Life After Pro Rugby & Breath Training - Keegan & Jacko David Jackson

So were you looking for the edge, like give us a bit more of the context of where you're at in life when, when that happened.

So, so I'd 2013, I just signed with pre season for the new rugby season. It was like August. I just signed a new two year contract but I was 31, so I was like, you know, I'd played over 300 games and I'd had a, it's my 13th season, I was about to start, but I had just signed a new tier contract, obviously expecting to do those two years but I don't know if I'd have done much. You know, I'd been 33 by the end of that. Would I have done much more? Maybe the odds it had been a case of like, see how the body is, is doing. So I knew that like anything like a rugby career, it's never going to last forever. So you are, you are starting to think about what, what you're going to do after. But yeah, I, I'd had a series of concussions that were gradually getting worse. There was this cumulative effect building up that we're well aware of now, but not at the time. So you know, I just kept going back into, into the same thing that was seemingly taking less to, to knock me out and less to more severe the symptoms. And the one I had the, that gave me a small bleed on the brain. I had a seizure on the training field was just two of us banging together, playing touch like it wasn't a big impact at all. My mate said that, you know, it was actually quite funny like seeing two of you trying on the same team, trying to catch the same ball, just banged into each other and about to start laughing. But as I hit the deck, I started having a seizure, having a fit and the closest guys put me into the recovery position and made sure I didn't swallow my tongue and got the physio out. And the good thing about those scenarios is, well, I certainly didn't. I don't know if it's the case for everybody but you, you don't remember what's, you don't remember what happens. So I can't remember any of that. All I remember is being in hospital and being like a bit sort of like, why am I in hospital? And then when you're confused in hospital and you've had a load of concussions before, you know exactly what's happened. And then you say to the physio, oh, I've been knocked out, haven't they? And the physio goes, yes, and you're like, well what's up with you? And then you're like, then you realize, okay, I know why you're pissed off at me because I've asked you that about a million times, haven't you? And he's like, yes, would you just shut off? Because you just literally assured to memory I'd lost some memory. I lost a couple of weeks of memory that I've never got back. But in the short term you're just like a, you're just like a goldfish.

And were you married at that time or say again? That was just after you were married?

Yeah. Yeah, just. Yeah.

Wow, that's. Must have been pretty, pretty intense for your wife as well and for, you know, for yourself of like, where does this put me for family and everything? Like we.

Yeah.

How was that time?

It was. Well, for the first few months you'd like trying to get back to, you're trying to get back to playing. Like you don't, you're not instantly retiring and, and you know, I remember one period where, or speaking afterwards, not really like having said to my wife is always very like, you know, she's not going to like, even if I'm like Dan and dwelling on stuff, she's not going to like let me dwell on anything. And it's you know, looking positively the on it. But I remember thinking to myself thinking like, gosh, like, you know, this is like six months later and I'm still spending most of my time in bed and you know, I can't look at a computer screen and thinking I can't see how I'm ever going to have a thought. Like, am I ever going to be able to have a job? Like just even just like a really boring job just sitting, like how am I going to make any money? Like obviously my rugby career is over, but what am I going to do? And I said, I never said that out loud to her but I remember once I sort of recovered saying to her, were you ever worried about like sort of the long term prognosis for us? And she was like, yeah, like you were basically like a zombie and you were just fucked. Like you didn't, you weren't able to just do sort of your day to day functioning. But yeah, it, you know, it takes time and you know, not for everyone makes the same type of recovery depending on how severe the injury is. But it took me, it took a number of years before I came across the research linking brain injuries and like respiratory dysfunction so affecting your brain and that oxygen delivery, but also how Your brain recovers. But how the breathing is really dynamically sort of changed the results. It's been well studied for the last 60 years. Unfortunately without. Not unfortunately, but it feels like when there's. When there's stuff in there in the literature. 60 years old, you feel like, well, how come. How come I wasn't sort of given any of this information? You have to find it yourself. But as is. Okay. It's probably the case with many things and there'll probably be some politics as to why breathing after Covid.

It's less of a mystery, I think, why a lot of the health information, like all of a sudden health. Everyone has to stay at home. Everyone has to. Okay, all right. What else do you not know about health? What else do we know that we don't know? Yeah, for me, for me it was a big wake up or at least it made it even more obvious of like why the best stuff isn't known. But. Yeah. So you, you were there other things before we like, because we're going to focus mostly on breath today.

Yeah.

And Cody, who's on here has actually got a brand that's built around rugby skills as well. So there might be a question around rugby and your journey there.

For sure. Yeah, yeah.

You want to say something there, Cody? You can say hello.

Nah.

Hi, David. Hey man, this is great. I just, I just looked you up. You played for Nottingham, is that right?

Yeah, I played Nottingham in the championship. Yeah, that was my local. That was my. I started when I was six years old and finished when I was 31. So I was like. Went all the way through the age groups and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, great. I'm just coaching at Barry St. Edmonds at the moment in that too with the younger Ford brother. So obviously you know the Fords.

Oh yeah, yeah. As in George Ford. His brother's name. Jacob. Jacob, yeah. I think he played for it. I think he was playing for Leeds when we must have played against him. I'm sure.

Yeah. I think that's Joe. So I think he's coaching at Doncaster.

Ah, that's right. Joe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Donnie. Donny was a bit of a rivalry for us.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we. I wanted. I want to jump into the. The breath side of things. Yeah. But what, what else it jumped out at you when you started to go on this journey of how do I fix my brain so I can live again?

Yeah, I think initially sort of more diet, like some. There was some. The starting point, like some dietary stuff. The first bit that I'd Sort of seen. My wife is really big on this. So she, I think, I think it was her that sort of put this paper in front of me that was like brain injuries and gut dysfunction. So the, the brain. Gut axis. And I had a, from the day that I had my last brain injury and had that seizure, I must have bitten my tongue because I had like an ulcer on my, on my tongue that literally I didn't get rid of for like three years. And I developed some like skin, some, some skin irritations and some skin issues that again, like I'd never had before. And it seemed to be that my, yeah, my, my gut had been affected and therefore like working on that was, was a name. But I guess for, for whatever reason that's like, I guess you like different things or other night. Like my wife actually loves that like gut health stuff. And I, and I'm like, yeah, and I get it, but I just like, I find it hard to be as good at it as someone like she is. But when I came across the breathing side of stuff, it was like some really bad, like just this, this concept of being like, how have I never thought about how I breathe before? Like when I'm thinking about like how when you're absolutely blowing out of your ass during like a pre season, like a lot of the guys I'm working with, the moment, like they're in pre season, like you get in absolutely like annihilated by the fitness coach and you're given very little tools or ability to manage your actual airflow as well as manage the nervous system off the back of the stress that you put in under. And yeah, it's sort of multi dimensional, sort of baffling like thinking like, how did I not even think about this? But no one was talking about it. So the only thing that we would get is like put your hands on your head and take some big breaths in which isn't necessarily like wrong. You're gonna be better off taking a larger breath than a smaller breath when you, when you're trying to catch your breath. But we didn't know anything about the role that CO2 plays. We didn't know anything about like the mechanics of a brain. And I, I'd worked a friend of mine and she was my physio at one point and she'd gone on to work for British athletics. And I sat down with her and I said she'd. She'd done the Oxford vantage training. I sat down with her and said like, how do I know if I'm breathing right Like, I don't. Like, you know, when you're at that point where you discover this stuff and you're like, what's it supposed to feel like? You know, if I said, if I'm thinking, am I doing bicep curls? Right, Take like a really simple exile, like you can look in a mirror and you can check whether you get an idea of whether you think you're doing it right. But a movement pattern like breathing, that's sort of a bit more hidden and underneath and a bit more intricate, but at the same time it's automatic. Adds that other dimension to it that going like this really basic thing that I've been doing all the time, like, I'm asking now, am I doing it right? Such a weird. I found it quite a weird question to ask myself, but I couldn't answer it and I couldn't put it down. I couldn't, like, just leave it to one side. I wanted to, I wanted to know. And when I'd seen this research about it being linked to the brain injury, I was like, well, I've had a brain injury and I do want to do stuff to make sure that I don't. Yeah, I don't suffer later in life because that's the, the thing with the brain injuries and the multiple concussions. It's like the build up and what that may lead to in terms of your cognitive function, early onset dementia and things like that as you get, as you get older. So it's like, what can I do now? I'm like, I'm 41 now. It's like, what can I do now that's going to keep me in good physical and mental health going forward? So, yeah, it started there, but interestingly, I found some really profound performance benefits just on my own. I got back to doing some running and I was doing calisthenics and in my running, of which I was doing not much like 5k. I had some massive improvements without even trying to. And I was like, whoa. Like, this is. This is quite astounding. Like, I wish I knew this when I played rugby, like, and it made me explore that and then go back into the sport that I played and loved and wish I knew about how breathing affects our performance and our recovery. And there was still a few guys that I'd. When I was finishing, they were just sort of starting their careers. So we're talking a good sort of six or seven years later, maybe even eight years later. They're now at the end of their career but still looking for the. When you, when you get a bit mature and you rubicro, you are looking at ways to extend it. So they're quite open to, to some of these conversations around breathing. The younger guys are maybe sometimes not there yet, but it depends. But yeah, and that's how, that's how I sort of got into. Back into the world of rugby. I'd sort of not done an awful lot in the world of rugby for quite some time. So it's been nice to connect back in there as well and give something back.

Yeah. So we've got a question here from the YouTube and I think it's a good place for us to start. He's like just joined breath training. Is that useful for me as a kickboxer. It certainly leads to the question of like, if an athlete is thinking about this, they sort of roughly heard something, they've got some idea. What's the first thing that you sort of start with? You know, you've given us, given us already, but practically like what, what should an athlete do? Athletes like being told, hey, do this and. And you'll get that. Where does it start?

