Are You Breathing? | Josiah Igono, Erik Averill | Athlete CEO #55
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Episode Summary
We have all been there. In high impact situations and high stress situations we forget to breathe.
At the exact moment we need to be at our best, we cut off our brain’s lifeline to function. Shutting down our frontal lobe, which is responsible for high level thought, decision-making, executive functioning, being able to think backwards, think strategically, and being able to innovate.
“Be in control of your breathing, be in control of your performance.” Dr. Ken Ravizza
The benefits are unmatched when you can really control your breathing:
Decreases stress
Decreases anxiety
Decreases muscle tension
Improves performance
Listen in as Peak Performance Coach, Josiah Igono, PHD provides practical tools and resources to unlock the full power of breathing.
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:00):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill, founder of AWM Capital, where we partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact. And one of the things that we believe deeply at AWM is that the greatest driver of your net worth is your human capital. And so this podcast, The Athlete CEO Podcast is dedicated to bringing you the tools, tactics, and access to world-class experts to help you unlock your full potential.
Erik Averill (00:47):
And so today we get the gift once again, to sit down with our good friend, our resident performance coach, sensei, Mr. Josiah Igono. I got to get you every week. Welcome back to the podcast.
Josiah Igono (01:02):
What's up, E? How you doing, man?
Erik Averill (01:04):
I'm doing well. This has been such a gift over the past few months. I know for so many of you listeners, how much it's benefited you. The stories pouring in of just the impact that these conversations have had. So excited once again, to talk about some of the key areas of performance and a conversation that seems to be at the forefront of so many performers minds over the last year is talking about breathing. Whether this is through Wim Hof or just these other techniques is, I think we're all convinced that this is absolutely a tool of performance, but it's a huge, huge, broad topic. So I'd love to hear your thoughts specifically about tactical breathing.
Josiah Igono (01:54):
Yes. So when we start talking about the tactics of breathing, the how tos, it's very important to understand why breathing is so important, right? Breathing is like the, when you look at a vehicle, it's powerful because breathing is the steering wheel, it's the accelerator, and it's the brake. It helps you to navigate to and from, left and right, east, west. It helps you to stop, slow things down. You hear it all the time, right? Oh, we got to slow it down, right.
Josiah Igono (02:24):
It also, as we have spoken in prior podcasts, it helps you to speed things up. Should you so need it to upregulate. And my friend, the late luminary, Dr. Ken Ravizza, he used to always say, hey, be in control of your breathing, be in control of your performance. And it's so true. And when you started looking at breathing, right, just doing deep breathing, right, for a few minutes, the research it's just littered throughout the research that breathing helps to decrease stress, lower levels of anxiety. It helps to improve performance. It helps with just muscle tension. I mean, the benefits are just, unmatched when you can really control your breathing.
Erik Averill (03:16):
Yeah. And like you said, the data where it shows up, right? One of the coolest things about a lot of the wearable technology that we have today, whether it's, I wear a Whoop or the Oura ring or some many of these others is you can see that when people go into breathing protocols, whether it's trying to, as you said, calm themselves down maybe after a game or it's that arousal regulation, you can see it show up in the data, trying to spike your HRV. And so we know that this is such a tool of performance.
Erik Averill (03:49):
I would love to hear what are some of the protocols? When should these be implemented? What type of routines? Is it all created equal? Is it 15 minutes? Is it 20? I would love to get real practical with the audience today. I'm not going to open up the can because you told me I couldn't. I know that you said your opinion on breathing has changed. Right.
Josiah Igono (04:13):
Yes, it has.
Erik Averill (04:13):
I would just call, the awakening of becoming even more nuanced in your expertise is really what it is, but it's not all created equal.
Josiah Igono (04:23):
Yeah, no, it's not. And yeah, my opinion about breathing has changed tremendously. And when you start looking at breathing, there's a lot of things that go on with breathing. A lot of times we just think about it as oxygen, who's talking about CO2, you know what I mean? I'm not going to open that can up here, but yeah. In terms of the practical means there's different types of breathing, right? You mentioned Wim Hof. I mean, he's on a different level. You know what I'm saying? We going to stay right here with it. So the most practical is just a centering breath, right? Just a simple centering breath that you can inhale for about five seconds, hold for about two and then exhale for another about seven. Just doing that alone helps you to hit the reset button.
