Brandon Guyer, an MLB outfielder, explains how he uses breath to stay calm during games. He stitched the word "breathe" into his wristband during the 2016 World Series and practices box breathing between pitches, cycling through five-second inhales, holds, and exhales.
Questions this episode answers
October 11, 2021.
"breathe".
The 2016 run to the World Series.
Box breathing: 5 seconds in, 5 seconds hold, 5 seconds out, 5 seconds hold (also noted shorter 2–3 second in/out cycles between pitches).
Chapters
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Talk to me about the breath. Talk to me about the wristband. You, you mentioned the breath as either this first step or a early step in your at bat routine of a deep breath. Tell me more about the breath and how it's been a tool for you.
Yeah, I would like to say breath is probably the MVP of everything that I try to go over in the program. I know you all talk about it a lot and it literally changes. It can change everything. So it was that important to me going into the playoffs. This 2016 run that we went to the World Series, I had a clubhouse guy stitch, breathe into the wristband. I don't know if you can see it right there, breathe. So that became my focal point during the game because kind of like the arete tattoo, looking at it, thinking of it, you might, you know, in the heat of the moment, you know, thousands of people, loud stadium, in your mind, you got millions watching tv. You might lose, lose track of, okay, I need to take that deep breath because I feel like stressful situations, a lot of people either breathe shallow or they kind of hold their breath not even knowing it. So that's going to change so much physiologically, psychologically. So this was that focal point. This was part of that in game routine, whether in outfield, hitting in the dugout, where you can have more meaningful deep breaths, lower breath counts, maybe five seconds in, hold for five seconds, exhale for five, hold for five seconds, do that box breathing. So, yeah, it literally was everything. First learned about it in that book. Heads up baseball, working with Ken Riviza, harped on it even more. And you'll see watching the game nowadays, people stepping out, taking that deep breath, it's starting to get more out there and it was that important. I had it stitched into the wristband. So basically in between every pitch, that breath and in the outfield, have more time, focus on the breath. Because during these big situations, like I said earlier, if you're not, what it's going to do is you're thinking about your breast. So you're in turn not going to be thinking about the craziness of the atmosphere or if you're about to go give a big speech, you're not thinking about everything else. You're thinking about your breath. So it's going to help you there and then it's, you know, you're just going to help relax you, calm you, energize, tranquility. So breath is everything. Um, and there's various ways to go about it. Obviously. I know you guys talk about different breath counts and stuff and I think everyone finds something that works for them better. We're all different. Personally, my go to is like a box breathing kind of thing, but after every pitch more so just, you know, three, two or three seconds in, two or three seconds out because you don't have a lot of time. I don't think the umpire, catcher and pitcher would be too happy if you take 20 second breaths in between every pitch. But yeah, so that's pretty much how it was.
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