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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#122 - FC Pt 4: What if "taking a deep breath" doesn't work?
Have your athletes ever come to you saying, “I tried the breathing, but it didn’t work”? In this episode of Coaching Minds, we tackle exactly that—what to do when athletes struggle with using breathing techniques during competition. We’ll break down why diaphragmatic breathing sometimes feels ineffective and provide practical solutions to help athletes stay calm under pressure.
From refining breathing exercises to understanding how to use them in high-stress moments, we share real-life examples and proven strategies to make these techniques work. Whether it's adjusting timing or mindset, we’ll teach you how to guide athletes through the common challenges of breathing and focus control. Plus, we'll explore additional strategies like muscle relaxation and mental resets to enhance their overall performance.
If you're looking for ways to help athletes unlock the full potential of their breathing techniques, this episode is for you!
Are you an ATHLETE looking to take your training to the next level? Check out our website to learn more about 1-on-1 training opportunities:
mentaltrainingplan.com/athletes
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Hey, welcome to the Coaching Minds podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan. We're here to help you perform at your best, no matter the situation. Today we're diving in a little bit deeper into the physical side of focus cycle. If you have not listened to episode 119, I would encourage you to pause this episode right now. Go back and listen to the focus cycle, where we basically teach you how to implement this, how to use this framework, how to come up with your plan, whether that's for you as an individual or that's your team as a coach and basically, what we're trying to do next is say, okay, we have this plan, we went and tried to put it to work, but maybe something didn't go as well as we would have liked. So, episode 120, if you're having a hard time focusing on the next play or the next possession or whatever you said you were going to be focusing on in that big moment, you figured out, okay, what are some ways that we can dive in a little bit deeper and help you with that? Figured out, okay, what are some ways that we can dive in a little bit deeper and help you with that? Episode 121, what if the self-talk isn't working or I don't believe my go-to statement or we need to change. How do I know if I need to change? And then today really want to dive in. If you've got an athlete that comes up and says, hey, I tried the breathing, it didn't make me feel better, what do I do? And just want to give you some practical ways that you can have a conversation with that athlete and you can help that athlete. The first thing that really comes to mind is are they actually doing diaphragmatic breathing?
Speaker 1:This summer I don't know if you guys have seen the YouTube video, but Kalen Henderson and I actually went out onto a golf course and I was kind of coaching her on the course and at one point she was going through her pre-shot routine and she said, all right, I'm going to do my breathing, and I actually pulled out my phone and opened up my stopwatch the second time. She did it because it was like there's no way you're doing your diaphragmatic breathing, like maybe you're taking a big deep breath, but you're not. You're not doing what you wrote down. Um, so that that's the first place that I would start. I've even got a another golfer that I'm working with right now who's at a power five conference school has worked with a sports psychologist in the past, knows the power of breathing and how that can help your body physically, help you think, clear all that stuff. And this athlete has been told multiple times, even on the course, by their college coach hey, take a deep breath, which has always been, and that that's not the same as diaphragmatic breathing. And I will say, you know, after the, after this particular golfer started using it, it was like, oh my goodness, I feel so much more in control of my body physically. So that would be the first one I would.
Speaker 1:Maybe, you know, if an athlete that I was working with, one-on-one, said this isn't working, I would say, all right, well, I want you to do your breathing for me and just kind of count off in my head and get an idea. For how long are they inhaling, how long are they holding, how long are they exhaling, and then what's that pause like? Because ideally we want the inhale and the hold to last at least eight seconds and we want the exhale and the pause to be at least eight seconds. We also want to make sure that they're not turning this into. You know, I've had, like some middle school boys before that I think, thought this was one of those competitions that you have in the deep end of the pool where you see how long can you hold your breath underwater. We're not doing that either. There's some diminished return If you hold onto that air longer than I don't know four to 10 seconds you're not really getting a whole lot after that. That would be the first place that I would start. Are you actually doing diaphragmatic breathing or are you just taking a big breath? The second thing that I would want to know is do you think this is actually going to work? Is do you think this is actually going to work? Because if they don't really deep down, believe that, yes, this is going to do something for me, I think you're going to have a really. You got an uphill battle in front of you getting your mind and your body to be on board with something that you think is bogus to begin with. I'll never forget the first time that I heard about diaphragmatic breathing.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting at this coaching conference and I'm listening to Dr Jason Winkle, who had done military training with special ops, with SWAT teams. He had a military background and he was talking about how the United States military did a giant study and they spent millions and millions of dollars on how do we help our soldiers? Let's say we're in a situation in Iraq and there's a roadside bomb that goes off and all of a sudden we start taking fire from this building and so now we're in fight or flight. We've got all this adrenaline coursing through our body, our heart rate is jacked. How do we control our mind and body, be able to stack up on the door, bust down the door, throw in a flashbang, enter the room with four people, clear all the corners, check for any bad guys, make sure that we shoot the bad guy, don't shoot any hostages. I mean, you've got to have super high precision to be able to control your body in that situation, to be able to make split second decisions in that situation. And I'm like on the edge of my seat thinking, yes, give me this secret. What is it? And he said they figured out you need to breathe. And I remember just being so disappointed because it was like there's got to be more.
Speaker 1:And I think too many times we've heard in society, whether it's a teacher, whether it's a parent, whether it's a coach, that means well, we're upset, we're frustrated, we're flustered, and they say, hey, just take a deep breath and you're like take a deep breath, that's not going to. What do you mean? Take a deep breath, that's not going to do anything, that's not going to fix the problem, let's fix the problem. Going to do anything, that's not going to fix the problem, let's fix the problem. And it turns out that as you dive deeper into that science, that the vagus nerve is connected to that lower part of your brain. It goes through every major organ in your body. So your athletes that have butterflies in their stomach, or your athletes that have adrenaline just coursing through their body, or you know, they've got all kinds of extra energy and there's muscle tension, or maybe there's muscle weakness or they're kind of shaky, or all of these different physical things can be addressed by basically turning down that fire alarm that's coursing through our vagus nerve. We can stay, stop, relax.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of power in talking about the science behind that, you know, you can maybe even dive into. There was an article that was published in Neurological Sciences that talked about how deep breathing can induce effective improvement in quote mood and stress, both in terms of self-reported evaluation and of objective parameters such as heart rate and salivary cortisol levels. So the science behind this is solid, and maybe your athlete just needs to know a little bit more about that, just enough to realize there's a difference between hey, the next time you're stressed, take a deep breath. And look, these people that did these breathing exercises not only did they self-report feeling better, but they also had biological changes that we could track, like heart rate and the amount of cortisol that was present in their body. That's a place that, if my athlete wasn't on board with yes, I think this is going to work I would start there. The next thing I would maybe dive into is like well, tell me a little bit more what's not working, because there's a lot of times that an athlete will say to me well, I took a deep breath, but I didn't feel confident.
Speaker 1:And I think it's important to point out like those are two different things. The, the breathing, is going to help your body's physical reaction. It's going to address your heart rate. It's going to address cortisol levels. It's going to address physical things that are happening in your body. It's also going to address some mental things. It's going to give you the ability to use a different part of your brain, think critically, things like that, but it's not always necessarily by itself going to just make you feel confident. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1:But if I'm flustered and I can take a deep breath to get my body under control, and then I can say my go-to statement and then I can focus on the things that I can control, that matter right now, and then I can go take action and go do whatever's next in the process. And I've put in the time and I've put in the work and I've earned the right to be confident. Well, now, in combination with all of this, now I'm starting to feel confident. So I think it's important that the athletes know this isn't. This isn't again just. You know we talked about in the last episode that the go-to statement isn't just a magical spell that poof. You say it once and all of a sudden you feel exactly the way you want to feel. But this can turn off that fire alarm that's sending us into panic mode. This can help us think more clearly. This can help our bodies be a little bit more under control so that we can continue through the rest of the focus cycle.
Speaker 1:Another thing that's kind of not working sometimes with athletes has been they're not able to think clearly. We know that cognitive overload or tunnel vision starts to kick in depending on the person, their age, how in shape they are, but somewhere in like that 140 to 150 beats per minute. So I think it's important to note the athlete, especially like in a sport like basketball, where there's just constant motion and constant movement sport like basketball, where there's just constant motion and constant movement, we don't have to go from 140 back down to 60. In fact that's not going to help you play at your best. But maybe we need to go from like 150 just back down to like 130 so that I can make decisions in the game, I can think clearly, I can do my job, I don't have tunnel vision, I'm able to observe what's going on on the field or the court around me. I think it's important that the athlete has an understanding that we're not trying to get our heart rate all the way back down. We're just trying to bring it down a little bit so that we're back in control. We're just trying to bring it down a little bit so that we're back in control.
Speaker 1:Some athletes need to increase their heart rate is another problem that I've run into frequently. Where I have this athlete, you know like I'm thinking like a middle linebacker in football who just gave up a play, just got hit in the mouth, is kind of like oh man, what, what's? I don't know what to do, and it's like all right, well, we need to get in the game and you need to get going, you need to be ready for the next play. We need to shake that off. We need to figure out what's our assignment, what's our alignment. Boom, we need to go execute. So maybe in certain times that athlete needs to do some some, some faster breathing, instead of you know, the big, deep, slow, diaphragmatic breaths that are going to slow everything down. Maybe we need to get amped up a little bit, and there's certainly a time for that. There's certainly a time where, hey, we've come out flat and we're not playing at our best and we need to get ourselves moving. Some knee tuck jumps, some burpees, some fast breathing, maybe a couple sprints, things like that can help out.
