S3 Ep105 Jack McMillan: Slow Is the Skill

Most high performers are running on a nervous system that hasn't been given permission to recover. You feel fine. You're productive. And underneath it, you're running hotter than you know.

Jack McMillan was an elite footballer who kept choking under pressure not from lack of talent, but from a nervous system he'd never learned to regulate. What he found, reluctantly, through yoga and breathwork, changed everything. Not just how he performed. How he lived.

Now co-founder of Optima Performance, Jack works at the intersection of breath, physiology, and human performance  with elite athletes, football managers, and corporate teams of 400 people who all share the same problem: they know how to push, but not how to recover.

In this conversation we get into the mechanics and the meaning. Why dysfunctional breathing quietly drives overthinking, poor sleep, and tunnel vision under pressure. How a single shift from mouth to nasal breathing can lower your heart rate before you've said a word. And why the pause the one most high performers skip might be the most underrated performance tool available.

Jack also walks us through his breathing gears model for difficult conversations, the Reset Breath practice you can do in two minutes before sleep, and why the best athletes he's worked with are the ones who leave their ego at the door.

This one is practical. And if you run on stress, it might also be uncomfortable in the best possible way.

Reachout to Jack vias his website or LinkedIn 

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Forging Resilience. Real conversations for high performers facing transition. I'm Erin Hill. And join me as I talk with people about challenge change and the adversity they faced in life so we can learn from their experiences, insights, and stories. Today on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by Jack McMillan. He's the co-founder of Optima Performance, a company working at the intersection of breath work, physiology, and human performance. Jack's work focuses on helping individuals and teams understand how they regulate their state under pressure using breath as a tool to improve improve performance, recovery, and resilience. Jack, welcome to the show, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Thank you for having me, Ryan. It's good to be here. And yeah, thanks for the for the introduction as well.

From Elite Sport To Breathwork

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Norries, mate. It's interesting you say that, but the the the introductions are the bits that I enjoy the least, and and I always catch myself tripping over the words that I write, but it is what it is. Life happens. Jack, give us a give us um a bit about your story and what took you into the world of breathwork, mate.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, I think my my story, just like many, when they get into something like this, it comes from their own personal experience with that one thing that they didn't know they needed at the time, but it was only after the penny dropped, and they realized that that might have been the gap uh or the missing piece in their puzzle in their quest to sort of hype, you know, to be a high performer. And mine started as a uh elite footballer, basically. So I was I was growing up with a very sporty family. My dad, my uncle, my granddad, my brother all playing elite sport. Um, and that was part of my journey as well as a as a kid. And when I got to the ages of sort of 14, I was playing both tennis and football, and just the the ability to regulate under pressure in the moment, it was I probably felt it first more in the individual games playing tennis. I just crumbled, I would choke and I wouldn't know why. Um, and then that started translating into football as well. And it was only until I was 16 I I achieved my scholarship and my professional contracts as well uh in football. So I sort of chose that route. And it was only then when I started to explore my mind and body further through originally it was through yoga, so you know, one one limb of yoga is pranayama, and that for you know, in layman's terms, is is breathing, right? And I started to implement breath work on a daily basis with the movement to understand myself more, but for recovery first physically, but also then psychologically as well. And it was only then that I realized like wow, this is really changing my state quite quickly. It was the only thing that was um I would say sustainable that I could use daily that wasn't gonna have you know a hindrance on other other parts of my life, you know, like a a tablet water, for example. So I sort of lent on breath work that side, and then from there it just sort of spiraled, it became a daily practice. I actually obviously chose to step away from professional football and went into other avenues and down different paths, and one of those paths was obviously to become a yoga teacher first. Um, and I was the only you know guy on my course that was just me and 20 ladies, which is typical, really, especially in the Western world. There's not many guys that were practicing yoga or wanted to become a teacher, especially not an ex-professional footballer. Um, and to my knowledge, I'm the only one in the UK that has made that transition from footballer to yoga teacher, and then from the yoga teacher side, like everything just spiraled um and breathing then became a center pillar to to our delivery at Optima. Um, and that just then ignited a little bit of a flame inside me to to want to be able to deliver this to the world, um, elite juniors and elite seniors um in in sport mainly. Um, but then obviously that translates into other industries, which I'm sure we'll get onto as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Yeah, a little bit many. Um you mentioned that you that that that doing yoga and the breathwork side was uh sustainable in your ability to change your state. Uh I'm curious what what were the states that you were looking to change?

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Um, well, I think my nervous system was just like many athletes are, it's just compromised a lot of the time. And I'm sure, you know, from your own personal experience as well, like you you find yourself in this state of you think you're relaxed, but you're absolutely not relaxed. Um, and the body will tell you a lot about the state you're in. And I was not recovering properly, and uh, you know, before doing that, and my my mind was just way too busy for the state that I was supposed to be in when I was relaxing. I wasn't relaxing. Um, you know, every time you're off the pitch or out of the training ground, you try and recover. But what I then realized quite quickly is we were never told how to recover. That wasn't just um, you know, a massage gun or getting a rub off the physio. Um, it has to go deeper than that. And I think that's what well that the states that I was trying to change was that it was anxiety as well. Um, it was overthinking, it was not being able to sleep the night before a game, it was just like the typical state of an elite performer that has to sacrifice absolutely everything in their life to become elite performer, and I think from that day I realized like, hmm, we can do both if we have a more sustainable approach to to the choices we make to become an elite performer.

