I'm well Zeke and co-founder of fuel athletic success training and one of my partners and I wanted to launch a podcast. We look no further than anchored on FM. There are many benefits to using the anchor dot f m platform. First of all, it's free. There are also creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer anchor will distribute your podcast for you. So it can be heard on Spotify Apple podcast and many more are podcast was on Spotify within minutes of uploading it the first time you can alsoMake money from your podcast with no minimum listenership. It's everything you need to make a podcast all in one place download the free anchor app or go to Anchor dot. F m-- to get started and launch your podcast today.Hey guys, I'm Brian record. Welcome to this month's fuel podcast. I'm joined here with Steve Brown from Brown performance coaching. You're here because you understand that stopping pox has more to do with. Oh, it's up in the Noggin as opposed to your mechanics. And at the same time we're here to make sure that you're in the right mindset to make the sage you need to make when you need to make them Steve. We're going to talk about pressure today. All right, no pressure when we talk about pressure saying leave this off.So I had the Good Fortune when I was with the Bruins. I worked on the staff of Robbie for torque great coach and we're having this discussion one day and someone's like well, you know who's got the most pressure on the team? Em, so I'm obviously yes. It's the goalie and in Robbie looks at me and goes why the goal is a well. It's obvious. You know, you're the last line of defense if you don't play. Well, the team doesn't win blah blah blah. It's like no way he goes pressure self-induced. So this third line left-wing can put as much pressure on himself as your $7,000,000 lead. Goal scorer as you go it doesn't matter what position you play. It's how you perceive it. How do you respond to that? Yeah. I think I think in general I think pressure emotions themselves are constructed right like so we construct them. So they are an individual piece. Right? And so that third line Winger can create pressure internally, that would be akin to what a goalie faces right now, maybe ten same deal. Yeah, so maybe unlike the average of your to average it out. Out, you know, maybe a goalie just as a position because the responsibility the single nature of it that type of piece maybe do but if we think about stress or anxiety or fear all those things, it's really how you internalize and process and then what you put out what comes out of it for you as far as the emotion right and how you feel pressure. So let's say let's say like most of us, right You feel pressure. I mean, it could be from your position can be school. It could be for an adult. It could be work. Right and when someone feels pressure if we go with the self-induced it's how you look at it and your mindset. So when you feel the pressure, what are the vehicles that we can use to kind of mitigate the impact that the pressure has on our performance? Yeah, so there's really Two things, right? So if we're thinking about pressure, there's really two tiers of pressure that you're looking at. Right? So one is those skills that you're going to build up like something like even like mindfulness training, right? That's something that you're going to build up ahead of time. You're not going to use that acutely right like so you're not going to go into and what I mean by that is like in the course of a game you're not going to start to meditate right during the game, but we know that if you can if you practice forms of meditation right over time that can build up Up your resistance and resilience to stress, right? So then you have an internal kind of capacity to kind of lower your score to increase your stress response, right so that you'll be able to handle it better. So that's like a tier 2 option we get in Tier 1. I think what most goal is you're talking about is like what do I do Under Pressure if what can I do in that moment when things are getting hot and like, you know, there's a floor in front of my net now. There's going to be a dispenses own face off right in front of me. How do I get common those couple seconds, right? So if we're looking at a tier one thing one of the first things you can do is just kind of expand your vision, right? So if we think about stress we tend to get tunnel vision right and tunnel vision forces into like this fight or flight response, right? It's a natural occurrence that happens with that. And so when were in that state that tunnel vision, we kind of all those other symptoms that kind of creep up right like all that other stuff like the increased heart rate increased breathing at all those things and kind of feel that when we feel that our body makes prediction. Oh, I've been here before this isn't good. Right and that's scary when we can expand our vision and you know, the goalies have a nice chance of the kind of see the whole ice. Right especially that panoramic Vision kind of see enough to your side where you can do is take away that increased Focus inside that tunnel vision and expand it which kind of calms that nervous system down and it can take a couple seconds. Another key thing to do is breathing right? So okay if we talk about breathing, I think most people kind of think about okay. I got it. I spent breath. I got it. There's lots of different strategies to it. The most important thing you can do in them in the moment is a slow exhale, right if you can slow your exhale, right and that Excel can be longer than your inhale. Well, then in that case well, then you're going to probably bring in more parasympathetic recover a little bit and be able to kind of be there a little bit more. So we're really looking at expanding the vision right and then you can come back in and focus but doing it under your control, right? So expand I get out of it now. I know I have Get back focused then also kind of taking those slow breaths to kind of calm down that stress response. And then lastly it's understanding and this is something that you