under threat or not? So without realizing it, children are breathing a certain way, which is ultimately influencing how they think and feel in the moment that they're in. So if I was to go back to your original question, nose or mouth, in an ideal world, yes, nasal breathing. At rest, when we're walking and when we're doing light exercise, but that takes time to train. I'm not gonna tell a kid who maybe has anxiety, um, who has been prone to panic attacks before, to change from mouth to nose, that's gonna panic them even more because CO2 is a is a an alarm system to the brain to breathe in again. And if I was to get parents on the call, if they're not driving, to inhale through the nose, exhale softly out of the nose, and pinch and hold the nose and keep their mouth closed, they will experience the sense of CO2 rising in the blood, which sends um a sense of air hunger to the body. So it feels like we're we're not breathing enough. And when they release their breath hold, when the first urge comes to breathe, they will want to breathe quite fast because they'll want to feed the body again and keep it alive. So that is without realizing it, spiking their stress response to whatever they're doing. So we can actually train stress resilience and your response to stress by doing controlled breath holding uh frameworks that we deliver to even kids, as long as they've not got asthma or any respiratory problems or anything like that, just have to say that disclaimer, um, then it's it's a really good technique to actually use to train them to deal with stressful moments, but in the right functional way. Because, Gordon, if I was, you know, if I changed my tone right now and I started to shout at you and I started to, you know, um put you on the back foot, what a lot of us do before we we make our reaction is we breathe. Now, a lot of us will take a gasp through the air, uh through the mouth, and then go, yeah, but you said this, and then we'll go on the attack. Now, what happens is when you breathe in through your mouth, you spike in that stress response, the heart rate goes up, and then we're ready to speak. So without realizing it, we can help control our reaction even to what the words come out of our mouth if we breathe correctly before we say a certain thing. Um, and you know, we're all guilty of uh of saying things with that we don't mean sometimes. So it's just another way, and that's even like maybe even helpful for a parent, you know, they've got a couple of kids at home with uh, you know, it's a bit of a madhouse on a Friday evening, and one's trying to get to bed and they're gonna react, and how they react is really important as well, um, to obviously get their point across. So breathing is complex, and I hope you've realized that. But the the the simple the simple framework we use is something called the gear framework. Which gear are they in? Now, gear three, um, which is actually in the breathing for junior athletes ebook uh that I will send listeners as well. It's a free ebook that they can download. Um, level three is mouth-mouth breathing. Now, obviously, there's so many different variations of mouth-mouth breathing, and of course they are, but simplified, are they breathing in through the mouth and out through the mouth? That's gear three. Gear two is nose-mouth. Are they breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth? And gear one is in through the nose and out through the nose. Now, gear one is would be translated to calm, controlled in the moment. Their heart rate would mirror their breathing rate. So you can start to understand where a kid is by the way they're breathing. Now, gear two is the intervention breath. Because typically, what we won't do as human beings, we won't sit here and just breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth at rest. We either breathe through the mouth or through the nose, not both. Okay? So without realizing it, you know, if you've watched a kid watch TV, their jaws sort of open, they're like, um, like concentrating and they're just breathing through the mouth. They still can be rested, of course they can. But it's the translation to the moment that they're in. So if a kid is stressed, you will typically see their heart rate is up by their breathing rate. You can hear people how they breathe and you can watch them. Are they breathing through their chest and shoulders? Are they using a lot of bodily movements to breathe? Breathing should be done quite um secretly. You shouldn't really be able to see anyone breathe, right? So if they're at a mouth-mouth breath, that shows them that if they're on the football pitch, great, mouth-mouth fine because they need to ventilate the body in their highest heart rate to breathe and perform. But it's when the ball goes out of play or when the moment happens, we can intervene with level two. Can they change their inhale from a mouth short, shallow, fast breath to a nasal, slow, low, deep inhale, which changes their breathing rate, which now allows them to start controlling their heart rate quicker. And if they can get their breathing down, they can get their heart rate down, if they can get their heart rate down, they can recover quicker. To ultimately stepping off the pitch, getting back to level one breathing as fast as possible. Can they be back to nose-nose? Because now remember, they're not hyperventilating. You are breathing through your nose right now. You don't need to breathe hard and heavy to sustain being alive and what your body needs at rest. And I think it's at rest that we forget to that we can intervene with functional breathing to show a junior athlete, okay, as soon as you step off the pitch, your recovery process starts. Now, your recovery process cannot start if our nervous system is still compromised in a sympathetic state. The body is tense, you know, we um we lack blood flow around the body when we hyperventilate, our blood vessels actually constrict, and there's a lack of blood flow, even goes to the brain. So all of these different things are being influenced by the way you breathe. So the the simple thing of observation for a parent is how is how do their athlete breathe on a daily basis? Um, and the next one is how do they breathe when they sleep? Now, without going into, you know, um, if they've got any respiratory conditions or, you know, breathing-related conditions, they will be compromised in different ways. And, you know, the parents that listen into this call will probably know that because they've probably been consulted by a specialist. But if they've not, just observe how are they breathing. Are they breathing through their mouth when they're sleeping, or are they breathing through their nose? Are they allowed sleep or are they a quiet sleeper? Because the way you're breathing when you sleep is influencing the sleep depth of where we can go with our sleep and how recovered they will feel when they wake up. So breathing is super, super important. Um, I'm not gonna sit here and recommend taping your mouth, um, especially not for junior athletes. I wouldn't recommend it at all. Um, I only recommend that to 18 plus when we've actually, you know, analyzed them properly and understood whether they can sustain a nasal breath when they're sleeping, because some people can't, but you will start to understand where their recovery process is when they sleep as well. And that's influencing your jawline, that's influencing your teeth, that's influencing um even the posture of your tongue and the posture of the body is all influenced by the way you breathe on a daily basis without realizing it. So I remember going to the orthodontists as a kid, and they never told me about breathing, they never told me about tongue placement, they never told me anything like that that's influencing my jawline and how my tongue sits in my mouth is influencing how we breathe. Um, so those are the two ways. Observe when um when conscious in day-to-day life, observe when they're in activity, and when they're in activity, you'll start to understand how they breathe. And is it becoming an issue? So ask your junior athlete, how does it feel when you breathe? Does it does it hurt? Does it, does it, does it feel quite relaxed? Do you feel like the breath gets stuck anywhere? These are just like simple terms that you can use to understand where are they breathing into the body? Um, and when do they feel like their breath is helping them? And when do they feel like it's just an alarm system to tell them when they're tired? Um, so the the gear framework is super simple to understand without even needing to do a crazy technique, where are they at? And then eventually, when it's trained, they will be nose-nosed throughout the whole day. They will be nose-nose when they're walking, when they're cycling, for example. Lower heart rate activities will make it realistic for them to breathe through their nose. As soon as their heart rate goes up, what happens? The mouth opens, we go back to our habitual breath and we start to ventilate the body. That also can be trained, but that comes further down the line when we when we cover the foundations and we get those right.

