The Athlete's Guide to Mental Clarity and Peak Performance through Breathwork - Nick Sweeney

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are built in the off season. You're built as an athlete when no one is looking in the day-to-day. Where no one is, it can't making you accountable other than yourself. And that pressure weighs on you as an athlete so heavily when you are sick or injured and you can't do the things you know you need to do because you know it's brick by brick and that was driving me insane. For about 10 months I was extremely depressed. I had had my sights set very high, my fitness was amazing and then it all came crashing down.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Welcome to the athlete. One podcast Better. In high school baseball coach Ken Carpenter takes you into life's classroom as experienced through sports. Go behind the scenes with athletes and coaches as they share great stories, life lessons and ways to impact others.

Speaker 3: 1:03

This episode, the athlete one podcast, is powered by the netting professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. The netting professionals specialized in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for baseball and softball. This includes backstops, batting cages, bp turtles, screens, ball carts and more. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches and cubbies. The netting professionals also work with football, soccer, lacrosse and golf courses. Contact them today at 844-620-2707 that's 844-620-2707 or Online at wwwnettingprosecom. Check out netting pros on Twitter, instagram and Facebook, and also linked in for all their latest products and projects. Now to my interview with Nick Sweeney, former division one cross-country skier who competed in the Olympic trials after a tragic injury, and we will be discussing why breath work is so important and how breathing properly can decrease stress, muscle tension, calm your nerves, sharpen your focus, minimize negative and distracting thoughts. Hello and welcome to the athlete one podcast. I'm your host, ken Carpenter, and joining me today is Nick Sweeney. You might be wondering, you know why am I having a cross-country skier on a podcast that the primary focus has been high school College baseball? But I promise, if you stay till the end, you'll definitely find the value in today's podcast. It starts with, I came across you on what is now known as X-Acts and you you made a post About saying the doctors were not going to come and save you, and how breath was basically a gateway to willpower, and if you could just walk the listeners through At the height of your career, what happened to you and how it actually ended up benefiting you in transforming your life? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:24