kind of work with over. All right, but it's something that if an athlete's been working on it for a while they can easily kind of put in like that is to just understand what is pressure right? You're excited about it, right? And if you think about what are the what happens when you can you think about the last time you're excited? Last time each so your heart rate gets going. Yep that maybe you get a little clammy right? Maybe a little your body temperature maybe heats up a little bit. Yeah, right you have you have that that anxiety a little bit and write a moving forward. Yeah. So you think about that all the same physiological symptoms that happen when you are stressed happens or when you're experiencing anxiety or stress or pressure happen when you're excited, too. Right, so we know that you know, most people have like butterflies in the stomach or their mouth gets dry. They might have to use the bathroom, right? That's because your body's, you know, your body's kind of turning into like a superhero right? Those things happen getting getting prepared. Yeah, those things can happen because your body doesn't want to have to waste resources that Justin food, right? Your body doesn't want to have to waste you know, your body starts your heart beats faster your your breathing becomes faster to get more oxygenated blood through your body. Right? All those things are made for you to be quicker to respond faster the little shaken that you grabbed her that jumping nervous energy when you get excited is because you're nervous systems firing so much faster, right and that's going to allow you to be quicker to respond quicker, right all those things. And so if you can tell yourself, right if we construct a motion we can either constructed in a way that's going to be. Oh no because basically your brains a prediction machine, right? So it's predicting what's going to happen. It's not taking in this is happening and responding to it. It's actually making a prediction about what it's thinks is going to happen. So if you're in there and you're like, oh no, this is bad. Is it good? This is going to happen right in those moments. You kind of the hormones released the protein all that way that that works kind of set you up for kind of a Cascade downward. If on the other end of the spectrum you kind of look hey, I'm excited and you start to really believe that you can understand that I'm getting excited all this stuff happening. Then you can kind of use all that to your advantage. So what you're saying is that the same physiological response to nerves is the exact same rules. Nice of chemicals in your body as excitement. Yeah, so we've got to convince. Ourselves that they're the same so that if we're nervous are you excited nervous you're excited because that stuff only happens when stuff's important to you, right? You're not going to get nervous about something that's you know, usually something is at stake and something that you care about right? So if you think about a student scholar athlete student athlete you're thinking about school probably important to you, maybe asking somebody on a date maybe difficult conversation may be difficult for you, but Most guys. Yeah, so you think about what these main things are right the things that are going to cause stress and the differences is how you explain it to yourself. Right? And if you can practice that then it changes right and that Cascade that it creates that the emotions that you now structure change and then that changes the way the physiology is so I get like 18 questions off your first comments, but I'm going to go back so I'm going to kind of go off of what you just said. A little bit of a different area. Would that be the tricking our brain? Would that be the same as forming a habit? Yeah, right. So when people say you got to have really good habits. Is it fair enough to say that that's also a habit being able to look at those two feelings and an associate themselves as well. Yes, so I would urge I would give pause to the Idea, that It's Tricky, right? Okay tricking his cousin bad bad word. Right King is kind of like a hack right like and I feel like those are you think it's not you genuinely a purposely doing something right? It's really about purpose. Right? And so, you know last time we talked goals right like and we talked about trying to create habits. And if you just make you know, you put your sneakers out in front of the door because you want to run more right and you make that decision to put your sneakers trick, right? It's not a trick, but if you tell yourself, hey, I'm making a step in the right direction. Erection by doing this and you reward yourself even consciously but doing that step the odds of you like fulfilling your goal or much higher, right? And so the purposefulness right and being purposeful with the habit and the thought in the action. This is something that you can take in almost every aspect of your life right now if you're out there now doing drills, right? You start to feel nervous to tell yourself. You're excited practice. It understand it right and kind of get that right. Look at that looking back. You have athletes look back at the times when they've been successful, right? Okay. Were you a little bit anxious there? You little nervous. Yeah, you did. Well, right and you kind of get them to understand and change the way they might experience it or how they describe that emotion comes through. Once again, like if you look at this a great discussion on use of words because you're changing that that word in the changes you whole outlook. Absolutely Mind Set On the activity. I'm going to back you up though because I'm gonna back you up to the beginning. So the soft focus I'm a goalie and I want to use your advice and I'm getting a little feeling the pressure. So I want to open up my lens. Can you tell me all practicality? What does that mean? Do I start scanning the whole rink? Do I pick the far net and then work on my peripheral and open up? So in Practical manner in Practical matter, how do I how do I use that first piece of advice or so? I think it's the