It starts with an appreciation and it starts with like buy in and starts with awareness. And so like kickboxer. I've worked with a few MMA fighters, like contact sports, like, say my main sport is rugby. That's what I play, so that's what I know. But if you think that and this is about a little bit about just understanding awareness and buy in kickboxing, you know, intuitively already when, and it was interesting, you know, I spent too much time making a video this morning. It was a little bit about this, about body language and breathing. It's less necessarily about body language for a fighting sport, but it's big in sports like rugby. But the same principle applies in that as soon as you see your opponent, mouth breathing and panting, you know you've, you know you're going to go and knock them out. But at the same time, you know when you start mouth panting, the alarm bells and you're already going off and you're going, I'm fucked. And I'm just like now trying to escape and trying to get back to a point where I can recover my breathing. You know intuitively that when you start to see that happening and someone lose control of their respiratory rate, when you lose control of your respiratory rate, you're going to go to mouth breathing because it provides less resistance and allows for that faster rate. You aren't going to recover your breathing until you stop. You're not going to maintain you're not going to recover your breathing by panting like that at the same intensity that you're working at. And I actually believe it's part of a mechanism that your body's trying to get you to stop. We can have a debate about that potentially as to why. But, yeah, if you, if you can understand and you can appreciate that, you can take away some very simple things of going like, that's the worst type of breathing. You intuitively know it anyway. And you're just going to try and do all the opposite of those things. So rather than losing control of your spiritual rate, get control of your respiratory rate. How do you get control of your spiritual rate? Well, rather than breathing like shallow and fast, you're going to try and breathe a bit deeper and you're going to try and breathe a slightly larger but slightly slower breath. Breath. And a big key about getting recovery and control of your respiratory rate is get control of your exhale. We can talk about the intricacies of like, whether you do that through your nose or through your mouth, but if I tell you to get control of your exhale, even when you're mouth breathing, you intuitively rather have the mouth open and it'd be very fast. If you're thinking, right, get control of my exhale. When you breathe out through your mouth, you will still go, you'll make your mouth a bit smaller naturally and you'll try and make it a little bit slower. So you're doing the opposite of the things that, you know intuitively are signs of poor breathing and signs in a fighting sport. Signs of like, one of us is going to get knocked out soon. It's the one that's panting the most. That makes sense.

Yeah. The comment back there is he's struggling with his breathing and, yeah, can't think properly in panic mode. What does it do to the thought patterns, to the brain, to the nervous system when you're at that sort of maximal breathing without much efficiency?

Yeah. So it's, it's part of the. It's part of the fight or flight response. You have the olfactory nerve that gets, I guess, stimulated when your nasal breathing, that doesn't. When your mouth breathing. So they've seen, you know this, they put a brain in mri, a person, a person's head in MRI scanner and scan that and see, see them nasal breathing, see the mouth breathing and seeing the different activations of the brain and things that are impaired when we're mouth breathing and out of control of our respiratory rate in more of a state of like sympathetic Dominance. So more in fight or flight. Yeah, we can't process information, we can't think as clearly because they're not the things that are important for the brain. When you're in that physiological state of being up regulated so it will affect your peripheral vision as well. That's a big one. So when you're, when your mouth breathing like that, your vision narrows and like part of that sympathetic tone, you, your vision narrows. And the other thing we know about contact sports, fighting sports, is you're most likely to get knocked out when you don't see the shot or the hit coming. So if my peripheral vision is narrowed, then I'm less likely to see the shot coming. And then when you don't see the shot coming, you don't brace for it. And that's what then is potentially making us more susceptible to being knocked out. You know, that happened totally happens. I was not expecting to get hit when I admire last one and then you're not praised for it and there you go. So yeah, peripheral vision, your ability to concentrate, your ability to process information, your ability to think calmly, massively affected by your breathing which is directly impacting your, the nervous system, the breathing go hand in hand together.

So looking back at your rugby, was that a challenge for you or were you really good at thinking on your feet under pressure and when the game got tough, what would you say for your, your own experience of that?

My. So one thing that's interesting for me is that I wish I knew this stuff from a performance and a recovery perspective. Yes. But also from a sort of managing nerves, managing nervous system and making that flow state more accessible. So I was the type of player that when things went well for me and I got in my groove and I wasn't thinking like I could light the pitch up like I could. I got a decent highlight reel of when it was good, but my low light reel is bad because if things didn't go well, I didn't have any tools to manage those thoughts that are coming in. And then also how like my nervous system when I'm getting nervous and, and you know, I didn't have tools to be able to help manage that. So for me in terms of looking back, it's a great question. I think I would have, I would have been better prepared to be able to manage my arousal, manage my nerves and have something to help me get into my flow state rather than basically crossing my fingers and hoping. I hope the first touch I have of the ball or the first thing that I do goes well. Because if it goes well like then I'll get into my groove. Whereas I didn't have a way to, to get myself there on my own.

What about before the game? If you knew what, you know now what, what sort of breath work might you do before the game? Or would you have an emphasis on it?

Yeah, so we've got like breathing can downregulate us, can upregulate us, can elicit some important or interesting benefits in terms of breath holding, for example, for spleen contractions which can release some red blood cells for a certain amount of time that you've seen. If anyone's come across the, from the oxygen vantage where you can like increase your red blood cell count in a short space of time with some breath holding which would be very useful in a, in a contrast sport of like there's, there's aerobic and anaerobic work that we've got to do. But I think that, so that would be one thing but the, the main thing would for me would be being able to use my breathing to either just manage that arousal curve, like when do I need to get more up for something? When do I need to bring myself, bring myself back down?

So if you wanted to, if you wanted to get yourself up a bit more, if you feel like you're playing against the shitty opposition, you're not really ready for the day, you know, you kind of feel like you're under, aroused. What, what might you do?

Some strong breath holds. Some strong breath holds with movement in the warm up. Like holding the breath is a stress on the system, it's an up regulator. You're then going to get some performance improvements as well. You'll build up a load of CO2 that you're going to want to get rid of before you actually go out and perform. So you can just dump that off. But definitely that, that like, so I use it now for like if I'm doing a, say a presentation or talk to like a big group people for whatever reason I'm like, need like yes, I'm potentially a bit nervous but I feel like I need to get my energy up. Then I will do some walking breath holes like up and down the back of the room for you know, 30 paces, 40 paces, whatever, whatever we can go into.

Based on your level.

Yeah, based on my level, yeah. But then at the same time some very simple calming like slowing and diaphragmatic breathing to, to, to calm the nervous system down to get in that nice clear space and just being able to manage that is really important.

So yeah, the Opposite situation. You're about to make your debut, you're about to play for your country for the first time. Everyone's there, your whole family's flown in from all over the place to see the game and you know, you feel like you bell and everything's on edge. What do you do?

Yeah. So nasal breathing, trying to connect to your diaphragm. It's likely that we'll get quite tense. When we get quite tense, like some of that flexion tone will like just keep a look. You're breathing quite high up. So trying to get the rib cage lower down, like expanding three dimensionally. Get your diaphragm pulling air into the lower portion of the lungs so the breath can be a little bit slower, so it can be a bit calmer. When it's a bit slower breathing that in and out through the nose, trying to listen to your breathing and make it a little bit quieter. If we're getting very nervous and very sort of anxious about whatever the thing could be, it doesn't have to be from a sporting context then short little pauses can really help calm the nervous system. So there's an exercise we do where literally if someone's as severe as gonna have a panic attack, like we would use this but anytime to help calm people down, where we just take two normal nasal breaths in and out and at the end of the normal exhale, pause for just a few seconds and depending on your ability to tolerate CO2, that pause can be, you know, five seconds or, or more but just can start with just a couple of seconds just to break up a faster respiratory rate and just to allow CO2 to accumulate. But just gently. So two breast pause. Two breast pause. Very calming for the nervous system. It gives your mind something to focus on. That's very present moment as well, which is really important when we're getting nervous, say before performance and just get us in a better state.

Love some really good practical stuff for. It's dead the rugby lads. And you're working. Who are you working with at the moment? Is it with Nottingham or.

Well no, I haven't been but my old captain is now the head coach there. So I am actually going in a couple of weeks to go and do something there but a bit more like a bit of a one off workshop. But yeah, I work with one like Prem team here in the UK the last couple of years in a bit more of a consultancy enroll for them like I'm an S and C coach as well and you know, it's on the day to day Ground. It's like the S and C coach is really there. It should be or are implementing the. The day to day stuff. But I mainly work one on one with. With guys. So there's a number of guys that are in World cup camps at the moment and we'd say we're just doing stuff online to help them get prepared for that and then when we can we go down. Like I said, I like doing stuff with people in person. But it's probably not. Some of it's rather name dropping. Some of it's. Let's just say some, some like professional and international players rather than. I don't know if they. They would all want me to name. Name who they are.

You're a good idea.

Some of them are quite private.

Yeah, yeah, I get that. That. That world you're looking for a competitive edge and things like that. And you know, it's not always the thing to. To talk about depending on who, who it is. But yeah, that's, that's cool that you getting the chance to link up. It's sort of closing the loop a little bit. Maybe that you can help some of the current players and not go through or do better through things that you've been through. I think that's a, it's a good way to go. A lot of, you know, if you wanted to have a business, oftentimes the best business you can build is the one that you needed and it wasn't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yourself and you know that's. That's pretty much what you, what you're doing there, which I think is good, good way to go. Most of the men that I work with is generally. It's generally that like it's men who want to have a business that's based around something that they're really passionate about and they want to make a difference in the world or one of them is Dan depau. He used to work on fishing, fishing boats with his family business. And he felt like he was giving his life to something he didn't really want to give his life to. And so he really got into his training in CrossFit. But he's really into the breath work and regulating the nervous system. Did you want to. Did you want to share something there, Dan? Down in South Africa. There we go.

Yeah. How's the noise? I'm actually in the gym right now doing the expansion test right now. So I saw the link to the call and I jumped on. Yeah, I loved what Jack has shared there. Was like, you know, these tools, seeing them as as these tools to like navigate the. The nervous system and breath work being. Being a really good one to begin to recognize and like lower down that that upregulated state. And I wanted to, I wanted to share like you know with, with these tools. One of the ones that I use or what I teach is therapeutic tremoring. And that tension like you mentioned, like that tension. Most people don't really realize this unconscious tension that they hold, you know, this flexion muscles and how that their posture starts getting all like leaning forward, their breath then gets you know, stuck in that upper chest and you know that nervousness, that nervousness that they can feel. And yeah, I just love the way that. Yeah how you share that. The practical aspects of nervous system regulation can go so overlooked because it's like this very internal thing, this internal states. You know, we're generally always training external and looking for external strength and things. But that internal muscle I think is something that's. It's becoming more recognized here more and more people talking about it. So yeah, I just wanted to share like love what you shared so far with, with the breathwork stuff. Yeah, it being a very easy, easy entry because you know with the autonomic nervous system, the breast and the. Is one of those things that you know we can control, it's automatic and it's also you know, we can manually control it. So it's very easy. The therapeutic tremoring one is. Is something interesting to. To get some of the players to go through and experience it and get. Get that feedback is. Is something I'm. I'm building and, and yeah with Keegan's help in the network it's been super cool to do that. So yeah, thanks for sharing. Do you have any experience with. With therapeutic tremoring or you know that's that shaking that, that you know a person get that excitement. You know generally we look at this tremoring, this shaking as something to avoid and stop in my experience through the world of Tre and this neurogenic tremors, it's something to embrace and learn to control in a way where you can actually shake out this tension and down regulate the nervous system on a lot deeper level. Have you had experience around?