Anxiety Recovery And Leaving Ego Behind

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, well what did you learn um that about about yourself that you get to leave behind or that that no longer served you as you were like learning more about yourself, changing your state states, and getting to it's it's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

I think one of the biggest things that I always come back to when I get asked this question is ego. Um, and I think when I was, yeah, a you very young footballer, you know, you you think you've got the absolute world at your feet, and this is going to be you for the next 25 years, and you're gonna have an amazing career. And you naturally, as an athlete, you have to be selfish, but it doesn't mean you have to be egotistical in that selfishness, you can still be a rounded human being that has more better perspective, you know, can practice gratitude, can really sort of like hone in on the sustainable pieces of being an elite performer. But I think at the time, you especially young athletes, and I see it now, they they won't proact, they will rather react. Um, and I think that's a big thing because it's only when the penny drops, quote unquote, that they realised how they are acting or how they've been for the last two years and why they didn't get to the next level or whatever that was. So I think through yoga as well, you you learn a lot about the ego, and I think you know, to quote Ryan Holiday and the stoicism, it's like it it really can be the enemy because it can stop a level of growth internally, I believe. Yes, there's the external factor of the ego getting in the way, but of how you, you know, you you're conducting yourself on a daily basis, but it's more about the internal exploration that you can have with yourself through different practices that typically your ego wants to shut off, and you know, and as soon as that wall it goes up, you you limit yourself to what you're actually capable of as a human being. So I think that was the biggest lesson for me was surrendering my ego basically. Um, and as soon as those walls went down, I realized there was I've only explored about one percent of myself when I was a whether when I was an elite athlete.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, if I honest. Mate, what what what does surrendering yourself mean to to you?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

I think again, thinking about the ego, I think it's parking that. I think it's it's being open-minded to everything. So never, never saying, Oh, I don't want to do this, or um, you know, already judging something before you've tried it, which we love, you know, we always do that, right? It's like, oh, I hate mushrooms, but most people have never tried mushrooms, so how would they know? For example, you know, um, and I think that's like just the simple terms that we learn as a kid, right? But it's like all of these things they these prejudgments we make can have a you know um an influence on how we see different things, and you know, if it's if it's food, if it's a you know, um an expedition you want to go on or a hike or you know, or jumping out of a plane or whatever that is, it's like we we we make these uh assumptions in our head first, and that does affect how we see or what lens we see that situation in. So I think that surrendering for me is like literally stripping back everything to being as open-minded as possible to every possibility and outcome when practicing a certain thing. Um, only then I believe that you start to understand self, and what I mean by self is you know a little bit deeper than just the physical body, um, and understanding yourself more. Um, and I think that can be quite powerful for for anyone at any age, really.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that, mate. Um, in terms of learning about ourselves, it's always a it's the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? Um I I um I guess from both your experience in sport and working with with corporations as well, that the the overthinking and constantly staying busy physically or mentally is quite a common thing. Um, yeah, how how how is the opposite end of the spectrum met sometimes with just pausing, slowing down, concentrating the breath? What sort of reactions do you get to to that?

Why Corporate Teams Embrace Breathwork

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, I think obviously originally it was like through footballers, right? Because that's my background, that's what I went into straight away was was teaching footballers how to breathe functionally and effectively and achieve more on the pitch, both for their mind and body. And I think at the start it was always like I pigeonholed myself by accident with my brand. So I had a branding 101 lesson quite quickly. I was called Optima Yoga, and the yoga in the work in the brand sort of like pigeonholed me slightly because people were like, oh, it's yoga, or you know, and that has certain connotation or assumption, like we were just saying before. Before you try it, you already made your mind up. So that I realized quite quickly, especially with the elite world of football. I needed to change my brand, hence why it's now called optimal performance, because performance is more of a generic word, but it's everyone can relate to performance because they want to perform at a better level. So they'll typically be more open-minded due to that uh brand positioning, which I've I've definitely um like seen, but I think it's more again, those may the the people that I was working with right at the start. It's not now like people say, Oh, you must get lots of pushback from footballers. I don't. Um, I think one of the reasons why is because I've played the game and I've been a coach, so I understand the language that they need to hear to understand. Okay, will this make me a better footballer? Yes. Will this make me a better human being? Yes. Okay, maybe let's try it and let's see what happens. If there's normal pushback and slowing down and different things like that, they I just say, look, I'm not gonna try and convince you to do this. Try the session, leave your ego at the door, and then after you can tell me if you don't want to do it again, that's absolutely fine. But it's the power's in the practice. I'm not there, you know, I'm not a salesperson at the door trying to tell them why they should do it. I'm like, just give it a go. Um, and as soon as they do it, because it's so tangible and breath work can influence you in that microsecond that you need it. That's normally what grabs their attention um and the best buy-in is feeling, and that's what we get through through breathing as a practice for the mind and body. So, yeah, I would say it's probably more accepted in corporate now because you know, every HR department of every company now is looking at mental health and well-being and implementing more workshops and structures and you know, all of these different incentives and schemes for their staff to ensure that they reduce burnout, to ensure that their staff are in a better frame of mind on a daily basis, becoming more productive. And all of that comes through managing your own mental and physical health. So we've seen, without us maybe advertising that we work in corporate, we've seen a natural spill out into the corporate world just through, yeah, word of mouth or um testimonials that people have seen via LinkedIn that we've worked with some pretty huge organizations. Um, I won't name them, but only last week I was I was on a um we had a corporate workshop with over 400 staff uh online at once. And you know, the influence that you can have on so many people across the world is it's been quite cool that way. And I think staff as well are more open because one, it's it's time out of their day that they can take to actually just try and forget about everything, including emails or you know, whatever calls they've got coming up, and also it's from a if they're in a corporate organization and they're quite high up, they typically have that performance output mindset, or they're normally a growth mindset individual. So they've probably already touched on meditation, journaling, breathwork, Pilates, yoga, whatever that is to try and manage their self, you know. So it's not completely foreign, um, I would say, to to both industries now.