pendant and a lot of these strategies are really dependent on the athlete right? Like if you're an Sit and we talk about pressure. Sometimes pressure comes inside sometimes internalized based off of what my coach is thinking right about my parents thinking. So in that case stay away from the crowd right stay away from your coach and that's going to cause you more stress, right but I think in that guard regard, it's really about how much time you have right it depending on what level you're at. You might have more time just to kind of be there right if the puck goes down to the other end of the Zone then just taking the whole take it in right and see if you can sit there for a few seconds, right if it's going to be a Faceoff coming. It up and you have three so it's moving the head of not moving know. I would keep the head still keep the head still that's still and you just adjust even up yet. See if you can you see if you can see the board. Yeah, if you can see the boards, okay, you know and you can start a blue line and kind of work your way back right and if you can kind of see that and just kind of be there taking the whole setting kind of like a lifeguard at the beach right like the more you can kind of see expand your vision the more kind of calm you're going to be the other so you just referenced every time you say something another question. All right, you just For instance a coach or someone else putting pressure on it. So I remember this is going back quite a ways. I put I played at Merrimack College and we're playing our PI as one of the first games of the Season RP. I had just won a national championship the year before so we were playing the national champions. And I had a buddy great guy. And like from the time we got back at school to the time we got to that game. He was like, hey, you guys are playing RPI. They're loaded new guys are going to get crack, you know, like it was constant, right? It was just constant and he didn't say it in a bad way, but it was like piling on and it just for me it just built up the pressure. I didn't play as well as I should have, you know, we gave him a game book. I didn't play as well as they should sure. And I always think back to why did I let him? Get me to the point where I was thinking and just not feeling good about going into the game. So what advice would you have given me 35 Allah is a long time ago get is a long time. So what advice would you have given me as a as a player as a goalie at that time when someone from the outside was getting getting me worked up sure so you think about like you? They have if you thinking about your thoughts, right? They're going to happen. Right? Why would you give somebody else control of that that that part of you right? It's so much of being a goalie so much of being a person is internal and what's going on in your head. Why would you give somebody else power or rights to influence that space right? You're actually allowing them to broadcast like their radio station inside your head and that's not something that we'd want. Right? We want to be able to we're always going back to what can you control? What can't you control and You can control if you're going to accept that noise, right if you're going to be able to take that in and I think part of that is is like in the moment. There's thought stoppage be aware of it interrupts it, you know, and then all of a sudden replace that thought okay awesome. So comment being made that goes right through me. Yep in a practical way. How do I how do I how do I stop that it like right. How do I stop it? How do I stop that shirt? So if you're in that moment, right and it's a you're like plant you're in that right and all of a sudden a thought Pops in your head or you hear it right comes in your head, right? You become aware of the thought right just self-awareness, right? If you're not aware that you're actually having the thought and it's just operating on the Ground, it's going to keep operating like a virus in a computer. Right? So be aware the thought then you interrupt it, right and no with interrupting. Sometimes it's a visual Interruption. Right? So some people think of stop sign some people think but whistle you could actually you could have an actual visual cue absolutely like I know this guys coming. I know he's going to say something. I know it's going to get me wound up. So he says it I throw up a stops. I look at a stop sign right my head and I mean and then so you can do that. I mean, but it's also Oh the same thing like if say of only gets of that goal, right and all send their thoughts are kind of cascading down the other way become aware you interrupted and we always like to is the as much as we can use a kinesthetic you I always tell them to try to do that. Right? Because if we have like a stream of thought we can interrupt it with something physical that we can do. So maybe just kind of hit your stick on the ice, right and you just know you just do something from a physical standpoint to kind of break the thought and then you replace it with the thought that you want to have. So, what's the Q? What's the BQ? It's a dookie. What are the cues that you want to have? What's that? What's your motto? What do you say to yourself that are you ready? That what is it that you say to yourself replace it with that thought and be there right and maybe that gets connected to a breath maybe that gets connected to Vision grounding something like that. So it could be a k huge my here's my breathing is there maybe this is silly question are there certain amount of breaths. So so there's some guys forms. Okay, so before every face off Take two deep breaths. All right, then I saw a podcast the other day. And the guy said take six deep breaths, right? Does the amount of breast matter like does it have any relevance or is it just for these people? This is what they think or there anything scientific to the amount of buried deep breaths that we have to take to start calming down the brochure. So there's there's a lot of different there's a lot of different thoughts to that right then. I think a lot of it has to