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028 - From Pitcher to Performance Pioneer w/ Harvey Martin
101 Plays2 months ago
In this breathtaking episode, we sit down with Harvey Martin, whose remarkable journey from professional baseball player to pioneering human performance coach with the San Francisco Giants reveals a profound understanding of the mind-body connection.
Harvey shares his personal battle with "the yips" — a transformative struggle that became the catalyst for his revolutionary approach to performance coaching. Rather than beginning with mental techniques, Harvey explains why establishing a solid physiological foundation through breath work and nervous system regulation creates the optimal environment for psychological mastery.
Old Bull Training Program - 7 Day Free Trial: https://bit.ly/old-bull-train
Harvey Martin Books:
Breathe, Focus, Excel: https://amzn.to/4ipZtTH
More Than Words: https://amzn.to/4kkL2SJ
#BreathworkForAthletes #HumanPerformanceCoaching #MindBodyConnection #PhysiologyFirst #NervousSystemRegulation #ElitePerformanceTechniques #AthleticMindfulness #BreathingMechanics #MentalSkillsMastery #EmbodiedAwareness
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Transcript
Physiology vs. Psychology: The Importance of Internal Systems
00:00:00
Speaker
I realized that physiology is first before psychology. And I think if I go back to the career in which I had, If I could talk to that person again, I would have reversed everything that I was doing. When I was trying to get out of my mind, I tried to work in my mind. and I've learned over years that that's not necessarily the access points to better thinking or better psychology. I think it still is there. i still think it's physiology first.
00:00:28
Speaker
And if the foundation of what's ah all internally functioning well, the byproduct of that should be healthier
Introducing Harvey Martin: From Baseball to Human Performance
00:00:35
Speaker
thinking. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. Today's episode is a breath of fresh air as we welcome Harvey Martin, a remarkable individual whose journey from professional baseball player to human performance coach exemplifies the power of reinvention and self-discovery.
00:00:55
Speaker
Harvey's personal battle with the Yips became the catalyst for his pioneering approach to human performance, one that prioritizes physiology as the foundation for psychological mastery.
00:01:07
Speaker
Through his groundbreaking work with breathwork, nervous system regulation and embodied awareness Harvey has revolutionized how athletes connect with their bodies and unlock their highest potential.
00:01:19
Speaker
In
Books and Philosophy: Applying Harvey's Teachings
00:01:20
Speaker
this conversation we'll explore the philosophy behind his books Breathe Focus Excel and Without Words Mastering the Art of Being uncovering how the journey from who we were to who we are to who we can be applies not just to elite athletes but anyone seeking to transcend their self-imposed limitations.
00:01:40
Speaker
Now let's take a deep breath in and hand it off to Harvey. Ready, ready, and ready. I am sitting with Harvey Martin, author, two books. The one I have in hand here is Without Words.
00:01:57
Speaker
And there's there's a little meaning behind that. ah That is the journey, your perspective, and growth. And... That's the name of the game. what What I've come to learn about you through reading and listening to your podcast moment with Mart on Spotify.
Personal Transformation: Overcoming the Yips
00:02:14
Speaker
Spotify is my go-to.
00:02:15
Speaker
You've got great journey, philosophy. So I almost want to lead us to this point without words and and start strong with with your your athletic career. So mean even collegiate athlete into professional baseball career.
00:02:31
Speaker
that really helped unlock this this mission and vision that you have now with with your show, not podcast, right? You're with your show. Yeah. And then yeah in the the the the content that you're putting out now.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, man. Beautiful. i appreciate the the the introduction and the segue from, I like the the vantage point of kind of starting from myself as a player and and to where I've been now.
00:02:58
Speaker
ah it's, it's hard, right? I've actually talked to the athletes that I work with
Cold Exposure and Breathwork: A Career-Changing Experience
00:03:03
Speaker
now. Sometimes we'll bring up my playing days just briefly. And I think this is part of it. I think this parlays into how I wrote the last book without words is that I know that I played sports and I know that I was a professional athlete at some point. I can't remember that part of my life. And in the sense of it does feel like a material ah death in a way, in a way in which I've just moved on, you know, and yeah and I think that that is a lot of how I wrote the last book without words and a lot of what my perspective is in teaching and philosophy and and how we come to grips with ah
00:03:41
Speaker
with what we do for a living. But if I go back in time and just tangible eyes playing for a second, you know, I ah grew up in Michigan. I played, I was really successful all the way through. I went to central Michigan, played there for a few years.
00:03:54
Speaker
I actually went to central Michigan for four years and got my degree there. And I had, I had a ah red shirt freshman year and then I was a Tommy John medical
Breathwork Career: From Challenges to Opportunities
00:04:04
Speaker
red shirt.
00:04:05
Speaker
So I ended up playing ah two of the four years there. And that's how I got that degree. And then I transferred to Minnesota State Mankato. And I think a lot of that is what led me educationally into what I do now for a living and with the books that I've written and a lot of the the transformation, I suppose, of the content that I've created over the years because and I've shared this a lot in the past when I went to Minnesota State, they had a it was i'm drawing a blank it was the performance center and if i'm wrong i apologize to minnesota state but it was a sport performance center that was highlighting sports psychology and to my knowledge in 2012 2013 when i was getting there it was brand new i think i was actually one of the first three or four athletes i might even been the first
00:04:55
Speaker
ah Adam Thielen was one of them ah who I know was obviously gone on to have a great NFL career. But we were in this like early pocket of athletes who were dipping our toes into the sports
Role with the Giants: Integrating Wellness Practices
00:05:06
Speaker
psychology. And they were offering essentially like free sessions for the athletes at at Minnesota State.
00:05:11
Speaker
And ironically, the lady, Sindhya Kampov, who started this, she was a professor at the university. And I took a class with her in grad school. And went graduate school because I had to. as i just told you, I went to four years at CMU and then I was trying to get drafted and play professionally.
00:05:29
Speaker
So I had to go to grad school just from eligibility standpoint. I had no intentions of getting a master's degree or really diving deep into sports psychology. Right. But I took this class because it was centered around goal setting and vision training and psychology.
00:05:47
Speaker
And I just figured, Okay, it's 2012 spring. I have this free access and resources to mental skills, which is right across from where I lived and right across from the all the classes I was taking. it made a lot of sense.
00:06:00
Speaker
Graduate school was less demanding in terms of time from what I remember than undergrad. So I had a lot more time to sort of train and go to class and and work with people.
Health Simplicity vs. Modern Complexity
00:06:11
Speaker
And i just, I considered the spring of 2012 to how can I utilize all these resources solely to get drafted?
00:06:21
Speaker
And that was the point. It was like, oh, I'd rather learn about my brain and goal setting than any other course if I have to be in class, right? And so, but the irony of this was i found out that for the first time in my life, educationally, it was the first time I was curious to go to class.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I didn't find that as like relevant for years later. But
Foundational Practice: The Power of Breathwork
00:06:43
Speaker
I think that I really connected with psychology in 2012 and we'll call it the mental side of sports.
00:06:51
Speaker
i ah you I didn't know what it was going to grow into, but that was when it kind of came to me. And then I. got signed as a free agent. I went to the Milwaukee Brewers. I played with the Brewers for three years.
00:07:02
Speaker
And this is where I think a lot of my work, I know a lot of my work is curated from this experience because in 2015, I got released and I had the Yips, which is a performance anxiety, which I'm sure a lot of people on your end who listen to you and your fans and guests and whatnot are familiar with this concept because it's very relevant in sports. Right.
00:07:23
Speaker
And so i acquired essentially the yips, which was like a slow building phase. I was getting this like slow anxiety buildup and I was very, ah didn't understand what was going on.
00:07:34
Speaker
And it started in spring training in 15. And then it really materialized at around the draft period in June. And I've, for lack honestly i couldn't i mean people who were around would know but i couldn't throw a baseball like at all it was ah it was a really crazy experience i just lost the ability to throw a ball and i couldn't throw it anywhere in the vicinity of a strike zone so as you can imagine you're going to get released from professional
Home Practices: Tools for Athletes
00:08:01
Speaker
sports if you can no longer perform the thing in which they're paying you to do and so i got released
00:08:07
Speaker
In the irony of being released for performance anxiety, and why I told the story about me training in psychology, was I was sort of this older, 26.
00:08:18
Speaker
ah was right before turned 26. I'll call it 26. It was right before 26th birthday. I was perceived as this like veteran in the minor league clubhouses that I was in, ah psychologically sound, all these things, educated, you know how that gets perceived and in those in those environments.
00:08:38
Speaker
And so... Then I had to try to figure out, well, then how is my mind the thing that just took me out of the game? I was studying sports psychology in college. I understand these things
Sensory Input and Decision Making
00:08:49
Speaker
more than supposedly other people.
00:08:51
Speaker
I'm more educated, supposedly. And all of a sudden I can't play because of my mind. And that was incredibly, that was just extremely humbling.
00:09:02
Speaker
We can just put it that way. and you And you feel very vulnerable. But I think the mixture of vulnerability and humility, it really was needed because the the the next few months, and this is where I think my story sort of imprinted in a lot of the things in which I've shared over the last decade, is that I'd met a friend of mine who did breathwork and his partner at the time, now wife, she did soundbathing.
00:09:30
Speaker
She was a meditation teacher from Japan. she'd lived She did a lot of the stuff. I believe she did a lot of monastery work in India for many years. Traveled just like a world traveler, super deep into yoga.
00:09:42
Speaker
Unbelievable person, Amina. And i've she's actually been my healer for she's done a lot of energy work on me over the years. And I have great respect for her. But they introduced me to this like new at the time, this new lifestyle, this new holistic lifestyle.
00:09:57
Speaker
presentation of tools that I had no comprehending of at all. It had nothing to do with the psychological stuff that I was learning at all. And it was so drastically different. And like I said, I was in that stage of humility and vulnerability. So it just was like, whatever, like, take me.
00:10:14
Speaker
you know do what you need to do i'll do whatever right and so i followed this breathing practice which is tumo meditation which is essentially popularized by wim hof which is fast hyperventilative breathing withholds and i think that that's extremely normal for especially nowadays in our generations because it's very deep feeling breathing practices. And I think anything that we feel we connect with
Energy Dynamics in Teams
00:10:39
Speaker
in the 21st century, but I did that. I did that for about, if I can remember correctly, around 16 weeks, whatever it was the whole fall into the winter. And then in 2015 in the winter in Minnesota, I, so i did no heat source.
00:10:53
Speaker
And then my goal was to sit in the water of Minnesota, which is freezing obviously. So we cut, uh, We cut holes in the ice, I sat in the ice and I did the whole bit, you know, did my breathing, trained my breath work, trained my physiology and and sat in the water. And I did that for, I had a buddy who was gonna watch me. We were nervous, scared. You know, at the time I thought that was death.