Josiah Igono (05:13):
It's funny because when we were kids and we used to get mad, what did our teacher, what did our mom and dad say? Hey, take a deep breath before you start doing X, Y, or Z again. Right?
Erik Averill (05:24):
Right.
Josiah Igono (05:25):
Many people have heard of, I just spoke about a centering breath. Many people have heard of a four by four technique whereby you breathe, you inhale for four seconds. You hold for four, you exhale for four seconds. And then you hold for another four. Now, should I engage in a four by four technique in the batter's box? Probably not. You know what I'm saying? Like probably not. I'm just saying, right. Should I do that when I'm about to snap the ball on a game winning drive right before I go under center? Probably not. Right. There are different times whereby, you can use these types of breathing techniques.
Josiah Igono (06:10):
There's all kinds of combinations. You can do a 3-2-5, you can do a 4-2-8. I mean, there are different types of breathing scenarios, but the biggest one is a centering breath.
Erik Averill (06:23):
Right.
Josiah Igono (06:23):
Just having a centering breath is absolutely huge. You can do, Some people will just do prolonged breathing. So or rather, they would just do deep breathing, diaphragmatic breathing for five, 10 minutes. So you just get your little stopwatch and just do deep belly breaths, diaphragmatic breaths for like five, 10 minutes. And that floods the system with oxygen. Let me share something with the audience. So that's great, Joe, but why is breathing so important? Like I'm breathing right now. Why are you teaching me how to breathe? Right.
Josiah Igono (06:59):
So I'm going to give you guys some science. Your brain, right, is taking in two critical nutrients for high level functioning at all times. One is oxygen. One is glucose. Your brain needs oxygen and glucose to function at a high level. And what happens a lot of times with high level athletes, high level performers, is that we're almost staving off these elements if you will, in high impact situation, high stress situations. So what do we do? We forget to breathe. We don't deep breathe, right? Or before that seven o'clock kickoff, before the 7:05 opening pitch, our systems are flooded with oxygen. Our heart rate is going crazy and we don't know how to control it. So when you start talking about the brain, the reason why breathing is so important is because your frontal lobe, where you are having high level thought, decision-making, executive functioning, being able to think backwards, think strategically, right, being able to innovate, the frontal lobe actually receives those elements last.
Erik Averill (08:16):
Wow. Yeah.
Josiah Igono (08:18):
And if you're not breathing, if you're not breathing, then you're up a Creek. You know what I'm saying? So.
Erik Averill (08:26):
Yeah, no. I mean, I think back to my amateur domination of CrossFit on a weekend warrior standpoint, right? We all know this. You hold your breath in the middle of an exercise, you come out of it and you're all dizzy. You're like, oh, wait a second. That impacted my performance.
Josiah Igono (08:45):
Yep.
Erik Averill (08:46):
And on the flip side, one of the things that I'm experiencing talking to some of our highest performing athletes today, they're performance coaches are integrating these breathing techniques in the middle of their training regimen and protocol. That's how important this is to unlocking performance. That you've seen the evolution of the trainers implementing the importance of breath. And it gets me excited because it's all the things in life. Whether it's your money, your relationships, your health, control what you can control. Guess what's in your control? Your breath.
Josiah Igono (09:23):
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. It really is. And another thing I would say too, you mentioned Wim Hof. There's another individual out there, Patrick McKeown. His work is tremendous. A good friend of mine, colleague, Andy Clower with Fitness Evolved. He taught me all the muscles and the movements involved in the breeding process. Everything from my clavicles, my traps, my intercostals. And when I went through that regimen, it just blew my mind because breathing became even that more easier. It just felt different. I was aware of what the heck was going on. And so this area of breathing is something that is so simple, but it has a profound impact on your performance. And where is the easiest way to hide something? To put it right underneath your nose. And yeah, I'm telling you, you guys that are listening to this today. If you take the time to really learn how to breathe, it is going to make a tremendous impact.
