#105 - Helping Athletes Control Physical Energy Levels

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Those of you that are just now joining us today is going to be all about helping your athletes control their bodies physical reaction to stress , to pressure , to anxiousness . You're basically hopping into the middle of phase two , so phase one was kind of that . It was episodes 94 through 98 .

If you were gonna come up with a complete plan a lot of coaches do it as like a If I'm gonna have a year-round program where I'm emphasizing the mental side of the game , I want to give athletes a complete tool set . Where do I start ? We had the roadmap , kind of figuring out who they are , where they're at , where they want to get to .

We had how to Practice at a high level , Tools for competition and then tools for evaluation or things going well . Do we need to make changes ? So , um , so phase two is all about okay , now that we've kind of given them that foundation . There's still some athletes that are having some problems .

Or maybe you're catching up with this right in the middle of a season and you don't have time to implement that entire toolbox . But right now you know you've got some athletes that have shaky hands .

Or you've got some athletes that their heart is just racing and they physically are maybe freezing up , maybe they're their legs are locking up , they got muscle tension in their arms and you can just tell they're tight and they're tense . What do we do about it ? That's gonna be , that's gonna be it basically what we're talking about today .

So the the the place that I always like to start , was it kind of . It kind of was Unassuming . I think the first time I heard it I was in a . I was at a coaching conference and Dr Excuse me , dr Jason Winkle was talking about how the United States military Spent millions and millions of dollars on this one specific problem .

And he went on to to tell a story . He said you know , imagine all of a sudden a roadside bomb goes off or an IED goes off and we're now taking fire from this building and we now determine we are going to go into that building and take out the enemy threat . And he was getting he was getting pretty graphic into what combat was like , what it was like .

He was getting pretty graphic about you know that you've got casualties to your friends around you . You've got this is a . This is a life or death situation . So I mean , as far as high pressure situations go , this is way higher than Anything that we're going to experience on a football field or on a baseball diamond .

And he was saying that the , the military wanted to know okay , once we get stacked up on this door , we're gonna throw in a flash bang .

We've got I want to say it was like less than two seconds to get four people Through that door , to clear every corner of the room and then have the muscle control to be able to Shoot the bad guys , not shoot any hostages . Control your body , control your eyes , control your focus , be able to make split second life or death Situations .

And I mean , you know , here I am like I'm trying to figure out why was my punt returner trying to catch a , trying to catch a kick with shaky hands ? I mean , this is , this is kind of the the ultimate stressful high pressure situation .

And so you know , here I am and I've got my pen and my paper and I'm I'm ready to jot down this top secret information that the US military spent millions of dollars researching . And he said we taught him how to breathe .

And I remember just being so disappointed I was like you taught him how to breathe , like , come on man , we spent millions of dollars on this research and that's that's what comes up like that . That's where we get to . And you know , he starts going into the .

The physical Reaction in these high pressure situations of just what we can measure Would include things like your breathing rate increases , your body wants more oxygen , your heart rate increases , your body is trying to get oxygen to your muscles , your mouth gets dry and you get butterflies in your stomach because your digestive system is is temporarily shut down , the

your pupils dilate , your muscles tense up because now you're ready to either fight off this threat or You're ready to run away from this threat .

And you know , one of the one of the things that I talk about when I'm when I'm meeting with athletes or , you know , doing trainings with teams , is like you know , if somebody just said , hey guys , the next time you're stressed out , I Want you to just take a deep breath .

Usually the reaction would be something like why don't you give me something that's actually gonna do something ? But when you get into the science of it a little bit and you look at the vagus nerve that connects that that lower part of your brain all the way down through every major organ in your body . It's responsible for the , the blood flow in your stomach .

That's determining you know whether or not you're feeling that butterfly sensation or not . It's responsible for your breathing rate , your heart rate . It's responsible for even you know your , your entire digestive system . How much adrenaline is being released into your blood ?

How much you know fats and sugar is your liver releasing to give you that little extra boost of energy ? You can't control anything on that vagus nerve Except your lungs , and when you take over control of your breathing , that's the fastest way to interrupt that signal .

It's like a fire alarm that's just pulsing up and down that vagus nerve that's impacting literally every major organ in your body . It's responsible for muscle tension , all of those physical ramifications that we're feeling because of this high pressure situation that we find ourselves in .