00:11:16
Speaker
You can't do that in the middle of the winter. Right. But ah so we did all the prep work. We had all the supervision, et cetera. And, you know, I how to explain the moment that I did that in 2015. You can't. That to me is my own understanding, which is titled without words. That's my understanding. If I could connect it to anybody, that was when I met God. Right. I.
00:11:39
Speaker
was the universe opened up to me, whatever. I had my enlightening awakening experience. And really what I remember it was, is that I, for the first time in a few years, or really what I could comprehend as an adult, I felt present.
00:11:52
Speaker
And I think the presence came from and comes from the coupling of everything that's involved with those scenarios, extreme cold. So you're extremely immersed into your nervous system.
00:12:05
Speaker
breath work so you are in tune with your senses uh i'm in nature so i'm getting sunlight i have wind hitting me i can see the trees and the water and even as i sort of paint the picture i'm sure can all relate to how beautiful it is when we're immersed in nature and so i think that the accumulation of all those things it was so deeply impactful to me that's not even i think it was because that's what made me create a career in this But I looked back at that and I was looking at my life logically. i was ah released minor league baseball player who signed for $500. Minor league baseball players make no money. So I was broke.
00:12:43
Speaker
yeah I was sleeping in my buddy's closet for a year and a half. Shout out Steve McGuigan, one of the best guys ever, owner of MASH Performance up Minneapolis. But... I was sleeping there and I just thought to myself, like, what why wouldn't I chase that feeling I just had? Why would I go try to get a job or try to do anything materially when I've been in this anxious, depressive state for the last year?
00:13:07
Speaker
Why would I do anything but try to understand what just happened? And fortunately for me, I had a pretty decent network of professional athletes and friends that I could dive into the Rolodex and I could use a lot of the networks and connections that they had. And I i pieced everything together over the next three, four years. I put together ah podcast. I used professional athletes to get doctors and trainers onto the podcast. And that was a way to freely learn. I didn't have the money to pay for coaching or anything like that. So I was freely getting information like that.
00:13:39
Speaker
And i traveled. I found people around the country. i When I did get a couple of money, a couple of pockets in my pocket, I went to Amsterdam and met with some coaches over there and some teachers and just started like doing the thing.
00:13:53
Speaker
Obviously, I stayed with Daniel Wilson and Amina and worked with them regularly. And i think what came about that experience, what really curated over the next couple of years is now what my work is tangibly.
00:14:06
Speaker
And what I mean by that is my perspective towards psychology had changed because my understanding, it still remains to this day, my understanding of how we think perceivably in our mind and how our conscious like decision-making works is based off of our body.
00:14:23
Speaker
And so therefore I came into the the perspective, and right before we pressed play, we're talking about perspective expanding or perspective shifting. My perspective had now shifted through doing things tangibly and seeing things change really and objectively. And I saw my mind changing.
00:14:41
Speaker
I realized that physiology is first before psychology. And I think if I go back to the career in which I had, if i could talk to that person again right at whatever that is i would have reversed everything that i was doing when i was trying to get out of my mind i tried to work in my mind and i've learned over years that that's not necessarily the access points to better thinking or better psychology i think it's i think it's still is there i still think it's physiology first you do
00:15:14
Speaker
very tangible objectives, simplified foundational practices and keep it yourself principles are sound and you're healthy. And if the foundation of what's ah all internally functioning well, the byproduct of that should be healthier thinking and thinking has to remain subjective. So can I say that you will be this type of thinker? No, but I think that if I could have been a better breather, had a stronger nervous system, understood understood principles such as sleep, the importance of recovery and those sort of things.
00:15:43
Speaker
And relayed that into my playing career. I i obviously hypothetical can't say this is accurate at all, but I would imagine that I wouldn't have experienced performance anxiety at which materialized into the yips. I think that I would have been able to sustain a little bit longer playing career, but all that stuff. And obviously that's a long winded story, but that's, you know, that's the thing.
00:16:08
Speaker
All those things are what made me who I am today, I suppose. Time out. Every so often I receive messages that remind me why we created the Old Bull program. Today I want to share Kevin's story with you.
00:16:22
Speaker
Not just because it showcases physical transformation, but because it represents what's possible when training evolves beyond just sets and reps. Kevin recently reached out with a message that captures the essence of what we're building.
00:16:36
Speaker
Here we go. Hey Tex, this is Kevin from Old Bull. Just wanted to shoot you a quick text to say I'm really digging the program and seeing great results. Made a few dietary tweaks, up my protein for one, but through the training I've been seeing more muscle and strength gain with infinitely less pain in the process than probably any other point in my lifting career.
00:16:59
Speaker
I recently got together with some friends I hadn't seen in a couple years and every one of them made a comment about how they've never seen me looking bigger or stronger than I do now. Appreciate the program and what you're doing to make it excellent. Here's what really matters. This isn't about quick fixes or unsustainable programs.
00:17:18
Speaker
Old Bull engineered for the experienced lifter who values longevity as much as they do intensity. We're talking about intelligent progression that respects your body signal while constantly pushing your boundaries.
00:17:32
Speaker
If you're ready to transform your training into something more sustainable, more intelligent, and ultimately more impactful, the Old Bull program is your path forward.
00:17:43
Speaker
Click the link in the show notes and take control of your strength journey today. A necessary sacrifice moment, evil, if you will, that you are able to redirect.
00:17:55
Speaker
into education to now empower thousands of athletes. So it yeah it is a small, small sacrifice, and you didn't let it define you.
00:18:06
Speaker
That's why I love and appreciate this. And then the the concept where healthy physiology, that that's the foundation. of strong psychology. That's that's beautiful yeah in a sense. And then as they yeah ah a performance coach over here, utilizing the weight room to teach a lot of lessons, be behavior, ah resiliency, stick-to-itiveness, grit.
00:18:34
Speaker
Now this this puts me in a position to start also educating on on the physiology. Hey, this is what's going on in your body. So yeah no matter if they're high school or college, opening up that door for them and understanding this, this, this is motivating for me.
00:18:51
Speaker
yeah Beautiful. And ah so you, you worked hard to establish a network and foundation And you were in entrepreneurial phase. i always struggle with that word, even as a- No worries. I struggle with many words.
00:19:09
Speaker
the it was Without words. So now yeah you were able to to take this network, build a brand, and then create an opportunity with you professionally with the San Francisco Giants, which is cool.
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, obviously, that was amazing. i just finished my fourth year there. I'm back independent and sort of entrepreneurially. i'll hammer that was nervous to go to that, so i wanted to get out of the way and say it say right away. But entrepreneurially, yeah, I'm back into my independent space, which is why you're seeing a lot of the new shows and ah new content. And obviously I'm consistently kind of producing and creating, which feels so much at home for me. And I've always known that no, no disrespect to the last couple of years. I've i loved coaching and being in major league sports. How could you not? i
00:20:00
Speaker
what was cool about the giants experience. And I just recently answered this. So it's fresh on my brain, but ah you know, as I told that story and it went about, it was about a three year,
00:20:12
Speaker
three year discovery period from, we'll call, yeah, three years is fair, 2016 to about 2018, 2019 is when I was doing all those exploration, trying to learn, trying to study, trying to do all this stuff and trying to understand physiology and anatomy, et cetera, et cetera. And also my own life, like what am I doing for a career?
00:20:32
Speaker
In 2019, I started not I wouldn't, by no means was I financially having any success, was my business going off the charts. We were about two years in the podcast. We, I had, you know, every now and then I'd have a college bring me in and I'd do a presentation or i'd work with a group, whatever. And you you know how that works. You're kind of building up, you just take whatever you can get. And I was sort of surviving. i had a bunch of little odd jobs here and there.
00:20:58
Speaker
And 2019, in 2018, I started working with pro athletes and I was doing it free for the for the like the most year for the first year, really. 2019, I started charging slightly. And then 2020, the where the Giants is going to come into this story.
00:21:15
Speaker
This is when things really took off for me professionally, which was wild to experience looking back at it. But I. was in this space training people working with people and in 20 can't remember losing the dates but so i'm going to move on from the date so i can just tell the story but uh i was i was in the november-ish era and i took i left all these side jobs and i told one of my buddies back to mass performance the other owner tom buski who are still my best friends but i was working
00:21:48
Speaker
teaching pitching there and coaching high school kids. And I had a couple odd jobs. I was scouting with the Milwaukee Brewers. I was working at universities, coaching baseball, et cetera. And i had told Tom, I said, Hey, um I need like five months of these hourly jobs of working with you to pay my rent.
00:22:06
Speaker
And we just worked the math out so I could cover my rent and pay these things. And I was like, by March 15th, I'm out and I'm going full time on my old company is called the Mindstrong Project.
00:22:17
Speaker
And I'm going to go all in on it. And we were struggling financially. So I had to kind of mentally, I was the owner. I had to go kind of save this thing that we had. And so he he agreed to it. And ah my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, i remember waking up crying March 16th on 2020 because a world pandemic has taken place.
00:22:37
Speaker
Right. So I leave all my jobs in my first day working. COVID strikes. bam And that was a wild experience. I had a mobile sauna. I was taking cold tubs to gyms. That was my business.
00:22:50
Speaker
So to be a mobile sauna, breathing job in a respiratory world pandemic era, you're not working well. no So life was incredibly terrifying and the giants are nowhere and nowhere even close into the picture yet.
00:23:07
Speaker
But, uh, What happened, which was really fascinating, was everybody had time. If you remember those days, no one was working. No one was anywhere. So spring training was shut down. Major League Baseball was shut down. NHL was shut down. All these things were shut down.
00:23:23
Speaker
And I had had a decent following at that point. And I'd sort of been in the game for a few years now, like making podcasts, showing content. And I started getting DMs. ah from major league athletes and I didn't know them.
00:23:37
Speaker
So it was different. It was different than the buddies that I was working with or helping and not charging. And so I took this opportunity in about three months into COVID, I actually had a full, sustaining, profitable coaching, consulting business because I was able to explain how to use nature yeah and use things at your home.
00:24:00
Speaker
it And that helped you perform. And that summer blew up for me. you know, obviously we kind of limped back into working with people and I was working in the NHL at this time. And about a year later, i had a full blown successful career happening. And the Giants came in about a year later and interviewed me to be the director of mental skills at the time. I wasn't credible in anything. I didn't have a degree. I didn't have certain scenarios that they were looking for, but they interviewed me. I took it and went the distance.
00:24:30
Speaker
And afterwards I didn't get the job. And the next day, Gabe Kapler called me and just said, would you want to consult? And we'll call you a breathing specialist. And what does that look like to you? And I actually, so I took that role.
00:24:43
Speaker
And in 2021, I was a breathing consultant for the for the San Francisco Giants. And I actually signed three or four different contracts that year because they were not sure how I was going to fit in with the clubhouse. So it was all with the major league team.
00:24:55
Speaker
And it was, we're going camp to all-star break. And then I re-signed because I was kind of like my first tryout. Then we went all-star break to the end of the season. And then we did the playoffs. We ended up having 107 wins that year. Set a franchise record. was remarkable.
