Joey Barton dismissed Wim Hof's breathing technique as pointless until he tried it and noticed real changes in his mental clarity and emotional control. He brought it to his club's sports science team, where Mark Howard saw profound effects. Barton now uses it as a quick reset tool for himself and teammates.
Chapters
A cousin of mine introduced me to Wim's stuff online and said, look, you've got to have a look at this guy and try these different breathing techniques. So the cynic in me went away and thought, nah, it's just breathing, nothing can come of this, I don't think this will be something that I'll utilise. And I did the breathing techniques a couple of times and was like, yeah, this is— there's certainly something in this. Seen a real positive impact in not only my personal life but in my professional life. Came and seen the sports science team, showed Mark Howard, who's the head of sports science at the club, and said, look, this is what we've got. Mark then started practicing some of the breathing techniques, and he came back straight away, was like, wow, this is unbelievable. So at that point, I kind of thought, we're on to something here.
The opponent most of the time is your own mind, and today I want to give you tools to tackle and to win that game within.
To get it ingrained in a group in football, you've got so many different personalities, so many different mindsets, people coming from all over, people who get really anxious, people who don't get anxious, people who get nervous, people who don't get nervous. For me it works, so it's easy to believe in. You know, I feel the benefits every time I do it. It allowed me to be a better teammate, it allowed me to help my teammates do what they need to do, and You feel the benefits of having a clarity of mind, certainly when there is a lot of outside influences. And, you know, in the industry we're in, you can be top of the world one minute, bottom of the world the next minute, depending on results. Sometimes you've got to find a way of navigating through that bullshit. Breathing thing gives me the opportunity to reset, whether it's on a daily basis or a weekly basis. But I have the ability now, if I need to reset my mind, I just go do a bit of breathing, back in the room. Away I go again.
