How Rest Can Get You to Your Goal Faster

Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor Ronnie Baker discusses the importance of taking rest and finding stillness in both sports and faith. He highlights the necessity of activating the parasympathetic nervous system to achieve clarity and calm, and relates this to a spiritual practice of trusting God. Ronnie shares personal experiences of overcoming injuries and emphasizes that true strength and best performance often come from moments of stillness and peace. He offers practical steps to cultivate this stillness, including silence, breathing exercises, and prayer. The devotional concludes with a prayer and encouragement to other athletes to find balance and strength in their faith.

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Transcript

Ronnie Baker 0:00

What if the strongest thing you could do today is be still kind of crazy, isn't it? I am Ronnie Baker, your favorite Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor discipling you on how to navigate your faith in your sport. In today's devotional, we're gonna talk about how you can get stronger by taking rest. We live in a culture that says, if you're not moving, you're falling behind. If you're not practicing, you're falling behind. If you're not grinding, you're falling behind in sport, especially at the elite level. The message is pretty clear. Go faster, do more, push harder. Don't stop. No days off. But sometimes the biggest victories that we have in life happen in the quietest and most still moments. Sometimes the strongest athlete isn't the one who reacts, isn't the one who's bold, isn't the one who is putting on a show. It's the one who knows when to pause, when to breathe, when to respond, and how to respond and do that with purpose. So from a psychological perspective, stillness is nervous system mastery. It's how you regulate your fight or flight response. Manage your adrenaline and stay calm under pressure. So there's this thing called the sympathetic nervous system. So just to give you a little bit of a crash course on sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. It's basically when you're in a situation, right? Are you gonna fight? Are you gonna get ready? Are you going to go to war? When you go to competition? Or that flight response, which is, I'm so nervous that I can't do anything So when this system is overloaded, you may get jittery, you may get reactive, you may be emotionally unstable, you might feel a lot of anxiety come on. And when you do that, you can make poor decisions. You can feel burnout in your sport. Maybe you don't wanna play anymore. Maybe you just don't have the energy anymore. maybe you don't want to go to practice, but sometimes I don't want to go to practice too. But if it lasts for a week, two weeks, three weeks, you could be in a space where you're getting a little burnt out. So what we wanna do is we want to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, This is the calm state where you create clarity, you find rhythm, you perform from peace and not from anxiety. So let's take that to a spiritual level. Psalm 46, 10 says, be still and know that I am God. This is not a passive stillness. This doesn't mean I'm gonna sit on the couch for the next five days. Right. This is an active surrender. it's God telling you that you don't have to be your own superhero. You don't have to be your own rescuer. You don't have to force this outcome. You don't have to force your destiny, he's saying, I've got this. Sit with me. I've got a plan. And when you're grounded in God's presence, you're no longer reacting out of fear. You're moving from faith. So when you have God with you, you're not gonna make decisions based on external circumstances. You're gonna look inwardly, you're gonna find Christ, you're gonna be at peace, and you're gonna make your decisions, take your actions from there, and that's gonna always get you a better result. So. There were moments in my career where everything felt like it was spinning. I had injuries so many times in my career, and a lot of track and field, I believe, is expectations from others. in 2017, I strained my hamstring at the USA trials. In 2019, I dealt with a hamstring strain and an adductor injury. this year in 2025. I'm dealing with another hamstring injury. So I've been injured quite a few times and these were moments in my career where I felt like everything was spinning. I was doing so well, I was training so well, and now I have to deal with this injury that's gonna keep me out of practice for weeks and potentially months. And the moments I actually performed the best, I'll be honest with you guys, they weren't when I was hyped up. They weren't when I was wired, where I was super excited. A lot of them were in times where I was the most centered, where I was the most peaceful. when I took time to slow down and remind myself of the this thing, this one phrase that God is still in control. Tony Dungy was a professional NFL football player and a coach at one point, and he has a devotional book, and he said this, he said, calm is contagious. And in the heat of competition, stillness is a weapon most people overlook. Think about that stillness is a weapon that most people overlook. So how can we use stillness as a weapon? How can we use stillness to get stronger? How can we apply Psalm 46 to our life? let's build that stillness today. Here's your challenge, step one. You're gonna create five minutes of silence, five minutes before practice. Sit still. No music, no phone, no noise, and just be there. Be in the moment. If you have to set a timer on your phone for five minutes and do that, be in the moment, be still, be with God, pray, talk to him. This is this stillness. This is this peace that can overwhelm you. Step two, I want you to breathe and pray. Use your breath to calm your body. Inhale for four seconds, exhale for six. Repeat that a couple times and you'll start to feel your heart rate come down. In this step, I want you to pray. God, I release control. You are my foundation In step three, I want you to journal this prompt. I want you to ask yourself, where do I need to be still and let God be God. Where do I need to let the spirit lead me? How am I gonna wait and not rush into things? Okay? This is our challenge for today. I hope that this podcast helps you. Now, let me pray for you. God teach me that stillness isn't weakness. Teach me to trust you. When things are loud, when they're chaotic, when they're unknown, when I'm going through an injury, when I. Don't perform as well as I think I should have. God, when I take a loss, when I'm embarrassed, help me to breathe. Help me to stand tall. Help me to remember that you go before me. Help me to hold my chin at my head high. Let your presence be my anchor. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Stillness isn't stepping back. it's stepping deeper into God's strength. Remember that you don't have strength without God. You can't accomplish anything without him. So rest in the fact that he's got your back. Guys, if this encouraged you today, share it with another athlete who needs to hear this. And if you're still trying to figure out how to balance faith in sport, I'm gonna let you know right now that you're not alone. Keep showing up, keep trusting God. And remember, defeat is optional when your hope is in him. I'm Ronnie Baker and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.