00:25:10
Speaker
And then that next offseason, I kind of went full time and I went full time for a three year stint in 22, 23, 24. And the breathing consultant became the human performance coach.
00:25:22
Speaker
And that was really fun. So now I leave my company. I move my family and I move out to San Francisco. And I was working full time in the major league with a major league team and the major league clubhouse. And I was able to now get outside of the breathing thing and I could do all the things I wanted to do.
00:25:38
Speaker
yeah So i was able to use sauna and cold with the guys. We were able to do sound breathing or sound bathing and with breath work and grounding and walks. And we had a nature van. I'd take the boys out into nature in the cities we were in.
00:25:52
Speaker
And that was ah Super fun, right? I got to expand into this entire performance aspect. And it was a really monumental time for me, because i got to stop being an entrepreneur, which I really wanted to stop being an entrepreneur. That was a sound so beautiful a story I just told.
00:26:11
Speaker
on the surface and it was and it's great and I love it. But it was so stressful for so many years and doing that stuff, even when I was having success, it was almost as equally as stressful as it was when it was tough. was just was a it was something where I felt like I was being pulled and working with so many people that the Giants was like a slowdown period.
00:26:31
Speaker
And the slowdown period allowed me to only focus on the guys in front of me. I didn't have to build a business. I wasn't concerned with making a brand. And that was when I wrote the two books because Breathe, Focus, Excel came out in 2023.
00:26:46
Speaker
Without Words came out this December in 2024. And it was just such a that was an amazing last three years. I'm coming out of that now. And I feel different, obviously, with a new perspective change.
00:26:56
Speaker
But that that gave me time to focus on one thing. Know that I had a paycheck coming. Know I had one team I wanted to work with. These are the guys that I that i ride with.
00:27:08
Speaker
This is the staff that I work with. and And all my off time, I got to write. And the writing has really taken shape beautifully for me because it's like an accumulation of the last 10 years of thinking.
00:27:19
Speaker
and reading and studying that I can now just be alone and get thoughts out on the paper. And so I really enjoyed that process. I don't know if that answered the question, but I think that at least paints the picture, I suppose.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah. And Anne has set up a lot more questions. the i do want to spend some time with the at-home tools. so we can give yeah um some practical nuggets to take away.
00:27:43
Speaker
So i'm I'm outside Austin and we just had a winter storm. We usually get one one year. So now I pulled out the old ice bath and then yeah i I've been fortunate. i I sauna at least five five nights a week.
00:27:58
Speaker
I got a buddy who runs yeah and started his own sauna company, the hot box. It's amazing. nice so it gets up to 220, a little toasty in there and Took without words in there the the past two weeks.
00:28:11
Speaker
And then, ah yeah, diving into the ice bath. I had put that off since last winter just because yeah it gets from 20. twenty i'd say our degree range is 20 to 120 here in Hill Country, Texas. So just summer keeping that thing cold.
00:28:30
Speaker
I'm too cheap. So I just that's wild freeze water bottles and throw it in there. um But meaningful for this podcast ah for me to like, all right, let's get back in there.
00:28:42
Speaker
And i i'm I'm looking out my window here at this beautiful view. so I just plopped down in the ice and tried to to, to, to, to ponder, to think about the the messages from, from your book while I'm freezing my butt off for three minutes.
00:28:58
Speaker
And yeah, yeah, it's fun. Cause two 20 is no joke. So I've forced myself to breathe. I've removed a podcast. used to listen to podcasts in there just to distract myself.
00:29:12
Speaker
Now it's just books and breath. Um, yeah, So for for folks that are just getting into this mindset, what are those tools where you introduce to athletes virtually that they can start to apply at home and really start on this path that you've set out on yourself and empowered others to take this journey as well?
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's a marvelous question. I really enjoy that. I think that, you know, it's easy to... I'm to start broad here and I'm going to narrow it right to the breath specifically, because I think it's easy to look at all the modalities that we have access to and we can we can pick and choose them and and they're on the street everywhere you go. You know you can't you can't go anywhere now.
00:30:02
Speaker
and From my perspective, can't go anywhere in big cities around the country and not see a sauna on ice. facility or a red light facility or a stem machine or a pimp machine, like you you have access to all of these modalities and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a beautiful thing. um I know this is somewhat of a harsh take.
00:30:21
Speaker
I don't think it's a harsh take. ah for my ive It seems like that sometimes, but a lot of this is commercially driven, which is fine. We're a society that needs resources and we have businesses and those sort of things.
00:30:34
Speaker
But the broadness of commercialization i think makes this seem very confusing and i think the need of confusion is needed because that means that you need to reach outside of yourself to acquire whatever you're seeking right and that's where i think there's nothing wrong with that i'm not arguing that or good or bad all i'm saying is that if you cut through commerce and you go to art of self art of understanding art of recovery art of advancement Well, breathing is the one controllable that we all have that is incredibly free.
00:31:10
Speaker
It's a real-time HRV for you. it's a It's your governor of state. It controls your up-regulatory and down-regulatory state. It controls emotional behavior, cognitive recognition, ah retention of information, all these things. Breathing is the...
00:31:27
Speaker
is the foundational principle that I think you should take into all these availabilities that you have. And that's why I like, for me, but I enjoy, I liked you saying like, I don't listen the podcast anymore, or I don't do this in the sauna.
00:31:43
Speaker
And it's not that that's a good or bad thing. It's just that the sauna is a heat stressor that triggers an awareness to breath. But the breath is the whole point. Does that make sense? Yeah.
00:31:53
Speaker
And it's the same thing with the cold. Cold is so remarkably beautiful as a teacher because it's so penetrable in the nervous system. When we're in extreme cold, when it's uncomfortable, now there's some incredible things happening to the endorphins, sure. And there's the need of the cortisol, sure. There's a dopamine effect that we clearly need to get now in modern society because we're not getting natural dopamine. So I completely understand that 100%.
00:32:17
Speaker
But when you are in an uncomfortable cold and the shock of that, and everyone knows this is you can go into a cold shower and you'll see how immediate that is. You don't get that in the sauna, right? The sauna immediacy comes at the end, not in the very beginning.
00:32:31
Speaker
The cold tub gets you instantly. And so that's like a real time trigger into where you are currently at. And I think a lot of times with athletes specifically is they marry the protocols, they marry the objectiveness and they don't marry their awareness to breath. They don't marry the the recognition of how they're perceiving these stressors going on around them. For example, I see often there's Susanna Soberg had research come out of the Scandinavian countries about the 12 minute baseline of cold exposure each week. That was kind of the, the practical thing that you should be able to have around, yeah, 12 minutes a week. Right.
00:33:11
Speaker
Okay. Well, so if you do three minutes of four times a week, There's nothing wrong with that, but if you are an athlete and you challenge your nervous system up and down, or you travel from New York City in April, and then you go to l LA, and then you go to San Francisco, and you change chemistry like that, if you go from 20 degrees to 120 degrees in Austin, or wherever you're at ah climate-wise, environmentally-wise, if you change time zones and disrupt your biology, and you marry that protocol,
00:33:41
Speaker
That's not feasible. Right. So you can't you have to be adjustable naturally off of how you're handling stimulus in your own life. And I think that that comes into the way in which you're breathing.
00:33:53
Speaker
So if I go into the same temperature of cold tub four or five times a week and one of those days I can't control my breath or this is really crushing me.
00:34:04
Speaker
I think that's your breathing is the tell to get out and not marry the objective protocol in which you felt like you had to religiously follow. And I think that's one of the things that, again, I'm not going to say I'm right or accurate on this. I think we can all discover our own things and we can find what works for ourselves. But I would say in the last 10 years of really practicing breath work and cold exposure. I would say recently that seems to be to me, in my understanding, that seems to be where we're missing the boat just right now in this immediacy.
00:34:38
Speaker
We're so obsessed with objective protocols that we can't, we're missing everything. awareness to our breath and does that make sense yeah and we're we're open to the opportunity of hey we're all different hip sockets we're all different blood work yeah but do this specific time frame for everyone in the ice what yeah why can't the other perspective apply for ah for the the the recovery aspects and then making this this awareness connection. I understand your logic.
00:35:13
Speaker
I guess they're just looking for an easy layup. Let's just do this. Check this box. Yeah, and shout out to our guy, Logan Gelbricht. He always highlighted this for me, which I never really thought about it. I did a presentation at Deuce a few years ago out in LA, and we were having this exact topic of discussion.
00:35:33
Speaker
And I didn't think about it then as like something that would be relevant, I suppose, to teach now. But i've always my favorite number is 15. and whether this helps people who are listening or not as a protocol for them so they can understand their things uh you know if you do 15 breaths five breaths a minute you do three minutes and that just lined up with me for one it was my favorite number but then psychological or no physiologically it also makes sense right because if you maintain five breaths a minute
00:36:05
Speaker
five seconds in, five seconds out with a slight pause after the inhale and the exhale, you're right around that. You're hovering around five to six breaths a minute. which in a natural state of coherence, if you were to sit down and breathe like that, just in your living room or outside, your central nervous system will completely neutralize you, right? You see this on heart rates, variabilities, recoveries, all this stuff.
00:36:28
Speaker
So that's why coherent breathing, the pendulum of that, it neutralizes your CNS. So I've always thought of it as if I can maintain coherent breathing in the cold tub,
00:36:40
Speaker
And I think for the listeners, this is something you can challenge yourself on and you can really learn how you're handling cold is don't look at a clock, have a clock to the side of you.
00:36:51
Speaker
And can you do 15 breaths through your nose? And if you need the first five to be in through the nose, out through the mouth, just to get yourself into it. The last 10, you should try to be all na so nasal, nasal in, nasal out.
00:37:03
Speaker
And can you count your breaths? So you have something to be aware of mentally and cognitively and focus on and follow that. And then at 15 breaths, can you get out and look at the clock and see how close you are to three minutes?
00:37:17
Speaker
And obviously we're masters of ourselves, so we get better at that. But eventually... you can get away from the clock and pull it and you can just be at 15 breaths and where i mean by that is some days i do 15 breaths and i'm in there for a minute 30. that's a great thing to what we're talking about that's my cns isn't there but i did 15 breaths i got to get out i'm not going to do the three minutes i got to get out some days i do 15 breaths and i literally look at it it's been four minutes And it's like, I had a ton of space.
00:37:48
Speaker
like Where was that availability coming from? And I think yeah ah you let me know what you think about this as from your experience and coaching and your thoughts. But I think that has come to become a really good tool that I've given to athletes a lot. And they've found a lot of success there. Yeah, i I love that.
00:38:05
Speaker
Right now, practically speaking, I was just three minutes at a timer and it's Let's just aim to relax, but I know, yeah let's let's get to that timer. Let's get to that timer.