Dysfunctional Breathing And Daily Impact

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah. So if if people are coming to you generally for those things to to learn about themselves, to to up their game, to manage their states better, give us a a little bit of the understanding of what's happening then if we uh if we're not breathing in a in a way that's that's just yeah, efficient for our bodies. What sort of effect is that gonna have on our our daily lives and the tasks that we're undertaking, be that be that in the office, in a relationship, or or on the pitch?

Breathing Gears For Hard Conversations

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah, I think, well, not to go too deep dive in the science. Um I think the the breath is your it's your fuel, it's your energy source on a daily basis, right? We take over 25,000 breaths a day, and if they are done functional or dysfunctional, that in turn is having a influence on your nervous system. So if you think about your nervous system, and the best way to break it down is you know, you've got this gas pedal, um, which is your go pedal, this is your sympathetic tone, this is your drive, this is what we need when we're playing sport, this is what we need when we're performing at this highest level. That's fine, but we can do that in a controlled way. If sympathetic is uncontrolled, that's when we go into panic, that's when we go into heightened states of anxiety that is influencing your decision making, your cognitive function, and even your physical output as well. So when you're in this sympathetic state, it's the ability to manage this state, but do it sustainably. So you can stay there, but also understand that you have the tools to then recover as fast as possible and downregulate. So it's almost like if you were to think about doing a treadmill run and you were to do interval sessions, you were to move, let's say we were running for two minutes, quite a fast pace. That's your sympathetic. Yeah. And then as soon as you jump off that treadmill and you've got one minute to recover, it's how fast can you downregulate your system, including your heart rate, your breathing rate, to recover as fast as possible. So that's where we want to drop into our parasympathetic state. And that is your brake pedal for life, right? So the ability to manage these two aspects of your nervous system is, I believe, a world-class skill now. If you can do this sustainably, you will continue to perform at the highest level, but also know how to recover as fast as possible. So on a daily basis, if I was to just take like uh an the your average, well not your average, but your high performing corporate, you know, um your average high performing corporate person on a daily basis without them knowing it, if they're not aware of how they breathe, they will typically be dysfunctionally breathing because the nervous system responds to your external reality. And if they're in a completely high stressed environment most of their day, typically without realizing it, their mouths open, their heart rate's up, and we we start to hype acutely, we start to hyperventilate, which means when you hyperventilate, you you breathe more than the body needs at that state of time. Now, if they're sat in a chair at the office and they might be in a very uncomfortable situation, their heart rate goes up, but their body doesn't need to run away. But the nervous system doesn't understand that. So the nervous system will allow the heart, well, it will, you know, the your breath will start to increase, so your ventilation will increase, which means how many liters of air you breathe in in one breath will increase. There will near enough double from a resting state. In turn, what's related to your breathing rate is your heart rate. So now your heart rate will go up, and now your mind will go into some sort of state of readiness. Now that typically for most people is not controlled because they're not aware of the state that they're in. So that's when they can spiral and that's where they start to have narrow, um, they start to have tunnel vision, they start to even start to get headaches, they, you know, they're over breathing, they're panicking, and they they start to naturally just spiral out of control, which is influencing how they think, feel, and act on a daily basis. So breathing is typically seen as a reaction, alarm system to the body, right? You will know when you're stressed because you'll probably be panting like a dog if something happens. So the breath without you realizing it is influencing you so much on a daily basis. And that's the same when I work with an elite athlete or an elite football manager uh or in different um high-staked environments across different industries that is not necessarily just win or lose, but life and death, it's the same concept. The breath can tell you a lot about what state you're in, but you can use the breath to alter your state. So, not like your digestive system, which we can't really alter, uh, in the moment, what we can do is we can we can start to alter our physiology through the breath. So we can use the breath to help down regulate or help dampen the stress response when it comes into the body when a threat occurs. Um so on a you know, a very level one basis, that's that's sort of the influence the breath can have on your state. And I think another part to breathe in is you've got the psychological state, so we call it the psychophysiological state. So when the body reacts and the breath goes up and the heart rate goes up, what is then signaling the brain to do next? Is it is it panic? Is it react? Is it a threat? Is it run? Is it you know freeze, whatever that is? Um is it to show emotion, is it to hold emotion in? Everyone has a different experience with how breathing feels inside their body. So your own relationship with your breath will change over time, but also everyone will have a different relationship with their own breath because they might have, I don't know, been underwater way too long as a kid, and you know, they'll come up with gas for air, and that was their experience, their first experience with holding their breath, for example. So, own experiences are very key in you know, understanding someone's breathing pattern and understanding their daily life and how they react to things, but it can be a life-changing tool. Like we've seen it uh ourselves at Optima of how beneficial functional breathing can be for an individual, and then relating it to the to the performance in the moment. It's either a reaction or it's a proaction, and both are valid in the moment. Um, but knowing the tools to have in your box, um, we believe is is yeah, it it can be a game changer.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