do with experience to the more pressure situations. You're in the more you can get through it the more like you can kind of shrink that breath down, you know, so if you're if you're 20 Brazil plan is showing you've been around a while, right? You might be able to take a couple breaths and be right back, right if you're 35 and been there a lot longer you might be able to take one or two and be right there. Right? Right. So it's really about like experience and matching the stress to that when it comes to changing like physiology a lot. Usually it's around like 12 13 breaths that you start to see those changes, but you can elicit some response after just one or two, right? So it's really what I would Would I always recommend with athletes is how much time do you have? And how do you put effort into that time to kind of carve out where you need to be right because you're always kind of moving yourself a little bit closer. So if you only have two minutes take to take to deliver breaths, especially can write and then we can get into like technique and like what's the Cadence where does the are comb where does it go out does the Rhythm the Cadence? Does that play into it the so if I was going to do six breaths? Is it important that they're the same length? Should I try to change up the length? So am I just am I trying to max out every breath. So I think it comes down to the queer. Do you need to be from an activation level standpoint? Right because everybody's different when I work with athletes will have them like 1 to 10. What do you like it a level ten, right that's bouncing off the walls. You're almost you're not going right and one is like you're just too lazy or really calm, right and we kind of identify where on that one to 10 scale. Are you and then? Once we get that once we get where you are at 1 to 10. Well, if you play best at a six to eight and we know that then you know, we don't need to get you from a 10.24 we need you to be 10 into a seven, right? So sit in that. Yeah, so it's kind of understanding where your actual zone is as an individual and where you need to be but ideally you look as far as like, how do I bring you down? Because most people need to be brought down right? We're not talking Under Pressure. They don't need to be brought up. They absolutely not. Yeah, and so and so if that's the case usually like a foreign for out right kind of just To get that Baseline but the more you can exaggerate the exhale slow that down the more parasympathetic party nervous system may be a 4 6. Yeah, I mean, okay, but under pressure you might be breathing pretty hard right if there was like a lot of action in front of the net you might be one in one out just naturally right? So then it becomes can you just take your breath and just gradually get that exhale slower right? So maybe it's one in one out 2 2 and 2 Out 3 and 3 out and just gain some control of it, you know a question. So and you guys know who I'm talking about. I'm telling you right now because these guys and girls are watching this podcast because they love being a goalie and they want so bad to be good. How do you balance that off as an athlete as a goalie where you've got this? Desire to be the best and you want to make it to the next level and you want to do so well and you in essence put pressure on yourself because you want it that bad but isn't there like a balance between putting pressure on yourself isn't a bad thing. Right? Like is isn't there a balance that you have to find as a goalie. And once again like you think about the type of goalie that's watching this that go and it's going to you know, spend a half hour. Our listening to us talk is someone that really wants it absolutely so so at the end of the day like, you know, what would you what would you tell that person that wants it that bad that puts so much pressure on themselves sure. There's a couple of things there right? So the first is that not all pressures bad right pressure can cut right pressure If you stress is good, right if you're in the gym and you don't put stress on the muscles, you're not going to grow. I mean, you're not going to get bigger and not going to get stronger, right? So it's the appropriate dosage. Of stress right pressure actually and stress actually promotes learning, right? So we need a little bit of that to get the bdnf in order in order to like learn right in order to get better at things and so stress is good once just becomes bad is when it gets too far right when the body and the budget of the body can't handle it. So what either slows down or stops? Yeah. We're basically you seek people crash right and they can crash the commotion that incresed physically by getting sick, right? You see those types of things happen, right burnt out right and I mean that's a common thing. We see an ethic get burnt out of a sudden right like they've been grinding and grinding grinding then all of a sudden. It's like what am I doing this for? Right and so it's really important to get balance and we think about balance balance is bounced across Wellness, right? It's really balanced across so many domains socially balance around emotionally physically we should yeah exactly right and so can you spread that out you can attack and you can try to be your best in one in one area. You can try to be the best goal you can be but it has to be done with self-awareness. He's right. And so that's where we talked last time about. Like there's three ways to grow right and one of those ways to grow is through self-reflection. And so if you're not taking that appropriate time to self-reflect right to kind of think to it doesn't have to be journaling but the kind of really going into you know, what drives me what motivates me who am I is person right those things and having those under control and really knowing what those are right, then you leave yourself susceptible. If you don't have those two kind of to those moments of kind of Being able to handle it right the more you have investigate that the more you kind of go in that direction. The more likely you are to kind of deal with stress a little bit