00:38:17
Speaker
And then connecting this to to coaching. So ah coach high school lacrosse and okay control the long-term athletic development and 10 minutes of warmup.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's not the same dynamic warmup. it It changes and evolves. In season, we focus on injury prevention, but if I look at the span of four years for kids, That's a long-term development model.
00:38:42
Speaker
10 minutes of warm-up, 30 times 35 practices a season times four years. that's That's great development time versus the same dynamic. yeah yeah Wow.
00:38:53
Speaker
So now yeah I'm actively leading it. I let the kids lead the the the counts of the reps, but I'm choosing the movements, coaching that. And then this is my my time to also teach them self-awareness where most coaches use the warm-up to – you know, pal around and give them a give him a hard time. And well, now I'm just watching their watching their movement, watching their body language, watching their hamstring calf tightness, and then bringing this awareness, I can see the the the movement change.
00:39:26
Speaker
But now asking them Hey, how are your hamstrings feeling? So trying to build the mind and muscle connection, which i do want to get to momentarily here. So yeah, beautiful.
00:39:37
Speaker
Your book has introduced me to now now senses. So tapping into ah to my guys and helping expand their their awareness through senses, ah which which we're going to lead to, but just ah to wrap it on breath, you and you spoke on nasal breathing.
00:39:54
Speaker
I do want to help differentiate for... d the listeners, especially our our coaches at the high school level, nasal breathing, mouth breathing, and daa diaphragmatic from yeah well for that word too ah breathing as well.
00:40:11
Speaker
So just maybe the purpose for each of those, and then yeah connect it to the the practices you just introduced. Yeah, make sure if I get offline, I want you to point at me and tell me to stop because this is important. So let's make sure I don't go on. Let's make sure I don't go on my rants here.
00:40:29
Speaker
Let's start. Let's start. Extremely practical. So you want to look at breathing as I consider it three layers. And it's just like your pyramid, the bottom base, just like the old food pyramid back from elementary school.
00:40:44
Speaker
The bottom base is your mechanics. That's kind of where we can just cue in on that diaphragmatic breathing. And we'll we'll talk about that in a second. But the bottom base is anatomy and the mechanics. Like when you're looking at your athletes bodies,
00:40:57
Speaker
Okay, that's how I'm looking at someone breathe right away. i don't say anything. I just look at how they breathe. And that's, I'm not going to go, well I'm not going to rant. Let's stay on it. So you look at how they breathe. That's the anatomy. That's the mechanics.
00:41:09
Speaker
Then we go up the second layer, that's physiology. This is sort of, this is hard not to highlight as like the specialty of breathing because this is, breathing can change the physiology and influence it, which is what makes it so magical.
00:41:22
Speaker
But I don't think you get influence over physiology without healthy mechanics and a foundation, which I think is the basic across all of our movement patterns of anything we teach, right?
00:41:33
Speaker
Across all sports. and that's where i go back to the original story i told earlier the third part of the pyramid is kind of that it could even be that self-actualization point but that's psychology so it's mechanics physiology psychology in that order because it's simple the principles are the same so if in the mechanics and for people who can kind of see this your your diaphragm sits like an umbrella underneath your rib cage, right? So if people are sitting there, your diaphragm sits like this umbrella.
00:42:03
Speaker
When you inhale, it flattens like a Frisbee, right? And that's why when you're lifting, right? You know how when you take that big inhale before you go down for the squat, and you kind of create that intra-dominal pressure and you have that safety belt, that natural safety belt.
00:42:17
Speaker
Okay. That is horizontal movement of the diaphragm. That's why you get that Frisbee action, that flattening. So as someone's even listening to right now, if you're sitting in a chair, start breathing slow in and out through your nose and just try to feel if your back can breathe into the chair.
00:42:35
Speaker
Can I, can I feel the back of my ribs breathing into the chair? Can I feel the expansion of the side of the ribs? Yeah. Feel it. Right. And while you're, Doing that, the back is the hardest thing to breathe because we breathe so easily into the belly and into the front.
00:42:51
Speaker
But if you can feel that into the back of the chair, you're starting the process of getting away from this vertical breathing. You're getting to this horizontal breathing. And that's what you're really trying to access mechanically.
00:43:02
Speaker
So if you're if you're trying to test yourself mechanically. Just look take your shirt off or have minimal clothing and look in a mirror and take deep breaths. And we're taking deep breaths naturally. The natural state of society right now is we breathe into our neck and our shoulders.
00:43:19
Speaker
We do that when we do our deep breath. Okay, that's okay. It's natural. It's part of the process, but it's also part of the rewiring process. We need to get rid of that. So we need to... Breathe wide. And you want to think 360 degrees, that safety belt, but I'm breathing horizontal.
00:43:35
Speaker
And that's the flattening. So as you're doing this, even you, let's do this together. Take your hands and cup the side of your rib cage. Yeah, like just right there, like if you're clamping a wall or a table. That's beautiful.
00:43:46
Speaker
And breathe yourself into your back of your thumbs. And I can see you perfectly. This is great. Breathe into your thumb and your index finger. When you inhale, do you feel the ribs coming out first?
00:43:57
Speaker
They kind of come out and then they lift up. Yeah. And then when you exhale, that's beautiful. When you exhale, they should come down and in. Do you feel those ribs moving? Yes. Yes. So that movement goes back to the word you used about awareness. That movement is controllable.
00:44:14
Speaker
We can do it instantaneously. You can get yourself to do that. And now all of a sudden, you know, this is where I think the method, that's the principle. How do I get myself to breathe horizontally?
00:44:26
Speaker
How do I get the diaphragm to expand instead of getting me vertically? And when you're doing it consciously, it's easy. The difficult part is we breathe unconsciously.
00:44:36
Speaker
So unconsciously, we don't breathe like that. We breathe into our neck and our shoulders. And this happens obviously in sport when we're tired or fatigued and that's okay.
00:44:48
Speaker
But you want to look at mechanically sound. How can I create this unconscious movement to work for me? And how do I get that to breathe well Regularly. And I think that's where you have to train it. So your training, the methodology of training can get wildly diverse. You can put weights on your belly.
00:45:05
Speaker
You can have someone grip for you, whatever. You can stare in a mirror. I always tie like ah a band, a TheraBand or whatever those, you know, like the skinny TheraBands. I'll throw those around the bottom of the ribs.
00:45:16
Speaker
and just have people breathe into them horizontally, whatever it takes to get that movement that you just had. But as a coach, before I go up to so physiology, what's what are you feeling from that, from like the most simple thoughts?
00:45:29
Speaker
the I mean, it's is it's easy buy-in. So I used to establish – general box breathing. So I would be setting on time of 444 to bring awareness. But now I have a tactile cue where they can feel if they're doing it right versus me just on a stopwatch.
00:45:49
Speaker
Perfect. perfect Perfect. And you can do that in a sauna, right? You can breathe like that in a sauna. You can breathe like that in a cold tub. And that's where you can. So that will move us up the chain. Right.
00:46:00
Speaker
Cool. Go up to phs physiology, nasal mouth breathing. So this moves us up the chain. And this is where I think modalities become really powerful for the mechanics of breathing. So if we are always maintaining that bottom base, can I, the, the, the, the old ancient yoga,
00:46:17
Speaker
saying is if you can't breathe in a position, you don't own the position. And I think that is so true in any aspect of life, but it's so true in sports, right?
00:46:29
Speaker
If someone can't breathe underneath the bar, they don't own the bar. If someone can't breathe and they're in any movement that they do in any sport, it does not matter. You do not own the position. I'm in baseball primarily. So it's like you see a hitters and pitchers. Anytime they come out of the delivery, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to say breathing is the answer to that, but your breathing was dysfunctional because you just don't own the movement. So it's just something to always have a baseline foundation of. It's also in the middle of the body. And before I highlight this physiology part,
00:47:01
Speaker
One of the reasons why you want to train mechanically your diaphragm is your diaphragm doesn't have nerve endings like the body, the rest of the body does. So you do need to create an awareness to the tacticalness of it and become aware of the movements, not like a bicep that tells you it's fatigue. The diaphragm cannot do that because it has to work all the time.
00:47:20
Speaker
That's why I'm building it. And making it consciously powerful and more horizontal for you is positive. So we we take all that stuff. We move up the second layer and we go into physiology. I think this is where you make your breathe. This is where you make your money, in my opinion, as a as a as any person, because this is where you can learn your your your practices. This is where you can learn the protocols and you can start to implement.
00:47:44
Speaker
objective training whatever fits you some people like really fast breathing some people like slow breathing whatever it's you already said this earlier we're all different well this is where this is why i say you make your money here but if we go to physiology i'll use you again as somewhat of the the the the student in this position And I'll answer for you just so we can keep moving through this, but take a deep breath through your nose right now as I'm talking and just become aware of deep breathing through the nose.
00:48:10
Speaker
And as you're doing that, just keep repping it out and slow and deep as you're doing that slow and deep mentally. What part of the body is moving first?
00:48:20
Speaker
Don't have to be right. Don't have to say anything to me. I just plug in what you think the answer to that is. No, excuse me. Sorry. Now next, let's go to the mouth. Take a deep breath through the mouth.
00:48:33
Speaker
And what do you feel moving first in nature design this and everyone who's listening can be doing this along with us. There should be an initial movement that happened and there should be a difference from the mouth and the nose. Did you feel it?
00:48:48
Speaker
Even though i told you I was going to answer it. Did you feel it? Mouth was belly first. Okay, re reverse that. oh Okay. No, it's okay. Take a deep breath through your mouth.
00:49:00
Speaker
The cool thing is you see it on the film too, so you can see your body move differently. You should feel that right up and feel the nose lower.
00:49:12
Speaker
Nose, yeah, lower. And now, yeah, definitely chest for my mouth. With the mouth? Yeah. I'll have to go back to the tape.
00:49:24
Speaker
I'm going to go back to check tape, dude. Yeah. Check tape. As you're doing that, you should feel when I breathe through my mouth, I feel like I'm more upper, upper chest.
00:49:38
Speaker
I feel back of the ribs, upper or back of the ribs. When I breathe through my nose, I should feel like I'm a little bit lower. And now you're thinking about it, so you're making it conscious. But naturally, you know, when you're doing this, even do this with athletes and you'll you'll be able to kind of see it.
00:49:53
Speaker
Right. And even when you're training people, you can see it. But the point I'm making of this is that that is the starting grounds of understanding the difference between nose and mouth breathing, because as people are listening to me, even if you're listening, just start being conscious of breathing in in and out through your nose.
00:50:10
Speaker
you can feel that diaphragm expand and you can kind of feel the body get widened and you can feel yourself breathing lower. Well, the way in which gravity sets us up is all the blood sits at the bottom of the lungs.
00:50:22
Speaker
So when I nasal breathe, it's a deeper breath. i actually get into the lower part of the lungs and that pulls the diaphragm down. And as it pulls it down, all of a sudden that the bottom of the lung is filled with this stuff called alveoli. It's where we exchange our oxygen, our CO2.
