079 Try This Breathing Technique That Helps Athletes Manage Anxiety w/ Therapist & Athlete Kerri Bicskei

Are you an athlete or high performing person who has been slowed down by your anxiety? Anxiety can be crippling, frustrating and leave you feeling powerless. This solo episode is all about how breathwork can help you take back your performance and mental health by using a few easy (free) to use tools. 

In this episode:

• Humming Breath technique fro athletes
• Box Breathing technique for athletes
• My own personal struggle with anxiety
• When and how often to use these anxiety reducing techniques

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Kerri Bicskei, professional athlete, licensed therapist and mindset coach. I created ReadySet Mindful as an online mental health resource for athletes and high performers like you. And this is the ReadySet Mindful Podcast.

 Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Ready, set Mindful podcast. I'm your host, Kerri Bicskei, athlete, therapist, and mindset coach, and it feels so good to be back recording in Tampa after a month in Vermont, which was amazing. Um, but yeah, now it feels really good to be back home and recording in my own.

Space. So if you are new to the Ready, set, mindful podcast, fun fact about me, you might hear during this podcast my two wonderful rescue dogs, um, log and Otis. They are my my two rescue poodle terriers. So funny we. Rescue them on separate occasions, um, adopted them on, on separate occasions we got Logie from Washington and Otis from Montana and they both ended up being the same breed, which is kind of hilarious.

Logi is more poodle and Otis is more wary terrier. But anyway, a little fun fact about me if you are new here. So thanks for joining this solo episode. We are gonna be talking about breath work as a tool for anxious athletes today. So by the end of this episode, you're going to learn a new breathwork technique to integrate into your routine and help you decrease your anxiety.

So that's what's in store for you today. Uh, if you wanna learn a little bit more about what I do, make sure to go check out Ready set mindful.com. So many resources there for athletes and high performers. So, Imagine you're an athlete, you don't have a great workout, you're having an argument with your partner.

You are starting to feel pain somewhere in your foot. All of these things, you're behind in work. All of these stackable things can contribute to you having anxiety, right? These are life daily stressors that happen, and as an athlete, And high performing busy person. We have so many things throughout the day that we are trying to juggle, so it's natural to have some.

Level of anxiety, uh, right. But where it becomes unmanageable is where our anxiety is slowing us down from our day-to-day activities, impacting our relationships, definitely impacting our performance. So that's when we need to incorporate some tools like breathwork. Such a powerful one. So I'm so excited to get into it today and this episode.

Um, anxiety can be. You know, in your body and in your mind. So I know for lots of athletes that I work with, you know, anxiety comes up in the form of thoughts, you know, I can't handle this, or can I handle this? What if this happens? Everything's crashing down on me. Um, so anxiety can, can sound like in your head, like everything is falling apart.

Um, we really start to catastrophize in our anxious brain and in our anxious thoughts, and we have all or nothing thinking, and it's really, really hard to get out of without any separation, um, and using breath work. So that's why I thought it was. So important to talk about breath work for this episode so that you guys can have some accessible tools to latch onto.

When the anxiety really starts to kick in in your brain and in your body, um, it can be so, so hard. So hopefully there'll be some action steps for you by the end, so you feel like you have a little bit more control over your thoughts and over your body. I know that when I, you know, I struggle with anxiety as an athlete, uh, as a therapist, as a human, right.

So that's why I feel really passionate about, I. This subject and about passing on these tools to other high performing people like myself, because I'm not immune to getting anxiety. Things happen and I get super stressed and super anxious and, okay, how can I manage my anxiety and get myself back to this state of homeostasis and neutrality quicker, right?

Than rather than sitting in it and being anxious and letting a panic attack kind of happen. Um, so I, I've had anxiety since high school. I had it really bad in college after I had my, um, I remember when I torn my rotator cuff my junior year and I was, so, it was right after I transferred to University of New Mexico.

And I was so nervous after I tore my rotator cuff, are they still gonna want me? There's, they're gonna bring in somebody new. I'm not gonna have my, you know, my spot. Am I gonna be able to bounce back quick enough? I'm gonna gain, I'm gonna gain weight because I'm not working out a ton. Like all of these thoughts that kind of come with having an injury and the anxiety that, that comes from that.

