
Image Courtesy: Excelling Edge
Image Courtesy: Excelling Edge
Athletes make mental mistakes. Hitters swing at bad pitches. Gymnasts over rotate on tumbling passes. Point guards make bad passes. Linemen jump offsides. We might assume athletes aren’t focused but in reality they are too amped up.
Here are a few reasons your athletes get amped up beyond what is best for their best performance:
An NCAA Division I lineman with whom I worked struggled to regulate his activation (physiological energy) level before games.
Part of the problem was his teammates amping everyone up before tip off like Hall of Fame Linebacker Ray Lewis motivated his teammates in the huddle. When he was too amped up he was more likely to draw penalties or miss blocks at the line of scrimmage.
Some athletes need to be amped up to perform at their best; however others don’t. This young man was the latter, performing at his best when he had a relatively low level of physiological activation.
A technique that would have helped him is called diaphragmatic breathing. It is a technique to dial down the body’s natural fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous system) and take control of the body’s physiology by intentionally increasing activity in the parasympathetic nervous system.
Diaphragmatic breathing can help athletes manage their physiological (and cognitive) activation and elevate performance.
Here are numerous proven benefits your athletes can receive from using diaphragmatic breathing (based on McCraty and Childre, 2010):
By practicing this 3 part process athletes can access the powerful benefits of diaphragmatic breathing:
Diaphragmatic breathing, sometimes called belly breathing, involves intentionally breathing into the belly, not inflating the chest. Inflate the belly as you inhale and tighten the belly as you exhale.
Trying to focus on too many things at once increases the fight-or-flight responses. Instead, focus on one thing, such as:
Research shows that positive emotions such as gratitude and joy counteract the body’s natural stress response. In fact, positive emotions help activate the body’s rest and digest response. This is the body’s counterbalance to the fight-or-flight response.
To elicit positive emotions athletes can use multiple strategies:
By combining this three-part process, athletes can maximize the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing, gain control of their mind and body, and elevate their performances.
Diaphragmatic breathing is one of the 4 essential tools we equip athletes with in our premier online course, Mental Training Academy™ and a key ingredient for developing the critical skills every athlete needs to get more out of practice and compete with consistency. Find all the details here.
To help your athletes learn diaphragmatic breathing and practice it, I created this free downloadable poster.
To be successful in sports, athletes need to learn to manage their emotions and physiology. One aspect of this skill is knowing how to dial down the body’s activation when necessary. Even the smallest changes can make a big difference in an athlete’s performance. Help your athletes get into their optimal activation state by teaching them the technique of diaphragmatic breathing. Like anything else, the more they practice it, the more they can count on it when they need it the most.