No, I have not with the. Not with the tremoring but picking up on some like important point that you. That you make there that the. The breath can be a tool. It can be and Brian McKenzie has called it like the remote controls the nervous system which is a great sort of notion for it. It is a tool and can be a tool but at the same time as you mentioned, it's got that, like we can consciously do something with it, but as it's part of that automate nervous system, it's got the, the subcon or it's got the automatic state to it. And what we ultimately want to do is we want to teach people how to use the breath as a tool, but we also want to change their physiology. We want to change the habits of the biomechanics of their breathing. And the underlying mechanism behind all of the breathing is the chemosensitivity that the receptors in the brainstem have that modulate our day to day breathing. If we improve the quality and the efficiency of our breathing through a biomechanical perspective, that will lead into better mechanics when we start to teach ourselves those things. But that's going to change like our baseline. And when we change our baseline and the breathing becomes more efficient, the nervous system can be calmer. But then we've got a, we've got a baseline that gives us more capacity to deal with other stresses. You know, breathing comes at a cost. Breathing, like at high intensity breathing can take up to 25% of our oxygen uptake. Like, which is, I think is, is a fascinating thing of like you have to breathe to get oxygen in. But the act of breathing is using up potentially when we're training hard, like a quarter of what you're, what you're using. And so it comes, and even at rest it's going to come. It takes energy, takes oxygen to make air come in. And it's just, it's a, it's a job for the body to do just to stay alive. If we can reduce the amount it needs to do of that because we become more efficient with it, because we've actually calmed or improved the tolerance of those chemoreceptors in the brain stem to carbon dioxide, then we get a better base foundation to our breathing. And that will actually give you greater capacity and more control over when you want to use the breath as a tool as well. Because I can teach someone the tools we might talk about like controlling your exhalation, but if someone's super sensitive to CO2, they're going to find it hard to control their exhalation and they're going to go, oh, this doesn't work. And it's like, okay, well I need to understand that and I need to be able to assess your breathing and understand where you're at and to then give you the right tools for where you're currently at. And then they should progress as you progress and Ultimately, I'm trying to affect, I'm going to use the tools to affect your baseline and improve your baseline. I think that in the world of breathing at the moment, there's not a lot of people that understand all dimensions of breathing. Biomechanics, biochemistry, psychophysiological. There's not many people that understand all of those. Because people will say things like, or do box breathing. If you're gonna do, if you're feeling X, Y or Z and I go, okay, you're gonna do a 4x4x4x4 box. What is the mechanics of how you're doing that? What's the speed at which you're doing that? I'm not talking about the speed of like it's obviously a 16 second breath, but how fast do you get in the air? In and out is going to massively change what that is doing in terms of your oxygen and CO2 levels in the blood. And, and it's also going to massively change whether the. What state your nervous system is in people. A lot of people will only understand that one parameter of like the speed of the breath or the rate of the breath. 4 by 4 by 4 box breathing. What if my inhale is like this? That's a 4 second inhale. But if my 4 second inhale could also be like this and you're like, did his camera freeze? No, I was breathing in, but it was so gentle that you couldn't see it or notice it or anything. Two completely different inhalations, both could be the start of a 4i4 box. Both going to completely have a different experience for my, for my nervous system and my blood gases. So sorry, that's a bit of a rant from me, but just because that's.

Love it.

That's where the world of breathing's at. Because it's, because it's automatic and because it's dead simple. Everything I teach is simple. The open oversimplification is like, oh, actually there's a lot of people that don't get it. And a lot of the time it comes from. Generally speaking, if someone's been taught by the oxygen advantage, they will, they will get all three of those elements because that's what we teach. There's a lot of other things out there. That sounds like me being a bit. But I'm just being honest.

You're selling it hard, man. No, no you're not.

You know what I mean though?

No, like they, yeah, this, this is a fast. It's a fascinating world. I started to get interested in it Through Wim Hof. I think for a lot of us, that was sort of the introduction point. Yeah. What is? Because he got on Rogan and Tim Ferriss, I probably roughly heard of it somewhere. But Wim's such a character that it grabs your attention, it makes you think about it. And then you do that Wim Hof method and you're like, wow, I haven't, you know, I haven't experienced something like.

It'S what's going on.

Experience 100 my breathe.

And I think for a lot of people, so to jump in, it was like, it just, it's a great stamp of people to go when you do something like, my body feels different, like it's doing something. And that's, and that's a good, A lot of the time people eventually get to a point, point over different periods of time where they go, so what's actually going on? And then they want to find, they want to find out and what else could it do?

Yeah, I, I kind of wanted to know if God existed. You know, I was kind of like, that's what my interest with Wim Hof was like. I don't really want to do mushrooms and all this other wacky stuff that everyone keeps talking about, but I'd like to get some of what they're talking about. And I heard, I also heard about holotropic breathing. So I did some Wim Hof and then I got into, I did a holotropic breathing session. It's like two hours breathing as hard as you can and, and you'd like, you black out and you, you know, you, you, you tense up and it was, it was an intense experience and I can see why it was viewed as a therapy. So I, I, I'm a bit of a, I'm a bit of a research, like I'm a natural explorer type and I would have read, you know, a lot of different books about breathing, like all the, all the main kind of ones that everybody reads and go down the different rabbit holes. And then I do like that. It's so different when you speak to someone who's speaking about breathing from the perspective of where you can actually physically enlarge the rib cage and you can strengthen the diaphragm muscle and there's that kind of conversation and then the other conversation of you can heal past life trauma and go and go off with the fairies and do all this other stuff. And there's so much that you can potentially experience with breath. I think it is a very difficult thing for a coach. Especially if they're a strength coach or their personal trainer, to get your head around all of what that's all about. I think sometimes it all does become a bit too hard. I like that. Oxygen Advantage is a set of tools and an approach that from, from my understanding and I read the Oxygen Advantage book, you know, when it first came out was before he had all the courses and stuff.

2017 or something.

Yeah, yeah, 2017. From memory. And it was just off the back of, I'd just been to the WIM HOF event and whatnot and I was like, oh, these are, this is hard to deal with. Like, these are quite different things that they're talking about. And I got quite into Buteyko and looking at his research and I did some work with a man named Misha Sakharov and he's a Russian engineer who decided that the health system wasn't working that well and he wanted to help people who the health system said, you know, nothing's good for you. And he's really into the Buteyko method and meat based diets along with other, other elements to move in the lymphatic system and things. And very interesting man who's taken on people in cases where it's, you know, when, when people have the courage to apply their system, when it's really life or death and then, you know, that they believe in what they're doing and I don't, you know, he's, he's a good man. He's got a big heart. So there are all these different, you know, ways that you can think about this and use it. Mostly it's that athletic perspective that coaches are interested in.

Yeah.

You know what, I guess the, the question is like with the chemical side of things and the mechanical side of things.

Yeah.

What's, you know, what's the most, you know, important component of that, that that's going to make all the difference. Like is it to be able to physically strengthen and enlarge and if, if all I care about is I just want to be a better athlete.

Yeah.

Or, or is it the, the ability to, to hold and to, you know, to do those, you know, the pause training work.

Yeah. So it's, it's a great question. I'll probably answer it in a couple of different ways. That's all right. Because it's sort of, it's multifaceted in the, the biochemistry and the biomechanics, like they interplay and affect one another. The thing that's great about breathing is you're always doing it so if you're working with an athlete, no matter what they're doing, they're breathing and we all know that. And in terms of movement, like functional movement, the position of their ribcage, like, I like to think of the ribcage being like the epicenter of you. Yeah, it connects round into your spine, your shoulder blades sit on it, your tissues, like your diaphragm attaches to hip flexors. Your, your position of your ribcage is going to influence like your spine up the chain spine and pelvis and everything lower down your ribcage position is also going to affect your shoulder blades. So it's going to affect your scapula, it's going to affect your movement around everything. And you can. The position of our rib cage is going to affect how well that you can expand it, it's going to affect where you expand it. And as you mentioned before, you can actually increase like anything, like any movement, I can increase the, the, the range of motion or the space that I can create with my rib cage. And that ribcage is, is providing the space that your lungs are going to expand into. So I can work on my alignment of the ribcage and my expansion of the ribcage and my diaphragmatic breathing that's linked into that. You know, the ribcage in the diaphragm are going to work hand in hand, going synchronization together. I can work on that in any situation. I'm going to potentially, if dependent, then, then it goes to like, okay, where's my starting point? And that's going to depend on an assessment of the athlete. And the most important thing that we're going to assess is their CO2 tolerance. So that would be like the Bolt score if you've read the oxygen vantage. Yeah, the lower that is, the more the focus needs to be on the biochemistry to start with. And we need to get them to a point with their CO2 tolerance where they can then start to play around and manage their breathing. If my CO2 tolerance is very low, my respiratory drive is going to be quite strong. I'm going to want to breathe fast, I'm not going to want to breathe low because it takes more time, it's a slower process. So depending on where my starting point is with the athlete, depends on how much I need to focus on the biochemistry as opposed to the mechanics. But I want to get to a point where we're actually working on both those two things together. And whatever it is that you're doing, you can always work on the mechanics. And you can always work on the CO2 tolerance because you can manipulate either through holding the breath or manipulate by breathing a little bit less in terms of total volume of air than your body naturally wants to when you're doing a particular movement or training session. But saying within all of that, we want to get an athlete to the point where we change their automatic, we change their baseline and we give them tools that they start to just use by habit and intuitively. So that when my guys, when my rugby guys are on the field, I don't want them thinking about breathing. When, when there's a stoppage in play and they've got 20 seconds to recover their breathing. They might use something we've taught them, but we want to get it just habitual, just a natural part of how they, um, how they do things and the way that we get to that point is it's got to work. Like the stuff we do with them has got to work and they've got to feel the difference. And when we. I'd said coming all the way back around to talking about buy in at the beginning, when we're talking about kickboxing, like we've got to get buy in and we've got to teach them stuff for where they're at. This is where we need to individual. But for where they're at, that lets them go, right, this works. This is helping me. I'm therefore going to want to use it. And then it's, you know, as they progress, they get more access to more stuff.

Makes sense. So I've had the chance to work with a couple of guys like yourself from the southern hemisphere. I'm being involved in the rugby world. I don't know if you know any of my, my story, but I used to work in rugby league as well. I worked with London Broncos actually in.

Oh, nice.

England and Catalan Dragons in, in France in the, in the Super League. My brother's actually at Leeds there now at the moment. Cody's going to go and visit him sometime in the next little bit. He's with the. He's the head coach of the Leeds Rhinos. I was a strength coach for those teams that I worked with. Assistant at the London when I was like 22 and I worked with the Sydney Roosters and Sunny Bill and I've been in that kind of scene. I worked with The Roosters in 2018 and 19 as a consultant. One of the.

I was playing at Broncos because there's a number of the coaches at Sale. Sharks are like from rugby league. There's a few of them from League, from Leeds and.

Yeah, John Kirkpatrick, as you know, he. I think he's at. He's on the staff at Sale. He was at London, actually, when I was there.

He's.

He's a. He's a really good man. He was.