Speaker 42:15

Yeah, so basically, I mean that I I love that gear framework. So, what we're saying is there's different breathing techniques for different moments during elements of performance, because there sort of is and there has to be.

Speaker 1 42:28

Absolutely.

Speaker 42:29

Um, are we saying that that calming state, the sort of nasal nasal, nasal breathing, is what we want to be doing 90% of the time, whether that be pre-performance, post-performance, and actually the other part of that is the actual activity itself under the maximum amount of physical exertion or pressure where it will it'll naturally change anyway.

Speaker 1 42:55

Yeah, it will. And I always say to my players that I work with one-to-one in particular, but also the groups, I don't want you thinking about breathing on the pitch. I want you to think about the game. Like I don't want you to to be thinking about what Jack said, because then you're you're you're missing the point. You know, I I come, we come from the real world, don't we? It's like we don't come from the ideal world. And I think a lot of the time breathing is the ideal world, and they'll be like, oh, breathe through the nose on the pitch. Impossible. I've played the game, I've ran half marathons, you know, when your heart rate's in the high zone and you're absolutely hanging on for dear life, you cannot just breathe through the nose. But there's times where you can intervene when you have that awareness of how you breathe on the pitch. But ultimately, for example, we do um, and this is a tip for parents as well, and coaches with with athletes that are a lot of them in junior sport, they sort of end uh matches, don't they, with penalty shootouts a lot of the time to you know prepare the get the players used to having that pressure and seeing if they can score and stuff like that. And it typically Obviously, it doesn't amount to anything at the moment, like it's um, but it's a great opportunity to practice breathing because what we do at Optima is we bring in a visualization technique with breathing and penalty taking when we do workshops with clubs and junior athletes to allow them to understand the gear framework in motion, in it in action. When they step up to let's say, for example, they they walk up to take, you know, from the halfway line, and the that walk is very long and it could take ages. They um they put their hands out and they receive the ball from the referee and they put it down on the spot. Now, without realizing it, 99% of players will be breathing through the mouth at this point because they've just had a brisk walk or jog to the penalty spot, the nerves take over, the heart rate goes up, and now we're stimulated, which is fine. But a penalty kick does not require crazy amounts of exertion for the body. And we've recovered from the actual game and we're stood on the spot. How do you think we should breathe breathe in? That's a question for you.