And so we want to be intentional about teaching our athletes how to breathe and I always like to have them stand up , because very rarely , in very few sports are they going to be sitting .

And when we teach them how to inhale , we're teaching them they want to fill their lungs up completely and sort of emphasize that we want their belly button to point out , to stick out .

If you try like you're on the beach and you're trying to impress somebody and you suck in your belly and you try and take a deep breath , it limits or restricts your lung capacity . We don't want that . Athletes that have a difficult time with this .

Sometimes it's good to have them lay on their back and actually feel their stomach go up and go down and teach them to inhale as their belly is expanding or as their belly button is going up . And then the second step is hold .

We want to let our lungs absorb the oxygen that's in there , basically the opposite of hyperventilating or that really fast breathing where we're trying to speed up our heart rate , where our lungs don't absorb all that oxygen that air is moving so quickly in and out .

No , in this , in diaphragmatic breathing , we want that deep inhale and then we want to hold it so our lungs have time to absorb that oxygen . We want to exhale nice and slow . We want to , especially on the exhale . If you imagine like how you would kind of purse your lips and blow out a candle . We want to . We want to exhale slowly .

Side note there A lot of people will teach that you should inhale through your nose . That's going to slow your breathing down a little bit . I've got a decent number of athletes who have some real problems with allergies and that just it doesn't work for them . So I don't try to go too far into that .

But my kindergartner learned at school to inhale through the nose like smell the roses and then exhale through your mouth , blow out the candle . If something like that works for your athlete it's awesome .

And then at the end we want to pause and all this does is kind of slow down that breathing rate and the military calls it just box breathing and they'll do each of these steps for four . So they'll inhale for four , hold for four , exhale for four and then pause for four , and they'll practice that .

And you know , sometimes that's all you need and sometimes it's just a matter of kind of taking over the control of your breathing . I know when I was in that , when I was at that conference , jason was talking about how he was in a plane that started to plummet very rapidly .

He said imagine like that roller coaster feeling , but you don't feel like you're on a roller coaster and you don't feel like you should be feeling this . And he said stuff was flying around everywhere and he was like , if there's ever a time for me to practice my breathing , like here's my opportunity .

And he said , you know , it wasn't like he got his stopwatch out and was able to inhale for four , hold for four , exhale for four , pause for four , but instead you know he's holding on to his seat .

He said instead he was able to get his breathing to go from down to something like and just that , just that intentionality in you know , going from maybe a half second inhale and exhale to drawing that out to a full second . Or , you know , maybe eventually a second and a half was able to calm his body down a little bit Because , remember , we're not .

We're not saying in the middle of a football game that you want to get your heart rate , like , from 160 all the way back down to like 60 or something like that , like that . That's not the point .

What we're saying is , if you're at that point where you feel physically out of control or you don't feel completely in control , that doing this breathing can slow down that signal on your vagus nerve , it can relay to the other parts of your brain . Hey , this is not a high pressure situation .

See , I can take a deep breath , everything's going to be all right , and you know it won't . It won't immediately drain all that adrenaline that just got dumped , but it's at least going to help prevent , not dump more adrenaline . It's at least going to help you pause that or slow down that reaction .

And then eventually you know the more you do this , the more comfortable you're going to get with this , the bigger impact it's going to have . And this is something that , with our athletes , we practice three to four times a week .

You know we talk about what are the upcoming situations or the pressure situations where you're going to maybe be able to use this and just remind them to take some deep breaths . I love , you know , doing an activity .

If you got , like , some Fitbits that you can snag , if you've got heart rate monitors , if you can put kids on a treadmill or a bike or an elliptical where they can grab onto those metal sensors and they can see .

You know , I like to have races who can get their heart rate above 120 the fastest , and then you know from there who can get their heart rate back under 90 the fastest , and just teaching your kids that , hey , you can take that control of this , and that's something that we'll get to in a little bit .

You know we do a lot with customized breathing patterns where , instead of forcing them to do four , four , four and four , we'll actually have them take out a stopwatch and say , all right , I want you to just focus on inhaling and completely filling your lungs with air . About how long does that take ? And we'll have them time . That and we'll have them time .

You know the hold and you know my breathing pattern . I like to inhale for six , I like to hold for two , I like to exhale for eight , and then I don't even do the pause because I feel like I'm like suffocating and I'm out of air and it makes me feel panicky and I don't like it . I just want to start breathing again .