Hello. Yeah.

How long.

So how long ago were you there? When you.

That was 2005. 2000? Yeah, 2005, 2006.

That might be. I don't know, that might be a bit early. I think it's Jamie. Jamie Langley.

I'm 40 as well. I. I don't know him, but I know, yeah, I know who you're talking about.

Maybe. Maybe he was a bit later.

Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm sure we'd have quite a few mutual acquaintances. I didn't know as much of your rugby background either. I've been following your breast stuff for quite a while. It's funny to hear you got that story. My father was a rugby league coach. My uncle actually has coached England in rugby league as well. Tony Smith. So I've got a rugby league family. I did a little bit with. With some union guys here and there, mostly through Sunny Bill and. Yeah, but. Yeah, so in 20, 20, 18, 2019, I consulted with the Roosters again, the City Roosters, and. And they had a breath consultant, Nam Baldwin. It was. Was more than just breath, but it was. He also does some imagery stuff and important work. But they would. They did some really. Some really interesting breath stuff at that stage with like, really thinking about like strengthening the diaphragm as a muscle. So it was something that was done pretty much every training day. It's. It's sort of like that yogic, how to clean out your nose deal of like pulsing the diaphragm and you get like a lactic acid type burn in the. In the diaphragm because you're working it really hard. I don't know. Have you played around with any of that style of work?

Yeah, well, so when we're doing strong breath holding, we'll get multiple contractions of the diaphragm. So you get in, you get in that, like those pulses of the diaphragm. It's more like it can't move because you're not letting any air in and out when you're holding the breath. So it's. It's very much an isometric. Very good for people at the start when they're not, well, let's say connected to the diaphragm, like, you know, Some people start with a guy, you know, he's top guy in the bleeding world, and he's like. He's not sure if he's feeling his diaphragm or not. And he like, is it give him.

Some things to do?

And it's like at the start, you know, he's like three weeks in and he can feel his diaphragm and he knows what it is and it's. And it's working. But at the start it was like, I don't really know if I can feel. Like, everyone can do this now. Like, you can feel your diet. Well, whether. If you connect. It's a good little test, but you can equally use it if you just take a normal breath in and out. Pinch the nose and try and breathe in. If you put your hand down below where your two lower ribs meet, just below the sternum where your diaphragms are touching. If I try and breathe in. Okay. You'll feel that diaphragm pulse. If you're not normally recruiting your diaphragm very well, you'll feel your upper chest, like, try and draw that air in. But we should be feet that. That should. The act of trying to breathe in whilst holding my breath should isometrically contract the diaphragm and you're going to feel it pulse the working. So that's like that. So the diaphragm is like our main inhalation muscle when we're talking about breathing. There's so. I see so many guys where they can't exhale. Well, some of it's like ribcage positioning. We're stuck in. We're stuck in some extension patterns and we don't access the back portion of the, like the posterior rib cage very well. And for a whole host of reasons and whatnot, but they can't get the ribs down and in, and they can't get the air out without flexing the spine. And we're actually, like, weak in those. In those exhalation muscles. So one of the things that we use when someone starts to get a bit more advanced is. I've got one here, look. Sports mask that provides resistance to inhalation and exhalation musculature. Like, there's a tiny little. This is. It's got a. Let me show you. So it's got like a. A slider. You can see like the. If I move out the way slightly.

Yeah.

Let's see. And then the hardest setting, it's like just this little pin prick to breathe through. Like.

Yep.

You. I I'm like a bit of a knob. So when I first got it I just chucked it on. I was like low or high? I was like high and just went out for a run and I was like literally after about 200 meters like die feeling like I'm going to have a panic attack because you can't get, you feel like you can't get enough air in. But your real trouble is you can't get enough of the CO2 out. And the higher levels of CO2 for anyone will reach a point where it will trigger a panic attack and nearly got there. And the other thing that that does is the CO2 that you are breathing out pulls within the, within the mask. So you rebreath some of the CO2 and you know, carbon dioxide in the normal air that we breathe is about 0.04%. And the exhalation, your CO2 will have about 4%. It goes up by 100 times. Re breathing some of your exhaled air is going to expose you to higher levels of CO2 which is going to help you the CO2 tolerance. So that's the sports mask gives us two things. It's going to help you work on your CO2 tolerance but it's going to help the inhalation, respiratory muscle strength and the exhalation through range rather than isometrically. So that would be, that's something that there's, there's a reasonable amount of research on using them as part of a warm up. Like the research that's mainly done is like if you use like a respiratory muscle strength training like mask like that for five minutes in a warm up, does it improve my performance later on? Like as in I'm using them all then the session about to do and that's fine. But equally I'm interested in like building someone's strength of those muscles. Like I would any strength of any muscles in the, in a sort of training or gym strength environment. Like I want to, I want to train them on a build. I want to have ways to progressively overload it so they get better at it. But you know, before we do things like that, we want to be, we need to be. It needs to be building the strength through a good movement pattern. So we need to have good positioning alignment with the ribcage. We need to have good articulation ribcage and the movement of the diaphragm before we want to start loading up rather than just getting good at a bad breathing pattern that you've already developed or got. Yeah, that makes sense. I can't Remember what the question was? Sorry.

Yeah. Well, I started with talking about the diaphragm strength and you.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Exhale strength as well as the inhale strength, which I think is really. Yeah.

And not just isometric. Like the pulsing from holding the breath and doing it is, is very good for activation. And yeah, there's going to be some strengthening, but you're not taking range.

His isn't. It's. It's breathing. You're actually breathing with it, but it's not breathing through a big change in volume because it's fast. It's like a.

Okay, okay.

You know the.

Yeah.

And you really focus on, you know, doing it from. You pass the tissues around at the start if you know, if needed. And then it's like, all right, let's go for it. And they, yeah, they'll do intervals of that. And there's something that's different, but Nance had some, some really good results with, with athletes. And, um, it was, it was something different that I think helped with the buy in. From the perspective of like, you can actually feel that muscle burn and there's that aware. I think it gives you that diaphragm awareness of. Okay, that's what it feels like to have lactic acid in my diaphragm. As if the same way it would in your legs when you, when you squat really hard and heavy. Um, speaking of squatting hard and heavy, we've been doing a stupid. We do, we do challenges and I mean, I could call it stupid because I come up with it, but.

The.

Idea with the training system that I have and that we do in uncommon success is mostly around the experiences and how you deal with the challenge. And at least a big part of it is the goal is that it transfers over to other things that you want to do in your life. Like, anyone can, can train, but is it actually making your life better? So one of the ones that we did is just a real toughness challenge is 40 kilos on the bar. Every three seconds you do a squat until you don't want to squat anymore. And you know, you decide when you, when you're done. And so I did it and I got 110. And I was like, well, that was, that was an experience. And then, you know, like, I think I scared the people here where I'm, you know, in the village, like, oh, what's he done to himself? And you know, like, I was, I was pretty buckled. We had Victor Yasinski here, who is a world class rower. He's pushed to be on the Serbian team. He almost went to the Olympics. His father was an Olympian. He did the same challenge. He, he knows breathed the whole way through it. Eventually he got slow, but I was mouth breathing after, I don't know, like 20 reps. Like. Yeah. With that sort of challenge, like, what would optimal breathing look like and what impact is it going to have on. On the reps? My, my feeling is that I would, I would have tapped out earlier. Like, I wouldn't be able. I wouldn't have been able to get the job done through my nose biased.

Great question. Because it depends on like, like anything. You're depending on your starting point, you're switching to something that might be deemed to be. But this is where, like, we've got a bit lost with science and research at times where we, like, go, oh, we've compared this thing and it says it's better. And you're like, yeah, but what have you compared it to? And it's. And, and the individual, like, you know, it gets a bit. We've got a bit lost, I think, with, with some of the stuff that then get spouted out and then, you know, if, if someone's got a paper to back something up, it means that it's like, we take that as a gold standard without looking at the whole context of what's going on anyway. So in theory, your nasal breathing is going to help you more diaphragmatically breathe, which will help you, like, bit of intradermal pressure, help you stay in control of your respiratory rate, and it will help you control your blood gas a little bit better. When your mouth breathing, you're going to get a little bit more upregulated and you're going to get rid of CO2 at a faster rate. When you start getting rid of CO2 at a faster rate than is optimal, you're going to start reducing circulation. Because CO2 is a vasodilator and it's also catalyst allows oxygen to be released from hemoglobin, from red blood cells. So we have this sweet spot where an increase in CO2 that you can manage is good for circulation, for oxygen delivery. Too much is going to cause you to have a problem. Depending on what your CO2 tolerance is like, you may or may not, at the current state, be able to manage a task like that. Nasal breathing, if you work on your capacity to nasal breathe and your capacity to tolerate CO2 from all those dimensions, psychophysiological as well as biochemical and biomechanical, because of how you feel like you're getting on and how you feel like you're getting gassed out, then, yeah, you would in theory do better once you've adapted and done some training, be able to manage that better nasally. But this is where I made this mistake a lot myself at the start. This is where then the con, what I've just said there. Someone can hear just the nasal versus mouth and go like, nasal good, mouth bad. And it being as black and white as that look, I can nasal breathe really badly, mechanically badly, in terms of speed badly. It's not the. It's part of the answer and it's a huge part of it. Plays a nice role within all of it. There's loads of amazing benefits that nasal breathing provides for us. But don't see it as the only thing. It's like the top of the chain. Like there's a load of stuff going on beneath it that's going to impact it.

I like that. Top of the chain. Yeah, that makes sense. That it's. The nose is just part of the story. It's not. Or the mouth, it's. Either way, it's still not the full story. There's a lot more going on with the mechanics that you've been talking about with the diaphragm, the exhale muscles, the rib cage, positioning capacity, all those things.