I would say. I would say, yeah, I was on a great trajectory athletically and I can only relate so much to someone that plays baseball or or even team sports. But at the end of the day, we can all relate to certain aspects like burnout, injury, success, trajectory in general of athletics and also how it is all consuming in our lives and it was all consuming for me. And I trained, raced, competed all over the world, really had my goal set on the Olympics after getting a spot on the best ski team in the country. And I was on a hot streak coming off of my junior year. Covid happened, went home, went stir crazy in my house and started building mountain bike trails outside, just for manual labor, extra sort of cross training, and I built a course that ended up being my downfall. So I took a bike out one time to test out the trail I made and I just ate it really hard and and I it was a weird injury and I couldn't figure out what it was. I split my shin open, got stitches. That was, you know, pretty black and white, but this big bulge underneath my foot was an unknown to the doctors that I talked to and the physical therapists. Everything I read online was just leading me a stray and, as an athlete, getting sick, getting injured and having something happen where you can no longer train, because this is not just a Competition thing, it's like well, you, you are built in the off season. You're built as an athlete when no one is looking in the day to day, where no one is making you accountable other than yourself, and that pressure weighs on you as an athlete so heavily when you are sick or injured and you can't do the things you know you need to do because you know it's brick by brick, and that was driving me insane. For about 10 months I was extremely depressed. I had had my sights set very high, my fitness was amazing and then it all came crashing down. It was just a humongous wake-up call and I thought it was going to be Okay. Two weeks On the sideline, it's may, right now, skiers are built in the summer, I don't have a race until December, like I'm good, I'll be all right. And two weeks stretched into a month, into two months, five and then ten months, and About at five months, like middle of july, I realized I'm not going to be able to have the fitness that I Was hoping for I'm not going to have the season I Was wanting and I almost had to just accept that and come to terms with it and figure out what am I going to do, and I got just really focused on Healing myself. But I was also languishing in disarray, not doing the things I should have been doing to the end of the degree, because I was like, well, this season's lost, I guess. I just I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm aimless, and I think a lot of people feel that way when they get sick or injured and they get diagnosed by Multiple doctors or even if it's just one doctor. You know, knowledge is power, so you go out to try to get as much information as you can and then you might be just confused and overwhelmed and and end up not doing anything. And that was me towards october when I finally got another mri and I got another doctor to look at it and he was like Look, you have what's called a plantar fibroma. It's normally in the arch of the foot, but it's under your big ball of your foot and we you know plantar fibromas don't have a really good path to healing. We don't have a good Uh like diagnosis or or path to getting you healthy 100 percent. It's almost like, look if, if you need to walk, then you're gonna have to take painkillers because it was nerve damage, it was tingling, it was swollen, it was bruised. It was me in a scooter, um, scootering around, just feeling so depressed. And, as an athlete, your sport is your life and I was at that age where I wasn't thinking about anything else, I was just tunnel vision. And so when I got that diagnosis where he's like basically, you might walk without pain in a year or more, I Saw both of those years of NCAA eligibility kind of eviscerate and dissolve, olympics dissolve, and I just Kind of shattered. I was running a company during this time as well as force nutrition company, and I just I I shattered on that too. I was like I'm shutting the business down. I can't, I can't do any of this. I fully self-destructed for about three weeks and just, you know, sat in my room, did my online classes during COVID, barely like tried to make it through the zoom classes and do my homework, but I started. I was like okay, I cannot live in this body or in this mind anymore. I am going to go insane. I feel insane and I began Doing what's called transcendental meditation, where, basically for 20 minutes twice a day, you repeat a mantra Over and over, and over, and over and over and over in your head and it almost takes your conscious mind offline and it allows your subconscious mind to come forth and it allows your body to get into a state of like real relaxation, recovery and rest. However, even during the meditation and repeating a mantra that's supposed to block out all the thoughts, I would still have all these intrusive negative thoughts come in, and so I then discovered a few books. One was, uh, becoming supernatural by jota spenza, another was just the wim Hof method book. And then course, and I just started doing a deep dive on breath work. And I had used breath work for performance, but never for healing, never for meditation, and I just I started trusting the breath with each day I started and I was like I'm not. I started one week and I'm like I'm not going to let go of this streak, and the streak of breath lasted. I'm still, three, four years later now. I haven't missed a day of breath work and nor meditation, and those two things have culminated in a mind that I never thought was possible to live in and a body that is really like it feels invincible and it feels like if something does happen, I can handle anything. And so the journey of breath work lasted about three months where for 30 minutes every day, I would lay on my back in my bed, put some music on, put a guided breath work thing on, or sometimes just silently and count. And I did it every morning, woke up 30 minutes earlier than I normally would have, and it took about four weeks for me to really start to open myself up and start to realize like life is more than skiing, and I was sort of getting over the defeatist, victim mentality. So I was cycling out these thoughts with each breath. It's a circle and if you don't hold on to the negativity, you can release them, and you can release the subconscious thoughts as well. And I was clearing the psyche. But then I realized, okay, one day I focused only on my foot for the entire 30 minutes and I just didn't lose focus on that foot and it was so much warmer than my left foot at the end of the session. And that was a massive light bulb moment for me, where I'm able to consciously direct energy through mental intention. And now, looking back, I'm realizing more of what I was doing. But that became that light bulb moment where I'm willing myself to health. I'm willing more energy to this injury and I trust my body's intelligence to heal and know what to do and take the resources I'm providing and handle the situation down in my foot and it ended up, slowly, the large bump under my foot of scar tissue was getting smaller and smaller and less and less pain and more nerve, feeling less tingling, and I just found I kind of kicked and scratched my way to a positive feedback loop. And then, once I was in that positive feedback loop, I just rode it for three months and by the end of three months I had started incorporating walking, running, got rid of the scooter, got rid of the boot, went back to the doctor and he was like, what have you been doing? Because last time you were here you couldn't even walk and you're a skeleton of a person. Now you are like this empowered individual with a healthy foot that, like you, can start training for next season now and I was like, well, this is what I've been doing and there's serious power in this. And he kind of got it. But I wasn't about to give him, like you know some huge resurrection story in the doctor's office. I just told him that's what I've been doing. This is what helped. I'd recommend you know if other people have that, like give them hope, and that's been sort of my mission since then. I was able to ski the next year and race really well, but that's sort of the. You know one, two, three of the of the comeback story.