Speaker 1:Moving on, another one that's kind of in the physical realm still is muscle tension, muscle weakness, shakiness, anything that has to do with muscles feeling extremely tight or even like loose and uncontrolled and shaky things like anywhere in that range. I always practice the forced muscular relaxation with the athletes. That's something that when I've slowed down and done that with athletes one-on-one and we do it, you know, and we tense up and we tighten up during that inhale and we stay nice and tight during the hold and then as we exhale, you know, we can loosen everything up. I have not had an athlete say to me oh well, that just didn't work. So I'm not saying that that could never happen. But when done correctly, I think that the athletes can feel OK, just like the breathing. I can either let the lower part of my brain do it automatically or I can use the front and top part of my brain to take back control and be intentional about my breathing. The muscle tension is the same thing. You can allow the lower part of your brain to dictate that or you can use the front and the top part of your brain to take back control.
Speaker 1:I would say what's more common is you know, sometimes I have athletes who only use it after they've gotten tight, so after they miss a putt, and then it's like, oh, now I'm starting to tighten up and now I use my forced muscular relaxation and now maybe it's not working as well. I think another option there is well, let's be preventative. Let's maybe incorporate it as part of our pre-shot routine that we do every time we take a club out of our bag, or every time we're walking up to the ball, or maybe, hey, this is a two-minute situation, or I'm at the free throw line. I know that I've had a tendency to tighten up here in the past, so what I'm going to do is be proactive and I'm going to use some forced muscular relaxation on the front end to prevent that from happening in the first place. Another one that you know we didn't. We didn't even get into hydration, sleep, nutrition there's, there's all kinds of things that you know. If I've got an athlete who's struggling physically, uh, that that's going to be something that certainly needs addressed.
Speaker 1:Now I would say the focus cycle is a little bit more reactive. The focus cycle is a little bit more. This situation happened, oh no. Now what do I do? An example would be car lays on the horn as I'm stepping off a curb. I jerk back up onto the curb, take a deep breath. It's okay, the car is gone, I'm safe. I'm going to look both ways, not be on my phone, all right. Now let's go. So you know, in football, how can I take back control or whatever sport you're playing? What we're doing over a more long term is how do we change the reaction in the first place? So the car example would be if you move to New York City and you live there for two and a half years where a car is laying on its horn all day, every day, then when you come back home or you go somewhere else and there's not really very many cars, and now you step off the curb, car lays on its horn, it's not going to have that same effect, or at least not to the same degree. And so you know that that's a little bit more of a long term.
Speaker 1:I would say if you're coming into competition not hydrated, you haven't eaten properly and you haven't gotten any sleep, it's too late at that point. So, yes, I do think that we should address all of these things, but these are almost even their own separate topic where, if I have an athlete who's trying to use the focus cycle and things physically still just don't feel right, maybe okay, now we need to dive a little bit deeper. We need to figure out hydration-wise. This is something super common with golfers especially. Maybe all of a sudden they're in the middle of a tournament in the middle of summertime and they're sweating a lot more than what they usually do.
Speaker 1:Strength and conditioning dives into a study where they specifically looked at golfers and it said, quote this study is the first to show that mild dehydration can impair distance accuracy and distance judgment during golf performance. They took some 20 something year old golfers with handicaps from one point two to three so I mean pretty good golfers, from 1.2 to 3. So I mean pretty good golfers and they looked at their shot distance and their shot accuracy or kind of their dispersion pattern with 9-iron, 7-iron and 5-iron, both in a hydrated and a dehydrated state, and they found a 10.9% decrease in shot distance, with just mild dehydration, which they defined as, I think, like 3% dehydration and a 92.7% worse on target accuracy. So the dispersion got exponentially larger. This isn't like a driver either. I mean a seven iron and a nine iron. These golfers should be able to put that club where they want, but in a dehydrated state they couldn't perform at their best.
Speaker 1:I think sports like football are more on board with this because, especially in the summertime, athletes have literally died from heat exhaustion, from not having proper hydration. You know those types of things. I think runners know the importance that you're going to reach a physical limit and no longer be able to do what you need to do if you get too dehydrated. But in a sport like golf, where maybe that emphasis hasn't been placed on there and it should, and no matter the sport I mean, distance, accuracy and judgment during performance for the most part is going to be pretty important. I'm not going to start passing out advice, because that differs depending on the age of the athlete, the size of the athlete, the temperature or the climate that you're participating in, how intense your sport is, but a quick search on Google should be able to come up with some pretty specific suggestions. When I'm working one-on-one with individual athletes, we have a plan where it's like okay, if I'm a golfer, at this point in the round I should have had a bottle of water, or 20 ounces, out of my water bottle by this point in the round. I should be refilling this water bottle because you know I'm taking sips here and there throughout the throughout the entire round. So whatever sport you play, whatever that looks like, that's that's something that I would certainly address.