But we look for black and white answers, don't we? And it's like, you know, this isn't, you know, this isn't a play on, on this guy. But I'll just say, just as an example, like, if someone goes, oh, Huberman said I should nasal breathe, then everyone goes, I need to nasal breathe. And it's like, it's not that he's saying something that's wrong. I'm not saying I'm not. Like, that's. This is not me calling him out or anything, anything dramatic like that. But it's just an example where, you know, a lot of people listen to what he say for good reason. He knows what he's talking about, but they don't. They're not able to take it into their own context of going like, for some people, depending on where their CO2 tolerance is like and how bad their mechanics are, how. What their psychological relationship is like with air hunger, they literally nasal breathe whilst walking and they will feel stressed. So nasal breathing for them right there and then, even though it is going to be better for them, but right there and then in the instance, it isn't. And what we need to do is we need to give them ways to like Gradually calm the nervous system down, change their psychological perception with what air hunger is, it's CO2, not oxygen being low, and give them some tools to actually able to change that. And over time they're going to get to a place where, yes, nasal breathing is how you should breathe for the majority of your life. Most people can get up to 85% of their max efforts nasal breathing, whether you want like everything. I, I could do everything now and this isn't me going, oh no, look at me. But I could do everything now nasally. But I don't, I mean, because I do, I do like some super high intensity stuff, holding my breath as well and then try to gain my breathing like so. But that's because I've invested time in that for various different reasons. I'm exploring stuff, I'm trying to, you know, trying to experiment and all that sort of stuff. And is that necessary for everyone I work with and is that necessary for everyone in their sport? No, but what is necessary is for people to know how to manage their respiratory rate. That's probably like the number one thing. And then because I can, we can apply and give you tools for any type of sport for that to be done. Well and if I can just give like one other thing to that is like, then getting back to nasal should be a priority and the context of that, like after, when training is finished. We want to try and get back to nasal. Yes, we want to try and control and bring the nervous system down. And there might be pockets of time depending on what your sport is like, where you have intervals of recovery in between rep sets or bouts of work, or the sport itself, where you can get back to nasal or closer to nasal, but just be able to apply some of these like recovery breathing protocols, as I call them, where you're trying to get back control of your respiratory rate, get back control of those blood gases and just understanding simply how to, how to do that effectively. And part of training is exposing yourself to the challenge of that and getting better at that.

Would you expect you for yourself that you'd be able to get the same score or better holding?

Yeah, I've got like, it's weird now if you make me mouth breathe. I don't like, literally, I don't like. It feels horrible.

So if you had to, if you had to, you know, row your best 500 meters and everything was on the line or, or 1k, 2k like, or, you know, the test that I've given, like, is there a point where you would. Or it just wouldn't help you.

Possibly, possibly. I haven't necessarily tested it out. So an example I could give you. When my early. When I first started trying to implement some of the, some of the techniques from the Ox Advantage, I was like, right, I'm going out nasal breathing on a run. I get like 50 meters down my road and there's like snot pouring into my mouth and I'm like, this is horrendous. Like, this isn't better, this is way worse. But I understood why you should be able to jog nasal breathing. So I, I kept my pace low and I, I worked on it for, for many, many weeks. But as I said before, like, I'm a bit of a knob. So like with the sports mask, I just put on the hardest setting and my. I used to do a park run, but they have part one around the world. It's like a 5k on a Saturday morning. So my training for park run was go to Parkrun. That was it. During the week I was doing pure calisthenics, nothing else. Wasn't doing any running training. Over the course of like six weeks of just trying to nasal breathe when I'm doing stuff and whatnot. I go to a new Parkrun, a course I've never done before, and I'm running and I start nasal breathing and it gets to the point where like I can't manage the nasal breathing. Like, I just, I just go hard and I'm like just trying to get, I tried to get a PB every time I went. That was basically. But I did no, no right to because I did no training anyway. So I set off and I made, I don't know after how long kilometer goes and I'm like, I'm struggling to nasal breathe now. Some very simple principles that's useful for everyone that I understood was that in terms of efficiency of oxygen delivery, not wasting as much air in dead space that you have in every single breath that we take is the concept of like breathing like low down with your diaphragm, like drawing air into the lower portion lungs. That's where the most amount of alveoli is or density of alveoli. And the most amount of blood sits because of gravity. And taking larger breaths but slightly slower as a principle rather than fast and short. It's like deep but expand and just try to breathe a little bit slower but larger than you would want to. At that point I had to go to mouth breathing and it was like nasal in their mouth out to start with. Just on that sort of like, like Progression. And then I was like mouth in, mouth out. But rather than panting short and fast, I was like trying to just try and breathe a bit more diaphragmatically, a bit larger and a bit slower than I would have naturally. And across the finish line. Well, I came around the court, you know, you've done it, you've never done a course. So I didn't know where the end was. And I Across the finish line, I'm like, I didn't feel like I'd done very well. I didn't feel like I'd necessarily pushed myself and I was a bit like, I could have gone probably a bit faster than that. And I definitely didn't feel fast. So I didn't even look at my watch for a few minutes to. Because I was. Didn't think I'd got anywhere near a PB. And I'd taken, I'd taken. My PB was like 20, 15, 20 minutes, 15 before that, which. It's all right. It's not World record page maybe it's not bad. And I've been trying to get under 20 minutes for absolutely ages. Anyway, that day I knocked nearly a minute off. I dropped to 19 minutes, 20 seconds and I didn't even feel. And I was like, I was a bit pissed off because I was like, if I knew where I was going and how I was, I reckon I could have dropped and I could have snuck under 19 minutes, which would have been. But to knock a minute off by just applying some principles, not having really done the training, that's what really opened me up to going like, okay, there's some. This isn't just about brain health. This is about like performance of people. And that, that's what really got me. That was my like buying. That was my. In terms of performance I did. That was my buying. That was like, okay, how you breathe influences your performance big time.

Speaking of being a bit of a knob, when you jump into things like, that's. That's my style as well. If it's interesting, then you may as well, you know, experience it at a thousand percent and see what it does.

My mate's got a saying of, he says if something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. Which is a joke because obviously, but yeah, similar.

Well, it's actually with coaches, like if you're going to lead other people in something, like, I want to be with the coach who overdoes it. You know, like the fact that you're doing those breath holding workouts where it's like, yeah, he's kind of trying to kill himself out there. Like, he's, he's definitely pushing. Like, I see you doing that stuff, and I'm like, yeah, you're living it. Like you know what it's about. And so I think most coaches, you know, should push to the point of exhaustion, maybe get a few niggling injuries, because otherwise, what are you going to do? If you're really conservative and safe, then how do you know how to push the limit for your athlete and keep them safe? Or if they feel like they're overdone, how do you even know? So it's a. It's. I think it's. There's a positive side to it. At least that's what I tell myself when I, When I get into this stuff. And a number of times I've really gone deep on, on understanding breath and applying it. And when I get excited about the Buteyko stuff, like when I was doing things with Misha Sakharov and when I first read Oxygen Advantage, I get all excited about, okay, I'm going to tolerate all the carbon dioxide. You know, that's it. I'm done with breathing, like, hold my breath forever. And the thing that happens, like, I've done it a couple of times. Well, I did it once really badly where I got, like, a kind of anxiety that came on, and it took me like, two, three days to shake it. And I was like, wow, that was scary. Like, I'd never really understood when people talk about anxiety. And I felt like, man, like, I can't get rid of this thing. I don't know. You know, I was just playing around with tolerating more carbon dioxide. And I've read the books, and I knew that if you give someone a high dose of carbon, if you put them on a respirator, like, they go into a panic attack. Like, it's a literal black and white. Everyone experiences it and it's. It's not nice. What, what advice do you have to make sure people don't do that? What should they do if they. If they are knuckleheads like me? Because there's probably a percentage of the audience who, you know, are in that category.

I would say for most people, it isn't something that you have to, like, you have to be quite unique to push yourself to that limit of. Of discomfort. Say I've. I've had it with the sports mask, where it forces it on you. Doing it without the sports mask is pretty.

I was doing a lot of breath holds. Like, breath hold, walking breath hold Training just. And then just not breathing much the rest of the time. Holding my breath every time I thought about it.

Yeah, I think it's that, like, take some, some like, analogies that we know as strength coaches of people often do some sort of, like, gym work. Like doing heavy squats is great. Yeah, but you don't do them all day. Every day you like, you do your sets and then you get that bar off your back and you let the system, like, recover. It's like, don't treat breathing any different. I mean, this is probably too. Don't take everything I say is too strongly, but. So take it within context. But I don't treat breathing any different to any other movement pattern. But at the same time there is something different about it because it's automatic. But we can talk about like a squat pattern you could argue is automatic. People just do it badly because they've got all jacked up for whatever reasons. There are similarities with breathing, but I treat breathing and train breathing very much like from an SNC perspective, because that's my background. And treat it like a movement pattern. Understand what it needs. It needs endurance more so than strength. CO2 sensitivity and tolerance is very simple. It's the volume of air that affects it. Okay? If you hold your breath, the volume of air is zero. There's nothing coming in, nothing coming out because you're holding your breath. When you're doing any other type of breathing, there's two parameters at play. There's the speed of your breath and the size of your breath. So the respiratory rate and tidal volume, those two things make up the volume of air, or we call it minute ventilation. The amount of air you're breathing in a minute, you have to just reduce that. So as I said, when you hold the breath, your minute ventilation is zero because you're not breathing. If you breathe slower, your brain automatically wants you to breathe bigger breaths to keep you at the same level that you were previously at. So all you have to do is breathe a little bit slower and a little bit less, and then you're going to influence your minute ventilation. But at the same time, that concept of light doesn't mean you have to do that all day, every day. And the, the simple fact of progressive overload that you would apply for any other type of thing that you're going to train, same thing, build up gradually.

My hypothesis is that there's something with the vasodilation where if you push that and you're triggering that stress response a bunch of times that maybe you, you release stuff in your body as well, that that's sort of built up. If you've been breathing the other way and you've sort of had a lot of constriction and then all of a sudden you've got more vasodilation going on systematically, that it can maybe change some other. Some other stuff as well, because I think the gut. Yeah.

So it's also worth mentioning that, like the. Those two scenarios, like the breath holding and the like, reduced breathing or breathing light, the breath holding, when it's like done strongly, is a stressor, whereas the breathing light, which is very gentle, very calming, is like a downright, you can have it as a down regulator. So you've got those two pedals, you've got the accelerator and you've got the brake, so you can work on your CO2 tolerance in a less stressful way or a more stressful way, depending on the tool that you're choosing to do. I think one of the best things, sorry, that the breathing has done for me is teach me about my body and my nervous system and how I feel, rather than just like, hey, Jack, how are you doing?

I'm all right.

As in. No, no, like, what's your nervous system saying? Because you listen to your breathing, even just as. Something as simple as just counting how many breaths you're taking in a minute will tell you whether you're like agitated up, regulated or not. Feeling where you're breathing will tell you a bit about how your nervous system is wanting you to breathe. You can measure your heart rate variability with it, but equally you can actually just sit still for a minute and pay attention to your breathing and you'll learn quite a lot about yourself.

What sort of breathing rates do you see often when you start with an athlete that hasn't had a focus on this? Yeah.

Like 18, 20 breaths per minute is normal. And I'm talking like good professional athletes.

Yeah.

And if I'm running 50 minute 10k, that's the speed I'm breathing at when I'm running a 50 minute 10k. And they say that to them and they go, you just let it sit. You just let that sink in and they go, hell, you know. Yeah. You're sat there like you're running but you're not like, so where's your capacity for, you know, so we're going to bring that down and you see it with them. You can do one session with someone, you do some breathing, just calm them down a little bit, give them some cues to be more efficient and bring the nervous system down it's like how do you feel now? Like and retake, you know. Okay. I feel way more relaxed. I feel calmer. I don't feel agitated and I'm breathing naturally. I'm breathing a bit slower now. Yeah, exactly. Because it will respond quickly. One minute of breathing whether good nor good or bad. The respiratory centers in the brain stem that are sensitive to those chemical changes brought on mainly by CO2, its effect on PH of the blood. They respond within one minute. So you don't have to do a lot.

