WHOOP Podcast - Mental Toughness: Endurance and Grit Tips from Elite Performance Coach Rachel Vickery

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by Rachel Vickery. Rachel works with high performers in professional and elite sport, corporate and elite military who need to do big and difficult things where the stakes are high and the impact is significant for many. Now she is working as a High-Performance Consultant optimizing the physiological stress response so good people can execute when it matters and sustain long careers in these environments. Kristen and Rachel will discuss getting introduced to pressure (2:35), developing interoception (10:54), creating coaching moments through ice baths (14:10), entering the arousal state (17:45), cold therapy as a training and awareness piece (24:33), being in the moment vs natural arousal states (32:10), preparing for the arena as a high performer (38:46), breathing mechanics and performance (43:45), and setting yourself up for success (45:15). Resources:Rachel's Website Support 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, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, and we're going to dive right in. This week's episode, Woop VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, The Fearless, Kristen Holmes, is joined by Rachel Vickery. Rachel works with high performers in professional and elite sport, an elite military who need to do big and difficult things where the stakes are high and the impact is significant. Now she is working as a high performance consultant optimizing the physiological stress response so good people can execute when it matters and sustain long careers in those environments. Rachel is also a

qualified sports physiotherapist, a former international representative gymnast, a performance ambassador for leaders in sports, and has co-founded two digital health startups. Kristen and Rachel will discuss learning how to perform under pressure. Rachel actually talks about her time as a professional gymnast. The power of interoception. How cold therapy can be used as a mental coaching exercise. Preparing to be in the arena as a high performer. Breathing mechanics and performance.

Rachel actually shares a story about a professional golfer. She helped fall back in love with the sport. And how to set yourself up for success. If you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast. podcast, email us, podcastooop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. Without further ado, here are Kristen Holmes and Rachel Vickery. So people need to perform in high pressure situations, whether it's on the field of play, in the boardroom, in the operating room, or making a toast at a wedding. We all have moments that feel high stakes. Today, we're going to leverage the amazing Rachel and her

expertise to help us understand the science behind pressure and how we can create an structure to enable us to show up when the stakes are high. Rachel, welcome. Thank you, Kristen. Thanks for having me here. Oh, my gosh. So excited to be able to chat with you. You have had this really interesting career yourself.

And I think one of the sports that when I watch it, I don't know any sport that feels more high stakes and pressure than gymnastics. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe talk a little bit about just your introduction to just pressure. Yeah. And, you know, I imagine, you know, you just competing at, you know, an Olympic level, national level, you know, for New Zealand, you've experienced a lot of pressure. Yeah. And it was pressure at a young age, too, which I think was, you know, unlike many sports where you get to almost be an adult when you come to those moments of real pressure. We're still kids, you know, like 13 was the first time I was on the national team as a junior, but totally wasn't prepared for the stuff that we were getting exposed to, you know.

And I think in that environment with gymnastics, there's the pressure. and fear in that acute moment of doing a particular move, particularly if it's one that you're not comfortable with. But then there's also the pressure of the environment itself, you know, and pressure of, you know, letting teammates down, letting yourself down, letting the country down, letting family down, letting coaches down, you know,

and all of those sorts of layers that come into it as well. Particular sport like gymnastics, which is at the time was certainly a really toxic environment as well. But, you know, certainly for me it's that exposure to that environment what has me do what I do now, you know. It was like kind of the ultimate training ground. Yeah, it pretty much was, you know, and it was actually that exposure to how is it that as a human I can do something really, really well?

Like I used to have this mount that I'd do up onto the beam and the beam's like four inches wide and, you know, and I could nail this particular, it was very difficult mount. It was a back somersault, blind entry land on one leg. Jesus. Yeah, right? I don't know what my coach was thinking. I mean, I think gymnastics is so, it just seems so far out of the realm of the realm of, just human capability, you know, like I can't even imagine executing any of those.

No, and I look at it now, I'm like, how did I do that, you know? But it was this move that I could do just perfectly in practice and training or in a low-level competition, but I couldn't nail it on a big international, you know, I fell once. And I think after I fell that first time, and it didn't fall significantly. I was like just a tiny little bit off balance, but, you know, when the beam is that narrow, the margin of error is so small. So, and I fell. And I couldn't work out, why is it that I can do it when there's no pressure, but in those big moments, I fall.

And I think the traditional approach, certainly back when I was a competing athlete, was it's a mental issue. You're mentally weak or it's in your head, work with a sports psychologist, do the right visualization, use the right self-talk, and you'll be able to crack it. And I didn't, and I couldn't. And I was a really good competitor everywhere else. So it wasn't like I couldn't handle pressure, but it was just one particular thing. Does that make sense? It does, yeah. And that was fascinating for me.

just to go, what goes on for humans, you know, both in that moment, but also where are we, when we walk into our performance arena in terms of what is our pressure state at that point. And, you know, for me as a gymnast, it was less about, I think, that particular move, but it was everything else about the environment and life, bigger picture that meant I came into that environment already feeling under that, you know, that physiological stress response was kicking in already. Right, right.

I had no chance. And in a negative way. Because we need some level of anxiety, right, in order to kind of generate the arousal we need to perform on a stage like that. Now let me ask you this. So based on what I kind of understand from just the literature and psychology, if you're generally speaking experts, so let's say you're expert at the balance of me, you're expert at this move, right? Even at a very young age, you're expert. Generally speaking, experts perform better the bigger the stage, generally. So where do you think the disconnect was?

