MARTIN EP

The host of the Unparalleled Performance Podcast, Josh Rebandt, welcomes Harvey Martin as a guest. Harvey is currently the human performance coach for the San Francisco Giants Major League Team. He discusses his journey from being a baseball player to becoming a mental skills coach. He shares how he developed an interest in psychology and human behavior, particularly in relation to sports. He talks about his experience with performance anxiety, or the yips, during his professional baseball career and how he overcame it through breathing exercises and other techniques. Harvey emphasizes the importance of breathing and mental performance in sports and life. This is the Unparalleled Performance Podcast. I am your host, Josh Rebandt. Each week we will feature guests who are ambitious and passionate about being more than the status quo because we all know that being average is the enemy to success. We will cover topics that will help you become more disciplined and committed to your goals in life, leadership, and fitness. Now on to this week's episode. And remember, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Enjoy the show. Welcome back for another episode of the Unparalleled Performance Podcast. We missed a week due to the grueling Northwoods League schedule, but we are back in action and actually have a Northwoods League alumni. Harvey Martin is joining the podcast. He is currently the human performance coach for the San Francisco Giants Major League Team and has climbed his way up through doing a lot of different things. Harvey and I grew up together in Farmington Hills, Michigan. We played travel ball together and have a ton of baseball memories that we've shared playing long toss during the fall and different things. So Harvey and I go way back. Really excited to have him on the show here this week for you guys. He's really good in terms of just the breathing side of things, the mental performance side of things. And Harvey, I'm just super fired up to have you on this episode. It's cool to catch up with you and chat for a few minutes. So if you could just give a quick, brief introduction just of your playing career and kind of how that led you into where you are now with the mental side of the game. Yeah, for sure. I got to lock it in because I'm talking to Reeves here. So I started having the old blues memories as you were speaking just now. So I got to turn it over and put my professional face on for you. No, it's a cool question. Great introduction. For me, interesting enough, I got to go deep in the history of my life to catch up to the immediacy of it. But I've always been somewhat of like a cerebral thinker, whatever that means. I've just gotten away with saying that very often. But I've been intrigued with thought. And I don't know how to define that simpler than that. That's just something that I've picked up with my own life, my own curiosity since I was a little kid. Like most little kids, I wanted to play Major League Baseball. I didn't really intend to be a human performance coach in Major League Baseball. So that was kind of an interesting part. But when I grew up, the reason I say that is because mental skills, and this is all my perspective, I could be off on timelines or other things. But from my perspective, mental skills of baseball was somewhat being introduced when I was in high school. I want to say like 2006, 2007-ish. And then, you know, kind of really became part of the game when I was in college, in like 2009-2010. And these were just things and opportunities. And I know you've been a part of them a lot, baseball listeners to this podcast, or you know, mental skills has been like a side presentation. Maybe somebody comes in or something along those lines, or you have like a resource on a university or professional team, in that those environments occur a part of teams. I was just always really fascinated when that would happen. Still didn't think I'd have it as a profession. I just was like intrigued. So whenever that environment was happening on anything I ever played on, I was always making sure that I was there, I was available to hear presentations, meet with people. And I liked learning about psychology and human behavior. Then when I got into college, I played four years at CMU, Central Michigan, and then I transferred to Minnesota State. At Minnesota State, they started what was called the Center. It was a sports psychology department, which largely was like aiding the university, but it was also supporting the Minnesota Vikings used to have their training camp there at Mankato. And so they were supporting some resource. I think it was like extra consultation to the Minnesota Vikings. And they were just getting us started is the point. It was like a brand new, it just opened up in like 2012. I landed there for grad school. I took a couple sports psychology classes and my master's degree. It was right across the street from the athletic facility. So I started going over there and doing one-on-one coaching, started getting mental skills training. And that was when I would say, that was 2012, 13. That was really when I saw this as something that I could do for a career. I was obviously interested in it for my baseball career to actually play better, but I was also looking at it like, okay, yeah, this is a route that I would be curious about professionally for outside of baseball. So then I get into pro ball and played three years there. And the irony of this, as I'm thinking about this and sharing this story, this is getting involved in a podcast. I haven't done this in a while. The irony of this was I played three years professionally and I essentially got signed out of college with the Milwaukee Brewers because of my command and throwing strikes. I was a very good strike thrower, pounded the zone, all the above. I had the yips my last year and I get this performance anxiety. It kind of came out of nowhere in spring training. I get these yips, I can't throw baseball. It was wild experience. I always explain it as like space jam. If anyone's ever seen, if everyone remembers space jam from back in the day where they take all the powers, they put them in the basketball. That's what it felt like. So I get the yips and they were great. The Brewers were a great organization. They kept me on the DL for a few months to try to figure it out. And the time delay of that kind of made things worse actually. Me trying to figure it out kind of added more stress to it. I don't know why. But then I get released. That would have been 2015. And in 2015, I got released. Essentially the yips in my perspective is anxiety. So now I have anxiety. It kind of crippled me in other areas of my life. I had trouble flying. I had trouble speaking to people. Just was having anxiety, like panic attacks and sort of things. That led me into breathing. I met a guy who taught me how to do breath work. It was very intimate, one-on-one settings. Him and his wife, girlfriend at the time, wife now, they had kind of introduced me into, they were not athletes. They had no psychological backgrounds. They were not therapists. They introduced me to some concepts that were really intriguing to me. And it surrounded breathing. It surrounded cold tubs. It surrounded saunas. It was really immersing yourself into nature. And then obviously deep meditations. I did that for, I did that with them strictly, very disciplined for many months. And the winter of 2015, we were, you know, I'm getting, I'm hitting landmarks here. But we were, we dove into the waters of Minnesota. We're cutting holes in lakes and swimming in water and controlling our breathing and just really challenging ourselves. They were more so guiding and coaching me. And then boom, like as weird as it was, the aha moment was I found peace, like in these stressors, example being swimming in cold water, controlling your breathing. And for some odd reason, I started to notice my anxiety change. And that paralleled, or that shifted me into a kind of a different perspective of psychology. And I started studying physiology. I started studying the physiology of the body, how the nervous system works, how the cells work, how respiratory systems work, how our brain works off oxygen, all this stuff. And I just went down the rabbit hole, to be honest with you. I, again, did not think I'd be a human performance coach. I just was curious about myself. I was finding little checkpoints of progress. And so I started a company, a podcast, I started interviewing people and traveled the world, basically trying to study under teachers that taught physiology, taught psychology. I trained with many different environments of groups of people, whether that was an ABC or whether that was an athlete, whether that was a yogi. I just wanted to study human behavior. That kind of molded me into a human performance coach. And, you know, whatever it was, eight years later, now I have this position. I love it, man. What a story. That's so cool. Just to think about when you were playing center field with the South Farmington Blues, and I'm on the mound, and we're in barracks in Cooperstown and traveling to Tennessee for the AABC World Series. Just cool to see, you know, where, you know, you've come from those days and how, you know, I've had that same experience at different times in my life, whether it's considered, you know, performance anxiety or whether it's considered depression, whether it's considered, you know, something. I feel like everybody in our life, we're going to go through some period where we got to figure out how to get out of that. And I think that, you know, the breathing side of it is probably something that's incredibly underrated at this point. If you can take me back to your experience when you had the yips with the Brewers, would you have admitted that you had performance anxiety at that point? And would you have admitted that you had the yips? Or were you, did you feel like you were tough enough that you felt like that wasn't something you were, you would ever encounter? That's a really cool question. Wow, that's cool. The reason why that's cool is because I had the yips. It was clear as day. You could see it. Anybody who watched me saw the yips. And in that moment, I never had the yips. So I never told, I would have never admitted to you that I had anxiety. I would have never told you that I couldn't throw a ball. You know, I was always going to figure it out that day or that throw. And I mean, you know, it got to the point where my last time I ever threw a professional baseball, I threw a simulated scrimmage. It was kind of like my last try. The Brewers were going to give me my last attempt, right? And we had a couple, we had a guy down in the big leagues that was rehabbing. It was a big league rehab assignment. And then we had two guys who were minor league rehabs. And so these three guys were going to face me, right? We were going to do this before one of our games. And I threw a ball. The first pitch I threw, I hit the guy, the guy in the left-hand batter's box. And the other hitters kind of shut it down. And the reason why they shut it down was I threw my first warm-up pitch, I threw to the corner of the turtle. I hit the corner top part of the turtle, the shell, the batting shell for people who maybe are thinking what I'm saying. Which is way off the plate. Way off. Like we're talking like 10 to 15 feet off the plate. And then I threw a ball like 45 feet in the ground, like the right side of the batter's box, the next pitch. So now I've got these hitters like really like, what is this guy? What is happening? What's going on? And then I would do a normal, and then I'd pepper like three strikes on her up, you know? And then I'd throw another ball in the batter's box or whatever. And so then I hit this guy first pitch and everyone kind of shut it down. After I hit the guy with the ball, no one wanted to face me. And I had my team out there watching, like scouts were out there, our coaches were out there. People were like supporting, but then also like scouting and doing all the things that would happen in a professional baseball setting. I walked off the mound, our pitching coordinator walked me out to center field. We went and sat in the center field bullpen, our bullpen was out in the center. And I mean, I cried, obviously. I was emotionally wrecked. I knew I was never going to play again. And he just kind of tried to comfort me. But even in that moment, I would not have told you I had the yips, you know? And that's why it's an interesting thing. Because right after that, I had calls from other major league teams, independent teams wanted me to play for them right when I got released. And I still would say to him, like, I'm just training. Give me two months to train. Or I need to heal my back, you know? I'd make up little lies here and there. And so that's why that's a fascinating question, because that's what was taking place in the moment. The other thing that happened was, I remember in camp, I started cutting balls, and I started having this like weird feeling where I couldn't command the ball anymore. And I started having this like anxiety to pitch, and I'd get really nervous the night before I pitched. And then the day of, it was just overwhelming. And in that, I just chalked it up to all your common stuff. Like, let me watch film. Let me talk to the pitching coach. Let me see what the numbers say. Like, I just got to find my balance, whatever it is. But yeah, to answer your question directly, in the moment, I don't think I would have... I know I never admitted I had anxiety. In looking back at it, and knowing who I was in that moment, I don't think I was able to admit it. It's a weird thing. Yeah. So I had a bit of a similar experience during one of my years in college, where I could long toss the heck out of it, and catch play in 90 feet. I could hit a guy in the chest a million times in a row. But then a couple points during my college career, I would get on the mound, and I would get that same type of thing, that performance anxiety, where you start having thoughts of what opinions of other people start creeping into your mind. Like, can I actually be the guy right now in this moment? Those kinds of things. What's the separator, do you think, from a guy that is able to do things really well until they get into competition? Like, why is that a different mindset mode for us as human beings? Can you ask that in another way? I understand what you're saying. I just need to hear it again. Yeah. Let's say I'm really good in a practice setting. Bullpens, I'm spot on. I get into a game, and I get this performance anxiety creeping in. Why can we perform really well in a bullpen setting, where obviously there's low pressure, and then you get in a game, there's high pressure, and then you have a lot of external things that are going to be monitored. Like you said, when you were going through your experience, now you have scouts watching you, pro scouts. There's a difference between, I feel like, a practice setting and a game setting, where guys can perform really well in that practice setting, but once they get into a game, sometimes it just yips them up. I feel like sometimes that just... What can we do to help alleviate that for players that are going through that in the middle of the game? Yeah. All right. This obviously is really case by case. That's an interesting thing of all individuals, right? You'd have to dive into that with the individual and really understand how they think, what their behavior patterns are, what their life was like growing up. There's a lot of things that would have to take place in that scenario, but if we're talking generally, the human psychology, the way in which we freeze psychologically, it kind of comes down to just four principles are few, methods are many. Let's start there, right? So the principles of this question are few because they're pretty common for all of us. The methods are different based off of the individual or trying to find unique things for that individual. That's the uniqueness of all of us, right? But the principle to kind of help this in a purely mental aspect would be you have four really major barriers psychologically that freeze us or make us really uneasy or want to flight, want to run away. Uncertainty is a major one. I find that to be one of the... I wouldn't say any of these are more or less than the other, but this one tends to be like a very constant common one that you find. So uncertainty in someone's life, change is massive. It's a massive trigger that throws people off track, tension and struggle. So when I talk about it like that in game, well, let's look at it. Let's break down. I'll try my best to communicate and connect in like the college realm, but it's all consistent across all athletes. Like let's look at uncertainty first, right? If you have never played college baseball before, you're on the college team, you're a freshman, you've never performed in front of the division one crowd. You did fall ball, sure. You did winter training, but you've never played against UNLV or Central Florida on opening weekend with 4,000 people there. Well, that's uncertain to you. So the newness of that, the unknown of that is going to be incredibly overwhelming. You have to figure it out in real time. So you're going to learn about yourself in real time, and that's going to be met with a lot of failure for the most part. But you want to be aware of the fact that that is an unknown. Your brain has not experienced these stimulus, has not experienced this external sound. Your senses haven't felt this. You see what I'm saying? So that's an unknown. Now that could be coupled. I'm going to get creative here. That could get coupled with somebody does really well. So let's say a freshman, a guy first year, he ends up killing it in this uncertainty. And now he mindlessly blows up and he crushes it his freshman year. Okay, beautiful. Well, what happens to those guys reached? Freshman All-American. Now he's preseason X. Now he's draft stock this. Now he has attention on him. The sophomore slumps tends to creep in, and now they don't know how to handle attention. They handled uncertainty really well, but they didn't handle attention. You see what I'm saying with that? So that could be an example where your freeze or your in-game pressure and anxiety maybe has a different time delay to it than somebody else, where this other guy struggled in the uncertainty, and they had a really challenging first year. The other person didn't get challenged in the uncertainty. They were able to move through it seamlessly. But then the attention grabs them a year later, and now all of a sudden they can't handle that one. You know what I mean? So that instantly gives you two different examples of two different people. For the one that you use in terms of bullpens and game, well, that's change. That's a change of environment instantly. You have a different, you have a hitter, you have different hitters, you have different scouts, you have again different sounds. So there's a change of environment. And then struggle is the fourth one. I don't even know if I said it before. You have uncertainty, change, attention, and struggle. Those are four massive avoidance factors for the human brain, and no one wants to have those happen. So typically when you see somebody struggling, anxiety or a depression, any of those things, low or high, it's like a response that we see to something that someone was unaware of at some point. It's just a response to it. So anxiety is not a bad thing. It's just telling you to slow down, create some more space, let's rationalize the situation, and let's look at where we're making errors. Does that make sense? Yeah, dude, that's incredible. So I've had those same thoughts, but the way that you worded it, I was taking notes as you were writing or as you were speaking, because having a plan to attack, like, okay, these are the four different tiers or four different things that can help somebody say, hey, what category are you in right now? Are you in that uncertain category? Or maybe like you said, maybe the freshman that went off and now they do feel that tension. Or maybe it's a kid that's proven himself at a small school, and now he's going to pitch in the Northwoods League or the Cape Cod League. And now there's change because now the competition is elevated, and he's not used to that competition or being around teammates that are, you know, on that elite level. So yeah, the way you worded that was spot on, man. That's why you're on the show. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah, well, it's really interesting, because the reason why it's interesting, because the mind is, you know, like I said, those are some principles that all of us can look at our lives. That's why you hear things a lot about meditation or journaling. I'm staring at my journal, so I guess that might not be the best example. It's just right in front of me, so don't force me to say that. But no, the journaling and things like you're talking to somebody, like communicating with a coach or someone you trust, really, when you start to verbalize and externalize things that are in your mind, you tend to hear or see, either from somebody else listening, or you writing it, or you thinking to yourself, you tend to figure out what is the barrier holding you back? What's the freeze thing? Once you become aware of anything, it starts to die. And that's why you want to constantly evolve your thinking. You want to constantly challenge your experiences and what you're doing, because your example is really just a level of experience. You know, if a guy comes up to the big leagues, it's the exact same thing. If a guy comes up to the big leagues and can't demystify the big leagues, it's too big, then they're not going to be in the big leagues. But if you see someone who's played 10 years in the big leagues, they don't see the stands. And I don't say that in a storybook movie way. They literally don't see the stands. They don't see these barriers. They don't see the obstacles. And if you talk to two different people, you talk to somebody who sees the stands, who sees the glitter of Major League Baseball, that's what they see. That's what they're involved in. So there's a lot of stress there. There's a lot of things going on there. But then you'll talk to somebody else who's completely emerged into their system, completely emerged into their processes. And again, I don't say that to sound common with that. That is literally a 10 year vet is incredibly simple. They're successful 10 year vet. Their simplicity to the intensity of professional sports is incredible to me. It's incredibly fascinating to watch. It's incredibly fascinating to study. And that's not just baseball. I've seen that in the NFL and the NHL. I've seen that in the WWE. The best performers, for whatever reason, have created the ability to not see anything outside of the scope of what they're after. And it's a pretty cool thing to watch people do at any profession. It's funny you say that, because when I was in high school, pitching for Brother Rice, our Catholic League Championship was at Comerica Park. You know, 40,000 feet stadium, but there's probably only 500, 700 people there. I have no idea. I'm just throwing out a number. But it wasn't packed. But I get on the mound to throw the last two innings and I look at the stadium and I wanted to soak in the moment a little bit too. Like, man, I'm pitching at Comerica Park. This is really cool. And I didn't feel any anxiety in that moment, necessarily, like performance anxiety. Obviously, there's nerves and things like that. But I felt in control of myself at that time. But I remember thinking, like, what if there were 40,000 people here right now? Like, where would my mind be? And I was thinking about that just as I was running out to the mound to do my warmup pitches or whatever. And then correlating that now with coaching in the Northwoods League, where we get anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 fans on a given night, and I don't see the stands any night. That does not affect me at all. Maybe it's because of experience. But it's numb to me. Regardless of if it's 500 or 5,000, I feel like I can control my mind to manage the game and not worry about any one person that's at the game worrying about how our coaching staff is handling decisions. And I think that's just an interesting dichotomy-type thing where, yeah, there's nobody in the stands, but you can feel maybe a little anxious. And then there's everybody in the stands, and it feels packed, and everybody's right on top of you, and you feel nothing at all. And I think part of that could be from experiencing, having gone through those tense moments, having gone through the struggle, having gone through the change, having gone through uncertainty. Because I know my first years in coaching, every coaching decision that I made, I felt like I was being monitored because I had never made coaching decisions before. So I think that that's probably got a little bit to do with that. So yeah, I think you're spot on. Just kind of giving that example from my end of it. And you talk about elite performers. What do you feel like, people say getting into the big leagues and staying in the big leagues, it's so much more mental than it is physical because guys at the double-A, triple-A level are so talented. How are you helping guys that maybe just get called up? How are you helping those guys stay called up? And obviously, you've probably had a chance to work with them a little bit before they get called up. But is there any difference between that new player arriving and then maybe a veteran and how you're approaching that? Or is it still a case-by-case scenario? Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah, it does. I'm processing all the examples that I've had in my life with this scenario. It's interesting because like you said, with coaching, when I first got to the... Everything is new when it's new. When I first got to the big leagues, it was all new to me. I didn't know what it was like. I didn't know how involved media was. I didn't know how impactful the fan base was or what money's like and contracts. And I didn't understand the magnitude of having an organization that has 1,000 employees on top of it. And in general, it's just you're trying to play baseball or you're trying to work. And that's what all of us are doing for sure. But I say that because it was new to me. So you mentioned when I first started coaching, this was new to me. I didn't know. And that was the same thing with me. And it's always, always been new. Everything is new. And I think appreciating that first and foremost helps you empathize with a player. And I think that's really important across the board of anything is how can you empathize with any player. But with first, empathizing with yourself. And I say that because this might be on my head right now in the moment. I'd be fascinated to see what I'd say in a few years. But anytime I've ever felt like I could really help somebody or I could teach them or give them an answer, I've been, in my opinion, a poor teacher. Anytime I've felt like I can, here's the answer, here's a little help, and I'm going to do it. I've never really executed that with that mentality. And I've made that error so many times over. On the flip side, the perspective of first and foremost, like being healthy on my own, like being focused on my own, being about it on my own, for whatever reason, I don't know why that seems to have the biggest impact without doing anything. It's the weirdest paradox. You're not wrong. I feel the same way. I feel like, and I talked about this early on in the podcast, I don't know, probably 10 episodes ago with a coaching buddy of mine. And I feel like if I am able to take care of the disciplines and habits of things that I, A, want to do, but also, B, I feel like help put me in the right headspace for that day moving forward, whether for me spending time with God, reading scripture or praying, and then working out and eating healthy, those three things, if I can get those things aligned in my day, not that they have to be the first thing, but if I can align my day that I know that I can get those three things in, I'm able, I feel like I can help serve others and teach others in a more impactful way. And I feel like my mind is more clear to do that. So I think it's right on line with you. Like if you're taking care of yourself, our mind, I don't know if there's any science behind that, but I feel like my mind is more free because I've accomplished what I feel like is necessary in that day. And I think there's a sense of accomplishment that enables us to feel free mentally. Does that make sense? Tremendous sense, because, well, the reason why I agree with that, and that makes sense to me, and my basic principles are pretty much the same. Like if I'm aligned in my faith, if I'm healthy, if I'm training, I'm eating well, I'm sleeping well, I'm having really good conversations, my circle, my family and friends aren't lying. Like I tend to be a good coach, and it's me not even trying to coach. It's just like those are the things I'm focused on. That tends to have a really high return on investment for the athlete. I think that's the paradox, right? And so now to get to your question directly, well, the reason why I think that that's important, I think it's our responsibility in the positions that we're in to have a really wide variety of information and knowledge and experiences. And you're just in a position where if someone wants that, you're able to supply it. We were at dinner last night, and I said that my favorite part about being a leader is you're never needed until you're needed. And the irony of that is you're needed right then and there. You're not allowed to say, give me three days to go train and eat healthy and pray and get all my stuff in alignment, and then four days from now, I'll come back to you. Like, that's not how players operate. Like if a player had a bad game, or it's middle of the game, there's 40,000 people there, and the guy comes up to you in the fifth inning and says, hey, my heart rate's buzzing, and I don't know what I'm going to do against Soto next to that. What are you going to say? You know what I mean? You got to be ready to go. You don't have the opportunity to be like, give me a road trip to think about it, you know? And so the point I'm making with that is that all humans are rather the same in that each individual is pursuing their own level of excellence, and they're subjectively making that their own. And so the empathy comes into, can you learn the learner as fast as possible? Can I learn this 23-year-old without not learning the 33-year-old? Like, can I constantly learn the 33-year-old as he turns 34 and 35 and 36? Can I learn the 23-year-old and be with him as he goes through his contract phases, as he gets married, as he has a kid, as he gets, you know, whatever it is? And so you're constantly learning the learner and constantly changing and evolving the learner. So the individual person is always a different person. And so if you're in a clear headspace, if you're dialed, if you're focused and you're healthy, it lets you, you have more space to essentially handle your own stressors in life, but you have more space to kind of be more rational, more logical, more available to help. And I think that's the art of it. I don't think I can say this is it or