Erik Averill (10:30):
And I think beyond the 1% adding of performance, which is why so many of us are listening to this podcast, it's also just general health, right? Dr. Peter Attia, who's one of the leading experts on health span and longevity talks about lowering the risk of disease, right? Just your overall health. That we are in a society that is literally is like on crack, right? We are on overdrive, we're over information, overstimulated, that we literally have disconnected ourselves from some of the greatest gifts, right? I think of the simplicity of some of the most important things for our health, water and breathing. And there are two of the things that we neglect the most.
Erik Averill (11:15):
And I think of, we had on a previous podcast, Andy Maurer, an emotional wellness coach that some of the sessions I do with him, right, as he talks about the book, The Body Keeps the Score,
Josiah Igono (11:28):
Oh, tremendous book.
Erik Averill (11:29):
That I closed my eyes and it's breathe. And for the first time in maybe a week or two weeks, because I do a session with them every two weeks. It might be the first time I'm really connected with my body. And really it's bringing in attention to my breath.
Josiah Igono (11:46):
Yes.
Erik Averill (11:46):
So it's all integrated. Once again, we're fully human. Maybe talk a little bit about like, besides unlocking the performance, breathing allows you to probably engage into different aspects of performance as well. Because it's all interrelated.
Josiah Igono (12:03):
Yeah. It really is. I mean, when you're in tune with your breathing, guess what? You see clear. Right. You get to see what's going on. When I say clear, not just physically, but just more so mentally. Right. You get to see clearer. Things slow down. Other elements are heightened, right. When you can really slow... Breathing, proper breathing allows you to fully get an HD image of what the heck is going on around you.
Erik Averill (12:34):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (12:34):
It does.
Erik Averill (12:35):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (12:36):
It's one of those things where, when we're in a rush, when we're in a high stress situation, when we are looking for the next, trying to be the first, we're not breathing. We're not. You know what I'm saying? It's like, and when I say we're not breathing, what I'm saying is that we're not breathing well and we're not breathing deep enough.
Josiah Igono (12:54):
And when you're breathing well and when you're breathing deep enough, right, you get an HD image of what the heck is around you. And you're able to execute, you're able to forecast, you're able to vision cast, you're able to perform, you're able to just be. Right. We say it all the time, oh, be where your feet are. Right.
Erik Averill (13:17):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (13:18):
You can't do that if you're not breathing man.
Erik Averill (13:20):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (13:20):
You know what I'm saying? And so every now and then just take a break out of your day and just close your eyes. You don't even have to have your eyes closed. Just take deep breaths. Just do that for 60 seconds. Right. Do that for three minutes. Just deep breathing for three minutes. Watch what happens. Just watch what happens.
Erik Averill (13:37):
Yeah. I'm so encouraged when I hear this and also challenge because we throw words out around here, like high performance, elite. And what we know by definition, right, high performance is how do we stand out amongst the crowd consistently over time? And I think it's interesting that something so simple as breathing, something so foundational to who we are as humans can be a separator. Because while it is simple, it's very difficult to stay consistent and discipline on and to create a habit. But I do challenge you as we all know that if you talk to most people, very few people have this habit and this discipline in their daily life.
Erik Averill (14:25):
And so if you're looking for the tools and the tactic, it's not always some secret that nobody knows about. Right. As Josiah said, it's right here underneath our nose. And we talk so much at AWM and on this podcast about taking ownership of your career, of being a pro. And sometimes we've heard this before being a pro is doing the things that you don't want to do to unlock that full potential. And so we appreciate your guys' attention. We love the feedback that you've been providing over the last few months. Of course, we'd love to hear from you if there's something that we haven't talked about. You want to learn more about specific type of breathing techniques, some of the individuals and resources that Joe's talked about, we're going to link to them in the show notes over at athleteceo.com. And until next time stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro.