Breathing Techniques for Athletes: 4 Protocols That Work Under Pressure

You can usually see it from the stands.

The shoulders come up. The chest starts doing the work the belly is supposed to be doing. The breaths get short and high and stacked on each other, four where there should be one, and none of them reach anywhere.

That is the same kid who was loose and joking twenty minutes ago.

Nothing about their training broke. Their body flipped a switch, and nobody ever showed them where the switch is.

Here is what it is worth when somebody does. This came from the Denver Roller Derby, a team we work with, after a game they were losing:

"Just wanted to say thank you so much for everything you've done with us so far. It is why we won that game. I've never seen the team keep it together like that before."

Not a season of work. A tool they had in their hands while the game was going badly. Four of those tools are below, with counts, timing, and the moment each one belongs in.

Does breathing actually do anything, or is it just something coaches say?

It does something specific. Slow, controlled breathing shifts the body out of fight-or-flight and into recovery, which lowers heart rate, drops the stress hormones circulating, and releases the muscle tension making your athlete a half step slow. It is the one part of that response an athlete can reach on purpose.

Your athlete has two settings. The sympathetic side is the gas pedal: heart rate up, breathing fast, muscles tight, adrenaline dumping. That side gets a body ready to compete, and nobody should be trying to shut it off. The parasympathetic side is the brake, running largely through the vagus nerve.

Neither takes requests. You cannot decide to lower your own blood pressure. Breathing is the exception, and that makes it the one handle on a system your athlete otherwise cannot touch.

What are the four breathing protocols, and when does each one get used?

Four techniques, four different jobs. Box breathing settles the body before a start. The reset breath clears one bad play in about twenty seconds. Belly breathing brings the heart rate down between periods. The 4-7-8 gets an athlete to sleep the night before something big.

1. Box breathing, before the start

Count: In through the nose 4. Hold 4. Out through the mouth 4. Hold empty 4. Length: Eight rounds, about two minutes. When: Ten to fifteen minutes before the start, warmup done, sitting still. Before the first pitch, the blocks, the mat.

It works on two levels. The even breathing turns down the physical alarm, and the counting occupies the part of the mind that would otherwise rehearse everything that could go wrong. The holds are what athletes skip. Do not. They make it a focus task and not only a calming one.

This is the one the derby team was talking about. Their longer message named it:

"The team was so calm - when big things didn't go our way we refocused and boxed breathed and used the tools at our disposal and kept playing, kept trusting each other, it was amazing. This is the stuff that World Champion teams are made of!!"

Big things went wrong and they used it anyway. Anybody can breathe well when the game is going well.

2. The reset breath, between plays

Count: In through the nose 4. Out through the mouth 8. Two cycles. Length: About twenty-five seconds. The walk back to the line. When: Right after a mistake, between points, walking back to the mound or the blocks.

The uneven count has a reason. Heart rate tends to rise on the inhale and settle on the exhale, so a longer exhale nudges it downward, by an amount that varies from athlete to athlete.

Attach it to something physical. Adjusting the grip, touching the brim of the hat. The cue triggers the breath, the breath ends the last play, and athletes who can do it stop losing three plays to one mistake. More in anxiety and overthinking in sports.

3. Belly breathing, on the bench

Count: In through the nose 5, out through the nose 5, hand on the belly. About six breaths a minute. Length: Sixty to ninety seconds, which is what a bench gives you. When: Between periods, on the bench, between events or stations.

The hand is the check, not decoration. If the belly moves and the chest stays still, they are moving real air. If the chest is working, they are still in the pattern that got them tight.

This is the protocol parents tend to see the effect of first, because it is the one that runs where they can watch it. A mother sent Amy this a few weeks into her daughter's work with us:

"Thank you again, Amy, you truly are a gift that you came into our life. [Name withheld] seems focused, calm and more centered… Thank you again and enjoy the weekend."

Focused, calm and more centered is a state change rather than a competitive result, and we would not sell it as one. What she is describing is what a bench looks like when an athlete finally has something to do there.

4. The 4-7-8, the night before

Count: In through the nose 4. Hold 7. Out through the mouth 8. Four cycles. Length: Under two minutes. When: In bed, lights already off, the night before something that matters.

This one leans harder on the exhale than anything else here, which is why it is the sleep one (the count comes from Dr. Andrew Weil).