00:50:39
Speaker
And that exchange is also filled with all these parasympathetic type. And I know saying some words. The parasympathetic is just, it's healthy. it's It's rest. It's adaptive. It's advantageous. It's oxygenated.
00:50:53
Speaker
So you have this low, deep breathing uh sensation that funnels into your heart and into the rest of the body and that's the oxygen exchange that goes through the muscle tissue when you breathe through the nose when you breathe through the mouth Think about watching like a wrestler who starts panting or a boxer who starts panting at the end compared to the beginning. Or you see this in kickers ah that start breathing really fast before they even did anything. You see this in young kids all the time who they start paying. I just had a baby. Season the baby like they start to start crying.
00:51:26
Speaker
And that that mouth breathing is upper lung breathing. It's the top tier lobes of the lung, which has less exchange, as you can imagine, because of pure gravity. So now I have less exchange of oxygen, CO2.
00:51:39
Speaker
I'm more sympathetic, which is fight or flight driven at the top of the lung. and that's super close to the brain stem in the back of the brain which is our fight or flight and our rest and adapt it's our sympathetic and parasympathetic it's our nervous system it's the duality of that and so breathing alone will tell the brain stem what state you're in so if i'm panting Well, then my nervous system is perceiving this is unsafe. So I'm going to freeze and then I'm going to either fight or flight type deal.
00:52:08
Speaker
If I'm breathing slow and into the nose, my nervous system is perceiving this is safe. I can get deeper into position. I get more fluidity through my nervous system, my oxygen into my muscle tissue, all these things.
00:52:19
Speaker
And so this is why if I'm looking at athletes, a lot of times I have athletes put water in their mouth. Don't drink the water and do your dynamic warm up. So now you need to not only own positions, you need to nasal breathe. so you need to be parasympathetic, which allows me to move through the positions to loosen myself up, stretch myself out.
00:52:37
Speaker
And now when we get into training or competition, throw it out the window, breathe however you want. And for the listeners, I've always said, Breathe through your mouth only when you eat, talk or train heavily.
00:52:49
Speaker
Other than that, you should be nasal breathing your entire life because nasal breathing is the the key to oxygen. And if we have oxygen going through us, we're healthy. So breathing through our eyelids.
00:53:03
Speaker
The old what movie is that? Old Durham. The old baseball coach. Yeah. yeah I just told the guy who's got a bullpen today. I told him a bunch of those breathing through your eyelids. Yeah. Breathe through your eyelids for the sensei.
00:53:14
Speaker
the the The absolute purity of it. um I think that's a good start. I want to go a little bit further on nasal versus mouth breathing. But does that paint a picture a little bit?
00:53:26
Speaker
Yes, and and practical nuggets for people to to try. I love the the water in the mouth, almost a force, and then there's yeah there's awareness. I swallowed it or and I spit it out.
00:53:37
Speaker
So now we can try more. Yeah. and if you don't want to use water, just tape your mouth, you know, just tape your mouth and and do minor minor aerobic or go for a walk and tape your mouth and just realize, just become aware of that.
00:53:50
Speaker
I think the the easy part, if we get science driven on nasal mouth, and I'll be short with this, it's really simple. The mouth is for more air in, more air out. It's literally that simple.
00:54:01
Speaker
So think of the times in which you need more air, in which you need to get air out. You're going to use the mouth. When we think of the mouth, the mouth doesn't have any of the access points that the nose has for the health of the body.
00:54:13
Speaker
There's no hair in the mouth. There's no the nasal hairs, as you guys can be familiar with. There's no blocking of particles in the air that stop us from the mouth. That's why when we get sore throats or we feel things, we have a dry mouth.
00:54:25
Speaker
Having a dry mouth is a parasympathetic or a sympathetic tone. It's a fight or flight tone. That's why you feel more stressed compared to when you have saliva in the mouth. Saliva is parasympathetic. It's rest and digest because you've been nasal breathing. So you've been getting this drippage, this saliva drippage.
00:54:42
Speaker
So that's the big thing of the reason why the mouth breathing is not it's not productive in terms of biology and physiology, in terms of health. The nose, on the other hand, not only does it have these like walls, it has these terminates, which are like walls in your nose, which stops things from getting through them.
00:54:59
Speaker
It has hair, so it stops particle or pathogens or moldy environments from getting into your body. It literally protects you. So it's like a defense center. It's also smaller. So it has time to process what you're bringing in.
00:55:14
Speaker
And then i also just talked about this recently. i think one of for all the breathing coaches and my friends out there who are obsessed with breathing, they're all everyone's obsessed with the nitric oxide production of nasal breathing and how when we actually breathe through our nose as opposed to our mouth.
00:55:29
Speaker
We actually produce nitric oxide in the body, which is a vasodilator. So that dilator allows more blood flow to work through you. So if I think about this, if I go for a long walk, a long aerobic walk,
00:55:42
Speaker
and I maintain nasal breathing. I'm literally maintaining an openness of my blood and I'm able to stay aerobic. Aerobic is oxygen, anaerobic is no oxygen. We can imagine what happens. You know how that is when you train, you get anaerobic, you get the lactic acid, you burn out, fatigue get fatigued, you get sore.
00:55:58
Speaker
Okay, what I'm trying to say is how long can you maintain oxygen, aerobic capacities and states and then use the anaerobic parts of you, the mouth breathing parts of you as like boosters.
00:56:10
Speaker
And the only way to think or do that is to try to maintain nasal breathing and your entire life outside of eating, talking or training hard. Right. And so that's where think it kind of turns into getting really fun and fascinating with the two.
00:56:25
Speaker
And that's where it takes us all the way back to the saunas and the cold tubs. If you can't maintain nasal breathing in the cold, you're not adapted. You're not ready. you're not You're not in a position where your nervous system can handle this environment. And this is where we need to be careful because why would you give up fuel in a cold tub as opposed to your sport, if we're talking specifically for athletes.
00:56:48
Speaker
Why would you give that up? You don't have that much points of breathing. So don't give up any anaerobic activity in a cold tub. Don't do it. It's the same thing with a sauna. You see guys breathe in out through the nose the entire time.
00:57:01
Speaker
The second they go to mouth breathing, they could keep the same cadence protocol. And you will see if you track it, you'll see the nervous system shift. you'll see it go from parasympathetic activity to sympathetic activity.
00:57:13
Speaker
And this is where we're missing, I think, largely, and this is unfair of me to say that, I i should i shouldn't say that, where I think we could be misunderstood, and myself included, is sometimes our recovery modalities end up becoming our training modalities, and we largely miss the understanding of that of the two perspectives. And we thought we just went and recovered in a sauna and an ice tub, and in reality, we just went and trained in a sauna and an ice tub.
00:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, especially in the the length of a season. So you're yeah feeling or you're you're applying those tools as recovery. And it's it's not doing what you feel it is or think it is.
00:57:51
Speaker
And then performance suffers. Yeah. And then the finale of that is obviously psychology. Psychology is a byproduct of all those.
00:58:02
Speaker
So I know I think ah those were ranty-ish, but I hope that hits the blocks. but Very, very much so in and educational. And we're creating awareness for coaches to start to to observe and see, which is is a great segue observation into into your book without words.
00:58:23
Speaker
So speak to us about the the origin of the title. And that that a previous season with San Francisco, where you came up with these concepts, tested these concepts and then started to put them on paper ah that led to this book.
00:58:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think the hardest thing for me over the last couple of years was. Like I just told you, I think that I've been inundated as we all are with a a mass overhaul of technology and needing objective answers and needing the protocol. And I don't think that that is outside of the scope of materialism. I think we need that. And it's and it is what it is.
00:59:02
Speaker
What was hard for me was i didn't feel internally a couple of years ago You know, egotistically for many years, I felt like I could change people because I told you that story I had, that moment I had with God in 2015 in the water.
00:59:19
Speaker
And when you have such an awakening of self, the only thing you egotistic, if you turn into your ego mind again, you just want to give that to everybody. I wanted to tell the world that I no longer have the yips and here's the way that you cure everything.
00:59:32
Speaker
yeah It's breathing, cold, sauna, sunlight, grounding, and this is what you do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now, professionally, that ego drove me to madness, but it also drove me into material success. It got me into the big leagues.
00:59:48
Speaker
And I don't want to deny that because it did allow me to write a book. it It got me to believe in myself without degrees and certain things. And it got me to trust in my process so deeply.
01:00:01
Speaker
that it made me a major league baseball coach at the age of 31. And I'm not I'm not denying that as that my gratitude for that experience. That was an amazing experience. I think what the big leagues did for me personally which came out in that book is that i went into the big leagues to change major league baseball in the industry of sports i wanted to create a holistic environment for sports and i've always believed if you could do that at the major league level it would trickle down effect top bottom style and i envisioned that immersing itself into the youth of america the youth of america would
01:00:37
Speaker
be about breathwork and walking barefoot. you know like That was just my crazy dream vision. But for me personally, the big leagues actually changed me, which was the entire irony of everything, because I got into this environment that was so big, so drastic, so much things going on. It's very societally driven.
01:00:58
Speaker
It's perceived on the surface. Everybody can watch it. It's a billion dollar industry. And That opened me up, like to simply put it that way. It opened me up to realize how complex we've become and how complex we are as a society and how profoundly being healthy is actually really simple.
01:01:20
Speaker
But that's the hardest part is the simplicity of being healthy. and I think that my my anger and disruption of trying to figure out how to make it so simply easy in this huge environment, it actually changed me because it made me realize that I can't change this thing.
01:01:42
Speaker
And who am I to even think I could change this thing? And why would I need to change this thing? And all I really had access to was changing myself. And I realized in 2022, was living the same lifestyle I'd always lived, but I did a full major league season.
01:01:58
Speaker
And at the end of the season, I was exhausted. ah couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. i headings I was feeling anxiety again. And it's in i was feeling all these things that I had.
01:02:09
Speaker
And the 2023 season was, and this is for me, my personal story. I didn't do this out of any, don't think addictions or issues, but I i wanted to be sober for 2023. And i was the first time I didn't indulge in any alcohol, like a sip of alcohol for a major league season. And I thought that that was impossible at the time.
01:02:28
Speaker
I'd grown up in sports. I've been, have had alcohol, it's whatever. It's a social thing. I just wanted to challenge myself to that. I wanted to challenge myself to the basic principles I wanted to do. this And I had no intention of coaching anybody.
01:02:40
Speaker
I just wanted to do it personally. And in 2024, now I'm almost two years sober now, which has been incredible. But in 2024, I was so confused off of ah influence and trying to understand how to help people understand the simplicity of health that i I wrote the book without words, which you'll find out, I'm sure, in a lot of the underlying meanings of that book, is that my perspective towards teaching has drastically changed because I'm not sure, a we can teach anybody anything and B, if we could, should we?
01:03:13
Speaker
And that's the second one's a little bit more intimidating to ask myself, should we teach anybody anything? Because we ourselves are flawed and we ourselves are trying to understand this whole thing in general.