And then I remember having, I. Anxiety a lot. When I was playing over overseas as well, I had to really, excuse me. Two really hard coaches over there. One, when I was in Sweden and one when I was in Spain, um, who were just super hard, super hard asses. They were really hard on me, gave me a lot of anxiety about my performance, and the stakes were really high there because I was getting paid to play.

And if you didn't perform, that was. Sometimes, I mean, it was directly tied to your, you getting a bonus, um, or you getting paid that month or not. Especially in Spain, they were kind of shady about, about paying us. So oftentimes if you didn't perform super well, um, you would take a pay cut that month. So imagine the anxiety that, that surrounds, that at that point.

Um, and so what I was doing to manage my anxiety, At that point, I didn't have access to this, you know, amazing checklist that I have created for, for athletes now. So if you, if you're an athlete and you have anxiety yourself and you haven't checked out our, our checklist, make sure you go to ready set mindful.com to check out that checklist for ways to manage your anxiety as an athlete.

I did not have that checklist, so I had to figure a lot of stuff out on my own. Uh, you know, and when I was overseas that was a combination. I didn't really get like the relaxation part of managing your anxiety. I was just grinding and doing a lot of busy work, uh, you know, staying super busy to manage my anxiety.

So when I started to feel anxious in my body, You know, after I had a, a bad workout or a bad game, um, I'd feel that buildup of my, you know, my chest getting super tight, um, my breathing was, was pretty rapid and constricted. I would have all of these, what if ruminating thoughts happening. And so in order to do, in order to kind of.

Handle that and manage that. I remember cleaning my room a lot. Uh, I would do all of these organization exercises. I'd keep myself busy and distract myself from my anxiety, which is so amazing. It's such a great tool to be able to, you know, do laundry or organize. Um, clean, do these productive tasks that are distracting.

But the missing piece is that RAC relaxation and rest piece that also soothes anxiety. So I did not, I was just grinding, like full tilt to try to manage my anxiety. I really missed out on doing the breathwork exercises, um, as consistently as I do now. To manage anxiety. So highly encourage if you are that grinder and you, when you have anxiety and you feel anxious, that starts to set in and you're like, I need to clean, I need to do something, I need to work out.

I need to get more reps. I need to do all these errands. Like, that's great, but we have to balance that with the, the breath work, right? So that's so, so important. So the first breath work technique, I'm gonna. Sit with you guys and, um, and help you through one of them is called the, the humming breath. So this one is a really amazing breathwork tool.

I use this with a lot of athletes. So if you're watching on YouTube, just go ahead and do what I'm doing, uh, and follow along and I will guide everyone who's just listening just via audio as well. So sit up, spine back, um, nice and tall, nice and straight. We're gonna keep everything, um, in, in through the nose for the inhale and then the exhale.

Um, also your mouth is gonna be closed and you're gonna be. Exhaling. Uh hm. Uh, a vibrating. Hm. Uh, for your exhale. Okay. I don't know how that came across via audio, so we'll just see if you guys can hear, uh, what that sounds, sounds like right. A hum sound on the exhale. So inhale for, let's inhale for five seconds.

And when we inhale, we're inhaling from our belly, from our diaphragm. Um, and our chest is naturally gonna fall and rise when we do that as well. But really make sure that your belly, uh, your stomach is expanding from, you know, you're breathing from your diaphragm. It's really important. So, nice. Big inhale for five seconds.

2, 3, 4. Five. Nice big exhale. Mouth closed. Hm.

Til you're pushing all the air out. Good. We're gonna do one more time. Big inhale for 5, 2, 3. Four, five. Nice big exhale.

Good, and it just should start to fade out for that exhale. Don't try to push too heavily, just naturally. Let that exhale, let that breath. Fade, fade naturally. So you can repeat that five to seven times, um, as needed throughout the day when you're feeling anxious, when you're feeling super stressed, um, that vibration really recalibrates, um, what's overactive in your body, right?

So that vibration can be really soothing for your parasympathetic. Parasympathetic nervous system and especially if your vagus nerve, right? So your vagus nerve. Uh, I don't know if I've done, uh, a podcast on vagus nerve a little bit. I know I've touched a lot on the parasympathetic nervous system, um, but the vagus nerve carries.

Electrical signals from your brain to your body and your vagus nerve really helps disengage your fight or flight. So it really, really helps you to soothe your anxiety, um, soothe your, your breathing, regulate your breathing, regulate your digestion. So we really want a strong vagus nerve is gonna be.

Optimal for decreasing anxiety. So it's all about soothing your parasympathetic, um, soothing your vagus nerve, getting that to be really strong so that we can ultimately decrease anxiety. So that humming breath is an exercise that you can do every day. I mean, really it's all about reconditioning your nervous system, right?

So, um, I really encourage clients to do these breathing exercises. At least twice a day. Um, you know, so morning and night. It's really important to, you know, recondition your nervous system, especially after you've, you know, you've been wired to be anxious for your whole life, you know, or have, have anxiety, have anxious thoughts.

Um, you know, especially as an athlete, putting yourself in these higher pressure situations, taking risks, making mistakes, um, you're putting yourself out there and. With that comes a certain level of anxiety. So we have to just rewire your nervous system and your brain, and your body to, um, really be calm in those moments where that, that intent, where that, that default wiring is to go into fight or flight, right?

So that's something that's super important. The next exercise is one of my favorites. I've talked about this a lot on Instagram and um, YouTube and on the website box breathing. Is the ultimate tool. Some people call it, uh, four square breathing or square breathing, or box breathing. So whatever your verbiage is for it, box breathing is my jam.

I hope it's your jam too. It's, it's amazing. Um, so again, we'll go through this exercise together cause I want this to be really actionable for you guys and for you to do this with me, um, just takes. Literally a few seconds of your time. So nothing, nothing too crazy. So again, we're gonna keep everything in and out through our nose.

And with nasal breathing, it sends the ultimate calming signal to your nervous system. So that's why we really wanna engage in nasal breathing, uh, when we're breathing through our mouth, where. At really activating that anxiety. Um, and we're, we're breathing from our chest and through our mouth and that's really just calling more stress into our body and into our brain, um, causing thoughts to move faster and everything to be really disruptive for you.

So nasal breathing is the best. So, We're gonna again, sit up nice and tall. Um, if you wanna keep one hand over your chest, one hand over your belly, just to stay engaged and to stay accountable, go ahead and do that. Um, we're gonna inhale for four seconds, and then we're gonna pause at the top of that breath so you're not holding your breath.

It's not like, You're holding your breath. Um, everyone's capable of pausing for four seconds, right? You're not gonna die. Everything's gonna be okay. You can take an inhale for four seconds and pause for four seconds and you're gonna be totally fine. And then you're gonna exhale through your nose for four seconds and then again, pause at the bottom for four seconds and you're just kind of noticing, you're just kind of chilling there.

Not needing to do anything, knowing that that four seconds is gonna be over just in the snap of a finger. Um, so just, just chill there and then we're gonna start it again. So we'll go through two times. So I'm having my chest, uh, my hand on my chest, and my hand on my belly. So when you inhale, your belly will expand out.

And when you exhale, imagine your belly button pushing closer to your spine so you really like exhaling all of that stale, stagnant energy for that exhale. Okay? Um, so let, let's go here. So big inhale for 4, 2, 3, 4. Pause two. Three, four. Nice big release. Exhale for 4, 2, 3, 4. Pause. 2, 3, 4. Good. So now you have the hang of it.

So let's go one more time. Take a big breath, reset. Shake it out if you need to. Okay, let's go one more time. Big inhale for four. Fill up two, three. Four. Pause, 2, 3, 4. Nice big exhale. 2, 3, 4. Pause. 2, 3, 4. Awesome. Good job. So that was two rounds. So you would just do an additional, you know, additional two rounds to make four, four rounds.