A lot of races are quietly lost right here. An athlete lies down at ten, runs the event on a loop until midnight, and competes on six hours. More in sleep to win.

How do we practice this so it holds up in a game?

Two minutes a day for ten days, same time every day, before it is ever needed. Then one competition where the only thing your athlete uses is the protocol they practiced. A skill first attempted under pressure is not a skill yet.

Pick one. Not four. Tight out of the gate is box breathing. Spirals after mistakes is the reset breath. Cannot sleep is the 4-7-8. Anchor it to something that already happens, like brushing their teeth.

On day eleven, use it once, only in the moment you picked it for. Then ask a better question than "did it work." Ask what they noticed in their body. Athletes feel the change before they can name it, usually as shoulders, or hands, or "it got quieter."

Breathing is one of the 21 Mental Edge Skills we train, and usually the first, because an athlete can feel it inside a week. The rest of the map is in the 21 mental skills every athlete needs.

How do I know which one my athlete needs?

Watch the mechanics rather than the nerves. Every athlete gets nervous, and the nerves are doing their job. What the nerves do to the breathing is the part that costs performance, and it shows up in six specific ways. Two or three of these and you are looking at a trainable skill.

• Breathing you can see from row eight. High, fast, all shoulders.

• They come out tight and loosen up two thirds in, after the result is decided.

• One mistake takes the next several plays with it.

• They gas out faster in games than in practice at the same effort.

• They cannot sleep the night before anything that matters.

• They say "I couldn't breathe out there." Take it literally.

Character has nothing to do with any of those. They are mechanics, and mechanics move faster than most of what we work on.

Each of those six points at one of the four protocols above, and picking the wrong one is the usual reason a family decides breathing does not work for their kid. Book a free 30-minute consultation and bring the moment it goes wrong and we will pick the protocol that belongs in it, then walk your athlete through it on the call. Or call or text (757) 863-1349.

What if my athlete says it doesn't work?

Usually one of three things, and all three are fixable inside a week. They tried it exactly once, in the biggest moment of the season. They are breathing into the chest instead of the belly. Or they picked the wrong tool for the moment, and two minutes of box breathing is useless between plays.

Sometimes it is not nerves at all. If the trouble shows up in school and sleep and friendships and not only on game day, breathing is the wrong tool and you need a different conversation. How to tell is in 7 signs of performance anxiety in athletes. I am a physician before I am a coach, and I will tell you straight which one you are looking at.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best breathing technique to calm down before a game? Box breathing. Inhale through the nose for 4, hold 4, exhale through the mouth for 4, hold empty for 4, and run eight rounds, about two minutes. Do it ten to fifteen minutes before the start, after warmups, sitting still. The count calms the body and occupies the mind at once.

How long before breathing exercises actually help? Most athletes feel a physical change the first time they do it correctly, usually in the shoulders and hands. Holding up under competitive pressure takes about two weeks of daily practice at two minutes a day. The practice is what makes it available once the heart rate is already up.

Is box breathing safe for a 12-year-old? Yes. A four count is safe for healthy kids, and often easier for them than for adults, because they are not fighting years of habit. Skip breath holds in the water, and never hold the breath during exertion. If your athlete has asthma or a heart condition, ask their doctor first.

Does any of this help endurance athletes during a race? Different tool. Distance runners, swimmers, and cyclists use cadence breathing, which means locking the breath to the movement. Inhale two steps, exhale two. Three and two when the pace is honest. It is an efficiency tool, not a calming one, and it belongs in training, not on race day.

Where to start

Four protocols is three too many to start with. Pick the moment that is actually breaking down for your athlete and run only the one built for it, two minutes a day, for ten days.

Then tell us what changed. Amy is a physician as well as a coach, which mostly means she will ask you what the breathing looked like before she tells you what to do about it. Free 30-minute consultation at victoryperformance.co/schedule, or (757) 863-1349 by phone or text.

About the author

Dr. Amy Thompson is the founder and head coach of Victory Performance. She is a triple board-certified physician — a pediatrician, adolescent medicine specialist, and sports medicine physician — and a certified mental performance coach, holding both the Mental Game Coaching Professional (MGCP) certification from Dr. Patrick Cohn and the Mental Performance Mastery (MPM) certification from Brian Cain.

She ran cross country at the University of California, Berkeley, competed internationally as a figure skater, and trained at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She has coached athletes from middle school through the professional level.