better. The more likely you are to kind of have those relationships in place and the go to is to be able to handle those things. So like it's so funny touched on it. We're talking about pressure and then finding out where you are and where you perform and when you were talking about that I was thinking about the different goalies and why you have to play so much because you have to have enough time to start figuring out how you want to be to get in that zone. Yeah. So therefore C I work with Goalies that when they're relaxed and calm lights out as some other goalies when they play Angry their lights out and if they're not angry, they're not that good. Yep, but they playing for some reason certain goalies play. Well when they're angry certain goalies are in the middle other goalies when they're all serious and you know die, you know, oh, I'm focused and everything like they don't play as well. But those guys chill out a little bit and they get the fun in their game and then all of a sudden their lights out, so it's not one size fits all know. It's finding out and that and you just talked about self-reflection finding out how you have to be in what year mindset has to be to know how you perform at your best. Absolutely and I can't tell you. How many goal is that? I'll be talking to and I'm like, what? What do you what do you think our goal is should Like initiative that go you should be calm right? You should be poised. You should become and be like, well, what do you play best at know like bouncy? Right and you're like bounce it. I didn't even know that was a right they can use right and so it's really kind of tapping into that. Like when you play your best. What do you like? How do you bring your authentic best self out there? Right because if you're kind of if you're if you don't feel the way you're supposed you want to write then you how can you access all that training right? You kind of put a block on it. And so By kind of understanding like okay. I need to feel bouncy out there right now. I need to feel aggressive or I need to feel calm knowing that you can kind of dictate kind of your energy level towards that and kind of open yourself up and you can if you understand how you perform at your best, then you can tailor your pregame rituals. So if you're someone that needs to relax right then you've got to have a routine that is Bring you down and get you in that relaxed state to go play. Absolutely if you're a goalie. That has success when the plague angry right then they've got to get themselves in a Zone. They got to get sitting themselves in a mental mindset that they're ready to play Angry bouncy. If you play well when you're bouncing app, then you get so you've got to put your pregame ritual to put you in that state that mindset because it's not just the mind the body actually responds to that right like Play if you've got if you bouncy I need to have jump to play. Well, then you're physically going to need to get to that point, right? Yeah, because all you're doing is trying to set the you can't you can never guarantee a great performance, right? You can set the conditions for performance stuff. Right? And so if our brains a prediction machine if it's if your brain is getting feedback that on Bouncy when I've been bouncing before I played well, then it's going to predict you're going to play well and you're going to feel good. Right? And so it's kind of like one of those things right? So yeah, you your pregame your pregame routine your funneling that to get to that experience right to kind of promote that experience so you can feel that way. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think our time is up. All right and fantastic. If you're looking to find this we're at www.piofl.com visit find us on YouTube Instagram really excited about we have a formula here. All process is daily primers its weekly assignments. Steve gives out a weekly assignment every Sunday. You can see the Instagram post on that one, and we have our fuel podcast that we just did. So thank you very much for joining us and keep kicking. Thank you.
In this month's Fuel Podcast Brian Daccord and Steve Brown discuss the different types of pressure and the different tools for dealing with pressure. Pressure comes in many forms including self induced and from external influences. Among the tools athletes and goaltenders have for dealing with pressure are: recognizing external sources of stress and developing mechanisms for acknowledging those sources and adopting mental and physical processes for refocusing including breathing, cues (Be Cues and Do Cues) and purposeful habits. Also in this month's podcast you will learn to recognize the mental and physiological similarities between excitement and stress/pressure and understand who you are and where you are (and where your mental state is) when you are at your most successful. Some athletes are successful when they are calm, some are successful when they are angry, some are even successful when they are "bouncy." and all athletes use and re channel nervous energy in some way. How do you channel that nervous energy when you are your most successful self. What type of goalie are you? Where are you mentally and physically when you are at your best? How did you get there? How do you get there? How do you set the conditions to be able to play your best when it matters most? Fuel Athletic Success Training © combines daily video primers, weekly assignments, and a monthly podcast to help maximize our athlete’s potential in the four additives of success: Confidence, Competitiveness, Character and Commitment. Fuel partners with leading coaches to provide position and sport specific mental skills training for high school, college and professional athletes. The result, Fuel athletes build their capacity to perform their best when it matters most. Our mission at Fuel is to provide athletes with the skills necessary to be successful in and out of competition through a systematic approach to training confidence, competitiveness, character and commitment. For more information visit, http://FuelAthleticTraining.com. 