WHOOP Podcast - Best of 2022: The Top Conversations Unlocking Human Performance

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

During 2022 we spoke to Olympic champions, Hall of Fame athletes, and leading experts in various fields of research and human performance – and this week, we’re sharing our favorite conversations. It’s an episode that’s equal parts education and inspiration. Throughout our Best Of episode, you’ll hear from Emily Capodilupo on alcohol’s effect on the body (2:41), Andy Blow on hydrating to prepare for a night of drinking (5:55), Dr. Hazel Wallace on creating better nutritional habits (8:48), Dr. Maya Shankar on how to stay committed to goals (13:45), Reggie Miller on how practice led him to a winning mindset (19:12), Michael Phelps on his battle with depression and anxiety (24:24), Sloane Stephens on mental health and being open to understanding others (31:15), Dr. Andrew Huberman on breathing protocols to reduce stress and improve health (36:41), and Brian MacKenzie on the benefits of nose breathing (42:43).Resources:Ep. 171 Michael PhelpsEp. 173 Sloane StephensEp. 181 Andy BlowEp. 184 Brian MacKenzieEp. 185 Emily Capodilupo on AlcoholEp. 192 Maya ShankarEp. 193 Reggie MillerEp. 195 Dr. Andrew HubermanEp. 198 Dr. Hazel WallaceSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. That's right, where we sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, and more to learn what the best in the world they're doing to perform at their peak, as we are, of course, on a mission to unlock human performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP. Well, we're coming off a big week last week with the release of the WOOP year in review. If you haven't listened to that podcast, check it out.

I also recommend you check out your Woop Year in Review in the Woop app. But it's also been a big year for us in podcasting. And if you've been following this podcast closely, a big thank you for doing so. Incredibly grateful to all of our listeners this year. And what better way to celebrate the year of our podcast by doing a best of podcast. So that's right. We covered Olympic champions this year, Hall of Fame. fame athletes, the best researchers, and human performance.

And we've now released our 200th episode. So this has come a long way from when I said, hey, we'll do 10 of these and see how it goes. We're years into the WOOP podcast. Huge thanks to everyone who listens to the WOOP podcast. All right. This is a best of compilation you're going to hear from, of course, WOOPSVP of data science and research, Emily Capitalu, Hydration Expert Andy Blow. Nutritionist Dr. Hazel Wallace, cognitive scientist, Dr. Maya Shankar, NBA Hall of Famer, Reggie Miller,

Olympic champion Michael Phelps, pros tennis star and U.S. Open champion Sloan Stevens, neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and breathing expert Brian McKenzie. That's right, this is a good compilation learned from some of our best podcasts of the year. Also, just want to thank Emily Capilupo and Kristen Holmes, who have co-hosted many podcasts with me. Huge shout out to them. Reminder, if you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508 443-4952. We may just answer your question on a future episode. All right, diving in. As the holiday season is upon us, there's no shortage of opportunities to consume alcohol.

The social gatherings and the stress of the holidays often lead to a pretty boozy December. I sat down with our SVP of data science and research, Emily Capitalupon, discussed the negative effects of alcohol and how much each incremental drink can affect recovery. Here's Emily on drinking alcohol. So as much fun as alcohol is, it's also a poison. And so whenever we poison ourselves or sort of put things in our body that aren't good for it, our body responds by trying to get this thing out of our body. And so we put a lot of physiological resources behind eliminating the alcohol.

And then all of those resources are essentially not available for other things like performing and functioning optimally. Additionally, when we go to bed drunk, instead of all of the important active processes of sleep that help us recover and get into a good place to be well recovered the next day, we're sort of spending those resources on recovering from the alcohol, you know, eliminating that from our system. And so we tend to have much lower quality sleep. And so even though many of us have experienced like you know you have a couple of drinks and then you pass out and you actually you know sleep really well it's more like a sedated sleep than a active sleep and active sleep is what's really good for you and so by being sedated instead of you know achieving these important

physiological functions throughout the night you wake up even if you had you know many many hours of sleep having had very low quality sleep and so that results in being less ready to take on the day yeah i mean i think the the fascinating thing for whoop data and recovery is not just that state of drunkenness, which you described, but even just the one drink, two drink, three drink range, and how that starts to negatively affect your body. So the first theme, as I understand it, that you all analyzed, Emily, of course, leads our whole data science team, is looking at every incremental drink, how dramatically that affected recovery. What did you find?