01:03:25
Speaker
And what came out of that thought process was the book without words, Mastering the Art of Being. In my current experience, grip on perspective or society is that we are a mind-body vehicle, which we can physically, tangibly see and understand. We can make practical protocols for that.
01:03:46
Speaker
We can understand what injury is, what injury is not, what success. that We can create all our benchmarks. We can do all this stuff. We can say the protocols of the sauna, the protocols for the breathing. and We can create the literature. we can study the things. We can get the curriculums. We can have the degrees.
01:04:01
Speaker
But then there's this presence of self, this self-actualized thing that we cannot measure. we can't We can't know what it is. And what I think I've come to understand is that the platforms that we choose in life, the things that we go down right now are in the platform of podcasting.
01:04:20
Speaker
I think that what we do is we materially create characters. We play those characters through the mind and body that we can understand and can use surface level language to. But behind the character is ah is your soul, which you you are without words. You can't.
01:04:35
Speaker
And the first question that book is, Who am I? And I don't think you can tell someone who you are. But I've been telling athletes or been told as an athlete for 20 years. Who are you?
01:04:46
Speaker
And if you aren't successful, you need to figure out who you are. And my confusion with that question made me write that book. It was, well, who am I and who are you? And how could we ever know the depths of who we are individually?
01:05:00
Speaker
And I think from a spiritual sense, sports is nothing more than a platform that that exposes you to the awareness of self. And you need to use a mind and body to get to the depths of that exposure.
01:05:14
Speaker
And therefore, it's almost a duty or a birthright to unbelievably actualize the simplicity of being healthy. And it should be the greatest honor of yourself to maintain health.
01:05:27
Speaker
It should be the key principle of yourself. You should look at your breath, your nutrition, your movement, your sleep, your social connection. And if you have a leak in any of those chains, you're going to have a mental or physical injury.
01:05:39
Speaker
And when you're not healthy, you're not useful. And therefore, you've lost access to deepening your understanding of this life. I know it gets deeper and has a spiritual edge to it, which is different than any of the work I ever produced. But it was calling to me. So I did it. I just wrote it.
01:05:56
Speaker
Yeah. And it it it I took the time, especially with chapter one, just to to establish and what what you're aiming to introduce there. And then, I mean, reflect on my my career as an athlete and then transitioning into coach.
01:06:16
Speaker
and then into teacher, into mentor, yeah in all all these different phases. Now, 16 years in the industry where yeah the the the most proud of those different levels that I have is is coach when I'm actually working with athletes. It's beautiful. I still get the opportunity to present and teach and then individuals coming for mentorship That's when the the fun begins. And there was a moment where I didn't i didn't own that as a mentor.
01:06:49
Speaker
I wanted to continue to learn. So people would ask me questions and and and push them away, ah other coaches in the industry. And then finally, a a buddy of mine called me out for that, just how, ah i guess,
01:07:04
Speaker
I had closed that door. So then this, this book allowed me to to really reflect on that 16 years. And then the especially the last four or five, where my understanding of the social emotional development of people had really ah just taken ah whole new perspective and and development. So Yeah, I mean, this this got me got me thinking. And then how you describe the book here, who we were to who we are to who we can be.
01:07:37
Speaker
like that that was that That is beautiful to to me and really encouraging as... as I continue to to to coat to move as an athlete, to coach, to teach, to to mentor ah through this whole thing.
01:07:54
Speaker
And using sport as as that opportunity for me. And then a big theme of the podcast is sports don't teach lessons. Captains and coaches do. Your your teammates, your leader the team. you know Baseball taught us nothing. It's just a ball.
01:08:10
Speaker
Right. However, but the people involved within that are what led us to to understand us. That's beautiful. Yeah. um The the the last two, i don't know if it's the last two, but the the chapters I do want to highlight are.
01:08:27
Speaker
are Yeah. yeah Auras in this. This was new to me. And and the the mind body connection broken into different parts with the senses. So now I, I feel working through the auras chapter. I don't know if it, this is one of Logan's friends, but also mutual friend, Lindsay, Lindsay Matthews birth fit.
01:08:48
Speaker
Uh, I don't know if you had the opportunity to meet her, but she always spoke on auras and energies and I, I'd rather and give her a hard time, but this this was it like a a logical,
01:09:01
Speaker
ah chapter that then got me thinking about energy and flow within the team. So I can, I can, I can feel, see it. And if a kid needs it, step in. If the team, team needs it in that energy within the the locker room or sideline, like I can feel that, but now is putting the, the, the, the distances perspective in there. So speak to us a little bit about auras and energy,
01:09:28
Speaker
and then how that transitions into the the mind-body connection not just a saying mind-body connection but how to break it down in senses yeah so let's start with senses and get to chakra energy or energy those are kind of mixed into the two you can kind of think of chakras internal energy aura energy is external energy and there's seven to both which is really cool in the sense of how they're connected And, but beforehand, let's go to senses, which I think is a little bit more,
01:10:01
Speaker
maybe a little bit more practical to talk about or communicate on. And and we can kind of wrap our heads around that stuff. it is It's my understanding that the way in which we are even doing this podcast right now, or anything that we're gonna do today, i think our our decision-making processes,
01:10:21
Speaker
like excuse me psychologically is based off of the design of our current environment. So I don't, and this has been formed, this thought's been formed in my own opinion for many years. I don't think we're as conscious as we'd like to think we are.
01:10:34
Speaker
I think that we're the by-product of the unconscious environment. So, what that what I would mean by that is like, if you're not studying the home in which you live in or studying the city that you live in, or studying the team that you're involved in, or the colors or the clubhouse or the locker room, or the weight room, if you're not looking at the design of that, and realizing that we're a bunch of organisms walking through those and moving through that space and that design, you're largely the byproduct of whatever that environment is, which is exactly how
01:11:07
Speaker
your breathing is You are the byproduct of your unconscious breathing. If you are a chronic mouth breather, you are going to have health issues. period.
01:11:18
Speaker
And so that's your unconscious environment. It's poor breathing. Well, what would impact poor breathing unconsciously? Mold in the house, air pollution in the in the city, ah stimulus of sound, which makes you breathe faster, chaotic social relationships, which make you stressed breathe faster, breathe more, ah breathe anatomically unsound.
01:11:42
Speaker
ah processed food, bad food makes you breathe, perceiving that as a poison, ah artificial stimulants. Like I said, I kind of talked about drinking, but if you're taking yourself up and down on crazy stimulants up, well, then you're going to have to come down.
01:11:57
Speaker
So if you just go through society, I know this seems kind of negative in a sense, but I think it's just becoming aware of how everything's built around you. It's really easy to go anywhere from point A to B and every stop so every stopping point along the road has access to artificial coping.
01:12:12
Speaker
And so you on unconsciously pick from the environment that is around you. That's kind of what I'm saying as an overarching philosophy of understanding sensory input, because now all of a sudden the senses take in the consideration of how they're perceiving the environment around them. So you're kind of getting external attention impact into internal understanding.
01:12:35
Speaker
You are the byproduct of the two of those. Does that make sense? This is why nature in most in in Finland and in Japan specifically, I went to Finland recently. So they're on top. Costa Rica is a great example. was there last winter.
01:12:50
Speaker
theres Forest bathing is something people can look up and try to understand. Harvard, I think Harvard or Stanford did, an ah and I talked about in the book, I'm drawing a blank on it. I did one of the research is either from Harvard or Stanford talking about people who walked in urban areas.
01:13:04
Speaker
environments compared to nature environments and what that did to their physiology. We think of things as we just went for a walk, but we're not looking at the environment. And so this is why when you forest bathe or you go into nature, you under stimulate all the senses and you naturally start to recover. Your heart rate changes, your blood pressure goes down.
01:13:23
Speaker
your respiratory rate slows down and so the thing that i think people need to ask themselves is the only thing that changed was the environment because the senses are taking in different input which is why going outside right away in the morning is so healthy you're getting sensory input and so this is me defending that opinion of mine in which i believe the importance of the senses through your eyes, your smell, your taste, your touch, all that stuff. And you get deeper senses, thermal regulation, which we kind of talked about.
01:13:54
Speaker
You know, you have proprioception, senses, balance, all that stuff. But the major five, which I think is the classic of all us understanding. I think that we're the byproduct of the unconscious environment around us that impacts our senses. And I think that that's why you see people in the weight room who listen to heavy metal music. All of a sudden, they're really excited to lift.
01:14:16
Speaker
Why? If you go to an early morning game, people want to listen to reggae. At the end of the day, when you're by yourself studying for whatever reason, low quality hurts, jazz music makes you creative.
01:14:27
Speaker
And I think If you could pull yourself out for a second and understand that you're you don't need to consciously make yourself go into states, you can design the environment to put you into states.
01:14:40
Speaker
That's where the senses become valuable. And that's why you can start to make, as a human performance coach, you can start to design environments off wisdom rather than trying to acquire more knowledge.
01:14:55
Speaker
For example, How has it ever made sense to you intuitively to be under bright artificial lights at 11 o'clock at night when the sun's been down for hours? Just intuitively. You don't need to go research that.
01:15:08
Speaker
You can fact check and try to understand it. But intuitively, does that feel right? And It doesn't feel right because your senses don't want that input. So if you can become aware of sensory awareness, sensory input, you start to design your life to work for you.
01:15:26
Speaker
And that's a long-term process, but I think that's the point of what senses are. They just impact you. If I take cold water and I flick it at your skin, you're going to jump because the touch got a little sympathetic bite, a little fight or flight tone, right?
01:15:42
Speaker
and Yeah, I think that's kind of... Should I go further on that or how does that sound? Is that fair? it Fair, easy, simple. If they want to dive deeper, we got the book, but keep going on the...
01:15:56
Speaker
the The auras and chakras. Yes. So now all of a sudden we got to talk about we got to talk about energy. And this has come to me. This is rather recent to me. A lot of the energy work that has has really been impacting me and my teachings as of late has come through sound bathing and frequencies and drums and.
01:16:15
Speaker
And this has all been I've been studying indigenous tribes and I've been fortunate to be with some chief leaders over the last couple of years and really dive deep into drum ceremonies and these sort of things that are impacting stuff. But a lot of the ancient medicine practices that we've used have been based off of frequencies.
01:16:34
Speaker
So being able to promote sound and sensation to change the energy of the body. I'm really bummed that I'm indigenous healing, I think is the book I just read. And it's really bothering me. I can't remember it. I might be wrong on that. But the first part of the book is about how the shamans of the Pacific Northwest tribes used drumming as a drum circle. So if somebody in the tribe, and this might not necessarily be their tribe. I know this was a lot in the Minnesota tribes as well. But if you,
01:17:05
Speaker
If someone has depression in the community, the there's a leak in the community, not the person. So you would create a ceremonial drum ceremony from the way in which I understood it.