Makes sense. Have you played around with the heart Heart Math Institute stuff for their heart rate variability.

So my wife has used Heart Math I'm using just because the device is, is easier if you come across. Dr. Well J. Wells Hanu Health he's done some work with Patrick Oxymanties but he's so he uses a Polar 10 heart rate monitor and it's the hardware like in the app that then gives you real time feedback rather than say whoop or aura that gives you like an average give you some real time feedback which is great when I'm working with a client in person where we can put it on we can do a couple of different like down regulating breathing practices and see which one the nervous system right there and then is responding to to the most to just make it a little bit more individualized for them.

Which, which, which what's it called again?

It's called Hanu Health. H A N U Health.

You are connected with them.

Yeah. Jay Wells, Dr. Joe Guy in America. Like he's just I guess he's now devoted fully to hrv. That's his, that's his thing.

Good.

Yeah, really good guy with busy so difficult to get a conversation with him. But yeah, if you, if yeah reach out to him and I'm sure we'll hook you up.

Appreciate that. Yeah. So with that immediate feedback you can get that you know, next level of buy in. Have you played around with the lung volume stuff and, and measuring one of, one of the guys I've worked with, Scott Hagness, he's worked with some of the top CrossFit athletes and the, the guy who won the, the last one, I'm not sure of the name but he sort of connected with him and his coach and, and they've played around with some, some stuff with really measuring the, the volume that they're able to hold and he does like they do inhale closing off the epiglottis. So using like a muscular maximal expansion which is kind of seems a little bit counterintuitive or different to when you're thinking about breathing as little as possible like compared to Buteyko, which Buteyko and oxygen advantage are not exactly the same. And then you're going in more of the athletic direction.

Yeah, but there's a lot of Buteyko within oa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's have you played around with. With any of that style of. Of stuff?

So I do. I've got, I, I've really. I guess some of this stuff like you say from the start, like is it. It's your. Your own desire to explore things a little bit. So like mobility of the rib cage and how that affects the rest of my body and how it feels has been a. Something that I've enjoyed looking into and exploring and not only then how that how the movement around the rest of the body feels or like range that you can create very quickly within literally a few breaths you'll change thoracic rotation for example because of how the rib cage is articulate and it's going to affect how the spine articulates because they connect together that you can actually get a greater expansion, better, more fuller expansion of the rib cage. The. A lot of, a lot of athletes will like need but and sort of it's the more obvious buy in to them of like if the first thing you're going to do to them is make them hold their breath and do some squats say and then they're absolutely fucked afterwards and you're like that's what you need. And they're like this feels horrendous. Like it's, it's a difficult starting point. Whereas a lot of the time people feel like I need to take a bigger breath in and they may or may not, but there'll be times when taking a larger volume of air in is beneficial for sure. And giving them a few breathing mobilizations to get those ribs moving a bit more so they can actually feel that and they feel the freedom through their T spine but then also they feel those ribs moving more. I haven't been collecting data on what those changes in volume are more subjectively going like how does that feel? And they're like well yeah, like I want. I can move easier and we can measure that I guess more so in terms of range of motion but in terms of volume of air being created at the moment it's more like a. Yeah, I can feel I'm taking a larger breath in as I suppose I haven't got volumes of air to. But that would be. That's something I should, should do for sure because I, I feel like that's 100% happening.

There's a, there's a device that he's using that's sort of relatively new on the scene. I think he's using it while training as well. So he's got a test that he runs and then he's, he's seeing the volumes. So you can see what's going on exactly with or more detailed with the breath at the same time as watching the performance output. So I'll, I'll connect you up if.

Yeah, yeah, that would be cool.

He's a really, really good man. He did a lot of BMX as a, as a young man and he's got these old, old school videos on his BMX from the vcr and. And then he just continued the journey into becoming a massive guru on the, on the breath side of things and, and helping crossfitters. So he's a good man.

Part of me is like, I get it, why people want to see, like, data and stuff and it proves stuff. And I'm like, I've got a science, I've got an engineering background, I've got masters in engineering. Like, I've got a scientific background. But at the same time there's part of me that's just like, do it feel that it's better and then just trust yourself that it's better because you can feel that it's better. Like. Yeah, you know, but yeah, that's a, that's a sort of different side to me, I guess.

Yeah. 100. There's that element of like, you don't need the numbers for everything. And that's a little bit of the beef with the Huberman, you know, tsunami of like, everything that, everything that he's saying, which is a lot of things that people have been saying for a long time and getting, been getting criticized for over the last couple of decades. Huberman now says it's science and now, now it's.

Yeah, He froze up. Has he froze up on. Is it me? Have I froze or is he froze?

Yeah, I think he froze.

Yeah.

Yeah, he froze, definitely.

That makes me feel. I'm normally worried. It's like, oh, no. Am I?

Yeah.

Have you found the conversation that means he's gone. I know he's back in. No, it's.

It's been really good. I probably noticed breathing coming to the game of rugby probably the last five years.

Yeah.

Obviously done a lot of reading on what the All Blacks did, especially like Rich McCall. And yeah, whenever they conceded points, you know there'd be two breaths. Like it was always something they did and it's something that it's always been part of the themes I play for. But we kind of didn't know why we did it. Yeah, yeah, maybe you can see one try. Yes, it works. But then you can see four tries and then you go away from it. So it was like sticking to that process of it.

Thanks for jumping in there. So, yeah, continue the conversation. Yeah, I dropped off the face of the planet. It just disconnected for some reason the, the hotspot. But yeah, we've been into a lot of stuff there. I really, I really appreciate the conversation. I do have one more thing because the, I like numbers, right. As a strength coach, it's, it's often about numbers and with the teams that I worked with, I figured if, if the numbers were better, then we were probably a pretty good chance of beating some of the other ones. So I put an emphasis on improving the numbers. And I worked with the Sydney Roosters in 2013. We weren't predicted to make the finals. Trent Robinson came in as the head coach, rookie sort of coach. He'd had two years in France where he'd done well, but he came in and it was sort of like, okay, this is a caretaker role and next year it's going to be a high profile coach, the coach from Melbourne. And this is just a one year thing. So from the get go, I don't know whether that was true or not, that was just the hype in the media. But from the get go it was like, all right, you know, you're going to, we're going to throw everything at this and see what we can come up with because otherwise we're only, you know, we're only going to be in here for a year. We end up winning the regular season. We won the Grand Final, set an all time record for zero scorelines for opposing teams. And you know, it couldn't have been better. We won the World Club, you know, the Club Challenge, the, the club championship as well, like the juniors, the 20s. And I went in there and I coached the 20s to start with and then I was a big squad and all that. But the big thing and the thing I would say for coaches is like numbers, you know, put your numbers up and hold players accountable to improving now, you know, the quality of the movement. So don't worry about the numbers that other teams have, but if your numbers are getting better with the quality that you want to see, then you're getting somewhere with breath. The Bolt score For me, with men, with competitive men, it's like, I kind of like the number, but I don't really trust you to measure your own Bolt score and tell me what your Bolt score is. Talk a bit about your experience with that and then I want to give you what I've sort of been doing in place of that. But yeah, it's difficult to get it to be non competitive. Right. To be able to have an honest number because it matters a lot how much you breathe in before, how much you breath before. With Big la, how do you, how do you get a good number?

Yeah. So we're trying to, I go back to like what we got taught in science at school. When you're like 13, it's like, how do you make a fair test? You've got all these variables and you're only allowed, you're trying to like just test one thing. So you're trying to keep as many variables the same. So some obvious ones are like, we do it first thing in the morning, not at random times throughout the day. It'll be different. Like, yes, you can tell me yours is better in the afternoon, but I don't care. I do care. I care immensely about your Bolt score. But what I'm interested in is what is it consistently at the same time in the morning. Some of the discrepancies with the Bolt score come in that not everyone's first desire to breathe in is the same or feels the same. Yeah. So some people, it's like they, they almost like think it, they can, it's in their head somewhere or it's in the, in the mouth and the cheeks or it's, it's from the throat or it's the chest or it's the diaphragm. And what allows it to be consistent a bit like you said about don't worry about other people and comparing to other teams and whatnot is like if I, I do that, I do it with someone, I spend a bit of time boring the living daylights out of them. But to try and get them to understand is like, we want to see your auto, like your willpower. Show me that when we do some strong breath holds. And don't worry, I'll give you plenty of time to show me how amazing you are holding your breath. And actually I'm going to bury you when we do those if you want to get competitive anyway. But with the Bolt score it is like what is the auto. That's what interesting. So don't. You're not trying to do anything and I Actually, rather than call it a breath hold, I'll describe it as pausing. So you're going to take a normal breath in, normal breath in, normal breath out, and pause. And you're just waiting for that first definite desire to breathe in. Now, whatever that feels like to them is probably going to stay as their first definite desire to breathe in. So they get to their. Then use that as their same thing each time. The easiest thing to notice is when they let go and they breathe in. You can tell immediately whether someone's breathing is normal or relatively normal. Like, I've paused. Like, it's going to look a little bit like. Or feel a little bit different than when I'm not having that pause because my bottle's going up in 30 seconds. I'm stopping for 30 seconds. But I shouldn't be either. Like, you see it in their face or you ask them a question. One I do. Like, ask them, how was that? Straight away, how was that? And if they can answer and they can talk in a controlled manner, that means. Because talking is a controlled exhalation, that means you haven't used any wheelpair. You're in control of your breathing still. But if they let go and they're a bit like. And I say, how was that? And then they don't want to say anything for a bit because they know if they go up in their mouth, they're going to go like. Then you know that we've. We've took it on a bit. Now people get the knickers in a twist a little bit. When I was speaking with coaches when they do it, you know, if I'm, if I'm mentoring or teaching the certification as I do to other. Other instructors, where they're like, ah, you know, it was 15. But I don't know, because their breathing was a bit like it. I'm like, okay, well, if it was 15, it's not 30 and it ain't 5. You know, you're in the ballpark, you might be a few seconds either side and then you can have a little break and get them to do it again and just reiterate, but you're in the ballpark. And I think it's very clear when you're not in the ballpark because someone's like, you know, you can sit, you can see when someone's held the breath or not. So I, you know, you hear Patrick McEwen, who developed the whole. The oxygen vantage, you hear him talk about it like, it's not like, squeaky clean, like, with no issues in terms of a test. But it's the simplest and most effective test that is, that is there for us to use. That takes just one.

It's not going to be the Olympics.

Say again.

It's not going to be in the Olympics though, because of the. Those challenges around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. I like that you get, gives you an idea and you're in the ballpark and, and that's valuable. One version that could be in the Olympics that I sort of played around with and it's like just playing around with a lot of breath stuff and games. Like you, like you say, I've played around with like 5 second inhale and you're allowed to inhale as deeply as you want. And then you have a 15 second or you have the same duration of exhale and hold before you inhale again. And you have to do 10 cycles. So you breathe in as deeply as you can, which gives you potentially some of that strengthening stuff as well that maybe some of these other coaches are pointing at that like it's okay to fill the lungs sometimes.

Yeah.

And then, and then, yeah, with. If you have to really slowly exhale and then you have to hold at the end of the exhale, it's still not black and white because you could not exhale as much. And then you hold after the exhale is going to be easier. But I've found that it's something that can make it sort of a bit more fun. And one of the, like, it's one of these breath exercises that, you know, you've got your Brian McKenzie up and you've got all these things that you can do and I've played around with a lot of them. But it's one that's sort of like a test that can be a bit of fun, that gets people to, you know, experiment with this stuff. What would your, your feedback on that be?

What are your thoughts like? So it's just when we're testing something like if it's an SNC test, which you've done your whole life, you'll be like, you'll know, well, I'm doing this test for this reason. And it's the same as anything else. You're like, so why are you doing the test? Why? And do, do we know what we're testing? So you're adding some other parameters in now and as you as you know that that's what you're doing and know what those parameters are in terms of the ability to expand the ribcage. So you're bringing in a Mechanical element. You're bringing in a bit more of a psychological element potentially as well. And what that's then. What's that then giving you? And when you see it in, like I say, if someone's able to do 5, 5, 5, and then next week they can do 6, 6, they're seeing the progress that they can make. All that we. The what we using that as a standalone test. What you wouldn't know necessarily that clearly is what has improved. Has their CO2 sensitivity improved to allow them to do that, or have they got better breath control with their diaphragm or if they got better mechanics or, you know, and then partly they're changing their psychophysiological relationship with their hunger and it might be a mixture of all those things. Whereas with the Bolt score, what we do know is all your testing is chemosensitivity. If you do it correctly without any workout, all you're testing is chemo sensitivity. There's no inhale, there's no mechanics, there's no nothing. It's just chemo sensitivity. And that's why it's useful. That's why it sort of stuck there as a bit of a gold standard for breathing. Brian McKenzie uses max exhale test from like free diving. Again, you're adding in other parameters, which is fine if you know what those are and if you understand the process, but you don't then know when that improves. You don't know actually which bits you've necessarily improved. Some people like various different things. I just know from my personal experience is the simpler we can keep things, the better.

Do you have, do you have a top end performance breath test that you like? Because a lot of what's spoken about like the Bolt scored, such as it came from sick people and helping people not to die. Buteyko noticing that breath rate was a predictor of death in hospitals, that's kind of where the roots of that come. I think at the other end of the spectrum, if you were working with a top end athlete and they'd been doing work on their breath, what test might you put them through? They'd be like, oh, yeah, this person really is top of the game as far as being able to tolerate this.

So I would still do the Bolt score? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, more like something with exercise.

Yeah. So maximum breathlessness test is one where we do breath hold with willpower whilst walking, counting our steps. So how many paces can you take? So it's very. It's walking, it's low level aerobic activity, but I'll do Some potentially some other like jogging or running ones, but as a, as a standard sort of like walking pace. Use as much willpower as you. As you want. How much can you tolerate then? So then we're bringing in that psychophysiology or urge your control of your diaphragm as well as like CO2 tolerance into that and that's going to. Yeah, that's going to challenge those systems and a. Yeah, a high performing athlete will, will be if they can tolerate the acidity that you're going to build up. Because with the bolt score you're raising levels of CO2 just to the point where the chemoreceptors say take a breath with like a max breath hold like walking test. You're accumulating CO2 within the blood that's making the blood more acidic and you're seeing how well you can tolerate that physiologically and psychologically because it feels uncomfortable. And that's one of the things, the things with the breath holds is like when we're doing them like high intensity in, in sports and that all the research shows and rightly said it's fairly obvious you don't need research to show this but the more sport specific you do your breath holds for your athletes the better. Yeah because the, the adaptation is happening at a tissue level so the muscles that are working are the ones that, that are adapting to the acidic environment and lactate threshold. So but they're, they're, but they're nasty. No one likes. I was a bit weird when I played rugby. I quite liked that I think because you like what you're good at. So I want big. I didn't go running over people. I was fast and I was fit like and I could, I could mentally push on, on some like, you know, like lactate shuttle sort of training that type of stuff, repeat sprintability things. So I quite liked it. And so I don't mind pushing myself on some high intense breath holding now and improving that tolerance. I think partly I'm exploring for my, my ability as a coach to coach this. But yeah, a lot of people don't, they actually don't, they don't like it because I think that there's a. As you meant there's that psychological bit, there's that anxiety bit that makes people freak out a little bit and go like what the is this? I don't like. It's not just physically. I've got jelly legs and I can, I can feel the lactate potentially or whatever I'm feeling in the, in my legs. I'm feeling that jelly leg thing that's, that's similar to when I'm doing something really hard with the coach in pre season. But I've also got this weird mental thing going on and like, I don't like that. And I think actually there's a, there's a lot of good work to be done in that place, but we've got to be sensitive to the athlete and where the head is at with that and take people there gradually. But I think there's some. Yeah, it's almost like there's some, there's some weird demons in there potentially about. Because it's. Your brain is like very sensitive to those changes in the, the blood pH which the CO2 is creating and it messes with your, with your psychology a little bit. So there's, there's some, there's some. And we haven't talked, so I'm blabbering on as well. But we, there's so much. There's this whole other side to what we do with the breathing where you're really developing like some mental resilience to high levels of physical and emotional stress when you're doing some work with breath holding and to stay calm in that place and be able to regulate your breathing afterwards when you do finally let it go. Yeah, there's some, there's some really, really strong and beneficial work to be done there. But it's later down the line for people all the time. They've got to, as I would say, was it like you gotta, you want to. If you're going to do a strong breath or you've got to want it because if you don't want it, you won't be able to do it. It's just, it's. It sounds like obvious but it's, it's sort of this weird thing. It's as simple as that. And I'll have days like if you said now, right, go and show me what's the max breath hold you could do. Depending on what mental state I'm in, like if I've just had a massive barney with the wife, I ain't gonna be able to hold my breath very long. And you know, well, why is that? Because you see a 2. Sensitivity hasn't changed. Yeah, because my psychology and my state my nervous system in is massively going to affect that. And then you start going like, okay, so actually if it affects that my physical, my sort of psychological and physiological state of my mind and my nervous system when I'm playing a sport like rugby, well, that's going to affect that. You're saying that's going to affect my respiratory drive? Well, yeah, of course it is, because we can see it in a simple scenario. It's like when I've had a Barney with Mrs. So the stress of like an international rugby game and pressure and all these things that's going on in our head around those scenarios. But, yeah, that's all going to affect your nervous system and the nervous system is going to affect your breathing and literally your respiratory drive. You know, it's nice to come onto that, towards it like now, because everything else we talk about with breathing, when we talk about biochemistry and breathing, like responsive respiratory drive, we're all always talking about CO2. But there's this other bit to it. If you jump in an ice bath, you notice it. Your breathing goes crazy in an ice bath. Not because there's loads of CO2 in the ice bath, but because your nervous system response is being shown through, through your breathing. Yeah, there's some, there's some value to working on that, but it's nasty. People don't want to do it. So I'm searching for the guys that want to do. I like the weirdos that are like, yeah, let's get after this.

When you, when you're doing that work, the interesting thing about it is it doesn't have that same physiological cost of, you know, some of the other types of training that you might do to toughen up an athlete. Like, it's another. It's another tool for a coach to use or for a team.

People are not using it, they're not using it. It's still, it's, it's. It's gonna, it's going to come. It can't not. And I'm doing my little bit getting infiltrating the international rugby world gradually, but they're not using it. And it's so simple. I just seen like a thing on Instagram. Like, it's interesting now, like, when I played, there was no social media at the start and all that sort of stuff. So. But now you get to see what we were doing and you see, like, I think it was Northampton Saints. It was like, oh, what crazy. Like training they're doing in pre season. And like, I can't help but not just like observe what the breathing is like when you're doing it and you like go exactly what you've just said there. Like, you need to do some stuff that's redlining physically. But at the same time, I could probably give those guys the higher levels of lactate through half the effort of the physical activity, but make them hold the breath. And we're going to get like some psychological work done at the same time. There's definitely a place for it in sports like rugby, like, definitely. And I still, I'm not entirely sure as to why there isn't the uptake. I don't know whether people just don't know quite know about it. I don't know. It's interesting one as to why I'm presenting in two weeks time at the UK Strength and Conditioning conference in Nottingham, which will be the first time they've had anyone talking about breathing in a strength and conditioning conference, which I'm slightly intimidated by, as well as excited by to try and present this in a way to get people to strength coaches and conditioning coaches to be like, okay, yeah, we could, we could implement or at least think about how are we actually training the respiratory system as part of our conditioning work?

Do you ever zoom out and think like we've invested all this money and effort in all this technology and we've got, you know, we've got Facebook and Zoom and Twitter and all this stuff that we can do now we can fly around the world and, and it's left to people like yourself and you know, there's, there's no Baldwin and Nigel beach is another one who's on Amazing guy. We met at the WIM HOF event in Australia. We've stayed and stayed in touch since then. Yeah, we were speaking recently when I was in Vanuatu. But yeah, the like. Does it, does it not seem a bit bonkers that something that's, you know, Buteyko had his research sort of quite clear quite a while back that, hey, this is, this is an important factor in health. It's clear that it's a. Perform an important factor in performance. And there's like, you know, there's Patrick McKee and there's yourself and you know, there's obviously now quite a few oxygen advantage practitioners, but it's like such a small fraction of mankind's collective energy and focus that's going into this at a time where the health status of the world is meant to be the top priority and we've just been through this thing where everything has to change for health.

Yeah.

Like, does it not seem a bit crazy to you that you have to be sort of the one pushing this forward in the, in the uk, in rugby and, and having this, you know, getting the word out?