Each incremental drink makes your recovery go down about 4.2% lower recovery per drink. And keep in mind, this is on average. There's a lot of inter-individual variability here. So we saw, like, you know, just one drink, the effect is relatively small. But when you go all the way up to, like, having 10 or more drinks, which is the maximum amount that we're calculating, you start to see things like really, really dramatic changes in, you know, in recovery and of course in the inputs to recovery. So in things like HRV where you're losing 20 milliseconds off your HRV, you know, same thing with resting heart rate, which tends to

climb, you know, in the difference between, you know, one drink, your resting heart rate goes up about two beats. But when you're talking about 10 or more drinks, your resting heart rates going up like 14 beats per minute. So it's a really, really dramatic, you know, steep incline as the drinks increase. Pretty amazing to see how much the body has to do to deal with alcohol and how much it affects your physiology, your whoop data. Probably not a huge surprise, but it is pretty profound just how much it affects you. If you want more on alcohol, that is episode 185. Transitioning nicely to hydration, which is always a good thing to do if you're going to drink

alcohol, here is Andy Blow, who has some great tips on how to stay hydrated while drinking and an insight on non-alcoholic beer that may surprise you. know you're going to a big celebration, a big part, and you are just accepting the fact you're going to have a few drinks and you want to just take the breaks off and not worry about it. You know, having, treating it almost like a workout in some ways. You're going to, because what you're going to do, alcohol is diuretic. It's going to make you pee and you're going to lose a lot more body fluid. And having a like a, almost like a prehydration like you would before a workout, a strong electrolyte drink and trying to do the same as well, either during the evening at some

point or before you go to bed. It's not going to, it's not like a cure-all because if one of those existed. I think people would have found it by now, but it can help, you know. So if I'm having a party or something like that, I'll pre-mix up a bottle of electrolyte drink and have that towards the end of the evening or before I go to bed as one strategy. And then probably another one in the morning if I'm going to try and go out and, you know, work out, work the hangover off, as it were. The other thing to do was we would chat and we've been chatting with an interesting company that's making some things like non-alcoholic beers for athletes and and that sort of thing and they they were trying to come up with this funky like a beer equation so it was

like the race the ideal ratio of maybe having like two alcoholic drinks to then one non-alcoholic beer or something like that because what's changed massively in the last few years I think is the range of like interesting because it used to be if you went out and you were not drinking you got offered a coke you know that was it really and that was kind of of like, well, I don't really want to drink a coat. It's out of glass of water. It's pretty boring. Now, you know, I'm a fan of drinking real beer,

but some of the non-alcoholic beers are fantastic. And if you just slip one or two of those into the, into your evening, yeah, they're actually pretty good at hydration. You know, if you are in a social situation, it can feel a little bit less awkward because, you know, you're still, still for, you know, it still looks like you're having a drink if that's what matters. And it certainly, they taste, you know, they taste pretty good.

Sometimes after a long, if I go out for a long run on a weekend and it's hot, it's actually like a cold, non-alcoholic beer is a really nice thing to drink as in recovery. I suppose those kind of things, you know, rather than trying to be preachy because we're all, you know, many of us are going to do it. We're going to go out and have a few drinks and enjoy it and then still try and get up and train. So if you do what you can to manage you.

Got to love the insight from Andy there on how to stave off the rough morning after a great evening, you can get the full conversation in episode 181. It's not always the easiest thing to do either, being mindful about creating a habit of getting a water mixed in or having that electrolyte drink handy before bed. But our next guest, nutritionist Dr. Hazel Wallace, has some tips on how to create better nutritional habits and how setting up the building blocks for a healthy lifestyle can prevent diseases later in life. Here is Dr. Wallace.

I think if you're starting out and you feel like you're completely lost, then just kind of start back the basics and think about making one change every month as opposed to all the changes at once. So maybe if this is day one for you, can you get five portions of fruit and veg in each day this week and then build upon that? I think more and more we're accumulating all this research that a plant-focused diet. I don't mean a vegan diet or, you know, excluding animal products, I just mean including more plants in your diet, is going to benefit you in lots of ways because they're so rich in fiber, antioxidants, which benefits the gut, but also all of the processes in our body. Also, you get a lot more nutrients per calorie, so they're not that dense in terms of energy. Focusing towards healthy fats as opposed to high saturated fat foods like lords and butter and processed foods. So thinking about those kind of healthy fats that you find in a Mediterranean-style diet. When it comes to carbohydrates, again, we're not demonizing any food group, but we're thinking about the quality of foods

that we're putting into our diets. So getting in those high fiber whole grains and thinking about the low glycemic type carbohydrates versus the high sugar foods that are going to taste good and give us loads of energy for a short period of time, but not sustain us, not leave us feeling satiated. And making sure we're getting lean sources of protein at each meal time, if not at snack, as well because I think also we often think protein is just important for those who are active or going to the gym, but it's really important for immune health, hormone health, longevity. So if you're starting from day one, focus on the basics and focus on quality of the food that you're putting into your body, then you can build upon that. Like don't get bogged down

about specific niche diets or cutting big food groups because it's not where you're making the most health gains. We don't want to terrify folks, but there is a very clear connection between nutrition, like what you're putting in your body and disease. Do you want to just talk? Because I do think being informed can help inspire behavior change as well. So I think it's important for folks to understand there's short-term implications, of course, but there's some really, you know, scary long-term effects of chronically putting food in your body that is not necessarily helpful. I think we know that highly processed foods are not beneficial for health, largely because they're very high in saturated fat and salt, which are two key nutrients, which are detrimental for health in the long run.