You know , different people have different lung capacities . So you know , in the military , where you got to train a hundred thousand people at a time , like what's the fastest , most effective way to do it , like , yeah , four by four , perfect , move on .

You know , if you have the time to let them come up with their own customized breathing plan and figure out what's going to be comfortable for them , maybe instead of having to go through , you know , the box breathing five or six times , maybe they can use that customized breathing pattern once or twice and really take back control .

One of the golf teams that I work with I think the coaches were taking better notes than some of the athletes because , you know , they had like a club championship coming up that they were competing in . There was one of the coaches that I work with .

He actually said you know , ben , I feel like any situation that arises on the course or at work , I can go through my breathing cycle twice and be back in control , and that's the goal . The goal isn't to , you know , take out your stopwatch and be perfect about this .

The goal is have the confidence that if you breathe the correct way , you can stop that fire alarm that's pulsing up and down your Vegas nerf and take back control of your body . The second one is forced muscular relaxation , and you know , if you've ever had , you've you've got some athletes on your team .

I would just about guarantee that when they are taking a test , at the end of that test , their muscles are tight , their shoulders are tight , and muscular tension is just when muscles either voluntarily or involuntarily tighten up and it's usually in response to either a threat or a perceived threat .

And so what we want to do is help them not only be aware of that and be able to identify that , but then do something about it . And so you know , keep in mind , like muscle tension isn't a bad thing , like it's not . I think it's important that we teach our athletes like it's okay if this happens .

I mean , if you were out in the woods and all of a sudden a bear starts growling , like that wouldn't be a bad thing to have some muscle tension , you know , to instantly be able to go from I'm loose and relaxed and enjoying the great outdoors to I probably need to get the heck out of here .

I need to hop in my car really fast , I need to get my bear spread Like , whatever that looks like . But when it's uncontrolled that can be a problem . A lot of our athletes don't even realize this is happening , like right now you're not paying attention to what the bottom of your feet feel like because your brain doesn't think it's important .

I guarantee you there are some athletes that you know they're putting , or they're trying to swing a baseball bat , or they're trying to throw a ball , hit a ball , catch a ball and for whatever reason , their body is involuntarily tensing up and tightening up , and so what we want to do is help them . Number one you know be aware of .

If this happens , it's all right , it's not a big deal , we just need to .

Instead of allowing that lower part of our brain that does things automatically , instead of that part of the brain controlling this muscle tension , we're going to use the front and the top part of our brain , that system two that allows us to think , to make decisions , to figure things out , to plan things out .

We're going to use that part of our brain to take back control and force our muscles to relax , hence the FMR , or forced muscular relaxation .

And so I like to have athletes start with just their hands and we'll say , go through your breathing pattern and tense up your hands as tight as they'll go for the inhale and the hold , and then on the exhale and the pause kind of loosen them up . So inhale , tighten your fists One , two , three , four .

Hold One , two , three , four and now loosen up and relax and exhale and shake those hands out and move your hands around and just feel what it feels like to let go of that muscle tension .

Then we're going to do that again , except this time we're going to clench our fists , we're going to roll up our wrists so that our forearms are tense , we're going to squeeze our biceps , we're going to squeeze our shoulders and our neck and our back as tight as it'll go and inhale one , two and go through that and then on the exhale , loosen up , shake out

our shoulders , shake out our arms and force those muscles to relax . Use the intentional part of our brain to say we don't need that muscle tension right now . We're not under attack , we're not in a dangerous fight or flight situation , we're good , we got this .

I've got some girls that I work with that this is such a productive tool for them and it helps them feel so in control with their , their arms and their shoulders especially that are golfers .

That part of their pre-shot routine and no one would ever know it is they tense up their upper body as they're putting their hand on their golf club and nobody can really , unless you're looking for it , you can't really tell what they're doing .

It looks like they're just pausing and looking down the fairway and then , after they relax , you'll see them take the club out and it's just , you know as much of a reactionary thing as you know this can be where it happens and then , as a as a reaction or in response to it , we're going to force our muscles to relax .

They're using it more as like a proactive . Let's get ahead of this . Let's make sure it doesn't creep in , let's make sure that it doesn't happen . So , again , this is something that we want to have . Our athletes practice this .