Speaker 3: 13:50

That's amazing. You know. You said something there where you know you kind of took things into your own control. And you know, in my situation, you know, I guess I'm kind of selfish in a way, you know, by reaching out to you because my health started failing 12 years ago and I developed ulcerative colitis and had to have, you know, an emergency surgery where they removed my large intestines, colon, and, you know, shortly after that I ended up getting skin and oral cancer. And currently, you know, I see a colorectal surgeon, a rheumatologist, a dermatologist, and I think the last time I checked I'm up to like 85 medical appointments that I've been to, whether it's been surgeries or follow-ups. You know I take supplements, I hand fools, the pills, and it basically destroyed my career because I can no longer teach and the one thing I've really, really enjoyed doing is being a high school baseball coach. And here I am, you know I. You know you get people say, well, you know you look good, you know, but the reality is I'm sick 24 hours a day and there's no cure. That's basically what the doctors, they say it's, the best you're gonna get is what you have right now. And so, you know, I wanted to talk to you about how you dedicate yourself to practicing intention, focus and belief and explain how that basically is helped you get back to where you're at You're now. You know you had a chance to compete in the Olympic trials.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Yeah, absolutely, thanks for sharing that. I mean I, you have two superpowers with your consciousness, you have your intention and you have your attention. So, when doing breath work, let's say, where is the attention? Is it on the business that you have to work on later in the day, or is it on your gut If you're sick, if you wanna boost your immune system? Where's the attention? And then also that intention, the intention of send healing energy, send resources. Visualization is a really powerful way to enact, implement intention. So, even doing breath work, I would imagine like little miners down in my foot, mining away, chipping away at this scar tissue and, to go to what you're saying, like I don't, the doctors and the medical establishment absolutely have their place and they're completely, very important. It is a broken system and for many reasons, but I believe that one of the reasons is that they're not allowed to give you false hope and I think that that's a tragedy because our minds are so powerful and it sounds like I'm, it sounds so preachy and it sounds esoteric and it sounds mystical saying the power of the mind, but it's true and it's real and you can apply the two superpowers the intention and attention to placebo, hack your way to health, and this is all intertwined with belief, and so if you believe that you are incurable, then you're going to remain that way, whereas even if you in your reality, maybe you are incurable, our brains are able to, our thinking and our bodies are so intertwined. So if you think my foot's really painful right now, then your foot gets a positive feedback loop reinforced of yeah, we're really painful, we're injured, and then that loop gets sent back up to the brain and it's like ow, my foot is hurting and it's just this cascading effect of the mind. And I think what's special about breathwork is that it gives you your power back. It places the power and within you and you are at the helm of the ship and you can decide your physical reality, you can decide your performance, you can decide your outlook on life. I believe that the breath is this powerful thing that is overlooked and often people think it's yoga, spirituality, blah, blah, blah, whereas I come from the perspective of no, this is breathwork for performance, breathwork for vibrant health, breathwork for mental acuity. These things are absolutely possible because you can channel the energy and the breath is this unconscious. It's the razor's edge between the unconscious and the conscious. So right now you're breathing, normally, unconsciously, automatically, you're not thinking about it, but if you apply your mental intention and attention to that breath, then it becomes the purest expression of willpower that we have. When you take a forceful inhale in, that's being done because your mind told your body to do so, and I think that that's a really special thing. That gets overlooked is this is a lever that we can control, and this lever doesn't just control your breath, but it controls every single physiological process that you have. And then you go down the rabbit hole of okay, so my breath is an expression of willpower. A what am I doing when I'm breathing in, while I'm loading up on oxygen and energy? Okay, what about if I express the intention by breathing, load up on energy and then put my attention where I want the energy to go? And it takes these automatic processes like our heartbeat, our body temperature, our immune system, our adrenaline, all of these things that are happening automatically, that we're unaware of, the thousands, millions, billions of processes that are happening in our body at any given moment. All of these things can suddenly become controlled for our benefit, especially when it comes to health. And I think a lot of people do breath work once and they feel it, they kind of get a taste of it. But the magic is consistency. Consistency is king and it's a journey and it's tough. And when I say I've done breath work for four years straight, my bar is super low for keeping a streak. As long as I do 10 conscious breaths a day, I count it, check the box. All right, I did breath work today. Now normally I'll do 10 and then I'll end up doing 50. And it's a lot easier to meditate when you've meditated every day for 250 days versus on day two. So it's about like getting into the streak of things, especially as an athlete. They know the power of that streak and that feeling of progress becomes addicting. And even if you realize, okay, this could take 10 years for me to overcome this illness, it's either that or I keep believing the doctors, placebo hacking my way into illness and not performing my best and not and giving my power away. You go to the doctor's office. You're giving your power away to the doctor. You take a supplement. You're giving your power away to that supplement. The breath is a way to just accumulate all of that power and accumulate all of that consciousness. And when you stay consistent on it, then you can channel it and I really believe there are no limits and I've seen a lot of people that have healed from really, really hardcore diseases and injuries. And then there are even crazier examples online of people after a week at a Joe Dispenza conference, like getting out of their wheelchair, when they were paralyzed their whole lives and now they can walk. Now they just stood up for the first time and so, taking the premise that, like there is, your consciousness is unbounded limitlessness, you have infinite potential within you and if you just believe that, even a little, you just choose to believe it, even if you don't feel like you believe it, you choose to believe it. And then you backfill that with action, backfill that with breath, work, meditation, good diet, good health, exercise, good sleep. I really think it becomes this engine of growth in the direction you want to go in.

Speaker 3: 23:29

So you're tying this into, say, for example, baseball player and they're in a game and they're facing a pitcher, that's just. You know he's still a 90 mile an hour and they're down into count and you know the breath works, got to help with the negative thoughts that come in, and you know how could a baseball player in that situation you know you see some of these guys take the deep breath in and they, they exhale. Is this, you know, kind of what you know, tying it into baseball? Is this how you would do it?