Because you had all the repetitions. You had, you know, what did you learn that if it wasn't confidence necessarily, it wasn't, you know, the sports psychology couldn't fix you, what was the, you know, and I put that in quotations, because you were not broken to be really clear. But, you know, what was the mechanism behind, you know, that inappropriate level of arousal in that moment? I think that there was so much writing on it that it was more the high consequences. of outcome. You know, in the world that I work in now, certainly, you know, at go time,

you know, as in like when you step into your performance arena and you need to be able to execute. There's usually a few things, usually three, maybe four, depending on your sport. You know, one is high consequence of outcome. You know, one is unknown and uncertainty. One is being outside your comfort zone. And then if you're in a sport where there is some sort of aerobic component, there's also a significant change in breathing from a ventilatory response, you know, not from the arousal perspective, but just from literally what changes to breathing mechanics when you're breathing hard and fast. So three, if not four of those. And so sometimes you can account for one of them, you know, but for me as a gymnast, I think

apart from the aerobic capacity, there was certainly three of them. And I think it was the biggest one was the consequence of outcome that in that moment was the big one because it was more the feedback of what we were going to get from the coaching staff. Do you know what And that was, I think, that extrinsic pressure wasn't so much internal. So I think that's one of the things if you're more of an adult, you know, you talk about being an expert. You've perhaps got a better internal barometer in terms of confidence and all those sorts of things, right? As a young athlete, we're so driven or, I guess, our internal litmus test of, have I done a good job, is not internal. It's especially sport like gymnastics.

You're relying on coaches and parents and media to tell you. judges, right? So you can do a good job and there's a judge down the other end of the scorecut and their opinion is more important than what our opinion, at the end of the day, right? Because that's how that's how sport works. But I think, you know, what I, years later, when I, you know, went down my professional career with all the things that I've added into that, is understanding that yes, when we talk about pressure, there is obviously the mental or the cognitive side of that. But there's also a significant change in our physiology and our biomechanics that happens as a result of that.

And so for me, and I think we see this a lot with experts, you know, in inverted comments, especially elite athletes, is that we practice our event to the point that you know exactly where you need to position yourself precisely to execute your thing. However, a subtle change in biomechanics because of what changes with the physiological stress response and that physiological stress response, one of the changes will be a change to respiratory mechanics,

which will generally change firing up through, you know, the upper limb, right? And so you get an increase in tension through the shoulders, you get an increase in tension across the chest and across the upper back. And so a sport like gymnastics where you're positioning yourself exactly, you know, we see it with free throws for basketball. There's a lot of sports, firearms and military, you know, is that just that subtle change in biomechanics and timing because of the physiological stress response that's been triggered by all of these other things, the change was actually a biomechanical change. So as I was coming into the board on that particular move, my time, I could actually feel my timing was

off, but it was too late to course correct because you're already in motion. Does that make sense? And so what we never taught is yes, we did the visualization, the mental rehearsal, the self, but we weren't taught, I guess, that sense of breathing mechanics, but also what am I feeling in my body and what's changed? And how can I work with my body to change, you know, what am I feeling in my breathing? What am I feeling in my heart, right? You know, all of that, you know, interception, really, like to go, what, what's my body doing in this moment that I can actually replicate it in my body rather than trying to change it in my mind. So is interception kind of step one would you say, you know, when you're trying to help

someone, because you work with all, you know, these really top performers, right, in the world, right, to kind of help them work through pressure and be able to perform to their potential when it matters the most. Would you say that's kind of, how do you train interoception, right? Like I, you know, I think that this is, from my perspective, like, I couldn't agree more that I think having, being in touch with what's happening internally, your heart rate and your, your respiration, like all of that, I think, is such a critical element to performance and just to self-regulation and to be able to kind of bring yourself to a point where you have appropriate arousal and mental physically emotionally, understanding that that is actually what underpins it, I think is probably a really important source of insight. So you just talk a little bit more about how do we develop. interoception. And when people develop it, what can they, how do they then leverage it in these high pressure moments? And it's funny because it's a term that I hadn't really come across until relatively recently. You know, and I've been working in this space for like two decades. So I think

in terms of giving it a label is relatively new. But that's like a lot of things, I guess, isn't it? Yeah. Same as allostatic load, right? That's a relatively recent or new term, you know, not when I say recent. It's not like 20 years. It's coming into the public consciousness in a way that it hasn't previously. It's been in the science world, right? Yeah, totally. And so in terms of how do we train it? I think what's fascinating is that normally the only time that we get that real

adrenaline hit, you know, that physiological stress response really kicking in is usually in a scenario where there is a priority threat focus, you know? So what I mean by that is you're generally focused on whatever it is that has triggered that response in us and you're worrying about solving that. Does that make sense? And so we don't normally get awareness in that moment of what am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I noticing with my heart rate, my breathing, all of those sorts of things?

Because I'm just worrying about what do I need to do to sort out here. So one of the environments that we'll often use is, funnily enough. And I know this gets done to death for some of the wrong reasons, but is ice bath exposure. Right? Because I think when you get in the ice bath, especially if you haven't front-loaded it with anything, you know. And my preference is you just get in and you feel, how does my body? body respond to that because I think it gives us a great insight to, you know, the trigger might be different. The thing that triggers that stress response, there's a whole lot of different

environments and scenarios and what triggers yours is going to be different from mine. And when you say front load, what do you mean, you know, it's kind of your, you're preloading kind of what you think is going to happen when you get to the ice bath? Yeah, but also, I mean, I think one of the popular shiny things these days, right, in the performance world is to do some sort of breathwork before getting into the ice bath. And I think I can understand some of why that happens. But again, if you think about the functional go moment, when that comes out sideways in life, you haven't got time to go hang on a sec, just give me 30 seconds while I do my, you know, fill in the gaps, breath work, right? Yeah. All right, I'm doing it right. I just

get my booty right into that cold water. A hundred percent, right? It's like, you know, I don't think about it. You don't think about it. Right. But in the real life, you know, if it's a car accident, if it's someone that's suddenly shooting you, if you're in theater and a patient goes south, you know, you don't generally have time or warn. You know, you don't generally have time or warning that says, hey, you're about to get this adrenaline hit, this physiological stress response where breathing changes, decision-making changes, situational awareness changes, you know, all of those things. You need to be able to feel it and then immediately de-escalate it.

So having those tools in your toolkit to be able to do that. So I think the first thing with ice bath is it just gives people an awareness of where does my body go to, you know, what is my stuff? Because some people will feel it absolutely in their breathing to the point that they'll hyperventilate and they really notice, wow, I get really tight through my shoulders. But some people might notice that it's actually their thought processes that change. They very much go to that victim mindset. You know, this is, this is, you know, this is crap, what am I doing this for?

This is a waste of time. You know, this is cold. I've got to get out of here. This is too hard. They'll be more in their head with it rather than being in a body with it. So I think that straight away gives awareness for them, and then they can start to work through that. And how do you coach? So someone who's in their head when they get in ice bath versus someone who is kind of fueling in their body,

what are the different coaching moments for those kind of different pathways? Different pathways. I mean, obviously the first thing is just notice, right? Just notice. Right, just the awareness. Yeah, 100%. And I think very much then coming into the body, you know, I think as humans, right, we kind of like to think that we are these very smart, you know,

cognitive beings that just happen to feel. But if you think biologically, we're feeling beings that happen to think. So more often our thought processes are driven by our physiology, whether we're in sympathetic nervous system or parasympathetic nervous system. You know, if we are in sympathetic nervous system because of this physiological response, we're more primed mentally to be looking for where is the threat, where is the danger, where is the thing that I have to, you know, it's basically, I guess, at a primal level, don't die, right? That'll show up in a lot of different modern ways for us.

If I'm teaching this visually, I usually, you know, I talk about squiggly lines and red lines, right? Because it kind of makes a little bit of a visual understanding of the fact that with our, arousal state as in like our physiological stress response, parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system, we're always fluctuating between the two. It's not black and white that we're in this one or we're in this one. You know, even in a stressful day, we'll be fluctuating, right? And we've always got a threshold that says as long as my arousal state stays below whatever my threshold is and you'll have a different threshold in the same environment, then as long as my arousal states below my threshold, none of the negative side of performance will show up.

You know, I can, my cognitive awareness, my decision making, my fine motor skills, all of that stays in my relative control. But once that crosses my thresholds or my red line, you know, that's when I lose my smart decision making, my situation awareness, my fine motor skills, my big gross motor skills sometimes that will alter and change performance. Now, if we try to sort of think that through in our head, but I've lost my rational thinking and my smart decision making,

it's too hard. I actually need almost a body skill or a way that I can dart input into my physiology to de-escalate my arousal state. Then my smart brain's back online and then I can talk myself down from the ledge or I can think through what is my next action, what do I need to do? Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. Totally, as a psychophysiologist, I think about the integration of these two things,

which comes first. I always feel like the path to accessing the mindset that you need in the moment to perform, your path to that is through your physiology. 100%. You know, there's no question. Like, I don't know if everyone would agree, certainly a psychologist thinks that I think they can talk yourself into a better future, but I think to get to a place where you can talk yourself to a better future, the degree to which you can kind of control your autonomic nervous system to a degree, and I know that is kind of a, people are like, it's automatic, but I think,

you know, but I think what we're saying is that you can down and put into it, right? Of course, right. Like, you know, you can bring yourself from a sympathetic state to a paristhenic state through your breath, right? And this is this exciting revelation, I think, in the last decade, is that we actually have way more control over a physiology than we ever thought, right? And I think this is, and I'd love to get, you know, to hear you expand on this, like the number one skill is interoception, right? Our path interoception is number one is awareness in putting ourselves in situations where

we are forced to become aware of our body. We're forced to kind of think about this relationship between our autonomic nervous system and how it's sending signals to her heart, right? We get into this cold bath, right? It's 37 degrees, and all of a sudden, I am sympathetic. I've got adrenaline in my, and now all of a sudden, I am, I can't help but be aware of my body. So this is like incredible training ground, is what you're saying.

Yeah. And the next thing is that in that moment in the ice bath, you're getting in with the only, that's the sole purpose, is to train the stress response, is to awareness, and now how do I train it? How do I, what can I do, that is going to de-escalate my arousal state that will take control, rather than, you know, I've worked with professional footballs, even elite military, you know,

we first get them in and they just try to white-knuckle it. You know, they're like, I can suck it up and I can deal with it. And it's like, I know you can, but that's not the purpose because, again, in your go-moment in the real-life situation, if you're having to put that much energy into just white-knuckling it and dealing with that three minutes in the ice bath, that's so energy costly that you can't do that in the go-moment when your threat focus is elsewhere because you're using all of that mental focus just to white knuckle the ice bath. Does that make sense? So what we want you to be able to do is get to that point of complete calm and you do that through, you know, obviously

breathing is a critical one. Right. But it's not, again, it's not breathwork, right? It's coming back to first principles of respiratory mechanics. Right. Spiritary phase longer the end, then spiritually, and out through the nose using the diaphragm, you know, in terms of tapping into parasympathetic breathing. Yeah. Just restate that because you went really fast. Sorry. longer exhale than an inhale. Yeah, longer exhale than an inhale. And there's a whole lot of reasons that we do that from a respiratory mechanics perspective, but also from heart rate slowing down more with the exhale than the inhale.

But if we put more emphasis on the inhale, we tend to breath stack. So we get shallow and we end up being an upper chest breather. And as soon as you're an upper chest breather, you're in sympathetic nervous system. And I think just in breathing, you know, why I come back to, you know, breathwork is not breathing mechanics. There's a huge difference between what you do for that two minutes of breath work versus the 20,000 breaths that you will do through the day when you're not thinking about breathing.

And the 20,000 breaths that you'll do through the day when you're not thinking about breathing have more of an impact on your arousal state than what you do with those couple of minutes. Yeah, all right? And we can, you know, the story will often talk in that scenario as a golfer, he's a pro golfer, and he had his card up here in the US.

and then he had a form slump and then he couldn't make the cut and then he lost his card and he moved back home and he'd been working with a sports psychologist for about eight years at that point on, you know, on breathwork and then Scyc had referred to him.

I worked very closely with Sites. Got a lot of time for them and, you know, obviously it's an integrated approach but, you know, and he came in to see me he'd been referred about a year before he comes in and he comes in and he says, Rach, he goes, I've made the decision this morning I'm done with golf.

This is the first time I've ever met him, you know? And to be honest, don't need to learn this breathing crap, who didn't use that word, he used a very Australian word, but, you know, PG podcast. He goes, I don't need to learn this because it doesn't work. And I said, okay, he's like, the psych's been teaching me for years. I said, well, how does the psych teach you breathing for arousal state control or for performance? And he's like, well, as part of my pre-shot routine, I step off the ball, I take three, you know, big breaths, deep breaths, I step in the ball, I dress the ball, I play my shot. I say, fantastic,

How long are you on the course for? And he was like anywhere from four to four and a half hours. I said, great. How many shots do you take? And he looked at me like I was an idiot. And he was like, well, 70. I was like, okay, cool. So what you're telling me is of the 4,500 breaths you're going to do that whole round,

210 of them are designed to set your state. But the other 99.6%, you're leaving completely the chance. And he just looked at me like, oh, I haven't got this breathing so well sorted. Which was awesome, because then what we could do, right, is we could step him through biomechanics. And we could actually say to him, hey, when this adrenaline kicks in, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in. One of the first things that happens is your limbic system makes you breathe upper chest because it thinks it's preparing you to run from danger or to fight, but you need more air,

which is why we start the upper chest breathe, right? It's part of the respiratory response to exercise. We will use our upper chest. However, if you're a golfer and you've practiced your swing, same as what we're talking about with that gymnastics move, right? You know exactly where to position yourself, the fluidity of your backstroke and you follow through. you know your timing really, really well. But now when you're walking from the ball and you're walking between shot

and you're thinking, if I miss the shot, I'm going to miss the cut. If I miss the cut, I'm going to probably miss payday. If I miss payday, I'm not supporting my family. And that all escalates in the head, right? Which means that that golf is getting this increase because of his respiratory mechanics changing. So now his whole biomechanics of his swing

is completely different. And we could just show him that on his anatomy, say these are the muscles you use to breathe, These are the muscles you use for your golf swing. Can you see how this changes? And he was like, oh, that's not a problem in my head. That's a problem in my body. Because if we could actually then give him,

A, their awareness of what's changing as it was changing, but be more importantly, what can you do to replicate by dropping your shoulders, breathing out, you know, those sorts of things. Lift your eyes, use your peripheral vision. Again, another great way to turn on parasympathetic. Then he could actually start to take control and replicate the position that he was in when he had. needed to execute his skill rather than just being reactive to his arousal state, you know,

and he cracked it and goes card back. My son is really into golf these days. He's interested in playing in college and spends a lot of time. And that's who we say, like between holes, it's breadth and strategy. That's it. You're not attaching yourself to outcomes. And maybe just talk, because I think a lot of what you're saying is, and I think a lot of when we think about high pressure, high stakes, we think about, you know, performing for a certain

outcome. And I'm, you know, having, you know, as coach and high, takes pressure situations for many, many years, and I really created an infrastructure with my team to almost attach ourselves from outcomes. So all of our entire kind of ethos and framework was set up to evaluate our performance, not on outcomes, but a set of principles and that we were aiming to kind of, or values that we were aiming to live, you know, through our sport. Awesome. That's great. You know, so it's just like a different way of thinking about it. As a result, we want a lot. I think about this idea of outcomes as being really an assault on the process

and creating a physiological and psychological state that actually is quite counterproductive when you unpack it in a way that you do. So I think as a strategy, like I love setting your state. So interoception is the awareness piece. Cold is a thing that you can do to train that interoception. is there other couple modalities that you feel like are really good to kind of help help get a person to maybe feel that their internal state so cold you mentioned and then we'll talk a little bit more about setting your state real quick yeah yeah yeah I think you know in

terms of cold it's it's the awareness piece but then it is the training piece too yeah right and so it's you know can I breathe can I just get to that point of of calm depending on the people that I'm then working with, we will then either once have got to that point of calm. And, you know, this is not for the average person necessarily, right? I mean, you know the types of people that I work with, as do you. But then we'll get them to do some cognitive training. So it's like, right, in the ice bath, with control of your state, now is it, you know, they might need to know, do some really complex maths equations depending on their role

or they might have to, you know, foreign language or something like that. So can you actually be working with us at the same time as now staying in control of your arousal state. And what they notice is as soon as they start to get into their head to think about that thing, their shoulders come up. They lose control of their breathing. Their heart rate starts going fast again. So then we try to put those two together. So we're training them to layer that ability to do some hard cognitive tasks with still control of their arousal state or fine motor skills, you know, as an example. So you've got a stack complexity as you gain more confidence or competence kind of in that arousal state. Yeah. So they're trying to almost control

Not subconsciously, but more at a lower level of I can concentrate on another task, but I'm subtly aware, oh, my shoulders have come up. So how do I just, well, my breathing's got tight, so I have to do that at the same time. And even there is great awareness for them as soon as the first time we usually do that where we throw another more complex task at them, where they realize that they lose control of that arousal state very quickly, is again for them to understand, okay, now in your performance arena, can you see how, you know, because most of our high performers, right, have that mental, emotional, physical ability to do very difficult things.

They're very mentally, physically, emotionally, even spiritually resilient, right? But that doesn't mean that their physiological stress response is not going nuts under the surface and escalating to the point that it can cross over their threshold and tank performance. So when we do that for the first time in the ice bath as an example, they go, oh, I get why at go time in that really high pressure moment, even though I'm mentally, physically, emotionally resilient, I lose control or I make mistakes or my bad. decision making goes AWOL because it's escalating without me realizing it.

So it also then puts the awareness for them on why it's important for them to learn to train that rather than, you know, most people, I call it the technical, tactical, tactical hope strategy. You know, they get really good at the technical and tactical aspects of their craft, whatever that is, and then just hope that it shows up under pressure without having an understanding that you actually need to have an understanding of what changes for me when that pressure response kicks in. So I think, you know, ice bath is fantastic.

I'll also use really intense, depending again on the group, really intense physical exertion and training when you can actually get someone to that point of physiological redlining from a physical exertion perspective and then do fine mode of training or cognitive training or whatever. So again, they have to apply to some skills to de-escalate. Usually, you know, same thing, breath, vision, thought. You know, usually three of the things that change

in our physiological stress response that we do actually have conscious control over with training, you know heart rate is a little bit harder as a direct as a direct input yeah the breath out we can generally have a lot more control over and vision expanding our vision yeah exactly we don't want to have a narrow we don't want tunnel vision yeah so either looking up or or just being aware of peripheral vision just bring that back up yeah back online yeah as I tell my son he's you know walking to the next hole like don't look at the ground don't like you know yeah yeah look up you look up look up you know look up you look up you look up you look up yeah and giving someone you know

that action framed in a way that's what to do, what not to do. So rather than don't look at the ground, it's like, hey, look up. That's important in our own self-talk to, you know, in terms of how we frame things. Because coming back to your point about the outcome piece, right, I do a lot of work with high-level swimmers where they're very focused on the time. That's often when they start a race, that's successful failure. If you're a gymnast, same thing was a score, right? But when you set something up that's outcome-focused, then there's a risk that you might actually

fail at that task. And when you understand, you know, as I know you do, right, you know, human physiological stress response, failure as a primal human was literally a death sentence. Right. And so anytime we perceive that there is a chance that I might fail at something, sympathetic nervous system kicks in, right? Because it's trying to keep me safe from failing at that task. Failing to, you know, run away from a lion, right? It wins. It's all over for me. Yeah. So if it's something that's the outcome, I might fail at that. Then there's suddenly a high consequence of outcome to that and through a response kicks in. If I'm focusing on the processes

or more even creativity or opportunity in that there's like curiosity. Curiosity right? I wonder how well I can play. I wonder how clean I can execute this thing. And sometimes with training I'll get a group it works very powerfully when you get a group

especially if it's a group where they're the same sport and it's easy to give them some examples and it might be okay close your eyes and just feel in your body I have to swim and we give them whatever their time is right right and they'll just notice randomly as they're closing their eyes they'll notice that their shoulders will creep up their heart starts going they'll feel this heaviness in their stomach almost this heaviness in their body and now I'm like okay close your eyes same thing what do you notice in your body I wonder how fast I can

swim you know I can swim fast and I wonder how fast I can and they'll describe like this lightness or this openness or this um you know just freedom more in their body and I'm like fantastic which version of you behind the blocks do you think it's going to swim better? And they're like, oh, well, obviously this one, you know? So it just gives them that confidence, I think, to know when you change your thinking, this is how it changes your body. Can you see that that's probably going to give you that better performance, that ability to replicate the fluidity, the power, the length, whatever it is that you need to execute for your thing? Yeah, I think this is like such a powerful framework for people, or just even, when you think about it from

a psychological perspective, you know, everything you're describing is called appraisal, right? Like, how I'm praising the situation is it going to put me in a bucket of either at the highest level, easy, challenging, or very difficult. Yeah, yeah. And when I'm in a very difficult situation, or I perceive or appraise the situation to be very difficult, I'm going to have a mental, physical, emotional response that's probably suboptimal. It's not going to allow me to perform to my potential under pressure.

Yeah, yeah. Similarly, and I think this is important for us to talk about too, too, is what if I appraised that task as too easy, for example, right? I'm also not going to generate the appropriate level of mental, physical, emotional arousal. And I can think in, you know, in a lot of situations that maybe I feel like something isn't as relevant, but you know what? I still need to perform.

So there's relevance and appraisal kind of work together. Relevance basically sets a ceiling on how much, what my potential motivation is for the task. Yeah. So I think, and I feel like performers, and anyone who's interested in performing consistently needs to understand the relationship between perception and appraisal, right? If we don't, if we don't know how to manipulate that, we can't consistently perform at peak levels. 100%. So maybe just talk a little bit about, okay, let's assume that our potential for motivation is high. That is, I think it's really relevant. All right. How would you coach someone to kind of

toggle between, you know, they perceive it as very difficult, but it's relevant? How do we get them back into this kind of very challenging kind of middle state where a route? is appropriate and it's going to enable to me perform, you know, to my potential in that pressure situation. Yeah, and I'd probably look at it slightly different, right, a slightly different framework from when you're in that moment and you're going to get the natural increase in arousal because of go time because it's very difficult, right, or there's the high consequence of outcome or I'm way outside my comfort zone. Have I got buffer already in the system between where is the start point and where is my threshold because if I'm coming into go moment already with a heightened physiological

arousal state because of life right so sleep hydration fueling yep totally all of the stuff you know all of the stuff in terms of the practicalities that we know and you know unfortunately I'd love to say there's something sexy and shiny but it's the fundamentals but to me you know in high performances you know it is doing the common uncommonly well right and and so that gives you the standout Sleep recovery, training consistently, well, is going to be your buffer for this moment. But then there's also the other stuff around fear of what other people think, fear of not being good enough, you know, our self-doubts, our insecurities, our stuff that goes on for us as humans that we often don't, doesn't fit in a box,

you know, and I think especially in their performance world, you can measure sleep, you can measure, like there's so much that you can measure in that, right? The other stuff, the fear of failure, fear of other people, Even fear of success, you know, for a lot of people's success comes with more responsibility, right, which also is stressful for a lot of people, more exposure, more, you know, loss of, you know, like I remember working with a client at one point who didn't want the degree of fame, I guess, that, you know, Steph Curry had, and he was one of his teammates, you know, because he was like, well, Steph can't even go to the supermarket and does grocery shopping.