So, what might be one or two things that people could do or or put their attention on, example, for example, if they know they've got a high, a difficult, a challenging conversation coming up. Um, yeah, be that a work or in a relationship, you know, that one of those ones that yeah, gets your heart thumping. What's some of the things that they can do to sort of, as you mentioned, down regulate um so that they're fully aware of what's going on within them before they step into that meeting or conversation.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Great question. I think to understand that, we've got to understand where that response comes from. So, as everyone knows, we inhale oxygen and we exhale CO2 carbon dioxide, right? Now, after every exhale, we don't inhale straight away. We're not continuously breathing in and out, in and out. We pause, we take pauses, we speak, and then we go again. What happens is your CO2 sensitivity, so carbon dioxide we exhale, oxygen's still being used in the blood to the muscles, and in turn, that means that CO2 is being brought back into the lungs. And then when that rises again, in the back of the brainstem, there are chemoreceptors. We call them, we like to like describe them as little minions that sit at the back of your head. If they are sensitive, as soon as a tiny bit of CO2 will rise in the lungs, you will get a signal sent from your brain to breathe. Now, typically, that breath that you take in, if CO2 is high and we we can't really manage to keep hold of a lot of CO2 in the lungs, that breath will be quite sharp and it will be quite quick because you will be experiencing a sense of air hunger. Now, when air hunger hits the brain to breathe, it's a micro-panicked state of it's a breath typically in through the mouth and it's a chest breath. We use our shoulders, we use the muscles we shouldn't really be using when breathing. And typically we take the inhale through the mouth rather than the nose. Now, what that does in turn is if we think about it, every inhale that you take is a stress response, every exhale that we take is a relaxation response for the body. Now, if we take that breath in quite quickly and through the mouth, it means it's sharper, it's higher, and it's faster. Now, a faster breath equals a faster heart rate because now we start to get the heart rate up. So typically on a reaction breath, before we make the choice of what we're going to say next in an uncomfortable situation, without realizing it, what we do is as we receive that information, the mouth opens, we take a gasp through the mouth, we go, yes, but you said this, and then we go on the attack. So typically we breathe through the mouth before we make that decision or we respond to something. Now, if you were to want to feel calm and composed under pressure, we can alter that breath and we can change it. So straight away, when we're aware of that happening, there are sort of like different gears that we can breathe in. What you know, this is how we describe it as a very simple basis. Gear three is that sympathetic drive, which is mouth-mouth breathing, which is an inhale through the mouth and an exhale out of the mouth. Gear two is typically for most people, especially in physical exercise, but also in daily life, this is almost like the intervention breath where we can change a mouth-mouth breath to a nose-mouth breath. Now, we've not gone straight to nose-nose, which will be next. We've gone to nose-mouth because going from mouth-mouth to nose-nose for some people will be quite difficult because if they have a low, um, if they have a high sensitivity to CO2, going from mouth-mouth to nose-nose may actually um may actually ignite more of a stress response because they're holding on to more CO2 and it might feel a little bit difficult to breathe. So what we do is we go to nose mouth. So we so we change the inhale, that's it. So we go from a dysfunctional inhale to more of a functional inhale. And then we let the exhale out slower because the slower you breathe, the more we're gonna activate the vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs around your whole body, which is linked to your parasympathetic, that break of your nervous system to calm down, the slower that we exhale out of the body. Then gear one is nose-nose. So when people are having uncomfortable situations, or you know, if I'm teaching someone, uh coaching someone to uh public speak and how they are speaking and breathing between sentences, can have great effect on the audience's engagement because it's the effect that you can have on someone with the words and the tone and the pace that we speak and how we um and how we breathe in between. So typically the first step is the awareness of which gear are you in, because the gear will typically tell you where your heart rate is and how your thought process is in that moment. Now, again, we need to dampen that and we need to come down through the gears as quick as possible to ultimately achieve a nose-nose breathing pace. Um, because when you breathe through your nose, yes, it's 10 times smaller than the mouth. But what nasal breathing does is it slows down your uh your breaths per minute. So when you breathe in through your nose, it is a lot slower than if you were to breathe in through your mouth. Now remember, the slower you breathe, the more efficient you become. And the slower you breathe, the more the heart rate will be dampened and it won't be as high. When we use the nose to inhale, we contract the diaphragm more, which means the diaphragm is the breathing muscle that sits below the lungs, acts as like a vacuum when you breathe in, it pulls the air all the way down. Now, because of gravity, of course, the blood is at the bottom of the lungs. So you need to ensure that when you're breathing in, the breath is functional and that happens more when you breathe through the nose. The breath laterally expands the ribs. You've got your intercostal muscles between your ribs, they inflate and laterally expand, but also the ribs are on the back of the body. So the breath you're taking in is 360. Now, when you breathe through your nose, you shouldn't see your shoulders rise. The breath should be secret, really. Only you should know you're breathing in that moment. If we if you've ever watched a podcast or a keynote, etc., the ones that are calm, controlled, and confident in the moment are the ones regulating typically through their nose. And you don't see the breath, you don't hear the breath. If you do, you know that person's nervous. And that starts to influence the audience or the person you're speaking to as well. So body language can come into play as well of how you're breathing and how the words that you're communicating are being received. If someone is nervous, I don't know about you, but especially in your, you know, your background, there's a sense of distrust that comes with the words that they're saying through how confident they can speak those words. So without realizing it, the breath is influencing a whole array of things. So I think number one step for anyone is to understand where they are with their breath and how comfortable they can feel when they're breathing. Um when they are nasally breathing, the mouth is closed, the lips are sealed. The tongue is the so if you think about your posture of your jaw and also your neck, the tongue should be placed gently to the roof of the mouth when you're breathing through the nose. So when you breathe, so the tip of the tongue will sit just behind the hard palate, which is just at the front of the top teeth, just behind the top teeth. And then the rest of the tongue will be pressed gently to the roof of the mouth. If you were to go ahead and swallow, you will notice the tongue naturally sits at the roof of the mouth, and that's where it should sit when you're breathing through the nose. That holds the jawline and your posture more correctly when you're breathing through the nose. Okay. So all of those little aspects to like this is just functional breathing. I believe if every high performer knew this, they could that could have a significant difference on how they present, how they communicate, and how they perform under pressure because they start to be aware of their state. And only when you're aware you can change.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, yeah. I love that. And as I listen to you talk there, I can't help but reflect for me what I'm hearing in my for myself and for quite a few of the people that I work with is the ability to pause. Because if we're rushing straight from one meeting or conversation to the next, there's yeah, there's there's there's no there's no micro moments to to recognise what's going on. Um, but yeah, so to pause in that porner, in that pause, over time comes awareness, uh, what's happening, like you alluded to there. I think for me as well, I'm not sure where you'd you'd stand on this, Jack. So I'm happy for you to challenge it and and give your expertise here. But noticing that there's nothing to fix, and it just because we're doing these things doesn't take away certain emotions, but it allows us to regulate them. Um, and I can't help but think that when we do, then we're more present with what's going on. And for me, there's less story. So even though it feels really uncomfortable, whatever the outcome, it's not I'm not yeah, exploding that out to to some what catastrophizing it. Um and then and I get to go again, you know, it's the conversation, then afterwards a pause, it's awareness, not fixing anything, presence story.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yeah, I'm I'm the is there is there truth in that or is is there anything that to me that sounds like mindfulness, like the ability to observe your present state without judgment, because only when we judge we become. So if we are stepping on stage and we know we we observe, we're oh my god, you know, I'm super nervous, I'm really anxious. If we then become those thoughts, we that that's when we see that things change psychologically, that they almost become those things when they're stepping out onto the stage. So it's I agree 100%, you're right. Like taking moments, micro moments to pause, they could be that could be your one percent gain because only when you do that you can manage. So we say to people it's not just about thinking positively, it's not just we can't just tell a client to think positively in the moment, it doesn't work like that. Life just definitely does not work like that, especially at you know the elite sport level. Um, but what we train people to do is have the inner belief that they can manage any situation that comes their way. So I say it, I've said it before on different podcasts as well. Billy Jean King, the the ex-tennis player, said um pressure is a privilege, right? Great, agree. It's only a privilege if it's managed effectively. If it's not and managed effectively, it's definitely not a privilege to anyone involved. So it's it's and without you, you can only manage a state when you're aware of a state. If you're not aware of the state, you will never have that intervention moment of the pause to regulate and manage that moment that you're in. So it's not necessarily, like I said before, changing a state. It could just be managing a state that you need in that moment. But the more you do it, the more we've seen that people can change their state over time. But that necessarily doesn't mean in the first instance.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