Speaker 1: 24:03

yeah, so We've been talking about basically healing and injury and energy, but Once and this breath work is a journey, so you're gonna be able to find certain circumstances to use it in everything. The most exciting thing is for performance in those moments that really matter in athletics, and I believe that If you can trust yourself To put yourself in flow state on command, then your performance, yours, you're going to perform as good as you possibly can every time. And so when these thoughts come in that Make you feel like you're gonna crack under pressure, that you're not good enough, that you're gonna choke, that the 90 mile an hour baseball coming at you is A curve or this, or that you start analytically Thinking you're having automatic thoughts come in. That's where you get derailed as an athlete. That's where you lose your performance, that's where you lose your edge. The edge always lies within the flow state, and Breathwork, I believe is, is the gateway to flow state that you can repeat. You can replicate it every time and Trust that you will get into flow state. And if you're an athlete, you have to operate under the premise of trusting your training. So you train for that 90 mile an hour baseball coming at you Over and over and, over and over. But there's always this inkling in your mind of like, am I gonna be able to hit it when it Comes at me in the important game? And I believe that when you see a really amazing athlete doing what he does best Michael Jordan or you know, back in tennis, it's flow state. They're operating on a subconscious level. The conscious mind is really like a bumbling idiot, okay, and a clown in many ways. It's been useful for me to see that in Athletics. My, my brain would be like oh, you're not good enough. What are people gonna think of you? You're not fast enough. You're off the back right now. It's the same thing in tennis or baseball or any athletics for, or any endeavor like a business meeting. You are gonna operate at your potential in that flow state when your subconscious mind is the one running the show, because your subconscious mind is so intelligent, so quick. It's the operating system in your brain that we get creativity from, or instant ideas from, or Sometimes when you just nail that fucking home run and you're like I don't even know how I did it. I you didn't. It wasn't your conscious mind doing it, it was your body, the muscle memory and the subconscious brain in operation and so the breath can take you there. And one way that I have clients do this is Is an understanding of your central nervous system, first and foremost. So when you are Inhaling longer than you exhale, multiple times, like before you get out on the pitch, you're probably a little revved up. That's when you are more in fight or flight, that's when your Consciousness is kind of scattering, that's when you have a lot of thoughts coming in now and it's so easy to derail yourself from Flow state. When you're in that fight or flight mode, even at a subtle level, then, conversely, exhaling longer than you inhale, that's taking you to rest and digest. Flow state Lies in the middle of the two, the balance, the equilibrium between your nervous state, your nervous system. So it's not fight or flight, it's not rest and digest, it's like dead center. That's where you can reach that flow and, using the breath, you can do what I call the vortex breath has a bunch of different names online, basically because a Longer inhale then exhale is fight or flight and a longer exhale then inhale is rest and digest. What we want to do is have the exact same time of an inhale and the exact same time of an exhale to bring yourself to that Zero point of consciousness and flow. So, for example, it goes 21 seconds in 21 seconds out, 13 seconds in 13 seconds out, eight, five, four, three, two, one at one. That's when you're able to Release everything. I Like to say the word release, but you can say the word flow. You can say whatever your intention may be. You hold your breath for a second there and then you start breathing normally and you're immediately in flow and With practice you can keep that flow state for a long time. So I'd recommend, like baseball players, if you know you're about to go up and hit, you've got a minute left or so do the same inhale Duration as an exhale duration. It could be six seconds in, six seconds out, for 20, 30 times. It could be six seconds in, six seconds out, for as long as it takes before you go out on the pitch. Then you release that thinking counting what not, and you just are present. Performance lies, peak performance lies an absolute presence and self-transcendence and flow state, and that can be accessed through Calibrating your nervous system with the breath. It's such a powerful lever in that way. So six seconds in, six seconds out, a couple minutes. You know you're going up, you do that, you release and then you're just there, you. It's a lot easier to not think After doing that breath work. It's a lot easier to not have intrusive thoughts. And even if an intrusive thoughts come, comes in, you just release it. You just keep repeating release, release, release, release, release, because you want to relax into flow state it's never a forceful thing and Then you go up and you'll hit the whole thing.

Speaker 3: 30:50

You're basically just keeping it Simple. You simplify it, is that? Am I right there?

Speaker 1: 30:59

Yeah, yep, it's definitely not a complicated thing, but it's a misunderstood thing that we think we have to. But the fear of Not getting into flow state is Is wire is where we mess up. It's like we don't think we have the power to access flow state. We we go up to the pitch and we hope. I hope this time I'm gonna hit it. I hope this time I'm gonna be in flow. I hope this race I don't overthink myself into a bad result because I don't trust myself to get into flow. I don't know when it happens. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, and and it's this unskillful thinking that gives you the Eradic, erratic performance, whereas we want to be consistent, we want to be able to trust the training and then also trust the process that puts us in the state of mind that we want to be in and Know that that process Equates to that flow state right.

Speaker 3: 32:06

Timothy Galway talks in his book the intergame of tennis about relaxed concentration. And have you ever felt like? You know? I've seen this in athletes, you know, you know, particularly in baseball, where it's almost like the we're trying too hard and it ended up having a negative effect on their performance trying too hard is always a Way to move backwards from where you want to go.

Speaker 1: 32:34

It's actually really paradoxical and interesting and it's taken me. I wish I knew this stuff when I was an athlete I mean, I'm I'm not as much anymore. I ran a marathon on Sunday and that was the first like test where I could really test out these different theories that I've solidified. And Whether you're trying really hard to get money in business or trying really hard to get healthy or trying really hard to perform, our minds have a very good way of Throwing us off the tracks, so trying is almost the wrong way of going about it. That's, I'm trying really hard to hit this home run. That's gonna make you Operate from a place of fear, because you're afraid that you're not gonna hit it. So you're gonna try really hard to hit it, but in the background you're operating from a scarcity mindset, a fearful mindset and a mindset of disbelief. You don't believe in yourself, so you have to try extra hard, whereas you can create a positive feedback loop where it's like I really trust in myself, that I Can do this and I trust the processes I have in place, I trust my training and I believe in myself and that can become a default when you walk out on the pitch. And it's definitely put very well by Timothy Galway and intergame of tennis. It's amazing book because it's about relaxing, actually not trying. Trying is this forceful thing. Relaxing allows your body to do what you trained it to do and your mind.