So if you're watching on YouTube, I'll do the square, uh, visual for you. So 4, 4, 4, 4, um, four times. So, And again, that can be done any time of day when you're feeling super anxious, feeling super stressed. Um, it's my go-to tool. It really helps to just slow down those thoughts and regulate your heart rate.

Your breathing allows you to have a little bit more clarity when your anxiety is wanting you to move super fast, a million miles a minute. Um, it's. Really encouraging all of these negative emotions. You're seeing red maybe, uh, during those times. And so when you're using the breathwork to create separation between your thoughts and your responses, you have so much more control.

Like how amazing would that feel to have so much more control rather than just feel. Totally helpless and like you are a victim of your anxiety, which is unfortunately how a lot of athletes feel. A lot of people feel like that. Well, I'm just super anxious. My body just kind of runs the show. There's nothing I could do about it.

Um, which, which sucks. Like that's, that's not a fun way to feel. Um, but anxiety can make us feel like that sometimes. It can feel really, you can feel really powerless and. Frustrated and sometimes your anxiety, if you're not paying attention to what makes you anxious, uh, it can feel like it's coming out of nowhere.

Right. Uh, if you're not super in tune with your, your body and your environmental triggers, it can feel like it's coming out of nowhere, and then you really feel dysregulated, which, which is not fun, right? Uh, especially as an athlete, you have your performance to think about. You obviously want your mental health to be.

Um, you know, to be healthy and, and positive. So how can we manage these things? So these two breathwork tech, uh, techniques are just gonna be your ride or die. So practice these as often as you need to. Um, you know, and if you find yourself. Asking these questions like, do you know, do I have anxiety? Um, you know, do I, do I feel like my thoughts are negative and they get in the way of my performance?

And if you've have you tried different things that have worked for you and nothing's, you're still not able to figure it out, things really aren't working for you. If that sounds like you and you've, you've been really struggling, do make sure to check out the checklist on ReadySet mindful.com because.

That's a really good framework for you to take some of these steps and check some of these boxes off of, of your list, um, so that you can start feeling better so that you can start performing better. The checklist is like gold. It's amazing for the anxious brain. Your anxious brain craves at like water and sunshine.

So I promise you, uh, if you. Go to the website, check out that checklist, see how it works for you. I wanna hear how it works for you guys too. So make sure I know when I talk about on Instagram, um, a lot of you guys have written to me and let me know that the checklist really does work for you. It's so helpful for your anxious brain.

I really appreciate you guys being vulnerable and opening up about your mental health struggles and how the checklist has helped you. So make sure to go and check that out. Uh, so the next thing I really wanna talk about is, When to use these techniques. So as an athlete, Um, obviously we want to incorporate this into your routine, into your, your daily life, right?

So when you're using, whether you choose to start with the humming breath or the box breathing, um, or maybe you're trying both and seeing which one works for you, that's totally awesome. I encourage my athletes that I work with to do morning. Um, you know, prior to competition or prior to practice or prior to a workout and then right after the workout?

It depends. If I have athletes who are good sleepers and are pretty good with their nighttime routine and have a solid nighttime routine, um, I will have them do that third breath work aft right after their workout. So you'll do it morning pre-workout. Post-workout or pre-race, post-race, and then you'll just go with your nighttime routine and go to bed.

If I'm working with clients, I'm working with athletes who are kind of crappy sleepers and they really struggle with sleep. Um, that breath work can be that breath work in the evening prior to bed. It can be a really solid way to kind of lull them into a state of relaxation and prep their body, cue their body for sleep.

So, kind of depends on the situation. I individualize it, depe, you know, depending on the person and what their, what their needs are. But, Three times a day to really condition your nervous system. I also tell athletes to practice, um, especially like the hummingbird breath or the four eight breath, which I didn't dive too deep on, um, or talk about at all really in this podcast episode.

But I'll link, uh, I'll link an episode. I did talk about it before in, in a previous episode, so I'll link that one in the show notes if you're curious about the four eight breath. Um, but in the car or commuting, Walking to and from practice or walking, um, your dogs in the morning, like any time that you're going from A to B can be a really amazing time to condition your nervous system.