I don't want to lose that, you know. So it's interesting a lot of that stuff, that noise that actually makes us humans. And then there's the practicalities of life taxes and jobs and all that sort of stuff. So all of that, that's the allostatic load piece, right? It's that accumulation of stuff over time that if I haven't handled that and I haven't got good strategies in that space, it makes a huge difference. It means I'm already coming into my performance arena with like no buffer in the system. So when I get the normal increase in go time.

So your gas tank is basically half empty, you know, half full. Yeah, yeah. So given that we, if we accept that a go time moment, you know there's going to probably be those three if not four of those things that we talked about before because that's a reality of go time moment right to me we're always going to get an increase in arousal state in those big moments that's not the problem right as long as we've got buffer in the system right to handle that so when we're training people in in my world what we'll do is we'll give people some immediate de-escalation skills you know I've crossed red line and I need to

immediately get under and that's what we're talking about before about the breath out their eyes up, and usually having a preloaded thought that might be either gratitude or opportunity, because we can't think, you know, generally gratitude and fear, they don't live in the same place in the brain, right? And so they'll tap into very different things. And as crystal waving and as unicorny as that might sound, it's very powerful in that moment to have a front-loaded thing, right, to think about. Gratitude, awe, and curiosity are just like, I don't think humans leverage those enough. I would agree. You know, I just think it puts you to your point. It creates a very power of physiological response that puts you in so much more

control. 100%. So we'll give them, you know, immediate, I call them get out of jail cards, right? You know, how do I? I've crossed, I'm in jail. How do I get out? The most effective get out out of jail card is don't end up in jail in the first place, right? Which is all of that front-loaded stuff. And then we'll also teach people, okay, you know, how can I push my red line out? how can I push out my, I guess, comfort with being uncomfortable, ice bath training. I'll do mental rehearsal work, but not mental rehearsals. So this is the uncertainty, unknown and uncertainty kind of. 100%, you know.

And so with mental rehearsal, I don't do it where it's like close your eyes and visualize yourself doing the thing. We'll get someone into a calmer state, you know, so that ideally we've tapped into optimal brainwave states for them to then do some mental rehearsal, but more importantly, as they're mentally rehearsing with their eyes closed, and they're lying down, they're sensing what's happening in their body at the time. So rather than just mentally rehearsing where the physiological stress response goes unchecked, you know, because often when you ask people when they mentally rehearse,

they'll be like, oh, yeah, I don't do it because it makes me feel nervous or anxious, so they'll stop doing it, right? And it's like, actually, if that's your body response, fantastic, let's leverage that. But now let's get you to the point that we can mentally rehearse. But in the now moment while your eyes are closed and your head doing the thing, you're also keeping your shoulders dropped and you're keeping your breathing into your belly and your heart rate is slow.

So I often think of that like video editing software. You know how you've got like the visual track and then you've got the audio and you've got special effects. And so basically what we want to do is we want to keep the visual track but we want to cleave out that whatever your physiological stress response that's been playing for the last couple of years because it's trying to keep you safe

from that threatening environment. Let's take that one out and actually now let's load into that with your mentor rehearsal. Yeah. that calm a physiological response so that you can actually, when you're in-go moment for real, that one just more automatically kicks in. And some people have said, is there a threat or a problem that they might be too calm in that environment? And I'm like, I don't think so.

You know, if it's really that critical moment, you're not going to be too calm. Because you just want to open up as much the brain as possible to, you know, make decisions and to readjust. Yeah, because you'll probably find, if I can make better decision, I'm going to push it even harder. I'm going to push it even further. I've got more capacity to take my performance to a whole other level or get into that zone that I really need to get. You've just got more cognitive bandwidth to be able to do that. You mentioned, I love this concept of buffer in the system. And, you know, this is, I think it's important that folks understand like the consistency piece of that.

Like, you know, it's like you can't expect to show up and perform your potential in a high stakes, high stress situation. high-pressure situation when you are chronically underslept or chronically overfueled or underfueled or, you know, not getting enough fluid in your system, appropriate levels of fluid. Like, you know, it's just like these really kind of simple basic things that kind of, I think, you know, you're either going to come to the situation with a full gas tank or half or a quarter. And so maybe just talk about, you know, how do we actually manage that allesthetic load to, you know, and how do we show up as consistently as possible with appropriate levels of physical, mental, emotional arousal.

Yeah. Without that then becoming a stress in and of itself, right? Exactly. Yeah. So what is, how do you? Totally, yeah. Yeah. And I think that really depends on who we're having that conversation with.

You know? Context, yeah. So if it's someone who, man, they're an elite high performer that are in the top 1% and their livelihood, their life, the life of others, you know, is critical on their ability to execute in that moment, then I think. Military, acute care surgeons, like, 100% yeah all of that then that's quite a different conversation i think then if it's someone who you know they've just got a fantastic life but it's just you know it's 9 to 5 there's not there's not

there's not a whole lot you know but they want to be optimizing their own performance just for well-being right i think that sometimes there's a different intensity that would have that conversation with i think for me it's you know i have a list that military acute care surgeons actually is higher you know 100 you know and i think that's i always feel like you know it's i always feel like you You know, and I used to do some work with special operations. I'd just be like, you know, the cross to bear is for you all. It's not when you're in the arena. Yeah.

It's actually when you're not in the arena. And maybe frame it like that, yeah, because that to me is the challenge. Yeah, 100%. For everyone, really. Yeah. And I think, you know, I have a list. And this is we're coming into this framework that I'll present in terms of squiggly lines and red lines, right? As I'll often, or always, when I'm presenting, I've just got this list of all of the things.

that glow pieces, you know, that's like, here are all of the things that can escalate your squiggly line, turn on your sympathetic nervous system, right? And what are some of those things real quick? All the things we were talking about before, yeah, sleep deprivation, caffeine, high sugar diet, you know, refined carbohydrates, alcohol, toxic environments, fear of failure, fair of not being good enough, taxes, life, kids, travel, you know, everything, right? Fair of failure, high consequence of outcome, you know, chronic pain, TBI, you know, all of those things, And I'll get people to, you know, identify on their list really what are their key things. What are their things that are their big ticket items that they know is contributing to escalating their squiggly line.

And generally, that's where we start. Because I don't think we can... Such a beautiful analogy. Well, otherwise, I think people have the sense of guilt that's like, oh, I'm not, you know, I'm not sleeping well or I'm not, you know. And I think it's, in that framework, it's understanding that it's, there's consequences to the choices that we make. have I got buffer in my system to allow for that? If I understand that that thing impacts me in this way and escalates my arousal state,

then I might be okay with that until it's like, okay, now it's a campaign or it's a critical moment coming up that I know I can prepare for. So I'm going to take some of those things out, again, just to make sure that I'm not constantly escalating my arousal state. Funny enough, one of the biggest ticket items is how someone breathes when they're not thinking about breathing,

you know, to that point they were talking about before. If your default brainstand breathing pattern is shallow and upper chest, you're going to be operating at a higher at RailsLState all the time without being aware of that. So you don't really fix it with breath work. That's where you've got to retrain breathing mechanics, a whole other conversation. But I think... It's really interesting to see in our data, I want to do this study more formally, but we have this thing called Stress Monitor.

It's an unbelievable feature, but it basically looks... It's a combination of your auto-damp nervous system and heart rate, so HRV and heart rate. It's an algorithm that basically kind of shows your stress on a scale of zero to three. and it's interesting to see kind of the shallow breathers what their stress monitor looks like during sleep versus someone who is breathing from the belly. Yeah, they'll be a fascinating study to unpack that stuff.

So fascinating, right? And how does that actually bleed into how you function and operate during the day, right? How you recover. And, you know, like I just feel like to me there's just a goal mine of insight and are kind of a stress monitor. But the things that I observe and seeing

when I kind of talk to people and like just comparing data that I think it validates, I think, what you're saying in terms of like how our breathing during the day when we're not kind of conscious of it how to actually manifest in our sleep and yeah yeah yeah and then there's a whole performance piece that I think doesn't get touched particularly well in in the breathing space or you know the main focus often is in HIV arousal state right you know there's a whole biomechanics physical performance piece that's related to breathing mechanics default breathing mechanics and then

your breath control when you do your thing particularly when if you're you know let's say you a tactical athlete with firearms, carrying load over distance over time because of the changes in the respiratory mechanics. If you've got carrying load, compression, you know, changes things, right? If you're a rower, if you are a basketball player, if you're a tennis player, the whole changes that happen to buy mechanics of your sport and performance that's got nothing to do with the arousal state piece. It's actually the physical execution, but what changes with, you know, just respiratory

mechanics with that? You know, can you hold good core strength and breathe well? You know, it's actually a minefield and it's really cool. You know, I love working in that space. Yeah. But as I said, that's a whole other conversation. Coming back to the original question, because I know we could talk for hours on all this stuff, is probably rather than going, here is a gold standard list and you have to do all of these things,

which can become stressful for people, right? It's what do you know escalates your arousal state? And what can you do that works for you that's going to de-escalate, that gives you best bang for your buck. And then generally, once you've got some of those things squared away, now I've got more capacity to address some of the other more challenging things. Because, you know, to your point about, you know, elite military or critical care workers, those are generally our populations that have got the least time

and the most exhaustive and constraints at the best of time. So normally we have to find one or two critical things that work for them. That also works in their timeframes, you know. and that's where we start to nuance it and make it work for them in their time. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I know we're kind of up on time here, and this is like I could literally just talk to you for days. I think maybe if we can just end with, like talking, you know, you talk about breath, talk about vision, maybe just talk a little bit more about thought

because I think that you touch on gratitude, you know, curiosity, awe, like if you can just kind of put those three together in like one example, of like, you know, this is what we do with our breath, this is vision, this is thought, like kind of just give us like a kind of a power example of like, so folks can kind of take away, be like, all right, these are the kind of the things that I need to think about when I'm trying to manage a pressure situation. So I would just, I literally call it to get out of jail card, right?

And it's, this thing happens, whatever it is, you've felt that stress response kick in, it's a breath out, you know. Let's talk public speaking, because I think this is an area that most people can relate to. Yeah, okay, cool. That's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing. All right. And so hopefully you've done some front-loaded work, right?

Right. So you're not going in totally cold. You're not going in totally cold. So reduce the uncertainty. Yeah. Reduce the uncertainty. Get more comfortable, get more comfortable, being uncomfortable, cold showers, you know, whatever it is that you do, that just gets you comfortable with that threat response.

And more importantly, that now you've learned that the threat response is not, it's not dangerous, right? It's how to feel anxious, you know, and nervous. It's just, have you got buffer in your system to handle that? But let's say you're about to walk on stage. name's been called, you know, you've got sweaty palms, dry mouth, you know. That would be an awesome moment just to look up, you know, and just to either, you know, look onto the, onto where the ceiling and the wall meet or just be aware of peripheral vision as you breathe out, as you do that long, slow exhale, you know, and drop your shoulders and then take one

or two breaths down into your belly where it's in and out through your diaphragm. I don't even care about, you know, in for however many seconds. I think people get too caught up on that. Yeah. It's first principles, just breathe into your belly, you know, breathe out more slowly. And in public speaking, how often is it that we are so focused on, are they going to think I'm an idiot, are they going to, am I going to say the wrong thing? What if I forget what I'm going to say? We're so self-focused in that moment, which turns on so much threat response because that triggers some really deep primal things around fear of what other people think, you know,

getting kicked out of the tribe, all of that historical, physiological hard coding, right? but if you can flip that into what an amazing opportunity to share knowledge that might actually really help people like that becomes making it about the other people and as humans when we can tap into some of those things it's the thing about tapping into a purpose that's bigger than just ourselves I think in that moment that's where you tap into the opportunity you know I was invited to present at the Premier League Head Coaches Summit last year and it was yeah it was it was fascinating because I haven't grown up in professional football, right? And so the whole, oh my goodness, it's the Premier League moment

kind of didn't hit, but I could sense that in the room, you know, and everyone who was presenting was a bit on edge, and there was just this tension, right? And I was like, what's this about? Which was, I'm grateful I didn't have that, but I walked up on stage and it was very serious and very intense, you know, and when you presented with, you know, groups of, you know, I mean, again, some of the groups we've talked about before, this felt weird that there was this intensity with head coaches and managers and sport teams, right? Anyway, so I walked up on stage and I felt that little bit of nerves, you know, but immediate, because I was like, oh, right, there's that judgment thing, right?

Yeah. Especially being the only female presenting, you know, and I think they're only female in the room, you know, at that point, which has never bothered me. But I was like, and I was like, hang on a sec, like, I immediately refrained it when I felt those nerves to, what an amazing opportunity that I can share some knowledge. that has a potential to fundamentally, not only change these coaches' experiences of handling, because we've talked very much about high pressure in the peak moment, right? We haven't even touched on how do you sustain that over a career or a lifetime of high pressure

and high stakes environments. So it was like this might change their life, but also have them coach from a very different way. So they're not coaching from that fear-driven, outcome-driven way, right? That is actually going to change the lives of all of their athletes. So to me, that's big purpose, right? And it's like, man, that's exciting. That's an opportunity. I'm so grateful for that.

Same as even being on this podcast, right? It's like, this isn't about me. It's about what knowledge we can share that might fundamentally help people. So I think that reframe and that get out of jail card is really important as well. I love that. Yeah.

Well, this has been wildly insightful. Yeah. Thank you for your time today and sharing your knowledge. The work that you do is just really, I think you'd say, kind of first principle, but in so many ways, like, a lot of folks are very disconnected from these principles. So I think that helping people, you know, come back to just this kind of core framework is so valuable. So when you talk about impact, the impact that you're having is just truly remarkable. So thanks for sharing. Likewise. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do.

It's amazing. Appreciate it. Last question. What are you obsessing over right now? Oh, man. Sleep, probably. Only because I've been on the road for like, you know, for weeks at the moment. So that's kind of my thing. Oh, that's a fantastic question. Answer your question, I'd probably say that deeper level of performance, you know, as in like I think we're getting pretty good at some of those more superficial, you know, sleep and nutritional as those things, right?

But that real human aspect and how do we actually connect people and pull that out from them? I think that's probably, you know, that holistic integration piece. And, yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And getting out of these freaking silos that we often look at performance in, you know. Yeah, you mentioned earlier, just this integration. You know, like I think that it's like we have to work together, you know, to kind of create a solution that is, has the right level of context. Yeah.

You know, because I think when we come at it from one kind of vantage point, we're probably missing a lot of the pieces, you know. Yeah, well, that's what, you know, I often talk about optimizing the gray, you know, that is that piece, right? I want to ask you, yeah, yeah. It's very much that stuff that it doesn't fit in a silo, you know, and sometimes it's very, very hard to measure, right? And so we don't, because we can't measure it in the science world

and often in the sport performance world, there's not a data point that we can put to it. It's easy to, we don't think about it. Or it's not that we don't think about it, but we can't measure it, we can't show a change in formats, can't quantify it, right? But to me, that matrix of that's what makes us humans. It's actually where all of that stuff,

that's stuff that fits all between the gaps, you know, is where the magic actually is. Yeah. And stuff that overlaps, you know. I remember someone saying, and I wish I could remember who this quote was from, but, you know, you've probably heard this phrase before in performance. It's like, stick to your lane, right? Well, the phrase that was given to me was like, you know,

learner drivers need lanes, but Formula One drivers don't. You know, they know how to operate, you know, all over in Excel, right? And I think there's obviously professional boundaries, and I think we have that professional responsibility to know what we're good at and we'll know what is not our skill set and that's very appropriate. But I think being able to work with other, you know,

exceptional people, there's always an overlap in skills and knowledge and I think that overlap is where there's so much we can optimize in that space. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I think you can't really teach the mind without understanding the body and you can't teach the body without understanding the mind.

100%. I think that these mind-body interactions like in understanding how it fits together mechanistically and then just in an applied setting is everything, you know? And I think as practitioners, I think we have to get to a place where, you know, we are, understand these interactions at a fundamental level and can teach from that platform. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's just, we're only just starting to understand that human peace and how we can really optimize performance, you know? I love that. It's more than the data points. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. And I think back to your original point is about awareness and interception. Like, I think at a fundamental level, like the more we kind of understand, or what is actually sitting in the gray?

You know, is it the fear? Is it the, you know, like, what are these things that are in the gray? Then we can start to manage them more effectively in these moments that really count. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Rachel.

That's great. Big thanks to Rachel Vickery for joining us to discuss her work as an advisor and coach to the high performing individuals she works with. If you enjoyed this episode of the Whoop Podcast, please leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the Whoop podcast. can check us out on social at whoop at will amad if you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcast to whoop.com call us 508443 4952 we'll answer your questions on a future episode if you're thinking about joining whoop this is the best time ever because you can now sign up

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