So yeah, and and and to recap, then it before people are going into those conversations or meetings, uh becoming aware of what's going on for them and maybe just dropping from from yeah, mouth-mouth to to nose mouth is is enough to buy them that bit of time to downregulate before yeah, responding to that that question or or statement.

Sustainable Habits Movement And Self Care

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Yeah. I I I think everyone, if capable, you know, some people have deviated septums or you know, ex-athletes I've worked with, you know, have got broken noses, and you know, breathing through the nose is is super tough, understood. But even when we're breathing through the mouth, we can still bring a regulated breath through the mouth as long as you're aware of that, right? We can still breathe to a level, and people might come back at me at this, to a level functionally, still through the mouth, if we do it slow enough and we're aware of how we're breathing. Um, but yeah, the the the advice for as always is any conversation you're in is when you're listening, your mouth is closed and you're regulating through your nose. Um, because your heart rate's lower, which means you're more relaxed. When you're more relaxed, you're more creative. So straight away you become, I believe, more of an asset in the moment, even when stress is hit or whatever that is, instead of going into that absolute tunnel vision where it's just survival mode in the moment, you've actually you can still bring more to the table because relaxation states are linked to being more creative, and you know, you can be more solution focused. Um, and I think that can be quite a game changer for people as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

You you mentioned right at the beginning for your own practice, you're looking for like sustainable habits for for high performance. I'm curious what what what are maybe your top two or three um sustainable habits that you that you use yourself for or the people that you work with, Jack, for for performance?