So as much as possible, you just wanna rep that out and slowly just watch your anxiety, um, you know, start to decrease over time. It's not gonna be an all or nothing. It's gonna, it's not gonna be overnight. So just stay consistent with these breathwork exercises and. Don't have that expectation that your anxiety is just gonna disappear.

Um, it's going to stay with you because life is, can be stressful. There's events all the time that are gonna kind of knock you off your game. You're gonna make mistakes. Uh, your coaches are gonna get mad at you, you're gonna have disagreements with. Your partner, your friends, your family, whatever things are gonna happen and you're gonna feel like you can't handle it and you're anxious.

Um, but you, you can handle it. And your rational brain knows that, but your emotional brain does not know that. And so that's why we use the breathwork to separate so that you can access your rational brain in those moments where you are feeling super emotional and you don't feel like you have those tools in that moment, that separation, the clarity that you need, is literally just a breath away.

Damn, I should put that on a t-shirt. That was good. But seriously, creating space between you and your responses and you and your thoughts is, is really the ultimate tool to harness, right? Um, you know, I, I speaking of like, uh, another way for, for athletes to access breathwork, I think. In the middle of practice, I was talking about doing it before and after, and after training, things like that.

But anxiety can also come up in the middle of training. Um, you know, if you are not having a great workout, things are kind of stressful or you get injured, you know, whatever comes up. Try to sneak away to the bathroom or try to like, just, just go, um, tuck, tuck away in like a corner, or turn your back to, to someone and stretch.

Like, just take a moment, uh, to just gather your thoughts and to reset before those anxious thoughts start, uh, to build and your anxiety starts to get worse. You know, I used to do this actually all the time. I, I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I just knew that I, it was like a desperate attempt to survive the situation, but, In Spain when I had that really hard coach that I was telling you about, he would just yell and yell and yell and swear, and swear and swear, and you could never do anything right.

You were never good enough. Um, he was just really a hard, a hard coach to, to be around. Right? It was hard to tolerate, and so I. Would sneak off to the bathroom. Uh, I would finish my rep or whatever, and then I would, um, you know, just sneak off. Tell, tell them I had to go to the bathroom real quick. I'll be right back.

And he was probably really pissed about that. I mean, he'd roll his eyes. So it was just something that I, I did, I had to sneak away to the bathroom for two seconds, sit in the stall, and I would just sit there and breathe and close my eyes. And sometimes I'd put my hands up against the stall just so I can, like, it's a mindfulness exercise that I actually use.

A lot with clients too, but I'd put my hands up, um, against the stall, um, after I'd got out of the stall. So I had a little bit more room, kinda like you're doing a pushup, but just to kinda like lean into it, to just feel your body kind of move and it kind of is a grounding exercise to just. Remind you where you are and, um, wake your body up a little bit and give you like a little reset.

So I would just breathe deeply, collect my thoughts, repeat to myself that I can handle this, I can handle this. Um, I'm capable. I'm capable. Right? And then I'd go back out there and just reset and feel like I had a little bit of renewed energy. I'd be filled up just a little bit to. To get through the rest of practice.

So I really encourage athletes to, to do that too. There's no shame in just taking, taking a break, taking a, taking a water break, taking a. A stretch break. Um, going to the bathroom, just collecting yourself, doing that little reset, making time to just take some deep breaths to give yourself just a little bit of space in those moments where you feel like you just don't have any.

Right. So hopefully you've enjoyed this episode and feel. Empowered to use these techniques. I hope that they help you in some way. Um, again, go to ReadySet mindful.com and get that checklist, uh, for athletes to manage anxiety. And hopefully you guys have found this episode helpful and I hope you have a great week, and I will see you on the next episode.

Train hard. Be well, and stay mindful.

 Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Ready Set Mindful Podcast with me, Kerri Bicskei. If you like what you hear, make sure to like, comment and subscribe to the podcast. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram or visit ready set mindful.com for free resources, courses, and other ways to work with me.

Until next time, be well. Stay mindful.