I don't know because I was, you know, I say I was one of Those guys, I didn't consider breathing at all. So I think I feel very grateful. I come from a place for this where I understand the misconceptions because I was. I was part of it myself. And I understand why, you know, it's automatic. Why. Why would we need to. Why would we need to train it? But as I've seen the. Seen the difference that it makes and I guess, like, directly answering your question, like, yeah, do I think it's crazy? Like, yeah. But then at the same time, I get it. And then there's the other side of it. There's potentially, like, you know, it's not necessarily rocket science to work out why something that's free for everybody isn't actually a top priority. Because. Because no one can make any money out of it. That's just the sad state of the world that we live in. But I do think with breathing, there's this other dimension to it where the automatic nature of it and you don't think about it typically means that there are some barriers and misconceptions as to what. And you don't get taught anything. Like all my SNC training and whatnot and continued professional development, and we never covered breathing. And, you know, probably the only areas where it has been looked at is like, maybe like yoga or Pilates or something where a lot of people, for whatever reason, go like, oh, I don't want to do that. It's not for me. Like, for whatever reason. And they might not even. They say it's not for me. They've never even tried it, so they don't even know, but they're just. Their misconception about it. But then at the same time, there's a lot of people teaching it badly. There's a lot of people that don't understand it but are teaching it. You know, belly breathing is a great example where someone not understanding the mechanics of breathing and functional anatomy might talk about just expanding your belly, which potentially completely negates any movement of the diet of the rib cage. So, yes, there's probably some. Patrick always talks about there's some historically poor understanding and teaching of breathing that made people go, oh, no, this is bs and we're sort of living through some of that probably still at the moment. So it needs. It needs good. It needs good coaches coaching it well and showing that it works. You know, if it doesn't work, does. If the player doesn't feel any difference having me worked with them, then I'm not doing my job right. And that's a problem because then I'm another, I'm another data point of like a misconception, someone. That's my biggest fear. To be fair at the moment. I'm not working with a guy, I'm like, he's influential within the rugby world. I'm like, he needs to, I need to do this right with him. I need to get it right with him. I know it works, but I know that some of it, if I don't teach you well, doesn't get it, it ain't going to feel the benefits. And if he's, if he says this is no good, then no one else within that sphere that look up to him are gonna, are gonna take it on board.

Yeah, 100%. I get where you come from with that. Yeah. The, the fact that it could influence pharmaceutical bottom lines is, is potentially one factor. It's interesting when you look at the historical importance of breath, where the yogic practice has, as a key function, if you look at any of the traditional Eastern martial arts, they will talk about softness of breath and loudness of breath and how sick someone is, is how much you can see them breathing when they're sitting in a chair.

Because they know it.

Yeah, it has been known for a long time and somehow it's one of many pieces of wisdom that it's kind of been. Been lost. But I always.

It's intuitive. It's intuitive. You see someone going like all of a sudden, like, if I go downstairs, my wife is like, panting like that. I'll be like, what's the matter? They instantly know there's something wrong when, when the breathing doesn't match the surroundings or the metabolic demand. Like it's intuitive.

Yeah, it's a good segue into the, into the last sort of question that I want to ask here, which it goes with a bit of both of this because he's sort of had the, the go at, at Big Pharma and your ability to use your breathing to manipulate your own physiology to overcome health conditions and, and being the most outspoken and, and loud one about it, the WIM Hof method is, is what a lot of people are going to think about as soon as they think about breath. And I'm sure it's a bit of a thorn in the side of the, you know, oxygen advantage and Patrick and such, because they're different messages and they're for different purposes and it's nuanced for someone to understand. Well, no, that's not what we do. But, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's a bad thing. Even though what we're doing is kind of the opposite. You must get the question all the time. I saw your post recently about WIM Hof. It was well delivered. You did a good job on the acting side of things. You know, whims are great guy. I'm sure he would have loved it as well. There. You got your hoodie in the. Yeah, yeah. There. What. What are you. Yeah, what. What are your, what are your thoughts on it? I mean you, you've shared there, but. Yeah. Does it have any place for, for, for anyone? Look, so would you. Yeah, yeah.

For me it's very simple. Making a. Again, like we said a few times, like a black and white. Like the most common question is like, oh, what should I do? Which is best, you know? Well, what do you mean like. Which is like, what are you compared? Do you know what you're even comparing? And so the breathing within WIM Hof is one third of the Wim Hof method. It's not even the whole thing. Whereas with Oxford Vantage, we're talking about breathing and teaching breathing, teaching how to breathe. We will show you how the breath can be used as a tool to manipulate things and your nervous system, etc, but we're also looking at how you actually breathe in all facets of life and performance and recovery. With the WIM Hof method, it's just using the breath as a tool to manipulate the nervous system and then the immune system and the endocrine system. So other autonomic things that we've seemingly previously thought we couldn't really manipulate or control. And that's what wims, that's what WIM showing. That's what the research around his, his study has shown. He's not, say he, he is not saying this technique is like how. Going to teach you how to breathe. It's. That's not what it is. It's not supposed to do. So I'm trying to think of like an obscure analogy, but I can't necessarily think of one. But it's just a case of like, it's, it's. Don't misinterpret what it is. Just because it's a breathing exercise, that doesn't mean it's teaching you how to breathe. And that's where, you know, one thing that's important for us as coaches within the Oxford Vantage is that we need to individualize to people. We know that about anything. Like, not everyone needs the same strength program. You test people, you do assessments on people, you understand how they move and where they're weak. And where they're tight and whatever, and you deliver a program that's specific to them. When you're working one on one. It's the same with someone's breathing. We want to assess their breathing, we want to give them the right things to do to help them with their breathing. And, you know, the WIM HOF method, the breathing part of it, which is a third of it, is one breathing technique that may or may not be appropriate for somebody. That's. That's sort of my simple and rational stance on it. It's not, it's not. I'm not saying something's good or bad or different. Like, a good example is Ioderm. She's at the World cup at the moment. A female soccer player, female footballer, who. She started off doing the WIM HOF method and it was. She'd had chronic fatigue and it was helping. She said, it's helping me. I was like, great. Like, I'm not going to tell you to stop doing it. I don't teach it, but I'm going to tell you to stop doing it. If you say it, it's helping you, like, do it. But what I do know is how that's affecting your blood gases and how that's potentially affecting your nervous system as an upregulator. So we're going to work on the other stuff to make sure that I'm taking care of the mechanics of how you breathe, I'm taking care of your CO2 tolerance and I'm giving you some down regulation practices to help, to help with that, to give that balance. You know, I try to look at stuff as rationally as possible and always, always be able to answer the question like, why? So if someone's, if someone's doing the WIM HOF method and I say, why are you doing it? And they go, that's not good enough reason. You haven't got an answer. You need to have an answer. Why are you doing it? Do you know why you're doing it? Is it right for you? How many times are you doing it? Do you know why? Like, it's. And this is. Whereas with every exercise I'd give someone to do, I would have an answer as to why they're doing it. You're doing it for this reason, you're doing it this many times for this reason. Yeah. So hopefully that makes sense.

It does. It does make a lot of sense, I think. Always good. This is a lesson in general about taking information from others because we love learning and we love applying different things. I always like to put in the context of what's the most important person, what's the most important thing to that person? Like, why is this the message that they've got across the world and what role did it play in their life and whims story is tragic. You know, he's, he lost his wife and he was a father and, and he was looking for a way to continue on through, through tough times. And he'd already had experiences in the east, as far as I'm aware, like he'd spent some time learning, you know, about those techniques. And so he jumped in the ice and he got a big experience. He got a big rush of adrenaline, of like, okay, you nearly died, but you didn't die, and now we're all happy again. And, and you get that same thing with the breath. You get a very different psychological state. And some people need a very different psychological state at times. And the other alternatives that people use to get a very different psychological state have other consequences. You know, there's some consequences with Wim HOF Method, but there's, there's consequence with alcohol and, you know, ecstasy and hard drugs and whatnot. Ways that people sedate, that I think is the key context for Wim HOF Method. And, but he was able to then go and break a bunch of world records to be able to kind of use that as leverage to get a platform and to get a message out about something that he, that he really values. So, yeah, yeah, there, there probably is something there for athletes, as you say, about, you know, how much will you push yourself through this? I've done Wim Hof Method with probably a thousand people. And some people can't push themselves. They can't get themselves to breathe enough or stop breathing enough to, to get a big experience. Others will get a very deep experience. And, you know, some. Sometimes they cry after it, sometimes they laugh after it. Like there's, there's all sorts of stuff that can go with that. But I think if you look at. Okay, well, that's the context of what Wim was doing and, and, and he's done a pretty amazing job bringing awareness to something that no one knew anything about. And, you know, he's a special, special man. If you look at Patrick, you can see, you know, the little that I, I don't know him personally. I've read some of his materials and watched things. My understanding is that he had issues with his respiratory tract, with his. Yeah. You know, with his breathing and, and congestion and okay, asthma. Like he wanted a solution for that. And that was what he was solving. And, and so it makes sense that he's come up with that solution and he, he values that. Would that have helped Wim? I don't know. Like, it prob. It just wasn't probably what Wim was trying to solve. If you look at what the problem Charles Pollockin was trying to solve versus what Louis Simmons was trying to solve versus Edo Portal, then you see why they came up with the different systems because they were posing themselves different questions. And I love that you're posing the question of how do we, how do we fix the brain? How do we avoid concussion? How do we come back faster from concussion and be able to train like, like Mad Men. This is, this is a great question to answer. And, and I think it's clear that your context is slightly different to Patrick's as well. And you're going to take this two different people with a different voice and a different set of life experiences.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and it's, you know, it's great to see you playing that role because Patrick isn't probably the man to, to really put it on the table for a lot of elite athletes because you know what it's like with elite athletes. Like they, they want to see you doing it and they want to see you walk the walk. Like it's difficult.

Yeah, I get it.

The language, the currency of elite athletes is well, what can you do? You know, can you do what I can do? If you can't or you can't do anything close to it, then they might not listen as much. But yeah, I, I really, yeah, I really appreciate the work that you're doing. You've made the transition from more like calisthenics based business. Hey. Into like this is. Do you still do any of the calisthenics stuff as, as part of your business or is it.

Yeah, yeah, well that's a separate, that's a separate business that still, still run and exists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where are you going next with it? Where do you see?

I've got a client in two minutes. All right, that's where I'm going. That's okay.

But good timing for that. Yeah.

I appreciate your time at the moment. The rugby world is, is, is there as I always imagine, like I won't stay in sport forever as I become too old to be. Yeah. Like you say like rock up and is, is that old dude like talking about breathing? It's like it has so much like carryover into like all of our health and well being and actually really interested in like the inward journey that the breath can take you on and like meditation and just what you were saying, like asking like is there a God? And like that, that side of things is something that really interests me and I think that will be a lifelong path to carry on exploring and some people will want to come on that as well. And as I've done with how breathing influences like performance and recovery in the sort of sporting world, I'll share what I learn and people will take what they want from it. I'm sure I'll do the same with unsports related stuff. But at the moment I guess I've still got that, that desire within, within sport and enjoy pushing myself still as well. And we'll see where it goes.

Yeah, I think you'll still be doing it for quite a while. My guess is you'll be the fit old guy that's still kicking their ass on the breath holds. Work at 50 and 60. But I appreciate your time today. I'll let you run to your client and. Yeah, let's, let's stay in touch and I appreciate the time today.

No, thank you for giving me the space to chat.

Champion.

Cheers, mate. Take care.