We did some visualization on Friday afternoons after school at the the last school that I coached football at and we would actually part of the the breathing and the visualizing . They would actually tense up different parts of their body and practice relaxing it just to just to make sure that they felt like they were in control .

The last one is we want to , we want to kind of teach them to identify what's the physical spot where they play at their best . And so we talk about , like on this energy level . You know , where do they play at their best ? And for some athletes that's like I play at my best when I'm at a six .

I don't want to be too amped up or else , you know , I start pressing , I start feeling anxious . There's other athletes that they play at their best at a 10 . You know , just within one sport , even like quarterbacks usually don't want to be in that 10 range .

They want to be able to be a little bit more calm , they want to be able to think and analyze and make decisions quickly , whereas , like you know , maybe a Mike linebacker who's going to be taking on a block needs to be able to be ready to pound on guys and be , you know , amped up a little bit more . And we , so we kind of teach them .

You know , if there's like this bell curve , where is that number where they play at their best ?

You know they start off at like a zero when they're asleep and they're maybe up at like a one or a two when they're bored and then somewhere , at some number , they start to , they start to get dialed in a little bit , they start paying attention and then there's like that peak point , that peak performance , where they are playing at their absolute best .

And if they're not amped up enough , we want to have them increase their breathing rate . We want to you know the some quick breathing to get their heart rate going . We want to have them act energized . You know , do some , do some up downs . I think neurologically is one of the fastest ways that you can get your physical energy level increased quickly .

Some other full body stuff like standing in place , knee tuck jumps we actually did this when I was the special teams coordinator .

You know there'd be sometimes where there's a long drive and you're just watching from the sideline , as you know , either your defense is out there or your offense is out there , and now you've got to go back on the field and you know either kickoff or kickoff return team .

You haven't been doing anything for a while and we need to get amped up , we need to get ready to go , and so we would have them do five knee tuck jumps just in the huddle so that they could start getting that blood flowing a little bit , they would say some positive statements .

You know , obviously , if it's before a game or a match or a meet , you can listen to some upbeat music there . You know , that's a little different than in the huddle where you can't necessarily do that .

And then we want them to realize that at the top of that bell curve , where you know maybe they're playing their best at a six , maybe they're playing their best at a 10 , going down the other side , there's this like you know , I'm I'm too amped up , I'm too hyped up , I start to feel a little stressed or I start to feel a little anxious .

Or , you know , if I get way over , too far , I'm going to start to feel like panic and terror and I'm going to freeze up . And you know if they're , if they're too far and they need to calm back down and move back over . That's where the diaphragmatic breathing comes in , the or the four by four box breathing or the customized breathing plan .

That's where the forced muscular relaxation can help out . That's where you know , before a match or after a match or whatever , that looks like some calming music , doing some mindfulness , you know , closing your eyes , maybe , doing a little bit of visualization . We want to teach them that they can sort of fine-tune this number so that we can't .

You know , it's not going to necessarily guarantee that they're playing at their best , but if they can't control their body physically , I can guarantee you that that's gonna at some point pretty much make it impossible to play at their best . So really what we're trying to do with this is help them get to that ideal spot or that peak performance more consistently .

And you know I don't like to overcoach the numbers , like if there's an athlete that's really confused , I'll help them . But you know some kids are just gonna say if I'm at a six , that's at my best and if I get to like a 10 , that's too amped up and I need to calm back down . Other athletes are gonna say I need to get all the way up to a 10 .

I need to get hyped up to be able to play , to be able to be ready . You know , if I get to that like 12 to 15 range , that's too much . It matters a lot less that the athletes have the same scale . I don't care if one kid thinks that , you know , 10 is the top and another kid thinks that 20 is the top .

What matters is do they know what their number is , where they play at their best and do they have the tools to help them either increase or decrease their physical energy level , based on where they're at now and where they're trying to get to ? All right , so that wraps up this episode . Help an athlete to control their body physically .

If you're looking for the other phase two components , there's improving athlete focus . That was episode number 104 . There's improving athlete confidence . That was episode number 102 .

A quick reminder , if you want to go back to phase one , where we're given athletes or entire teams that complete toolkit , that entire foundation of here's what we need to really set ourselves up for success in the mental side of the game . Those are episodes 94 through 98 .

You know it looks a little bit different for team or for individual sports , but if you want a little bit more support delivering this to your team , check out mtpacademy and the website link is in the show notes .

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