define it. I think the art of my position with the example you used is, how fast can I learn this person? How fast can I absorb them, listen to them, get in their shoes, try to see the world through their perspective, detach any of my perspectives to that perspective? And then if there ever is a time where they feel that I can add anything to their journey, I better be prepared to supply that. And that's, like I said, I don't know if I can define that necessarily, but that's what I would, that's what I would think it is like. Yeah, yeah, no, that's really good. And I think, as you were talking about it, you know, like freeing ourselves up, I was thinking of a thumb drive in a computer, you know, it's got like 16 gigabytes of memory. And if we as a leader, our thumb drive is like 15.5 gigabytes, and we're just constantly deleting a little bit just to get down to 13 or 14. And then all of a sudden, you know, stressors come in, then all of a sudden, that thumb drive is full again. If we're constantly at that, you know, like top tier level where we have a hard time operating, we got to find a way to free up more space to be able to enable more stressors to come into our life that we can handle, but also enable other people stressors to come in if we're in a position of leadership to where we can now add that back in. It's like, you know, I think about, you know, sitting at, you know, my computer, I have a bunch of emails, and I want to delete them. All right, I got to delete them to get down to a certain amount of my voice. My voicemail is full, like you just got to create space. And when you can create space, it makes an incredible difference. So there's two things kind of that I want to touch on next. One would be, like we were talking about as coaching staff, if players are struggling, oftentimes they have an escape, whether that is training, whether that's eating really healthy, whether it's doing more, like more, you know, physical activity, whatever. Oftentimes players will find an escape to get them outside of that, like your experience with, you know, with the brewers or my experience in college. Like I look back and we, as we were talking about, I'm thinking like, yeah, I did probably use training as an escape because it was something that I felt like I was really good at. So we kind of go to that thing that we, we know that we're comfortable in, that we can perform well and that we can still get validation from other people that we are still good at something. How do we help players find a way to not just use those things as an escape, but use them as tools to push them back in the right direction? Hmm. That's great. Well, I'll start heavy on this because I, again, this is more of a philosophy thought, but I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I think we're all addicted to something and I think the power in choosing that addiction is when things can start to serve you, you know, especially when you go up the chain of dealing with high focused individuals, highly, extremely competitive, dopamine driven people who are trying to push the needle. There's a lot of fantasy in that. There's a lot of awe in that. There's a lot of idolization in that, which can be rather, rather scary, you know, when people are really going after it because a lot of people jump on board with watching. This happens in high school, even people who are highly touted high school athletes that they're getting inputs from all kinds of people and they're getting pedalized, they're on a pedestal, they're getting idolized, you know, and, and they're driven. We're all driven. And I think the, the, the crush to that is what you're saying is that you have this huge motor, this huge capacity, this huge ability to visualize and achieve things. And when you get it, especially as you get up in the college ranks, the minor leagues, and this is all, again, this is, this is in musicians. This is in people who are chasing these things, right? Every dose of that, every checkpoint of that, it, it, there's, the drug gets bigger. It's your, it's an addiction and it gets higher and higher. It's like video games. People who fall in love with video games, they just got addicted to the checkpoints. I got to get these ratings up. I got to get these ratings up. And so I think that's first and foremost, it should be talked about. It's just the simplicity of like, well, you are human. You have this tendency to chase something or need something or want something. And I would figure that out first, because that's where a lot of the things are going to lie. That's where a lot of these addictions are going to be. And this is the, this is where I think, okay, well, now if I have the power to choose something, that's the human ability to strategize, rationalize, communicate with people. Now let's try to, all right, if I can't get out of that, like I talk about this with my family a lot, you know, it was all fun and games when I wanted to be a major league athlete and I wanted to be this, this thing that was super highly successful when I was 17 years old. And now all of a sudden you're in your mid thirties and you realize that you gave up your entire twenties to do it. You know, you gave up everything to do it. You lived everywhere, you did these things. And so you look at it and I think it's worth asking, was it worth it? Okay, well, in many ways you could say no, but in many ways you can say extremely yes. And here's why, right? And so without getting too big, I think that you take, you simplify these things. You really realize who you are, realize what capacity you have for life, the desires you have, the achievements that you want, all these things that you essentially feel like you need to, to fulfill yourself. And then you would, uh, you would choose your outlets, which if you choose the healthy outlets, you tend to become sustainable. That's where I think that's the answer to what your question is, is where do I create the most sustainable addiction? Using that word, I'm using that word aggressively because I want it to be used aggressively. Like, uh, what are the healthy addictions that I can have in my life that allow me to sustain these pursuits and learn about myself while I'm on that path? Because if you're, if you're on the side for me, I'm similar to you, like God is really important to me. Um, if I can spend time in that, if I can spend time in my faith, it tends to clear things up for me. It allows me to know there's more to this life than, than the, the resume, uh, which is what drove me insane in my twenties, you know, but faith tends to help me balance that. And I would, that's part of my sustainable source. Uh, eating, sleeping are huge. Um, being very disconnected from the world. I love alone time more than anything. So it's like being alone. Uh, and then breathing, breathing is the governor of the nervous system. So it's your up and down regulator. It allows you to go up. I can get up and train. It allows me to go down. So now I have control over the system. I have control to go out and compete. I have control to come down. Now, if I choose unsustainable systems, this can all be opinion based, but there's a bunch of science and literature and historical people that would probably lean on the healthy side of sustainability. But the other sides are, as you would imagine, there's drugs and alcohol. There's, uh, there's incredible uppers and downers. There's, uh, all kinds of easy, uh, outlets and stimulants that you can take to regulate your system. Um, there's an influx and, and massive opportunity of getting caught into the rat race of modern society. And so you have these two options, right? And, uh, if you can choose one of them, the one that tends to be sustainable is extremely simple. Um, it's extremely tough because it requires a massive amount of discipline and a massive amount of constantly trimming, constantly cutting things out. And, uh, I think that's actually harder than the other one because, because the other one, you'll never have to consciously really think over. It'll be given to you. You will, if you don't do anything, you will get pounded with information. You will get in, you will get tons of flow into your life. You will get tons of things that enter you, um, temptations and all the above. And so, you know, I think that that really becomes it like, what is it that you're after? What you, are you trying to meet? Uh, what experiences are you trying to have? And then kind of going down that path and realizing how intense and scary and nerve wracking that's going to be. Uh, that's something that you've chosen as a human. And if you want to sustain that pursuit, it's going to require an insane amount of discipline and the simplest things that exist. I just call them nature's law, breath, nutrition, movement, sleep, and social connection. There's a leak in one of those chains. You have an injury, mentally or physically, there's an injury in the body. Can you, can you say those one more time? Yeah, breath, nutrition, movement, sleep, and social connection. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that's, uh, I feel like those things are so important. Like you said, they're healthy addictions that will help you to sustain yourself. But I think you also mentioned it too earlier, but, you know, being open to admitting these things and talking with people about it is probably one of the most important things. Like you can't perform as a human performance coach if somebody else doesn't, doesn't open up and talk about their, their background and their scenario. And I think that that's one thing that probably induces a lot of that performance anxiety is that we hold it in. We feel like we're too tough. Like you said, you would have never admitted that you had the yips. I would have never admitted that I probably had some form of the yips during college. Looking back on it when I'm, you know, going to throw in a tire with a bucket of baseballs. Cause I feel like I gotta be able to do that. I probably had the yips, you know, but in a moment you don't really feel like that's the case. And, um, so I think, you know, for you to be able to perform at your high level, you have to have people that are willing to talk. And then a lot of your job is probably listening and, you know, not as much even teaching, you're just learning more about the individual and the triggers and the way that they respond to things, their, you know, life background, their upbringing, their current situation, all that kind of stuff. And I think, like you said, those things can add or subtract from their performance based on what's going on in their life. So, um, one other direction, well, yeah, I had two directions I want to go in. The next one you mentioned is breathing. Um, can you touch on your philosophy with using cold therapy? And I, you know, I think it's just, it's something that I don't know as much about as I would like to. And I think our audience would love to hear just like terms of cold therapy and the benefits that that can provide. Um, cause I know you've had a lot of experience with that. Yeah. So cold exposure, cold exposure is really, it's, it's a really intriguing thing because in a lot of ways, um, what kind of the theory of concept of what we've been talking about, like you, you know, I got to hit the yips to get it into the cold. Uh, so a lot of the times, the reason why it's tough to tell someone about your, the yips, or it's tough to tell the truth or share the truth is a lot of times it, it, it changes the story, you know? And so many times in your life, like you have this story that you're going to live, you have this concept that you're going to live. Um, you have this story that you have, you have these past stories, you know, I don't want to call them all lies, but I would say, and I'm speaking, I'll speak for myself. So everyone else can make their own thoughts about their own life. I'll be, I'll say this, this is just me talking here. I don't know how much any of that is true. I don't know how much of what you did when you were 10 is true. How much people treated you is true. It's all perspective based. So even your futuristic thoughts of your life are perspective based, right? And so you have these constant perceptions and you, uh, shape your character around that. And so if you have these holes in your character, if you have these, uh, these barriers, um, that tend to be psychological, they're really hard to find because you can't see them. You know, if someone's got a, if someone's got a real bad, uh, internal rotation of their shoulder, well, we can see that we can measure it. It's objective. Okay. Yeah, I see that. That guy is not flexible or that person's tall. That person's short. These are all objective measures, right? This objectiveness of life is where I think that's where the beauty of it is. That's the flow. That's the unmeasurable. That's the something that we can't even figure it out. And so it's just a cool thing to do. The cold comes into that first and foremost to me because the cold in so many ways is a unbelievable tool to introduce you to that part of your life. And where I mean by that is if you see somebody who, if I, if whoever's listening to this, maybe we never see them or they're just hearing us talk right now. If I were to say, Hey Reeves, we're going to go jump in a 38 degree cold cup and the water's going to be swirling and, uh, it's going to be really cold. Just the thought of that is intimidating. We haven't even done it yet. So that means that the future, the uncertainty, the change, the attention, the struggle, that means boom, right off the bat, that sounds horrible. I'd rather not do that. Okay. Well, that's where, that's a lot of errors in our lives. That's a huge, huge psychological unseen subjective barrier that is stopping us from the next thing, from the next movement. So we would rather hold on to the character that we have than evolve it, right? And break things or shape things. That's where I think the cold is amazing psychologically because in our brain chemistry, a cold, cold is like death to us. We're going to die if we're in the cold. Think about when you grow up, you have parents and coaches make sure you have your winter hat on. We had a rule in our middle school basketball team. You couldn't, you had to have a winter hat and your hoodie had to go over that so that you were covered up when you walked from the gym to the car, you know, and I can tell you with certainty that you can hang out with boxers on in negative 10 degree weather and you can swim in the water and you're going to be fine. That's hilarious. I'll tell you as a human performance coach, there is hypothermia, there is things to be careful of. This is completely me talking about my own life. He told me to go hop in a lake to get in the winter. Let's make sure you, let's make sure you clear this with your medical practitioners and all the aboves and consult research consultation first. But the point I'm making is that the fear of that is a really good barrier to start understanding how your mind works. And that's an individual journey. So when you have to anticipate going into the cold, you already start to breathe more. Now all of a sudden the heart rate comes up more. These are all sympathetic fight or flight responses. So now I'm starting to feel the sensations of anxiety. I would always suggest to get out of your mind and into your body. If I can understand the awareness points of what feeling is, what anxiety is, and I can understand sensation, now all of a sudden I can start to minimize it. I can start to move through it or I can perform with it. You see what I'm saying with that? And that's where the anticipation, I haven't even talked about getting into the cold yet. I'm just talking