It's not about having these foods every now and then. It's about people that are having these foods most of the time. And in the long run, that can lead to things like increasing your cholesterol, insulin resistance, both of which will kind of increase things like risk of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. But also having diets that are low in fruit and vegetable, that increases your risk of things like colorectal cancer. It increases your risk of other health conditions like low calcium and vitamin D. We've got increased risk of osteoporosis in women. So having a poor diet is not just linked to things about everyday feelings of health or performance or appearance or body weight. It's about like longevity

and your risk of disease in the future. What you put in your body today will determine how long you're going to live in the future and the diseases that you may or may not experience. Nutrition is just as powerful as kind of preventing things and helping to manage certain health conditions. In medical school, we pay a lot of lip service to the role of nutrition and the prevention of heart disease, for example, but doctors today don't have the information to be able to advise on what you should and shouldn't be eaten if you're in that position or if you have osteoporosis, how you can support your bones if you're in that position. And I think that's the missing link that we have in medicine today we know there's a role of nutrition but the link between giving that advice

and getting it to the patient is missing and so people have to fill in the gaps by going online on social media asking friends asking dr google and so it can become very confusing and actually it can be detrimental to health because you could run down the wrong corridor i think it's incredible just knowing how little things we work on today can have such a drastic impact on our long-term health. You can find more of Dr. Wallace's insights on episode 198. If you're starting to build up that new nutritional habit like Dr. Wallace described or maybe a new exercise program, sometimes you have to really break down a goal in order to stay

motivated. That helps introduce cognitive scientist Dr. Maya Shankar, who joined the show to discuss the fresh start effect and offer some tips on how to stay motivated through resolution. and achieve your goals while navigating what's known as the middle problem. Here is Dr. Shankar. The fresh start effect refers to the fact that when we have these milestone moments or any kind of fresh start, that could be a Sunday, it could be the first day of spring, it could be your birthday.

It's a wonderful moment to seize upon when it comes to introducing behavior change into your life. And that's because there's some psychological parting between past and present, right, that feels meaningful, like a new set of behaviors that you might be willing to encourage because maybe you've left some behind. So a good example of this might be, okay, let's say you're moving apartments or you're moving to a new house. A lot of your behaviors are going to change as a result of moving to this new place, right? Your commute to work is going to change, where you go to get your coffee in the morning is going to change. Your friendship group might change. So it's fertile

soil for introducing other changes because you don't have its built-in routines and habits that you're really stuck to, which can make behavior change hard. So I love seizing upon these moments, because, for example, when I moved from D.C. to California, that was a nice moment for me to reset and think, okay, what are the things that I want to encourage in my life that I'm not currently doing in my D.C. life that I can introduce as part of all of the wild changes that I endure just as a result of moving to a new location and having a new job and all of that. And so one of them was like, okay, when I get up in the morning, I really care about taking a walk, which is not something. my DC life afforded me the opportunity to do. And as long as I put that into action very quickly

upon arriving here, that became a habit that was much more easily kept up. And so I would encourage folks to think about these fresh start moments. Again, they don't have to be as monumental as like moving across the country or getting married or whatnot. They can even just be, you know, your birthday. Like as you think about, what do I want my, you know, 24th year to look like or my 47th year to look like. We do know from research that they can be powerful motivators and you can psychologically wipe the slate clean, so to speak, as you try to introduce these new set of behaviors. Maybe talk a little bit about the process and how someone can pull that technique into their life and be more conscious about the behavior that they really want to change. Yeah, I mean, no doubt everyone who

listens to your show is inherently like motivated and ambitious to improve their lives, right? You're almost self-selecting for that population of people who's very eager to, yeah, to achieve some sort of goals, right? And I think the important thing that we want to bridge, and this is where behavioral science comes into play, is what we call the intention action gap. So we have all these intentions. We have all these lofty, big goals that we have for ourselves. But acting on all the micro steps that are required to get us to that final step can be very challenging. And so what we're trying to do is break these really audacious goals. Like, you know, I want to run a marathon by the end of the year. I want to eat healthier or I want to get my cholesterol down or whatever it is that