Speaker 45:04

Well, I'm guessing we we want to bring that down, don't we? Stood before we take it. The then going back to nasal nasal just to prepare and and drop that yeah, that nervous system being hijacked.

Speaker 1 45:17

Yeah, exactly. And your heart rate, like controlling your heart rate as much as possible. And it's going from mouth-mouth, which is inevitable, it's catching the mouth-mouth, it's coming down to nose-mouth to ultimately come down to nose-nose breathing. So you can go through the framework before you take a penalty. Like Harry Kane, for example, there's a couple of years ago, he scored a hat-trick of um of penalties in a Champions League game for Bayernich. Now he has the same penalty routine all the time. He is a mouth breather on the pitch, like most athletes. He gets the ball, he puts it down on the spot, he stands back, he takes a breath in through the nose, and he takes a long, slow breath out of the mouth to offload the CO2. Okay? Now, short term, when you do that, you catch the feeling of needing to breathe so fast because we get rid of the CO2. And to follow that comes nose-nose breathing to come back to baseline and balance. So he goes from mouth-mouth, he then takes three nose-mouth gear two breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth three times. Then he comes back down to nasal breathing by the time he takes the penalty kick. So the idea here is can you get your breath down to a baseline as fast as possible to tell the mind and body that you're in control again? And with that control comes a better body language, which is also influencing how the goalkeeper thinks you feel about the penalty you're about to take. So that's how we work it into like real-world application as well, because it's already been done. You know, it's a it's it's quite natural as long as we know how to do it.

Speaker 46:51

Yeah, and and you know what, even listening to that, and I think it's a really good way to sort of tie up this um episode is I I think that, you know, for me, even listening to it, I think that picturing of that gear framework, the understanding of when different types of breathing are more useful than others. But I think that way you've described the the walk-up to take a penalty is a lovely visual way of explaining it to anyone. That could be the same if you were stood on the, as I say, on the runway at a vault, or you were the goal kicker in a rugby game, or you were even the hooker throwing into a line out, for example. Are those moments where you need that that execution?

Speaker 1 47:33

Yeah, and uh look, I I refer back to football a lot because 80% of my work is in football. However, I do work in tennis. I've worked in I've worked with GB table tennis to prepare seniors for the um for the Paris Olympics back a couple of years ago. And it's the same concept, it's the same frameworks, it's just applied in a slightly different way with terminology. Another one um which we actually make reference to in our up-and-coming course, uh, because we're we're releasing a course called Breathing for the Junior Athlete, and it's for parents, coaches, and practitioners to understand how breathing you can apply yourself as a coach to apply breathing techniques safely and effectively. And we reference, um, I do a presentation on the difference between football and tennis. A single sport, you know, where it's just you know you versus you, and then a football which is a completely different uh mind and you know output on the pitch. And it's the same for tennis, it's the same for a second serve, it's the same for a first serve, it's the same for match point, it's the same for those crunch moments when you go to the tower as a as a junior athlete when they have their routines. How are they breathing in that moment? And is that influencing their next action? It's the same for golf. I've I've done some work with some golfers before, and I smile when you mentioned golf at the start because that's that's every golfer's um question mark, isn't it? You know, can they sustain it and find the rhythm to go again and and to perform? And typically without realizing it, their breath is having a huge physiological effect, which is influencing their psychology as well. Um, so yes, it's translatable across all sports, not just football, not just team sports, um, single sports as well. So hopefully that just helps paint the picture.

Speaker 49:19

I it's brilliant. I'll certainly be taking that uh onto the golf course this week in pursuit of perfection, which feels a very, very long way off, even if such a thing uh does actually exist. Um, Jack, listen, thank you for uh joining us on the show. It's been an absolute uh pleasure having you on. Uh what we will do, listeners, is Jack's mentioned uh a couple of resources there. Uh we will put on the uh podcast release uh where you can find Jack more about his work, uh that book for young athletes that that's been mentioned. So certainly uh if it's something that you want to know more about, um then we'll we'll allow you to get in touch there. But for now, Jack, absolute pleasure. Uh look forward to chatting again soon.

Speaker 1 50:07

Thank you so much, Gordon, for having me. And yeah, um um I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. Thank you.

Speaker 50:14

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