about anticipating a cold tub. So that's a really cool thing. Okay. Okay. Well, what would I do with that information? Well, the first thing is you got to break that. You got to get through it. That's the fear, the unknown, you know? Well, the success is on that other side. So let's flip into it. Let's get into the tub. It's 33, 38 degrees. What happens? Someone tends to hyperventilate. So they start, okay, well, what does hyperventilation do? I mean, not getting too nerdy about it, but your lungs are, the blood of your body is based off of gravity. So all of your rest and digest parasympathetic oxygen lives at the bottom of the lungs. That's why when you nasal breathe, you can already feel this normal breathing pattern in your belly. That's just a natural response to nature. When I breathe through the nose, I'm calm. I'm grabbing oxygen. I'm grabbing blood. I'm funneling that into the heart to the rest of the body. And the body is saying, I'm good here because I'm breathing through my nose. If I mouth breathe, well, that's upper chest breathing. Maybe you take a deep breath, mouth rest right now. You can feel this is the first response to the breath. Okay. That's built. There's not an exchange up here. It's an alveoli exchange, but there's not much exchange in the upper part of the lung. The upper part of the lung signals to the brain, stop sending oxygen because right now we are in a fight or flight situation. We need to run. We need to get out of here. So when people are hyperventilating, their upper respiratory breathing, their fight or flight oxygen, they're signaling everything to freak out, right? This happens in conditioning. This happens in the guy who can no longer pitch. This happens in the hitter who's panicking at the box. This happens in the baby crying. This happens in the spouse arguing. It's high respiratory rate. It's mouth breathing. It's upper chest breathing. All these signal effects of this is not a safe situation. If you've never been in a cold, that's what tends to happen is you get into a cold tub and you start to hyperventilate. Okay. That's amazing because now we can train the nervous system to get out of that. We can train you to gear down and we can gear somebody in a minute or two to breathe through their nose only and start to breathe into their lower body to use the lungs, to use the diaphragm, to control the system. And then you can relax in it. And now all of a sudden you are in a stressor. You're in something that psychologically you wanted to not be in. Your nervous system is getting trained and you have trained through your breathing, you have trained your system to handle stress. So now when you feel stressors in your life, traffic, breakup, not getting the contract, not getting the scholarship, whatever, if you feel these sensations, now all of a sudden you can get to it faster. You can rationalize things faster because you've used a safe tool to essentially stimulate your nervous system and then shift your thinking through your breath and you have a tangible tool now to do that. And that's where I think it becomes incredibly powerful for any sort of performer, any person really, who's trying to understand their psychology more. If we're just real short on this because this is, I think it's easy to talk about the physiological benefits or the concept of pure performance. A cold is a sympathetic response that drives home adrenaline, cortisol, all the things that create energy and sustainable energy in the body. So if you're using cold, I don't like using it post anything, honestly, I use it pre-everything. So morning, pre-training, pre-game. When I used to train in the NHL, we had guys who would do cold tubs in between every period and they would take their gear off and they'd jump in a cold tub. And it's only because it's sparking a safe adrenaline. It's not a coffee adrenaline, a Red Bull adrenaline, there's no jittery approach to it. You turn on what's called the heat vent. If you ever see someone who gets out of a cold tub, their body will get entirely red. That's the heat vent. When you use temperatures, your body does the opposite of the temperature. So if I go into a sauna, I sweat, my body gets colder. If I go into a cold tub, I get hot, my body gets hotter. So I want to use that heat throughout the duration of a game. See what I'm saying? I want to have this energetic metabolism type state so that I'm clear-headed. And that's all like pure performance. I don't think that necessarily has to be the psychological route. I would call that more training. That's awesome. Awesome. And I was even thinking about last night, we were in Kokomo, Indiana. And by the time I got into the shower, we had probably 30 guys that had already showered. The water's cold. I didn't want to get in that at that point. It was pretty cold. And you put one arm in and try and get your body adjusted to it. And then eventually, you turn your back and get a little bit of water running on it. And then you start adjusting. But I think as I'm listening to this, it helps you be able to adjust to certain points where you can't control your breathing. And I think there's an adjustment period. And it's the same thing as entering into that cold shower or cold tub where your body has to go through that adjustment period. And I think the same thing in those tense moments, like you said. You're in the batter's box. And it's a big at bat. Or you've got the ball with two seconds left. And you've got to make a big shot. Or you're getting up for public speaking for an event that you've never spoken in front of that large of a group. And just being able to adjust in those moments and having, like you said, a safe way to train for that and breathing. And I've been starting to get into the research on it a little bit more. I haven't fully adjusted because obviously, the shower and Coca-Cola, I'm still pretty intimidated by. But yeah, it's just like it's a really fascinating thing of putting our body in an environment where we are saying, hey, you got to respond in a way to help me still be able to control myself and my breathing. So thanks for sharing that. That was super cool. Yeah. One last thing before I let you go. I know you've worked with some really elite athletes. You've had players like Chuck Peterson, Marcus Stroman, that have said some really good things about how you've elevated their careers. Gabe Kepler, the manager for your Giants Major League Baseball team, for people that don't know, has spoken very highly of you. What have you noticed in terms of really high performance? And it's never just one thing, but is there anything that just comes to mind that you're like, man, this is something that some elite performers do really, really well? Yeah. Oh, man. It's ringing to me as a tough question to answer purely because maybe because I've got those three names that you just mentioned in my head, and they're all different, and I'm thinking about the differences in everybody. But what I would say makes somebody a high performer. That's a great question. I'm just thinking through a lot of scenarios. Yeah, go for it. You know, it's a thing that I can give you answers of experiences I've had. But the reason why it's a cool question is because I don't think there's an answer. I think that there's a lot of things that I've said in the past, and I'll say on this, and I'll probably say in the future, that you directly answer that. I think it's easy to go online after this and type in that and get direct answers. I think you can listen to an interview and you can hear people answer things. But the more that I've spent... You know, I worked with a really famous band. I'll keep it under the radar. But I worked with a famous band, and I learned more from them, I feel like, than anybody else. The lead singer didn't speak at all on the day that he performed. Every time he would talk, he'd hear to you, you