Speaker 3: 34:16

Baseball is a game of failure for for hitters? And how did you handle failure to become more consistent with your performance when you were, you know, a high school athlete? Because obviously you, you had to be a pretty good high school athlete to be able to get a chance to do it at the college level.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Yeah, yeah, I mean, in high school I was. I was a good athlete, but my mental game had strengths and weaknesses. One of the weaknesses was was not handling failure very well at all, and and and. On the back end of failure, I would always try harder. I was always training more. I was always putting more pressure on myself because now it's one less chance that I get. I just failed in that race. The college coach Saw me and you know I don't think I impressed him at all. So now this next one, I really have to try harder, and it took me some time. But learning to take myself from an outcome goal oriented mindset a Result oriented mindset whereas if I don't win this race I'm a failure versus process goal oriented. So, okay, my process is the only thing that matters, and if I nail my process, let the cards fall where they may. And and a lot of that is about detaching to the outcome, caring less about whether you hit the home run, caring less about whether you get a bunch of money in business, caring less about what people will think of you and Any outcome whatsoever. It's more process. Okay, what's my process? Wake up, I'm going to put my clothes on in this order and I'm going to eat these things in this order, and then I'm going to do my warm-up, and my warm-up is a full-blown process that I visualized the night before. So I know exactly what I'm doing. And Okay, let's say, you know, in ski racing, my skis Weren't the right skis for the day. I tested them in the warm-up. I need to switch skis, like, okay, because I'm so process oriented and have visualized the night before for that potential outcome of, alright, well, I might have to switch skis, my fueling might not be good, maybe I need some extra time to go to the bathroom, all of these things. I give myself a margin of error as well. And then, when the race starts, what's the process? Okay, well, I'm using this technique on this hill, I'm pacing in this way, I'm attacking at this point in the race and Just following through on those little goals that aren't attached to when the results sheet lies at the end of the day. Just that brings you into the present moment, and the present moment is your seat of personal power as an athlete and as a person. And when you are in the present moment, you can then also rely on a process to keep you in flow. State the present moment. If you're out of the present moment, if you're thinking about what everyone's going to, everyone applauding for you after you hit a home run, you're not in the present moment and you're giving away your power. It's all about accumulating consciousness and that's how you reach peak performance. And when we think about an outcome, a result, a home run, what people are going to think of us, what a coach is going to think of us, we're scattering our consciousness, we're giving away our power and we're dissolving the present moment. And now we have this tension where the body and the mind are here right now, but our mind is six feet in front of our energy. Our consciousness is six feet away from our brain and that distance creates tension and that tension is painful. It's what causes suffering. That's when I'm trying really hard to hit this home run and I'm thinking far ahead into the future. The distance of your thinking into the future, to your brain right here and right now, is where you're going to mess up. The closer you can be, the less tension there is, the more relaxed you are, the better you're going to be able to perform, the more active.

Speaker 3: 38:56

You are to be in flow In baseball with hitting a lot of players throughout the court season. They'll get in a rut, maybe they'll start struggling and they're slumping a little bit. Is there something you would recommend for someone who's struggling either throwing strikes as a pitcher or they're just not getting on base.