Sleep Downregulation And Bedroom Setup

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah, so if athletes they're doing 90% of the work already. Um, they don't need to change much. If anything, they need to reduce what they're doing. So to be more sustainable, we see it as daily movement um and awareness. So connecting movement to breathing is number one. Because what people do most of the time is they will move their body, they'll go to the gym, they'll do a workout, whatever. But throughout the whole workout, they will not be conscious of how they're breathing. And when they're conscious of how they're breathing, they can start to alter their state, they can go harder for longer, they can recover quicker, but also they they become more mindful because I've had it before, and I'm I'm you know, everyone on this call probably has had it before. You do a workout and your mind is completely elsewhere. You your mind is, you know, you're running on a treadmill or you're going for a run, and all you can think about is that meeting you've got in a week's time that is taking up all of your attention. And we use breathing to come back to the present moment because the breath is the only thing that lives in the present moment because we're continuously doing it. So the more we concentrate on the breath, the more we can start to have mindful practice and mindful movement. That's what we call it. So that is for me absolutely number one is can you connect your body and your breath when doing activities or exercise? Because when you become more mindful of the moment, you start to appreciate it more. And the more we can live in that present moment, the more we're less in our predictable future. And that's where anxiety lives. That's where all of these other things that can um start to consume us live when we're too busy thinking about the future. So for anyone, corporate, athlete, whoever we work with, it's mindful movement, it's connecting both, and it's also daily self-care. So, what we mean by that is moments, micro moments of time that we can bring into our day that are designed or put in our schedule, because what we do is we look at their lifestyle. So we look at their diary. You know, if I work one-to-one with a high performer, um, and we've actually just we're just about to launch our second um Optima Elite Performance Program, which means we work with an individual for 12 weeks and we look at their life. So we look at their because for those that don't know, my co-founder is a doctor, his name's Dr. Ricardo Kutembullah, and we also have a partner in Lauren Garner who's um GB Cyclins psychologist. So we work together to design programs from a psychology, physiology, and performance perspective for high performers, right? So when we do our Optimor Elite Performance Program, we look at their diary and we look at moments where they can come back to themselves, if it's a lunch break, if it's between meetings, etc. And we give them certain tools or practices to do in those moments. The first few weeks is exploration because it takes time to adopt new strategies and skills. But then over time they become habits. So it's it's bringing in those high performance habits daily that they can use. Um it's meditation, it's mindfulness, it's journaling, it's breathing, um, it's having set protocols that they like to do. There's nothing worse than doing a breathing practice that we don't like to do. Breathing should not feel uncomfortable. It's one of those things where it's like, yes, the gym, I hate squatting, but I've got to do it uh to get stronger. It's not the same with breathing, really. I mean, we can do breath holding, we can do, you know, different simulation of outro training, yes. But on a daily basis, breathing should not feel difficult. Um, it should be a tool there that gives you confidence um that you can do it successfully. And when we do it successfully, you're more likely to want to do it again, more likely to want to do it again. It becomes a habit that is sustainable. So those are the sort of things that we do in the sense of we implement into someone that and everyone listening can try is having these micro moments that we can come back to daily. You don't need 10 minutes, you need two minutes, you need three minutes. You know, if you've got five to ten minutes, great, we can do a lot in that time, but it's making sure that your battery is not red, you know, just like we charge our phone in the evenings before we go to bed. Um, you know, normally when you go to bed, your iPhone's on red and recharge it all night and then we wake up. So if we were to take that concept and put it into your daily life, it's like having these moments of the day where we can just put ourselves on charge by doing micro moments of sustainable habits that are going to help you. Um and um, you know, a massive part of that, I've just gone on to that already, but massive part of that is sleep. You know, we spend a third of our life asleep on planet Earth, but how many of us know how to do it functionally and optimally? It's still, you know, every year there's new sleep science coming out. Do this, do this hack, do this technique, etc. And Ricardo recently has just released an ebook for us um at Optima called it's more tailored to the junior athlete world because they really do struggle with sleep because they've got to travel a lot, exam stress, lifestyle stress, and then they've got to these you know, these these guys are training 10 hours a week on the football pitch and then having to do eight hours at school and then repeat. Sleep is their foundation to growth, right? And repair. Most people don't still understand how important sleep is to their life. So we also look at sleep, but ultimately to downregulate your nervous system so you can sleep. Most people will just step into bed straight off their laptop or emails. You know, they'll they'll be on their emails at 11 p.m. and they'll close their laptop and they'll put their head to the pillow and they'll wonder why they're not sleeping. So it's bringing in these intervention moments that are going to allow you to do the foundations of life, which are quite simple, by the way. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. I don't believe we need crazy technology and gadgets to get a good night's sleep. If we do everything else more sustainable in our day, we won't have to rely on these very expensive interventions to be able to do the one thing that we all do, by the way, because if you don't sleep, you won't be alive. So you already do it. It's just about optimizing it to make it as sustainable and as um yeah, um, as good as possible for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Yeah, so so talking of that then, uh like efficient, effective sleep, I guess, is what comes to me as well. What what's a couple of the things that you do personally or that works well for yeah, downregulating at the end of the day? And I know it's not 10 minutes before you go to bed, but yeah, what's what what's that look like, Jack?

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Well, so sometimes, like let's be let's be we're very real at Optima. Like I'm not gonna tell you to put your phone down an hour before you go to sleep, and you know, it depends on what life you live. Sometimes the scenarios just you perfection doesn't really exist when it comes to sleep because the strain you've had that day. So, for example, I wear a whoop, right, which tracks all of my health metrics and my my physical output for the day. So last night, for example, my strain was quite high because I had a double session, I had a gym and a run, and I slept nine hours last night. I've woke up with 42% recovery. Now, I felt fine when I woke up this morning, but ultimately it doesn't mean necessarily that I'm fully recovered because my body's still trying to recover. So, what happens is if we don't sleep, what people forget is there's a thing called sleep debt, which builds up over time, and this is influencing you throughout the whole of the week, right? Because you're constantly playing catch-up. So consistency of hours in bed is very, very important. Like the body loves consistency, like working to your circadian rhythm also is important. Of course, it is, you know, if we can wake up and get sunlight in our face, depends where we live. Um, uh you you're very lucky, obviously, being in Spain.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Um, we're I see the blue sky in the background there, mate, today.