know, and he never spoke at all because he wanted to save his voice for only the music. And I just thought that was fascinating. I've worked with multi-million dollar entrepreneurs and their systems and the things that they've developed and the way in which they believe in their system, when it's good or bad. They just have created a system. They see it through. They make the smallest, most minor adjustments in their ability to completely maximize time, I've learned from. Their ability to be unreliable, just their insanity behind their time commitment to their craft is next level. And that's what I've learned in the entrepreneurship world and the business world. What I mean by that specifically is like I learned to stop going to meetings a long time ago. When you network with someone you've never met before, like to not, to don't go have coffee with them, you know. And I did that all through my 20s. I met with people and when I started training as I got older and I started training with people who made millions of dollars running businesses and I realized that they never did that. I was like, whoa, that makes a lot of sense because just driving 30 minutes there and back is an hour. Now all of a sudden having an hour and a half coffee with someone is two and a half hours. Now I gave them an incredible amount of my head space. So now I've given up three hours. Well, if you look at multiple rhythms of the body, in many respects you have about three hours a day of maximum intensity of focus. It's kind of broken up into two 90-minute cycles. So if I give that to someone I've never met in a networking situation, that's probably not going to go anywhere. Now all of a sudden, how are you going to run your business? How are you going to be driven in your own health? How are you going to run your employees? How are you going to work out? How are you going to be dialed with your family? And it's just trickle effect. So I learned that from the business world. I learned the art of presence through musicians and their masterful work between art. They live in the subjective world. It's all poetry. It's all thought. It's all connection to the source. And so that was really fascinating to get to the athletes, which I'm sure a lot of people are like, all right, let's get to the athlete part of high performance or this and this. Athletes are all uniquely different because they all have different reasons for why they're doing what they're doing. There's some people who really just want to make a lot of money. And when I was early in the game, I used to always cringe at that. Like, how can that be so? Because that was never, it wasn't my driver. So how could that be this person's driver? And then you realize why money is important to them. And you realize what they're doing with the money and why they've decided they're working their work and their work makes them a lot of money. And their drive is to make this amount of money because this is what they want to do. And so you detach from what you want them to want to do and you see what they want. And you realize that money is just, it's changing the generation of their family, you know, and you get behind that and you watch how they focus their attention towards making money. But then on the back end, they're just an unbelievable father or their great husband. And they're just, and they love life. They're interested in these other things. They're just great at baseball. And they know that if they don't play the game outside of that, they just focus on getting out. So they're going to make this amount of money and that's all they care about. So then, you know what I mean? So you see their level of focus. And that's pretty interesting. But I think the common traits that I've seen from anybody who's been successful for a really long time is A, they see through, let me try to land this. This will be my last point on this and I'll see if this hits because this is what's coming to me. I think a lot of people, if they have a high level of awareness, they can see through the way in which the world's perceiving them. What I mean by that is like these high level performers that are famous, a lot of people give them their A game. They laugh at their stuff, even if it's not funny. They idolize them. They praise them. They do all these things, right? And for whatever reason, a lot of people who are on public stages that get that and they don't have an awareness to see through that. They can't see that it's actually to them. They just want to make money or they just want to have a legacy or they want to be healthy or they want to master their craft and they want to see how far they can go. If they can't see through the initial way the world's treating them, then they can't get to the truth of who they are. And the highest performers I've found, they play the game. They play the character. They play the role. They handle the way in which the world is talking to them. But they are deeper than that. They get past that to the next level. And when they get to the next level of their own awareness, now they're so creative. They're so unique. They're so themselves. They're so that, that no one else can touch them. And because you can't be Marcus Strowman. Marcus Strowman is Marcus Strowman. If you try to mimic his mechanics, his mentality, you don't know that won't work. So you will eventually fail. You might go far, but you eventually fail. What I know of Strowman, Strowman is Marcus Strowman. And I admire him because of my experiences and listening to him speak. He is unique and he's constantly pushing the envelope for his own understanding of himself. I think that would become my answer if I had to give an answer. They're able to see past the surface level of it. They're able to get into the depths of what they want. And because of that, they're gifted with the unique ability to know who they are. And that's, that's a blueprint that only they can have. You see what I'm saying? So they get it and they get it. And then they become high performance. Self-awareness, I think, you know, is a huge component. And that's one, obviously, that's not the only thing you mentioned, but just in my mind, that's kind of one of the things I was thinking about is having that awareness of getting past that and knowing what you can do once you get past the surface level. And it's like the guy, you know, the picture that gets on the mound, you know, with 40,000 people, and he doesn't see the stands, like you said at the beginning, like just having that self-awareness to be able to get past, you know, that surface level and understanding yourself, understanding your capabilities, understanding who you are. And then that enables you to be free and to perform well. But you said it better than I did. So, yeah, and that's why you get paid the big bucks. I think the key word you just said there is free. I would say if I summed all my gibberish up, all my long, rabble thinking, I would say freedom, that all high performers are free. And when they're free, they're untouchable. And again, that is in all professions that I've studied. That's in all the environments. These are free-thinking humans that are confident in their ability to get through tough times because they believe in themselves. Absolutely. Well, dude, thanks so much for your time. This is awesome. I know this will hit home with a lot of people that listen to the podcast. This has been huge. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me on, man. It's great to just talk to you. Actually, a lot of times I forgot where we were going to talk. That's just how I thought I kind of felt the same way. Like I looked down and it's already an hour. So, all right, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the Unparalleled Performance Podcast. And if you enjoyed it, please share with those around you. We'll see you next week and go dominate your day.