Speaker 1: 39:19

Whatever it may be, yeah, failure and ruts are part of the game, and a big thing that I've been using in my life recently that I wish I had when I was an athlete was whether you're performing really good or you're performing really bad. Don't believe the hype, stay right there, don't believe. Yes, so often we, as athletes, will go on a sharp increase to peak performance and we'll have some good games and we'll hit some home runs, and then we will start introspecting, we'll start thinking too hard about things, we'll get out of the present moment, we'll start scattering our consciousness into thinking, trying to analyze why am I doing so well? And then you fall back down to the trough and instead of these sharp increases, sharp decreases, what you want as an athlete is this slow wave moving upwards, and when you're doing really well on the wave, it's like don't believe the hype, I'm just trusting my process, I'm trusting my training and I also know that there's going to come a game where I perform like crap, but I'm preparing myself for that so that I can skillfully think my way through it and relax and realize that, like, this is part of the game. It's not going to be a hot streak my whole athletic career. That's just not it. And so so much of this is trust and faith and belief. And if you have thoughts of fear when you're in a rut, really the powerful thing to do is to discard them. There's two types of thinking. There's two ways of handling your mind. When you're in a rut, you have thoughts that are automatic coming in telling you why aren't I good enough, you don't have the potential, you're not going to get on the team, you want to get on, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And it's this conscious clown mind that's just terrorizing you and really manifesting your own destiny. And if you get swept up in thoughts, then you're not going to be able to handle, you're not going to be able to climb your way back out, you're just going to keep getting swept up and down spiral. And then there's another way of handling it. You got thoughts that are automatic. Then you have thinking. Can I skillfully think my way through this situation and come to a conclusion that was made by me, being rational, being grounded and being present and being very real with myself In this present moment? The past five games I've messed up, but in this present moment I know that I have the potential. I believe that I have the potential. I'm trusting my training, I'm trusting the process that I've gone through and I'm not going to believe that this downturn has to be something I identify with. The problem you get into as an athlete is like I identify as a winner because I just won a bunch of races and then you lose and then it all comes crashing down and you feel like crap and you're like what the heck? I thought I was a winner and you got to crawl yourself back up. Or if you're in that downswing, I'm identifying with not being good enough. I'm identifying with this downturn. I'm identifying with it. All change comes from that identity level outwards. So if you identify as someone that is trusting, believing of yourself, trusting your process, then you're so easily able to not believe in the hype of good or bad and that keeps you grounded, that keeps you in a place where you can tap into the flow, the present moment, that peak performance that you so desire. And so often athletes will be in the rut and be failing and they almost have to get to a point that's so low that a trapdoor comes down and there's all this fire below them and they're like I just I have, I don't care anymore. I almost just don't care at all anymore. This is so shitty. I hate having to do this. I hate this sport. I don't even want to do it anymore. And they don't realize it, but that's them detaching from the outcome completely. The body then relaxes and you're just there and you're like screw it. This is my last hit of my career. And then they'll hit a Homer, because that intelligence and that flow and that performance was there the whole time. They were just getting in their own way, and so often us athletes are robotic. We get in our own way, and that's what I would say about that is try to just not believe the hype. Try to trust yourself, try to trust your training and if you're in a rut, you know, maybe you do need to train harder. Maybe you need to see the places that you're cutting corners. Maybe you need to keep, maybe you need to start keeping the promises to yourself. Those are the most important promises of all. Did I go to sleep when I said I was going to go to sleep? Did I eat what I said I was going to eat when I said I was going to eat it? Did I train when I said I was going to train? Also, did I train more Like if I'm not doing as well performance wise, if there's a gap between where I want to be and where I am now, well, I do need to train more than maybe, and I need to like become a well oiled machine. And that is going to give you that trust, because it's hard to trust yourself if you're not training enough. If you think okay, you get up to the plate and you're like I skipped last year last week's workout, I didn't eat that well, I didn't take care of my sleep this week. That's when all those doubts and thoughts come in. Now you can circumvent those thoughts and be like you know what, I don't care about the outcome, I don't understand. I accept a big part of this is acceptance. I accept that my training wasn't perfect, but I trust that I can do it still. And okay, let's just relax, let's concentrate and let's not get swept up in these thoughts and then, boom, you'll hit a Homer, even if you didn't train as much as you should have.

Speaker 3: 45:45

So it's almost like double edged sword to talk things into existence and that self-talk can be both negative and positive. Am I correct in that?

Speaker 1: 45:58

Yeah, yeah for sure. As an athlete, a lot of this is ego too, and the ego so often is operating from a place of fear. I'm scared of what people are going to think of me. I really want this coach to be impressed by me. I'm trying to impress people. You're giving your power away to the coach and that ego can be used skillfully as a tool to leverage it of belief. No, okay, I believe in myself. I'm proud of myself. I've trained hard. I do believe in myself. If this coach doesn't want me on the team, then screw him, because I know what I'm about and I know I can do this and I know I've worked hard. And one tool that was useful for me was, I mean, meditation was huge, but speaking out loud really brings yourself talk to the forefront. You realize oh, I'm not talking very positively about myself or my performance Setting alarms randomly throughout the day on your phone where it's like okay, 10, 59 PM. The alarm goes off and you write down what was I just thinking about? And you start writing that down over and over, day after day, and you start weeding out these little patterns that are negative, that are useless, and then you can rewire your brain. A lot of this is rewiring the brain for performance, and I think that with breath work in particular, your mind is more susceptible and suggestible to change. And so, if your intention is, I am healthy. During a session of breath work where your energy systems open, your vascular systems open, you're currently moving willpower through your body and you're telling yourself mental override I am healthy, I am healthy. I am healthy. My concussion is healed, my concussion is healed, my foot is healed, my foot is healed. It's like self-talk on steroids for your body, and that's where I think a lot of the power of the breath work comes into play.

Speaker 3: 48:04

One or two breath work routines that have a name that you'd say, hey, this is what I would recommend for a high school or college athlete.

Speaker 1: 48:15

Yes, and there are so many and it's easy to get lost in the weeds. I would say that a good place for people to start is the Wim Hof Method, and that's spelled.

Speaker 3: 48:29

W-I-M.

Speaker 1: 48:30

The thing that's W-I-M-H-O-F. You can download the Wim Hof Method app and it has a guided breathing program where you can follow it every day until you sort of get it. You're like, okay, I count till 30 breaths and then I exhale, hold until it's a little uncomfortable and then I inhale, hold for 15 seconds and then I do it again. That's the process. Now what that Wim Hof is doing is longer inhales than exhales. So you're going fight or flight in a way. Your nervous system is ramping up, you're inhaling a lot of oxygen, you're inhaling a lot of energy. The key missing component to Wim Hof that took me a while to figure out is the rest and digest side of things, that longer exhale than inhale, and so I would recommend an athlete that's wanting to increase performance, energy recovery, healing, endurance, clarity, focus to do the Wim Hof. But then what you want to do is take this like fight or flight central nervous system and downshift it like a car into a rest and digest place, and that can be done with what's called SOMA breathwork, s-o-m-a or buteco breathwork B-U-T-E-Y-K-O. And if, yeah, so breathwork is like you're taking everyone is living as an automatic transmission. You got drive neutral, reverse for the car of your body. Breathwork can take you from those modes into now. I'm a manual, I'm a stick shift. I can shift up, get a bunch of energy, then I can shift down, accumulate a bunch of energy and channel that energy. Now I'm in a place where I'm super rested, my body is in the perfect state to heal. A and then B. There's a, there's an excess of energy in my system, there's a ton of oxygen, ton of energy and your body is super intelligent and knows what to do. It's like okay, we have all this energy, we're in a really safe, relaxed place. Let's do something with this energy. Okay, well, let's go to the foot or let's go to the concussion in the head and, taking that as a model, shift up, get energy, shift down, direct the energy is a really powerful way for athletes, I think, to heal and then also to get into a place of focus and calm and accumulate that power and that consciousness and a lot of. It's more like okay, it's very, it's very. I don't know if your listeners will resonate, but it's very like masculine, the Wim Hof method. It's like very forceful, very fight or flight, and then you kind of can come into more of like the feminine healing aspect when you do rest and digest longer exhales and inhales, and it's going to make your body an operating system that knows what to do and knows how to handle things. And so all of these thoughts, these subconscious, these erroneous thoughts during the Wim Hof method would come up for me. You're worthless, you're going to be injured for the rest of your life, your career is over, all this stuff and I would just constantly be like releasing it, release, release out the mouth, out the mouth. Release stress, inhale strength, release stress, inhale strength over and over and over. And you're just programming yourself. You're just mental override, programming yourself. Your body doesn't know the difference. Your body doesn't know the difference, especially when you're in this empowered state. You've got a lot of energy, you're breathing, it's like something's going on. I think we should listen to what he's saying and then it gets. The consistency is king. Though you do that once, not going to change, you do that for four years, your brain becomes like a really well-oiled machine that is accepting of things that happen, like this fall. I broke my arm and wrist biking and I just started doing Wim Hof method. Then Boutako, breathing physiological sigh Hubert Mann talks about that you basically super long exhale and that's downshifting you, and then Boutako and you're in a place. Then it's like you just did it. You just got a bunch of energy, just channeled all the energy. Let's go. You're ready to go, but you're in a calm, present, focused, flow state, place of acceptance. It makes sense.

Speaker 3: 53:24

I do a little thing at the end here. I call it rapid fire, and just your quick thoughts on it. Do you hate losing or love winning?

Speaker 1: 53:33

That's an amazing question. I hate losing, but I almost love losing too. I think a win feels the same every time, whether you just got a bunch of money or you just won a race, it all feels the same, and you're going to go back to a baseline of feeling afterwards. But losing you can learn a lot from, and so I would say any of your athletes that are in that rut, in that downturn now is the time where you really grow. Now is the time where you learn and improve and you can apply things. When you're winning, things get easy, you become vulnerable, you're not on your game as much, and so, of course, I love winning, but I would say I hate losing more, because it then puts me in that place of growth.

Speaker 3: 54:23

Three people you would like to have dinner with to pick their mind on why they were successful, dead or alive.

Speaker 1: 54:29

First I would say Theodore Roosevelt I think that he's really a interesting powerful, was a really interesting powerful individual that had really powerful thoughts about the world and about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a citizen of the United States and how the government should be run and how we should protect natural wildlife. And I would love to pick his brain. I would love to pick Kobe Bryant's brain. I think that he's got that mentality that is so powerful where he just had no problem really sacrificing everything and working just tunnel vision on one thing he knew what he wanted, he believed in himself. He was one of the only guys that came into the NBA and was really challenging Michael Jordan and knowing that Michael Jordan Michael Jordan could even feel it he met his match with Kobe. In some ways, most guys that would come up to Michael Jordan and give him pressure, michael Jordan would just take their number and run right over them and see it as like a challenge and a threat versus. He really saw something in Kobe where he's like, oh, this is a real, he means business, like I respect him and I think that that's a really powerful. He was a powerful individual and I have a lot of respect for Kobe and Miyamoto Musashi, the samurai from Japan. I can't remember what century he lived in, but he had so many interesting thoughts about what it means to be a warrior, what it means to be a person, what perfecting a craft entails, and a lot of his theories coincide with my own today, where it's not about trying harder, it's about trying. It's about trying better. It's about the focus of the process of slashing the sword through the bricks. If you're not looking where the sword is going to go and you're looking at the bricks, you're not going to cut through the bricks, and he just would have faith that his sword would go through them and go where he wanted it to go. And I think that his mentality was just probably unlike anyone else's, and I would highly recommend his books for any athletes that are looking for inspiration of what it means to be a warrior and athlete, someone that believes in themselves and trusts themselves and how to operate. If you choose something to do like baseball and swing in the bat, it could be really powerful for anyone that's in baseball, I think. So those would be my three.