01:17:17
Speaker
And the drumming would connect all the nervous systems. And so now all of a sudden you would drop in. And I think that's why you've been in sports teams, right, your whole life. It's like, think about what music does to a room.
01:17:28
Speaker
and what that what the beat does to the energy. And when the room starts to create and flow together, it's magic. There's a reason why whoever wins the World Series next year, whoever gets interviewed is gonna say this, and they're gonna say it the next year, and the next year they're gonna say, there was a time in our season when we were really struggling, we had some injuries, we were battling, we weren't quite sure, but then we knew we loved each other and we felt love in the room. I'm getting chills as I'm thinking about it. You're getting love in the room. And from that moment we connected and we just had the right chemistry and we won. They're never gonna talk about anything material.
01:18:04
Speaker
They're not gonna talk about objectivity. They're gonna talk about love. That's what's gonna happen. And it's gonna happen whoever wins the Superbowl
Exploring Chakras and Energy Centers
01:18:11
Speaker
here. It's gonna happen whoever wins the Stanley Cup. So what is love?
01:18:15
Speaker
that's what drives a lot of the work for Without Words is that it's a unmeasurable energy that we all have internally. And when we connect that with other people, the massness of that is unbelievable. And you, that's what you get to experience on teams or businesses or in families and love with a significant other or friend and animals, even nature, you just get to connect as one.
01:18:41
Speaker
And that's where I think, you know, spiritually speaking,
01:18:47
Speaker
you would put, you'd understand the connection of love. Materially speaking, chakras are kind of in a modern sense. It's just the nervous system. I'll just simplify it to its absolute core.
01:18:59
Speaker
It's literally just Easternized ancient verbiage of the disc of the nervous system from basically your pelvic floor, which is your root all the way to the top of the pineal gland, which is your crown.
01:19:11
Speaker
And you have your third eye you have your throat chakra your heart chakra you know you've solar plexus you have the gut the intuitive all this stuff but it's it's literally just disc that run up your nervous system and if there's a clog in one of those discs or they're not running smoothly internally it's literally back to the initial thing we were talking about physiology there's a dysfunction in your physiology so if you're a If you have a gut feeling, well, that's the ego speaking to you.
01:19:40
Speaker
And what disrupts the gut? If you eat, bret if you bring in bad food and you disrupt your gut, you disrupting part of your chakra system. But we don't have to use the word chakra. We could just talk about your vagus nerve.
01:19:55
Speaker
You know, your vagus nerve is from your body. Mind is not speaking accurately to itself. You have your body's trying to process this food. Your vagus nerve is frustrated with itself. And it's telling your mind that you are antsy and anxious or depressed or sad, whatever.
01:20:12
Speaker
And that's just the connection. The mind, body, body, mind connection. That's everything is everything. I think that I just have found in recent years, I've found a lot of... ah relate ability to just attaching that to the actual words of the chakras and understanding the root of the pelvic floor area, our grounding, our sexual energy, our healing energy, our emotional energy around the hips and all that stuff. Like you can call it the pelvic floor and do pelvic floor exercises or move and make sure the middle of your body is working well. you call your glutes, you can do stuff, or you can just work with the root.
01:20:48
Speaker
And I think that I've just found more comfortability and language around that, but I don't think there's any difference. So there, slightly the same. Aura is aura. Someone walks into the room, you feel their aura. but yeah Sorry, you were going to say something. I didn't mean to you off. I like that
Cultural Connections and Healing Practices
01:21:03
Speaker
that perspective. and then so i I've always felt a like a ah kindred connection with Native American tribes, just the stories. and Then through lacrosse. It's, it's the, yeah it's the, the, the medicine game they call it.
01:21:18
Speaker
So then Northeast, that's beautiful. Yeah, that's right. So it's yeah like America's true pastime, not baseball. yeah It's the, the first, oh you're right. You're right. So it's it's awesome.
01:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, in the sense, like going to the the tribes for all this stuff, they didn't they didn't have any of our modern technologies, perspectives, ability to, you know, dissect and cut people open, but they were still able to find these with without...
01:21:46
Speaker
modern tech so there's got to be some root right pun intended there to it and then it helps you understand and then you can connect science easily so it's uh you've got a range of perspectives to then make a connection with the person that you're trying to ah empower yeah well said ah But yeah, so now, now auras and this is I'm just looking at the book and then you do a great job on ah connecting the auras to the the ah chakras. aras
01:22:21
Speaker
So now it's, yeah, beautiful one liner for each. um Yeah. But yeah, the energy the so this this was something in the like the the layers. This is this is just cool to me.
01:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think of it as you know,
01:22:40
Speaker
I'm trying to think of where I want to take that story. I think if you, i think give you if you just start within, right, it's like the, the energy of the room and working yourself down. And in I'm thinking about if I have touch, if I touch you just sometimes, why is it that sometimes just touching someone helps them?
01:22:59
Speaker
Right. And so you have to ask yourself the question of does massage is massage therapy, Physical or mental or spiritual healing.
01:23:10
Speaker
What is it? Right. What is the what is the aspect of that immediate layer? And physical touch is incredibly important. There's a reason why teams for centuries have said teams who high five win.
01:23:24
Speaker
There's a connection there. And it's an energy. It's a transfer of energy. And I think that as you become more aware and you get outside of yourself, the more in tune you are internally, the the stronger your aura is going to be out externally.
01:23:37
Speaker
And you're going to feel just think of it as I know it can seem very, um trying to avoid the woo-woo-ish word of it, but let's just call it that. You have this eggshell around you of energy and it kind of spreads out a few a few feet from you, right? When things come into your aura and it feels off, it's because you're you're sensing that internally, that internal external connection.
01:24:00
Speaker
But when you have love and connection and physical touch, that's our first essential, our layer. And that's why I said, I use the example of teams. Now, if we step outside of how we can feel energy,
01:24:12
Speaker
I don't think that educationally we can get there as much as someone experiencing external aura. And if anyone sees a lot of my work and I talk about sound bathing in there and I do a lot of that with every athlete that I work with, we use some variation of sound.
01:24:29
Speaker
Mostly I use the crystallized bowls to create ah like ah a low hertz, like a 528, 432 hertz, these low frequency parasympathetic hertz. And these are frequencies that you can't necessarily see, right? But think of it as the sun.
01:24:43
Speaker
You can't see the rays of the sun that touch your skin, but you feel the heat. Right. And so that's a that's a and and an an outer external energy force that's impacting you getting back to the senses.
01:24:55
Speaker
I want to stay the soundbathing because it's practical and people can actually experience this. You can even it's not as powerful, I think, without actually having sound bowls or ah instruments. But you can obviously go and look at those hurts I just used, type those in on YouTube and just listen, close your eyes and just listen.
01:25:13
Speaker
and allow the energy that the aura outside of you that influence your internal chakras of your nervous system. But I always liken it to the concept of, you know how when you're on a boat and somebody says something to you across the water and the water, ah you hear it so clearly. You can hear from like hundreds of yards away. have you experienced this? I grew up in the Midwest, so we're always around lakes, but you know what talking about?
01:25:37
Speaker
that not not Think of it if you're on if you think it it if you're on a lake and someone yells in and you can hear them. have you ever Is that coming to mind or no? I don't have a lot of lake experience. My only thought is Tommy boy when he's out on that little boat and the boys are talking to some facts.
01:25:57
Speaker
That's a bet. Okay. Let's go with the Tommy boy example. So they can hear them, right? They can at least hear them even though he's screaming in that one, but they can hear them. So the point is that sound travels really well across water.
01:26:08
Speaker
Okay. you can, you can, you can attach sound and water frequency and water really well. Well, your body is you know, massively made up of water, 68% it or so along those lines is in this water.
01:26:21
Speaker
hydrated mode. So you have water all throughout your body. You're like a bag of water, basically a bag of cells and water. When you have frequency that comes from the external and it impacts through your layers of aura and it goes into you.
01:26:34
Speaker
now of a sudden, the water in your body, it starts to vibrate. And so that vibration is healing and that's what heals through the disc, heals through the nervous system. And so once again, it's not talking yourself into this adaptive state or this meditative state.
01:26:50
Speaker
The vibration C of the outside aura goes into your inside disc, your nervous system funnels, your chakras, and it will start to shake them up so that the bulbs can be free and everything can flow from the crown down to the root. And you can be able to neutralize your system homeostasis naturally.
01:27:07
Speaker
And now of a sudden in those positions of health, you drop into mindfulness. Does that make sense? You drop into your meditative states or your recovery states.
01:27:18
Speaker
And i think that's a good example. I hope that's a good example to try to expand extend on just like the layers of external energy that get into your internal energy. But I mean, as far as like reading about it, just read about auras. I'm just trying to create a storybook form to create metaphors of how energy transfers in and out of you.
01:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, i I can see the connection visually and then just getting the wheels spinning about how I can bring that that to a team.
01:27:50
Speaker
So finding different ah different tools.
Creating Energy Fields for Performance
01:27:53
Speaker
And we got a training camp this weekend. We're going away overnight with the high school dudes. So I'm in charge all team building and training. So I'll find a way to to get creative with this stuff.
01:28:08
Speaker
Yeah, just think of it as, like I said, think about it as what state do you want to be in If you want to be in a fight or flight state, turn up the volume, turn up the breathing, get the energy going, get the drums beaten, you know, like get the movement going. And you're creating the external field of energy to impact the internal and you will see a conscious behavioral change.
01:28:32
Speaker
If you want to downregulate, Well, change the sound, change the frequency. And they just work in conjunction. They work together is what I'm saying. And I think that it's just an accumulation. i try to use the book to talk about oral fields and the nervous or the chakras.
01:28:48
Speaker
Just I just try to give a different point of view to the Western world to just communicate it with different language. But it's literally nothing different than hearing, seeing, touching, walking, thermal regulation, all those things. And then your nervous system, fight or flight, parasympathetic, rest and adapt. It's, it's very, it's, it's a, it can be confused only by language, but we are the same. It's the same. Yeah. I think, I think that's a good, good note to wrap that up.
01:29:17
Speaker
And then again, you, I took my time reading it to really understand it, but it's, it's well thought out throughout, throughout the entire book. And then,
01:29:28
Speaker
like It got my wheel spinning and certainly a a perspective shift on my end. So I'm grateful for Logan for making our connection.
01:29:39
Speaker
I got a couple of quick questions. Just some fun here. Yeah. Walkout song. what What were you going when you were stepping up? My walkout song was stand up and shout.
01:29:52
Speaker
And it was a Mark Wahlberg movie. Do you remember that movie? I can't remember the movie rock star. think it was a movie called rock star. Yeah. Do you remember that movie with Mark Wahlberg long hair, stand up and shout Jennifer Aniston.
01:30:05
Speaker
Yes, dude. That was my walkout song. That is probably the first time I've i've ever heard that as the the choice here. um Yeah, I was a closer, so I was trying to come in loud.
01:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. So, yeah, I'm sure there's some energy and connection to to people's walkout song for... the whether they're a pitcher, whether they're they're coming up to bat.
01:30:29
Speaker
ah just I'm from Houston, so Astros fan through and through. And Billy Wagner, he just got nice Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame. So he was, yeah, entered the Sandman.
01:30:40
Speaker
And dude, freaking in the – In Minute Maid Park, freaking lights coming down. And then just the freaking Metallica starting up. And Wagner, he didn't dead sprint.
01:30:52
Speaker
he just He took his sweet-ass time just getting to the I'm in on that. yeah and he i in on that that ah just talk about the energies of a stadium. i Final thought on that, like I've been to, dude, hundreds and hundreds of games, especially Astros $2 Tuesdays growing up and they sucked forever, but then they started to get good and I would return back to Houston and go to playoff games with my dad.
01:31:20
Speaker
And do the energy, like just, just in the town. And then you step into the arena. Like it, it, it's something winning and losing, uh, just feeling it as a fan in baseball. I love it.
01:31:33
Speaker
So it makes it beautiful. Yeah. And ah final question here. I'm probably not going to change my philosophy on this hand for breathing fatigue and during games, like resting with your hands on your knees,
01:31:47
Speaker
resting with your hands on your heads or like a a power position, what do you feel is the the optimal for recovery to redirect and get your ass back out on the field? Wow, I love it, dude.
01:32:00
Speaker
Well, as a player, when I was playing, where the rules were never on your head. So I grew up in that era of ah of mental of mental resilience, I suppose, that we were absolutely buried if we had our hands on our head.
01:32:13
Speaker
And or no, sorry, hands on our knees. Knees, yeah. So I flipped that around. So i was I came up in the era here. and you had to be up top i think you know obviously there was the wow you're probably familiar with the research that came out a few years ago that said you got optimal breathing with hands on the knees do you remember that i do draw it's been a minute since i'm yeah go ahead sorry that's why i'm like no i'm not gonna listen to that you're showing yeah yeah opponents i remember when that came out yeah i remember when that came out hands on the hips
01:32:45
Speaker
I'm thinking about how I currently train. That's kind how I feel more comfortable. But you know what? I think that, I think it's an immersion of all three. I think that I've found just like pacing and walking and being able to continue movement and use my breath to to unwind has been the best recovery modality.
01:33:05
Speaker
I'll give it an extremely practical tool and then and then we'll come back to the debate of those three. But a gear system, which was brought to me by a mentor of mine years ago, and Brian McKenzie, I think they run Shift Adapt now. I might screw up that name. I think it's just called Shift.
01:33:21
Speaker
but ah him and Rob Wilson, I'm not familiar with what Rob Wilson is doing nowadays, but Rob and them had brought to my attention the gear system years ago, which I've really enjoyed communicating. So the, the, just think of it like this. We won't go through all of them necessarily, but think of your breathing as like a car and to be at zero to 25 miles an hour in the neighborhood is pure, calm, quiet nasal breathing. We'll just call that a low gear.
01:33:47
Speaker
And I'm kind of tailoring this to my own speech of this. You can look up their gears and they go way deeper. But once you move up the chain and you kind of get into that 45 gear, we'll say that's in through the nose, out through the mouth. You're kind of revving
Breathing Techniques for Recovery
01:34:00
Speaker
up.
01:34:00
Speaker
And then when you get on the highway and you're in that full gear mode, you're driving 70 miles an hour, you're mouth breathing. So I think why i that came to mind off your question and why I'm going to use it.
01:34:13
Speaker
to talk about recovery of breath is the mechanics. I think as long as the, the diaphragm can move and you can be able to pull in air ah according to the gear system that you want to use in that moment is accessible.
01:34:27
Speaker
Then I think it's whatever works, works, especially and competition. And I say that because as you know, any athlete who is breathing heavily or training or fatigued, try to give them information and see how well they can cognitively articulate anything they can't the rationale of the brain yeah it's gone away so it's it's what position works for you to breathe in that position works for you would be my answer and i've been i've been around pro athletes for x amount of years solely so i mean if you tell a pro athlete one thing sometimes they'll just tell you to buzz off and you got to get used to that so there's a little bit
01:35:05
Speaker
There's a little bit ah of a difference there from when I was coaching. I've just been so used to these guys having that that mentality from time to time. But and as I just talked just through gearing up, the process of recovery is can you have the process of gearing down?
01:35:21
Speaker
And you see this a lot in baseball with people who leg out like a triple and on two outs. And then they come into the the dugout and they only have like a minute and they go out in the field and they're just still like, it's just really stressful on them, especially a game like baseball, because it's so extreme start and stop for a significant amount of time.
01:35:39
Speaker
But I think that where we miscalculate recovery breathing is can you gear yourself down how we geared ourselves up? So a lot of times people hear what we've been talking about this entire show and they go, oh, well, this Harvey guy was talking about how recovery breathing and nasal breathing is all oxygenated breathing. So I'm breathing really fast. I need to breathe through my nose.
01:35:58
Speaker
and they just try in the wrong style without gearing themselves down. They completely they completely hurt the system. So a lot of times it's like if you're breathing really heavily, if you're in a high gear and there's five total gears, I'm just using a short short version of three here.
01:36:15
Speaker
If you're breathing it out through your mouth, your engine is revved and you're running on the highway metaphorically and you have a moment to recover. You don't just go from the highway to the stoplight. You merge yourself off the highway and you come down slow.
01:36:28
Speaker
And I think that that metaphor helps with the breath because I can, and I'm trying to pendulum this through my mouth. Now, wherever I get that is where I get it. I got to get that though. And I think if you get into that slouched,
01:36:44
Speaker
compromised position, poor body language position, I don't think you can get there. So I need to gear that thing, mouth in, mouth out. And then this is where the magic happens. Can I find a position of peace where I can go in through the nose, out through the mouth, and I can start to recover actually before I go back out onto the highway, I guess.
01:37:07
Speaker
I hope that that's, I didn't answer your question because I didn't want to. So I answered it the way that I wanted to. Well, i I've found an answer in there. What position works best for you?
01:37:18
Speaker
I, as a high school sport and strength conditioning coach, I get the opportunity to introduce what position is best for them yeah in their careers moving forward if they want to continue on in athletics ah past high school. yeah And that position is standing tall and strong.
01:37:37
Speaker
yeah And in a ah sport like lacrosse, which we sub quick on the fly like hockey, I need situational awareness. situational awareness I can't just sprint and call for timeouts to take off all my batting gear to hand it to the kid and take a breather.
01:37:56
Speaker
i if If lines change or we transition from offense to defense and I need my one my one line out there, You, you, vote on yeah you got to go out there.
01:38:09
Speaker
right You, you can slow the pace of the game down once we have the right personnel on there. So there's the opportunity in, in lacrosse to do that. But at the same time, I'll put you in the best position to optimize your breathing in a tall aware position.
01:38:26
Speaker
Yeah. um Yeah, I mean, I love that answer. I think the the issue could come from the cop-out scenarios, right? Where it's like, what do you what's your, pick your poison? I mean, are you really going to argue against positive body language, strong, powerful body language? there and ah there's We just talked about energy.
01:38:45
Speaker
I mean, that is a true effect of the hierarchy. People who just naturally sit on the hierarchies of anything are in the power positions have powerful body language, period. So... Are you going to really rely on one, some literature and and debate? There's so much that goes into anything and everything. And that's where I think if you're setting a standard of that position, can I rationally think in all these positions? Can I hold and maintain body position and power?
01:39:11
Speaker
Now, if you add a little bit of breathing, like we just did protocols to that, I don't see how that's not advantageous to anything. Boom, tasted science.
01:39:22
Speaker
Well, dude, Harvey, thanks, man. We we ran long, but this is is valuable and i appreciate it. So i'll I'll link up with without words and then the ah your first book, Breathe, Focus, Excel.
01:39:37
Speaker
in into the show notes so people can have a ah quick easy okay and link out to it again thanks thanks for looking for the connection and uh yeah man is where can people go to to continue to follow you tune into your your show i'm not going to call it a podcast yeah and uh continue to learn from you for all your growing and learning and giving to the world Yeah, I appreciate it.
Further Learning: Connect with Harvey J. Martin
01:40:02
Speaker
I keep it simple. Harvey J. Martin, just the websites, Harvey J. Martin dot com. My socials are at Harvey J. Martin, Twitter, Instagram.
01:40:12
Speaker
ah That's got to be the same for YouTube, too. My wife set up the YouTube recently. i think that's just Harvey J. Martin. So everything should be consistent across the board. Obviously my podcast that comes out, I do a solo show and a guest show.
01:40:24
Speaker
And that's just a moment with Mark. You had alluded towards it earlier on Spotify, they're on Spotify, YouTube, all the places that you find podcasts. And that just, I just started that like two weeks ago. So that's in its extreme infant stages. I'm sort of finding and feeling and peeling into what what I'm going after. But yeah, it's a lot of, i mean, I shared a little bit of my story on where I'm at currently with my perspective. I think a lot of my work Even the book I'm currently writing right now, it's just still still driven in this vein of philosophy and faith and in some of the perspectives that I found in these invisible-ish worlds, these non-tangible worlds. And I think that, you know, do people like that or not like that? I don't know. it's I think you just follow what you're following.
01:41:08
Speaker
And So I think it's, you if you look back my earlier work, you'll see a lot of tangible stuff, which is great. That's the first book I wrote. If you want to be tangible science literature, Breathe, Focus, Excel is ah incredibly that.
01:41:21
Speaker
It's all protocol driven. It's all practical. If you go to without words, I think I do a little bit of practicality as you kind of mentioned, but a lot of it is a lot more into kind of my own journey, my own personal perspective. I also was able to, I wrote that the publisher of that book, John Kohler, let me write that entire book.
01:41:41
Speaker
He didn't, they didn't impact any of that, you know? And so I was able to write that more freestanding. And then this next one is, I think, going to go even a little bit deeper, but that'll come out later on. So I'm not going to speak to that yet. But yeah, Harvey J. Martin, website, socials, and a moment with Mark on the podcast.
01:41:59
Speaker
Boom. All right. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Captains and Coaches podcast. Bye. Cheers. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Captains and Coaches podcast. If you like what you heard here today, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, and review the show.
01:42:15
Speaker
If you want to check out Harvey's books, they are linked in the show notes below, especially without words. Highly recommend. This is a perspective shift.
01:42:25
Speaker
I certainly enjoyed it and continue. You can see all my my bookmarks if we're watching on the YouTubes. And Focus, Breathe, Excel, I handed that out to Old Bull Athletes to really dial in not only their cool-down stretching, but also integrate this into their lifts so they can work on the the conditioning, work on the strength training that's within the program, and truly maximize the limited time that they have to train.
01:42:53
Speaker
Thank you again for tuning in to Captains & Coaches Podcast and helping us raise the game. Namaste.
01:43:08
Speaker
you