Mark, you just have to relax!

Building off last month’s post of knowing your numbers based on the Yerkes-Dodson Curve, optimal performance is realized through an interplay of activation and relaxation.

Growing up [and still to this day], the top word clients, family and friends use to describe me: intense. I never seemed to struggle with the high-stress side of the equation, making myself train and work; issues arose from the rest side, letting myself be. This resulted in over-excitement, bouts of burnout, and fire that burned my mental house down rather than cooked my food. Passion, when uncontrolled, becomes panic.

Numerous coaches would emphasize, “Mark, you just have to relax!” That’s what I needed to do… that’s what I wanted to do, as well. One major problem persisted: nobody showed me HOW TO relax.

That’s where Sport Psychology comes into my life.

The elixir I craved.

In our society, people are familiar with the term, hyperventilation. Perhaps it’s happened when watching a scary movie, experiencing turbulence on a plane, or battling anxiety after a surprisingly tragic event. Breath rate skyrockets, which increases heart rate, causing sweating and panting.. vision narrows and overwhelming nervousness fogs focus.

Very few individuals know, understand, and practice hypoventilation. In short, it comes down to taking longer exhalations. Inhaling through the nose or mouth, followed by extended releases of air via the mouth as if blowing on hot soup or breathing out through a straw.

“Smell the roses, blow out the candles.”

Exhales at least double the length of inhales allow breath rate and heart rate to drop, which eases the brain and body's physiological and somatic responses over time… opening vision from flashlight to floodlight, re-covering a state of calmness once again.

"Hyperventilating is making yourself do something. Hypoventilating is letting yourself be." - MG

When passion becomes panic, we enter an internal environment of dis-ease. When we feel dis-ease, use a technique called Triple A, similar to the roadside assistance we could call when a car breaks down, AAA: 

Acknowledge (become aware of how you feel), 

Accept (feel it fully), 

Address (hypoventilate). 

This is what I know now that I wish I knew as a teenager, as a middle-school and high school student-athlete. This is what I know to do, yet not always do what I know. This is HOW TO relax.

Calm the mind... 

by stilling the body... 

through extended exhales.

What we resist will persist; what we let be will let us be.