Speaker 3: 57:28

Next question. It kind of hits with what I think, based on reading about you, kind of hits home with you. What do you think it's important to spend time outdoors?

Speaker 1: 57:39

Amazing question. I think that if anyone is going through a difficult time in their life and they go out in nature barefoot for eight hours, they will never they won't come back the same person. I think nature has a way of really changing how we see ourselves in the world and we become so disconnected with our Nike shoes and our homes and our devices. And the truth is that we come from nature and we come from this place of violence really, and you go out into the woods and you, you ground on the bare earth. Not only is it extremely, extremely healthy and free, and people don't realize how healthy it is for them, but you're surrounded by birds and animals and they're all just out there trying to survive and you get placed in that sort of you almost get deja vu of another life when you're out there and this was your home and I think it brings you back to we're supposed to be in nature truly, where that's our equilibrium place, and waking up with the sunrise and the sunset, being in the rhythm of the stars and the Sun and operating. You know we're electromagnetic beings, so if you're, if you haven't grounded in a while, you have to discharge a bunch of electrons that you have accumulated through your devices, through the air you breathe inside. What you want to do is maximize your negative electrons and you do that by grounding on the earth and it. I think not only is it really healthy for the body, but it's really healthy for the brain, and I think the world would be a better place if people came back to nature and and became humble again and realized this is we're all interconnected. This is all one field of electrons. We're swimming in electrons and that can change your mentality and I believe that you know that's why I work for an oil and gas tech startup is like I really care about giving people energy, because energy is so crucial for prosperity of humanity. But also humanity needs nature and we should conserve nature and we should protect it and we should revere it, because mother nature has a lot of wisdom and intelligence. And I find that going into nature, if you're really struggling with something, you'll find that answers will come to you. If you go out there and you want, you, you ask for a vision, you, you declare what you want in your life. Maybe you won't get it right away when you're out on the walk, but it will come to you and you become connected to that source, whatever you want to call it, god source. I believe that there is a universal provision going on, and when I go out in nature and I see the artwork, the beauty, I think beauty is a direct line to the divine. And when you go out in nature and you see just the intricate pattern of like a bark on a tree, you sort of really are just in touch and tapped into that divinity and I think that there's a lot of power there. Your intuition becomes stronger and that intuition is power, that presence is power and the all those things then lead into peak performance when you leave and you go back to your life. So it's a good grounding mechanism, literally there we go metaphysically.

Speaker 3: 1:01:19

Well, where can listeners find you on social media? And if there's athletes baseball players that would like to work with you, is that something that that's a possibility?

Speaker 1: 1:01:31

yeah, absolutely. I am at based ethos on Instagram and Twitter based as a synonym for being grounded on the earth, and I run a coaching program for for athletes and entrepreneurs, and I am doing it for it as a coming from a place of service. I believe I have a unique perspective and experience and and a holistic approach that is different from many other coaches, and you know I had seven coaches when I was an athlete. A lot of them let me down in many ways and I think it's powerful to have like a coach that's teaching you how to train, how to swing a baseball bat, but 99% of athletics and life is in the mind and that's where I come into play, as sort of someone in your corner that is there to help you, there to hear you and see you and give you tools that have worked and also be like look, these are the landmines I stepped on. Here's how to avoid them, and that's really who I want to work with is like younger athletes that are wanting to go to college because there's so much pressure on them. Not only are you going through changes physically, you've got high school, all of the things that come with that. You have parents, then you have coaches and I think that it's really powerful. I wish I had someone when I was growing up that was just in my corner, 10 steps ahead of me. That could be a sounding board for me. That's unbiased and I think that's the powerful part of coaching is you're not like a therapist necessarily where you're, you're kind of biased. Maybe your mom goes into the therapist, tells them what's going on with you, and then they're biased and then they slap a physiological framework on you. Coaching it's like I take a step back. It's like, okay, what's going on and let's figure it out. And I think that there's so many different tools that apply to different people and especially young athletes. Their nuance, their unique, their brains are developing and it's really powerful time to develop them in a way that enables peak performance, presence and fulfillment. So, yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, I have a link on my Twitter at base Dethos and on my Instagram, or they can just DM me and that's spelled and go from there so that for the listeners that's B A S E D E T H oh, nick, it's Nick Sweeney, something totally different.

Speaker 3: 1:04:11

I've done 95 of these episodes and you really have brought a new perspective to me personally and I I can't thank you enough for taking the time to to join me here on the athlete one podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:04:26

It's, I very, very enlightening thank you so much, ken, for having me, and, yeah, it was an absolute pleasure this episode of the athlete one podcast is powered by the netting professionals, improving programs one facility at a time.

Speaker 3: 1:04:42

Contact them today at 844-620-2707, or visit them online at wwwnettingprosecom, and, as always, I'm your host, ken Carpenter. Thanks for listening to the athlete one podcast.