Breathing might be the single most underutilized skill in high performance.
While mindset often gets top billing for performing under pressure, it’s the body’s default physiology that can either sabotage or support elite output.
Rachel Vickery, a world-renowned high-performance consultant with deep roots in respiratory physiotherapy, works on optimizing the building blocks of human capacity—from Olympic athletes to elite military teams—by teaching how the body and mind can be regulated under stress, not in theory, but in the heat of the moment.
In a recent interview, she explained why breath is more important than mindset, how physiology quietly undermines execution, and what coaches and leaders get wrong about resilience in high-pressure environments.
The insights apply not just to sport or the battlefield but to everyday performance in meetings, parenting, or any situation that requires steadiness under pressure.
Jump to:
- Breathing vs. Breathwork: What High Performers Should Know
- Creating a Calm Nervous System in a Chaotic World
- Tools for Reducing Arousal in Real-Time
- Modeling Matters: Coaches and Leaders Shape the Nervous System of Teams
- Culture Is the Real High-Performance Edge
- Final Thoughts: Predictability is Your Competitive Advantage
Breathing vs. Breathwork: What High Performers Should Know
“Breathing patterns you’re not even aware of are dictating how well you’ll handle pressure before the pressure even hits,” says Vickery.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
She makes a critical distinction between breathwork—deliberate breathing exercises—and breathing mechanics: the subconscious patterns that shape your physiological foundation.
Under stress, people often default to upper chest breathing—rapid, shallow inhalations that cue the sympathetic nervous system. It’s a survival mechanism, preparing the body for fight or flight. But in modern performance environments, where calm decision-making and precise motor output matter more than sprinting from danger, this misfiring can derail performance.
“High performers—trauma doctors, tactical military, elite athletes—they’re wired to do hard things. But their default physiology can still betray them if left untrained,” she explains.
The Invisible Ceiling: How Poor Breathing Limits Performance
The consequences of poor breathing aren’t only cognitive—they’re biomechanical.
- If you chronically breathe into your upper chest, you reduce oxygen exchange efficiency.
- Your muscles responsible for breathing compete with performance muscles—especially those involving upper limbs.
- The brain receives less blood flow and begins dialing down cognitive function to conserve resources.
“You see operators who are technically perfect on the range, but under arousal, their breathing derails accuracy and decision-making,” says Vickery.
She’s witnessed the same breakdown in boardrooms as in battle simulators.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
“You can’t think your way out of hyperarousal. You need to breathe your way down first.”
Creating a Calm Nervous System in a Chaotic World
Performance doesn’t begin at tipoff, battle entry, or on-stage moment. It begins long before—with your autonomic wiring.
Inconsistent sleep, high sugar intake, dehydration, overtraining, or external stress all increase allostatic load—the cumulative wear and tear on your system. When that threshold is breached, it takes only a small acute stressor to trigger a full fight-or-flight response.
And that’s when athletes fumble, leaders freeze, or shooters miss.
“Everything might look fine on the surface. But when your system is dysregulated, you’re closer to redlining than you realize,” says Vickery.
The Performance Sweet Spot: Curiosity, Gratitude, Openness
One of the most powerful interventions? Framing.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
“Fear of failure or fear of not being good enough is primal,” Vickery explains. “It hardwires tension into your system before the action even starts.”
By shifting from “don’t fail” to “I wonder how well I can execute this” or “how calm can I stay here?”, athletes literally rewire their physiology. Curiosity and gratitude activate the parasympathetic nervous system, facilitating fluid movement, creative thought, and situational awareness.
“The difference in body language is immediate—more open, loose, fluid. That’s not a soft skill. That’s a performance multiplier.”
Tools for Reducing Arousal in Real-Time
In high-pressure moments, performers need what Vickery calls a “get-out-of-jail card”—a rapid strategy to lower arousal, restore cognitive bandwidth, and maintain control.
She teaches one such tool using three controllable anchors:
- Where you breathe to: Lengthen your exhale and breathe diaphragmatically.
- Where you look: Direct gaze to the horizon or your peripheral field. This cues the brain that you’re not in danger.
- What you think: Prime with a pre-selected mantra or reflection based on curiosity or opportunity—not fear.
“You can pull this off in under 10 seconds with training,” she says. “It can shift you from panic to poise in the pocket.”
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Modeling Matters: Coaches and Leaders Shape the Nervous System of Teams
The nervous system is contagious.
“Energy spreads,” Vickery explains. “If a leader comes into the room stressed, even if they say the right things, the team will feel the tension.”
This co-regulation is a scientific reality. Breathing patterns, facial expressions, and tone of voice all communicate safety—or threat.
The takeaway for coaches and managers: Your state matters more than your speech.
“Athletes watch how you walk into the room. If you’re calm and in control, they’ll have access to more of their own performance tools.”
Culture Is the Real High-Performance Edge
Too many teams focus solely on optimization during game time. But according to Vickery, championship behavior isn’t built in the arena—it’s cemented in the downtime practices.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
“Teams think they’re not mentally tough enough under pressure,” she said. “But the issue is usually the accumulation of poor habits when no one is watching.”
The way your team sleeps, eats, travels, trains, hydrates, and communicates sets the biological stage for performance. Dysfunction outside the arena squeezes the margin for control when intensity spikes.
“You win by stealth in the downtime,” she says. “That’s where you build the real buffer into your system.”
Final Thoughts: Predictability is Your Competitive Advantage
The stress response isn’t random. It’s mechanistic, measurable, and trainable.
Understanding arousal thresholds, spotting redline indicators, and embedding real-time recovery tools into your culture can turn inconsistency into control.
Whether you’re on the basketball court, battlefield, or boardroom, high performance begins by mastering what’s happening under your skin—before the moment calls for it.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
“We are feeling beings who think—not the other way around,” Vickery reminds us. “If we don’t build high performance at the physiological level, no mindset will save us.”