we want to make sure we're almost parsing it into these micro milestones, these easier steps to make sure that we're more likely to actually go from point A to point B. And so what you want to do is you absolutely want to have that abstract goal. You need to concretize it at some point. You need to actually make these concrete plans that are implemented day to day. Because ultimately, when it comes to long-term goal pursuit, what is long-term goal pursuit? It is just the execution of that long-term goal on any given day, right? It's actually like a very ordinary thing you're doing. It's committing every single day to doing a relatively small piece of that. And so it feels extraordinary at the finish line, but it can actually be very manageable if you think about it day to day. So things like

temptation bundling, things like the fresh start effect can get you started. We also know that motivation changes over the course of goal pursuit. So we know that there's at the outset of a goal, you'll see an increase in motivation. And then when you get to the middle point, there's a decrease of some kind. And your motivation wanes. And then as you're about to approach the finish line, again, you see a boost in motivation. So one of my friends, her name is Iell at Fishbox. She's a professor at the University of Chicago. She calls this the middle problem, right? So she's like, let's see you have a year-long goal. There's going to be this multi-month middle stretch where you're just not feeling as high motivation as you did before. And so her advice is to

actually keep the middle's really short. So rather than thinking about it as a year-long project, think about it as a quarterly project. So now you're in three-month increments and you have these micro-milestones that you're trying to hit. And now the middle is only a couple weeks versus the multi-month middle that it used to be. And so, yeah, I love the research on kind of motivational states and how they wax and wane. And I think it's just under To your earlier question, when we understand the science of human behavior and motivation, decision making, then we can just make sure that our daily choices, the rituals be set for ourselves, the way that we regiment our schedules, it reflects our best understanding of our pitfalls, of our human biases, of our natural tendencies, which, if not managed, might not always lead us towards that long-term goal. It seems like the right time of year to dial up motivation and commitment as you get ready for your New Year's resolution. If you want to check out more of that podcast, that is episode 192 with Dr. Maya Shankar.

I had the privilege of sitting down with NBA Hall of Famer Reggie Miller to talk about his mindset on how he built himself into a winner, how you can get more out of yourself by understanding others, and how preparation was his ultimate key to success. Here is Reggie. A lot of it came naturally and a lot of it came growing up in a big household with fly. other kids and who's the first to the dinner table. You know, so you build up certain characteristics as a kid and you just transfer them into whatever walk of life you're going to go. You know, I would study up on my opponents. I was huge watching film and reading tendencies.

And I think I do that as a broadcaster now because I can read people's body language before it happens. So being able to read someone's body language when they're tired, when they're upset, when they're on the verge of cracking, when things are going well, when to shut up sometimes, sometimes shutting up is good too. So I could read people's body language, which became an art of mind. And a lot of that went into my prep work each and every night of which buttons could I press or if I had to even press sometimes not saying anything being silent is that you know you never wanted to talk to Michael Jordan there was times where you could say something but why poke the bear you know everyone knows he's the greatest player of all time and I got to guard him for 40 minutes

out of 48 so why am I going to poke him but there was little things you can do here and there little subtle jabs you could whisper, you could say, or you could direct whatever you're saying to a teammate of his knowing he can hear it. There's a lot of games that you play out there, and it's a chess match, and it's who wants to play chess and who wants to really play checkers. The great ones know how to play chess, and there are three, four, five moves ahead of you. The good players play checkers. They're worried about the next move.

I'm thinking four or five moves down. That's how I approached it. So that's kind of how I built it up from a young age of being in a big family to always watching film, always doing my homework, and being prepared. People don't understand that goes a long way, along with your physical ability. I knew I wasn't as athletic as Kobe and Dominique and Michael, but I knew I worked hard, and I was meticulous in the little things that it was going to take to be a great basketball player. And on time, and you just merge that into a big gumbo pot, and hopefully something good comes out of them.

You know, listening to you talk about preparation and studying tendencies and just the enormous amount of work outside of the game. It reminds me of conversations, Michael Ford, Phelps on this podcast talked a lot about it, this idea where you've put in so much work before the thing, that when the thing happens, it's like, I've done everything I possibly couldn't for this moment. I'm not going to be overwhelmed by the moment. I'm just in the moment. You know, in a way, it makes you very grounded, very present, almost makes you less nervous. And when I think about your career, it's not surprising to me that that's probably how you felt in a lot of these big moments. Am I describing it fairly? Absolutely. And I listened to that podcast, which we

and it's almost like you're centered once competition begins because to me the hard work was all what I did during the summer. The games are the easy part. The training to me is the hard part is once the games began and I could revert back to those three to four hour days in the gym. This two and a half hour game means nothing. So when I listen to that conversation between you two, you know, I get it. This is coming from one of the greatest athletes of all time saying that. So him being centered, I could totally relate to that because you're almost let down come game time in the big moments. Because the sweat, the tears, being upset with your trainer or yourself, that all happened three, four, five months ago. The game, to me is

the easy part now. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Reggie Miller because not only was he such a successful basketball player, but he's converted that now into a successful career as a broadcaster. He's transitioned into being a great cyclist in his own right. And that really I think gets back to this idea of obsession, habits. It's a great episode. Check it out. Episode 193. Another athlete that is synonymous with the obsession of winning and the drive to be perfect, join me on the show to discuss a side of him that many people didn't know about. That's Olympic champion Michael Phelps, who goes into great detail on his struggles with mental health, depression, anxiety, and the importance of paying attention to self-care.

Let's hear from the 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps. You know, I think throughout my career I had a lot of cries for help. and didn't really know what to say or how to do it. And that one moment was, I mean, I was taking the express elevator down and the spiral staircase straight down. And yeah, I got to the point where, I mean, I didn't want to be alive. And I got to the point where I learned to ask for help too. So, you know, like all of these times or these moments that I've gone through,

whether they're good, bad, or ugly, they've all been learning experiences for me. And honestly, going back to that moment in 2014, when I got my second DUI, I honestly, like, without that night, I don't know if I'd be here today. You know, like, I was able to learn so much from that experience. And, you know, checking myself into a treatment center, the scariest thing I've ever done, admitting that I was, I was not okay. I was weak. I was broken. It was hard. But going through those steps to become who I am today is the best part.

I used to hate who I saw in the mirror. I used to hate it. The only thing I saw was a swimmer. I didn't see anything else. I never saw myself as a human being. So now being able to see myself as a human being, it's a completely different outlook on life. And I love myself. I like who I am.

So now I've been able to accumulate a few tools to help me get through those dark times. And look, I'll be the first to admit for me going through depression and anxiety, it's not something that's just going to go away. It's a part of who I am. and it'll come and go whenever it wants. And I feel like I have more things to help me get through those difficult times than I ever did before. And I think, you know, that's the only thing we can ask. And this is a very passionate topic for me.

And I mean, I want to be able to help as many people as I possibly can. And I know the struggle that I'm going through isn't different than what a lot of other people are going through in this world. So being able to talk about this stuff for me has been such an amazing. journey, being able to hear other people's stories and their experiences through their struggles. It's helped me. Yeah, it's just been a really cool experience. I think your story is so compelling, and I think you being so open about the mental health challenges that you've faced makes you so much more relatable and human in a way. You know, I mean, your career up to 2014 almost seems superhuman, right? Like, unrelatable in a way. And I think by showing that,

No, you did struggle and you did have these thoughts and you did have to work through it. Talk about some of the tools. You mentioned tools to help you cope. Yeah, I mean, therapy. Therapy is something for me that, again, put me here. Being able to, one, see a therapist, but pick up my phone and talk to my therapist whenever I need to. I have a therapist here that I can visually see and go face-to-face and see, or I can go online. However, I feel comfortable that day.

Writing things down, something for me that helps, good, bad, ugly, so I can go back. Again, I'm a data guy. So going back and looking at certain days, good, bad, ugly days, like, why was this day bad? Why was this day so good? And how can I get more good days, eliminate the bad days? So all of these different things for me, on top of working out, on top of, like, self-care, right? Like, anything that we do, I think, that this is a time where we need to spend more time on self-care, right? because I feel like through the pandemic, loneliness is struck in.

And when loneliness strikes in, depression rises. So, you know, I think that's one thing that I will say to everybody out there watching, and I can't say enough, is make sure we're getting that self-care, whether it's meditating, sleeping, like, whatever, taking a bath, taking a steam shower. Like, I like taking steam showers. I like going for a walk, a bath or a cold tub for me is always good. Things that put me in the right mind frame and the state of mind. And that's all I want.

Like again, it's back to being my authentic self. How can I be that person every single day, every single moment? You're someone who reached enormous success by pushing through barriers. How do you know from a mental health standpoint whether you should be pushing through or stepping back? I learned to communicate at an older age. I would say that's the most important thing because we can pile things up and compartmentalize and I'll be the first to admit that's not good and it's not healthy.

That put me at a very dark spot and a very uncomfortable spot for me. in my life. So I would urge everybody just to communicate, however that looks. Whether it's a friend, whether it's in person, whether it's texting, whether it's writing stuff down, communicate, get stuff out in the open. That is the one biggest thing that I think really frees us up. Because the more we carry this stuff along, it just puts more and more stress and weight on us, we just start hunching over.

So the more we can talk about these things, I think, and get them into the open allows us to just be comfortable and like who we are as individuals. Did you realize that you were going to talk openly and publicly about mental health challenges? Probably during the Sports Illustrated preview for the 16 Olympics. So right when I came out of treatment, I sat down with a buddy Tim Layden, who was a writer for SI at the time, and he asked a question. I don't know what the question was. I wish I could, I've asked him and he isn't told me, and I want to know, I don't even know

if he knows, but he asked me a question. whatever that question was, I just poured it all out. I just said, like, I guess at that time, I was just like, this is the right time, the right place, and here you go. I remember when I was in treatment just saying, I don't care what the rest of the world thinks of me. I'm going to show them me.

I'm going to show them the real Michael Phelps. And I remember once I said that, that's all I've done. Like, you're going to see the good, bad, the ugly, like somebody who's going crazy, doing everything that he wants, You'll see the depressed, unhappy, sad, because that's me. I don't want to hide anything. I am who I am, and what you see is what you get. It was pretty eye-opening for me to get to talk to Michael about all these challenges,

his depression, and really, I think eye-opening as it pertains to mental health. I mean, here's someone who's seen as one of the greatest champions of all time, and yet along the way and afterwards, he really struggled with mental health. So it's a powerful episode on many frontiers, and I would encourage him. I encourage you to check it out. That's episode 171, and thank you to Michael for his openness. Mental health, I think, has been a major topic of the sporting world in the past year. And tennis star and U.S. Open champion Sloan Stevens sat down with me to chat more about her experience with mental health. Sloan explained how important it is for people to be more open about what others are going through and understanding everyone's situation is different.

Here's Sloan. I think you have to take care of yourself. There's so many points, I think, especially as an athlete, someone who's active, who's traveling, who's away from home, like, there's so many different aspects of taking care of yourself and, like, self-care and self-love and, like, just being aware of, like, what's happening to your mind and your body and, like, connecting all those dots and connecting the pieces of, like, how you're feeling or how something may be making you feel or whatever. And I think controlling your environment and the things that you can

control, like, actually noticing and recognizing, like, you can do something about it, I think, is important. There's been so much of the time where people are just like, you're an athlete, like, just play your sport, do whatever you do. And I think now, obviously, there's been more talk about mental health and mental awareness and just being conscious of people around you, like your surroundings. And, you know, someone else may be feeling something that is completely different to what you're feeling, but to be respectful of someone else's space in their situation or whatever they're going through, I think we've gotten, as athletes, just it's playing tennis on our to where we've gotten a lot better at it because we understand that we're traveling the world

40 weeks a year with the same girls. And some weeks are tougher than others, right? Some weeks are not ideal to be traveling around because you're like, this girl is nuts. Like, what is going on? And we've had a lot of those. But I think now we're in a place where it's like, hey, guys, I'm not feeling great this week. I'm struggling. Like, don't mind me. Let me do my thing. And And you'll say that to someone you're competing against. Yeah. Now, I think now it's so much more open. Like before, I would say five years ago, seven years ago, like when I first got on the tour,

girls were iceboxes. They, like, did not speak. They wouldn't acknowledge you. They wouldn't even look at you. And now it's like, I know your locker's next to me this week, but like, don't talk to me. Like, I'm really going through it. Like, leave me alone. Like, and I think that's so much better than just, like, being rude, like, being mean.

Like, we all go through different things. all throughout the year. And sometimes, like, there's, you know, things that happen on tour that someone passed away or someone's, you know, grandparent got sick or whatever. Like, there's so many life things that you deal with along with, like, your sport. And I think never before have we been supportive enough, like, as a tour for women's tennis. I think now we're in a good place where, like, there's so many life things that happen in the world. And I think now we're much more supportive and much more understanding of, like, our surroundings. But just because I think we've, we've had a lot a conversation about it and like being open about our feelings and what's happening. And I love it.

I love talking about my feelings, which I know other people sometimes are not. But I'm like, look, like this is, you know. Well, you have a very open way about you. You know, it's refreshing. And many athletes keep things much closer to the chest, almost I think, is a way to protect themselves. And I think it also gets harder when you reach that profile and your status is a professional athlete and you have fans and media and a healthy defense mechanism can be to be a little more closed off right it's like a protection it's like it's an extra layer it's a buffer it's your safety net all of those things like that make you feel a little bit more comfortable like I think athletes are already a little bit uncomfortable whether it's like just walking down

the street and being recognized like a lot of those things like if someone comes up to me and like touches me and I'm like ooh who are you like thinking like that someone I know it's like no It's not like my mom's, like, coworker. It's literally a random person that I don't know. Like, I think a lot of the time, like, dealing with that, like, people don't understand. Like, it's very, it's very stressful being an athlete. I think a lot of fans don't necessarily realize that, that you kind of have to put on your arm or some days to go to work, right?

Yeah, like, it's not always, like, super chatty and fun. It's, like, each athlete deals with their focus or their concentration or they're, like, get ready or whatever it is, very differently, right? Like some people like complete silent. Some people like to like lay in a dark room. Some people like there's there's so many different things. I know that people do that I'm like, whoa, like I couldn't do that. Some people have to eat six bananas and like whatever.

Like there's that's just how they get ready. Right. And I think as fans, no one's ever really seen what that like behind the scenes is like. So they just assume that it's always like, yay, like all happy. And we're like, no, like you're probably about to like bite your coach's head off. You're probably about to like hit your, your hitting partner. because they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. Like, there's just so many things that people don't see,

so they don't really understand, like, what that's like. And I think that is where the disconnect sometimes happens. And then they're like, she was so mean. You're like, no, I was just literally getting ready for my match. I think it's definitely true that the stresses of pro tennis may be different than the everyday grind of someone working a nine to five job. But the message that Sloan shared, I think, extends to all of us.

And it's being open and acceptable. of people's situations, and finding habits that work for you. So check out Sloan's episode. That's episode 173. There are many ways to try and combat stress, but who better to talk about habits and techniques to manage stress than neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman and I dove deep into the various breathing protocols that can help improve mental health and decrease stress.

Take a listen. Here is Dr. Huberman. We thought, hmm, as scientists, let's think about inhale-emphasized versus exhale-emphasized versus inhale-exhale equal. So inhale, exhale, equal is easy to understand. It's where your in and your exhales are roughly the same duration, so maybe three seconds in and three seconds out, three seconds in and three seconds out. And you could even introduce a breath hold where you go inhale for three seconds, hold for three seconds, exhale for three seconds, hold for three seconds, repeat. So called box breathing. So we compared box breathing to inhale emphasized breathing, which means putting more vigor into

the inhale than the exhale, making the inhale active and the exhale passive. And that has a name. It's called cyclic hyperventilation. And it looks like this. So it's about a two to one count of deep inhale, quick exhale, quick inhale, quick exhale. And what you start to notice is kind of heats you up and it feels very alerting. And that's because of the way it changes carbon dioxide and oxygen ratios, but also it triggers the release of adrenaline in your system. And then the third breathwork protocol that we looked at was so-called physiological size. These were discovered in the 1930s. We all do this during sleep if we aren't getting enough oxygen, but essentially what it involves is a big inhale, followed by another short little inhale

to maximally fill your lungs and then a long, full, slow exhale, and then you repeat. And so we've studied those different patterns of breathing. And I should mention that we had people do these for very brief periods of time, five minutes a day, but in some cases even shorter. And what you find is that when you compare those three different patterns of breathing, box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation, and cyclic sighs, and you compare them to meditation, it really is cyclic sighing that has the most traumatic effect on improving mood, improving heart rate variability, improving sleep, and some other parameters as well. And to us, that felt meaningful because this pattern of a big, deep breath, you know, take a deep breath kind of thing, but then sneaking in a little bit more,

and ideally the inhales are done through the nose, and then exhaling all your air until lungs empty through the mouth, that pattern of breathing is known to create the fastest and most complete calming response. It really activates the parasympathetic nervous system. It sort of preferentially hits the break on arousal and stress and anxiety, whereas cyclic hyperventilation does the opposite. It's like hitting the acceleration, or the accelerator rather, of the sympathetic nervous system. And then box breathing kind of keeps you in that even plane of both. And a couple of key features that people decide to do this. First of all, you can do this any time of day. It doesn't have to be done in a specific time of day. Ideally, you would do it for

five minutes, but that actually is quite a long while for people to dedicate. So even just one or two cyclic size can be very beneficial. And then I should also just thank WOOP because WOOP very generously supported this study by contributing WOOP bands. We were actually, this was a, you know, humility aside, I think this was really a landmark study in the the sense that during the pandemic, all these laboratories were shutting down. And Dr. Spiegel and I saw an opportunity to start measuring stress. There was a lot of stress in the world and to do it remotely in people's natural environments. You know, we love bringing people to the laboratory because we can control everything. All the variables are controlled, pretty much. But we were

getting people's data 24 hours a day in real time with woup bands, right? That was my watch, but the woup bands here. The, um, it is there. It's under my sleeve. sleep. I like that. And so what's really amazing is that we were getting data from hundreds of subjects located in different time zones with different lifestyles, constantly pinging us data about their sleep, heart rate variability. And one of the things that was really cool was that we also found that people were very willing to do these short breathing protocols. And that was very informative for us. And this work will soon be published. It's in its very, very final, final stages of the process. But we are comfortable talking about the results. And it's really opened our eyes to the