The Reset Breath Guided Practice

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Yeah, I know it's a good well, yeah. For those that can't see it, it's sunny today, Dan in Wilkshire. But anyway, um, but yeah, we're not as lucky as you in Spain, for example, for that. But it's also, yeah, I spend 10 minutes before I go to bed doing my set breathwork routine. Um, that as just I've designed for myself over time and tweaked it and it works for me, right? Um, when I wake up in the morning, I do the same. So the first thing I the last thing I do is breathe consciously before I go to bed. And the first thing I do when I wake up is breathe before I start my day. Because what we tend to do is we forget the present, and then when we wake up, it's right, what's next? What's next? What's next? You know, we've got busy days, etc. Those little reset times, we call it the reset breath, very, very simple and very, very effective. Um, and those sorts of moments that we can bring in is fundamental to your recovery and how you recover. Yes, naturally, but ideally, we should be breathing through our nose when we sleep. If we're a back sleeper and a mouth wide open, typically we snore, it means we're breathing through the mouth. So mouth breathing and nose breathing is still a thing when you sleep. It's probably even more important when you sleep because you're doing it for eight hours, hopefully, six to eight hours continuously. If we're breathing dysfunctionally, that is having an onset um sort of like influence on the rest of your recovery and the rest of your day. So if we are breathing through the nose, absolutely fantastic. If you're not, maybe have a, you know, speak to your partner. Do you breathe through your mouth? Do you snore, etc.? Is the things that we can do to change that? It might be the position of how you sleep, you know, without um if you've not got any sort of breathing conditions or anything like that, then I'm sure you've seen a lot of people wearing mouth tape now and different things like that, nasal strips that open up the airways, mouth tape to keep the uh the lips gently closed, so we can then harness the nasal breath when you sleep. So we can breathe lower, slower, and deeper. Um and room temperature. So people, that's probably the biggest thing that people don't understand is room temperature and air quality. So, not that you need to go and buy yourself carbon dioxide. Meter in your room, but if every window is closed, you the CO2 levels would be super high and the oxygen levels will be quite low. So it's almost like you're inhaling your exhale, which is not what we want to do. Because when we inhale CO2, the body actually detects that as a threat response. So, yes, we create CO2, and I've just told you that we need to build CO2 in the lungs, but it's a different type of CO2. It's inhaled CO2 rather than the CO2 that's already been generated via our muscles because of the oxygen transfer. So if your air quality in your room is really, really poor, that's influencing the level of sleep you're getting, but also every breath you're taking in, the bloody's not being as oxygenated as much. So air quality, open a window, room temperature should be cool, breathe through your nose, 10 minutes before bed, and 10 minutes when you wake up are free things. You do like you don't need to go and buy these things, they are all accessible. Hopefully, everyone here has got a window that they can open the room they sleep in. Um, these little things I think are just like gold for people to take on board because yeah, those are the little things that we've seen make a massive difference to people.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Jack, what might be one sort of like standard practice in terms of end-of-day reset breath that the you mentioned there? I know you've adopted yours, but what something people might try for a couple of minutes in terms of it?

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Yeah, so this this um so little caveat, but we're so I'm part of a new company that is launching in June, uh, which I can talk about now openly, um, which is a wellness club. So we're actually me and um two footballers actually came to me and said, Look, we want to build a business, and they are into their longevity and wellness, and we're actually launching a uh health club in Newcastle in the north of England, um, and it's called Reset Wellness Club. And my sort of role within the club is to you know help build the business, but also design the concepts and work with it. So the last six months I've been sort of like trying to design concepts for the Reset Wellness Club, and one of those things that we did was the Reset Breath, and now that's become part of my daily life uh just because I've done it so much. And it's super simple. Ideally, you want to be breathing through your nose. Um, we take two soft nasal breaths. If we can do it in for four and out for four, great. So we inhale, we exhale with no pause. We inhale again and then we exhibit and then we pause at the bottom. Now we pause for 10 seconds, so we stop breathing for 10 seconds. Now, in that turn, in that time, CO2 will naturally start to rise in the blood. Now, your chemoreceptors, those minions at the back of the brain, will tell you to breathe. Now we want that to happen, but we'll want to then do that controlled. So the next thing that you do is inhale through your nose all the way to the end of the breath, and then we hold at the top. Now, the hold at the top, it's a different type of hold to the one at the bottom because now we've got a fresh round of oxygen. The urge to breathe will not come as quick because the oxygen needs to work for it to give off CO2, for it to trigger the brain to breathe. So, in this inhale and hold, there's a nice pause and it's quite peaceful. Now, after 10 seconds at the top, we gently and softly blow it out of the mouth. So if you imagine you were to blow out a candle but do it very slowly, your lips will come together, you create a little hole, and we just breathe it out, and we just do that as slow and as long as possible. We want to try and achieve an eight to ten seconds exhale. Now, what that means is that one round is about one minute long. Now, if you do five rounds of the reset breath, you've done five minutes of practice for yourself. So without realizing it, time flies when you do it in a structured way. So it's super simple. Do you want to do it together? Yeah, let's go for it, mate. Go for it. All right. So when you're ready, you can sit nice and tall. For the ones listening, if you're not driving, you can go ahead and close your eyes. Your lips are sealed and your jaw is relaxed. Now, if you go ahead and swallow, your tongue will be placed gently to the roof of the mouth. And when you sit here in your nasal breath, you can just notice maybe where the breath is landing inside the body. So does it stop at the chest? Does it stop at the stomach? Even the lowest part of the abs. When you breathe in softly through the nose, you're gonna breathe out even softer through the nose. Now here we go. Wherever you are, just take a very soft inhale with me. Off we go. Breathe in for two, three, four, and exhale softly for two, three, four, one more. Mirror the breath. Inhale for two, three, four, and exhale to the bottom of the breath. When you get to the bottom of the breath, just hold the breath. We're here for ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. How calm can you breathe in all the way in? Holding when you get to the end of the breath. We're here for ten. Now, in a moment, you're just gonna blow it out and we're gonna try our best to breathe out for eight to ten seconds. Four, three, two, one, exhale. The slower you can do that exhale, the more the body will deflate and relax. Now, if we repeat those rounds three, four, five times, your nervous system, this is what it is. We call it the reset breath because this can reset your nervous system in the sense of the whatever response you were in, we can bring balance back to the nervous system. And when we do that, we can start to feel that those deflation breaths can allow you to really relax and really start to melt deeper into your state of relaxation. So I do it lying down in bed. Like I don't need to sit up, you don't need to sit on the end of your bed or get on your yoga mat to do it. I just lie on them, I lie on my back, I do my five rounds, and then I turn over and I go to sleep. And that is what I need to just give me that moment for the day that I've said, okay, I've spent that time. Obviously, throughout the day, naturally, my practice of what I do, I'm constantly working with people in this space. So I'm doing it as well because I'm doing lots of demonstrations and different practices, etc. Um, and sometimes I'll join in, but around a very busy schedule for people that have real-world, you know, busy schedules, those little moments can be nice to reset.