Speaker 1:Nutrition is kind of along the same lines. You know, nutrition won't make an average athlete great, but it can make a great athlete. Average is a quote that I pulled out from that same study that I was talking about. You know, it's one of those things that I'm. I'll be honest, I'm not a great golfer. I wouldn't be able to just go hydrate myself and have impeccable nutrition and all of a sudden become a phenomenal golfer.
Speaker 1:But I can tell you a list of golfers who I have worked with that they weren't replacing carbohydrates. Uh, they, there wasn't enough protein in their system. What we'll do a lot of times is there. There's all kinds of different apps out there where you can put here's what I ate, here's how much I ate, and it'll spit out All right, this is how many calories you've burned, based on your, your age, your height, weight, all that. And I worked with athletes before who think you know I'm eating what I should be eating, I'm doing a pretty good job. I've, I'm eating pretty healthy. But then, when we add in four hours of walking and playing golf, all of a sudden they're like 1100 calories short on the day and it's like well, no wonder you're not playing well down the stretch, because you don't have enough nutrition in your body to fuel your body to perform. So again, I'm not going to give out real specific advice here on this podcast. This could be its own entire complete episode. But just know that if your athlete isn me, every time I suggest this is sleep. I had an athlete who he was a pitcher at Ohio state. He's a, he's in the major leagues now, but at the time he calls me and he's like Ben.
Speaker 1:Have you ever read this book why we Sleep by Dr Matthew Walker? Because it changed my life and you know. This book talks about the difference between people that get enough sleep and people that are sleep deprived. Talking about enhancing physical recovery, because sleep is essential for muscle repair, tissue growth, recovery from physical exertion, things like that. How deep sleep is where we release growth hormones. That aids in faster recovery and muscle development. There's improved motor skill and reaction time, because sleep strengthens neural pathways, it can improve motor coordination, it can improve reaction time and lack of sleep can impair fine motor skills. So if you're playing golf or tennis or basketball and you need to be able to do something precise, that's going to be difficult. Boosted mental performance and decision-making, because REM sleep improves cognitive processing and critical thinking and decision-making. There's a decrease in injury risk, because adequate sleep can prevent you having impaired reflexes or slower reaction time or reduced focus that can lead to injuries. When you get adequate sleep, there's enhanced endurance. It improves cardiovascular efficiency, mood regulation and stress management. Faster learning and skill acquisition, because sleep enhances the brain's ability to learn and consolidate new techniques or strategies.
Speaker 1:It's unbelievable what something as simple as sleep can do. Yet how many of our athletes, when we say, hey, it would be a good idea for you to put your phone down and turn the video games off an hour before you're getting ready to go to bed. You should try to go to bed at about the same time each night. You should try to wake up at about the same time even on the weekends. Don't sleep until 11 o'clock. Even on those days where maybe we don't have school that day but we have a game in the evening, you still need to get up at a normal time. You still need to go to bed at a normal time. Like if we could just tell people hey, pop this pill and watch this YouTube video or this Tik TOK or Instagram reel, like they would be all for it. But how many times do we get an eye roll or a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll do that, no problem, I'll take care of that, but then it never happens when we talk about sleep.
Speaker 1:So again, that that's an entire episode in and of itself that maybe we can we can dive into at some point in the future. But that is, that's another one of the things that, if an athlete is struggling with the physical side of implementing the focus cycle and the breathing and the forced muscular relaxation aren't addressing it and there's still some underlying issues, sleep is absolutely something else that I would do a deeper dive on. So hopefully this helps. This gives you some direction. If you've been listening and maybe there's something else, there's something that goes a little bit deeper and you've got some questions. Feel free to send those my way.
Speaker 1:This has just been, you know, in my experience working with a whole bunch of athletes over the last 16 years, these are some of the most common ones that have come my way, so happy to help out. If there's specific answers that I can give you or you know I can point you in the right direction for some other resources, don't hesitate to reach out. One last thing I would ask of you if you got anything out of this episode. If you think that these focus cycle episodes could be beneficial for an athlete you know or a coach that you know would really love for you guys to continue to share the podcast. That's how we grow. This is just a free resource. We don't have some giant marketing budget for the podcast. We only grow through word of mouth, so really appreciate you guys continuing to share this with other folks who might benefit from it. If you've got questions, things that you want to hear about in future upcoming episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out and until next time, make your plan and put it to work.