fact that deliberate breathing protocols, in particular cyclic sighing, are at least to my understanding, the fastest way to deliberately calm down in real time. And that's the other point, that meditation and many forms of breath work and massages and vacations, they're all wonderful. But they require you leave the environment you're in and go calm down. Cyclic sighing is something that you can do walking into a board meeting, maybe even during an argument or you don't want to get triggered. Children can learn how to do this. In fact, when children sob or when adult sob, for that matter, and they've been crying very hard and they're out of breath. Watch, they'll do a double inhale, long exhale. It's a way to recover. That's amazing, yeah. This is a built-in mechanism. It has to do

with a particular brainstem structure. Again, it works the first time and it works every time. I really love this idea of the cyclic sigh, and certainly a technique that people should be enjoying to stay grounded and get them through stressful situations. I've been practicing it. I hope you'll give it a try. And stay tuned because we have a lot more coming with Dr. Andrew Huberman in 2023. I think some things that are going to really blow you away on the product side. And Dr. Huberman is episode 195, really a brilliant guy in a lot of different contexts, and I think makes information digestible. Like complicated research, he makes it very digestible.

So check that out. That's 195. We are going to wrap up here now with another breathing expert, Brian McKenzie, and unpack the benefits of nose breathing. That's right. Don't breathe through your mouth. Breathe through your nose. At least that's what we've learned from Brian McKenzie.

Here's Brian. The things that I've seen, we haven't run research on this, but the things I've seen clinically, meaning the clients that I've worked with and we've recorded a lot of this data is increasing in REM and deep sleep. Even if we don't see an increase in time in sleep, we do see those increases. We see that in our data, too. It's, you know, antic data at this point, you know, just people reporting, hey, we've taped our mouth, and then they see huge increases in both REM and soy sleep. Yeah. So we've seen this also with just engagement of five to 10 minutes by bookending my day with breathing protocols that match my exhale test, help regulate the system a bit more.

stress has three parts to it right it's the stimulus or the event which is us talking right and then there's the actual nervous system's response to that so what how the nervous system interprets that and sends signals but then there's the behavior that follows that so if you ask a question that i don't totally understand or something were to go you were to ask something that was like i didn't like that can change the dynamic of things right and so my breathing follows these patterns of psychology of what's happening, right? So breathing is emotional, just like my tissue's emotional. I carry emotion in my tissues, right? Which is why we see people who have profound events happen through body work. But if we take this even further, what we see is that the breathing is affected when we're

going through something like this, but so are my hormones. So take a high stress situation. I'm driving in traffic. Somebody cuts me off. My adrenaline spikes. I hit the brakes, but then I get pissed and I react and go, you, and I start yelling and I scream, right? Take it personally. You get this response. Well, that hormonal flood of adrenaline, of the glucose corticoids that are happening, all of that then carries proteins that now work into genetic polling. So now I've created a behavioral pattern that's followed suit into something that I believe is just me, right? Where the real thing, and what I was getting at this is if you and I were really smart after we get off this call, it would just be to sit there for however long it takes to just do a few deep breaths until you feel that come down

happen. That come down is part of ultrate and what is called an ultradian cycle, which is very similar to the stuff you guys are measuring at night. Okay, so your REM, your deep, all that. That stuff is happening during the day, but most of us are blowing through it, because we've got so much on our plate. And that's where the breathing comes in is it's like, okay, go into something for like 90, 120 minutes and then calm down, chill out for 20 minutes

and let the system reorganize itself and do what it naturally will do. And that's where the creativity stuff starts to really blossom. And this is where breathing really should from a release standpoint come in in my humble opinion, is that the relief stuff is being way overused. And what we're seeing is that every app on the market simply just is some breathing protocol for calming down or doing, and it's like you can't actually do that if you don't actually

understand how the person responds to stress and how well they tolerate CO2. Because a box breathing set done 4444 is going to affect you and I. differently, and we can see that metabolically. Obviously, there's a lot of benefits to breathing through your nose, particularly how it can affect sleep, how it can maximize performance. If you want to learn more about Brian McKenzie, check out episode 184. All right, that's a wrap, folks. Thanks again to all of our guests in 2022.

We're going to have even more awesome guests in 2023. If you enjoyed the podcast this year, please leave us a rating or review. please subscribe. You can check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you want to ask us questions, we do podcasts where we compilation of lots of different questions. So that's podcast at Woop.com. Call us 508443-4952,

and we may just answer your questions on a future episode. Happy holidays, folks. Have a great new year. And we will see you in 2023. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.