Open Mindedness And The Three Pillars

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Awesome. How did that feel? Thanks, man. Yeah, good, mate. Good. Um, it's not something that I'm unfamiliar with. The breath has been something quite pivotal for me, but it's a it's a great little reminder. And I yeah, interestingly, I find myself doing it a lot often, just three breaths to let go, transitioning, which is something we talk a lot about here between one thing and the next. Um, yeah, especially Excel. Um, but yeah, I could uh this isn't about me, but um, I've got a few stories to tell you, maybe another time. But um mate, I I um I'm curious, Jack, as we start to wrap this up, is there anything that would that we've not talked about that you're that you like to mention that's important for you, mate?

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Good question. Um can you hear the can you hear the bell in the background?

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Yeah, that's alright, it's life, mate. It happens.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Sorry, I'm in a very old house right now, and there's this clock that just does its own thing.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Um it's a great reminder we're almost there.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

This is it, this is it. Um I would say for those that are on their quest to find in their optimal versions of themselves, just coming back to what we said at the start about the open-mindedness to find what works for you. I think most people don't explore enough to find what works for them. And I think it's typically those things that are standing in their way. It might be time, it might be energy, it might be ego, it might be past experiences, it may be um, you know, all of these assumptions they've already made by doing something. I've I've noticed with some of the best athletes in the world that I've worked with, they're the ones that are the most open-minded. And they typically leave their ego at the door because they're not bothered about what anyone thinks about them trying something because they know they are so obsessed with winning, they are so competitive. If they can find that 1% more, they've done their work. So don't let yourself get in your own way when looking for a version of yourself that you want to sustain over time, which has been, I don't know, whatever work you do. It's do that at the best level, but sustainable as possible because and that translates into your daily life as well. So I think what we do at Optima, the last thing I would say, just on that, is we work with the individual on a very 360 basis. So we look at their health, we look at their psychology, and we look at their performance, and we look at the pillars between each of them, which is breathing, sleep, and mental health. So at Optima, we look at sort of three pillars and it goes in this order sleep, mental health, performance. Now, mental health typically is not the word that, you know, I'm probably not describing it doing it just this. Most people use mental health as a negative connotation, and it's, you know, it's glued to every corporate program or every LinkedIn post now, right? But your mental health is your mental performance. So whatever state you want to be in, the health of your mental, your mentality is influenced how you look at your life and how you look at performance. Sleep impacts your mental health, mental health is impacting your performance. So they're the three pillars, and it goes in reverse as well. Your performance is impacted by the state of mind you're in. Of course, it does. And your state of mind will in turn naturally impact how you're sleeping. Because when you get into bed, if you're not in the right state of mind, you will not sleep. So these three pillars constantly are working together, and they're the three pillars that I believe every high performer needs to really hone in on. And it it's not expensive to do that either, like we were saying before, it's just mindful practice done regularly that can make the biggest outcome, we believe.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

That's right. Yeah, and I it it's it's really interesting that the what works for you is so individual, and it's definitely not a one size fits all. And I also think it's quite a valid point that just because it worked for somebody in high performance doesn't necessarily just mean it'll work for us. And as you alluded to there, um, yeah, that those one percent that they're great, but also for for me, it's really interesting a few layers back is what's fueling that um because yeah, and that's that's that that's a whole new conversation because um what's driving us to those to those lengths to perform uh sometimes, yeah, when we do look under the cover and and get a look in the mirror at the ego, it's not always what we think it is, um, which leads us on to the next level of the game.

Final Reflections And Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Um are you being dragged or are you being driven like in whatever you're doing? You know, these these sorts of things are a lot. I know so many elite level sports people that are playing out of insecurity, basically. Uh the point-to-proof rather than playing for themselves. Um I always you know ask the question, how long can we do that for? Um and it's yeah, it's it's not a one size fits all, it's a complex mechanism that's constantly working. And the we I always say to people as well, like exploring self is like an infinite journey. It's the one thing that I believe is infinite, is understanding and exploring your own self. Um and I I believe, yeah, everyone should try and do that more. Um but yeah, people don't have time, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

Yeah, on that bombshell, Jack. Mate, listen, thank thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us today, mate. Really enjoyed it. Um I I hope get it quick. Got the phone, got the phone. Love it. I uh I hope you have a good day, mate. It's some really interesting stuff in there for people to go away and and and reflect on and also put into practice. So, um, yeah, thanks for that, mate. I'll put the show notes or your your connection details on in the show notes, and um, yeah, thanks for your time, mate. And uh keep on doing you, pal.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Nice one, man. Thank you so much for having me.