♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Female announcer: Welcome to becoming your personal best.

Life lessons from Olympians and Paralympians, a resilient future for youth.

This series is about what families, teachers, coaches, youth leaders, mentors, spiritual leaders, and entire communities need to know about building resiliency for today's youth.

The series brings you experts in education and psychology, linked with inspiring Olympians and Paralympians.

Importantly, the series talks to young people to hear what they have to say.

This series is practical and uplifting, and it is for all of us.

Not just those who aspire to the Olympics or Paralympics.

Our host is Hunter Kemper, four-time Olympian in the sport of triathlon and at one time ranked number one in the world.

Hunter not only exemplifies personal and professional resiliency, but he cares deeply about helping youth become their personal best.

Hunter Kemper: We're at the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum.

Today, I am taking some young people with me to join a session in our Resiliency series to learn about Physical Resilience.

Our goal with this series is to give you some useful techniques about how to cope with life's challenges and to share stories of Olympians and Paralympians.

This series is for people of all ages and we especially want adults watching to be able to use these ideas to help the young people in your life.

This series is not about becoming an Olympic or a Paralympic athlete but hopefully inspiring you to become your personal best.

To lead off the series, we have Dr. Roberta Kraus who is an expert on resiliency.

Dr. Kraus is an international sport psychologist and leadership development specialist.

In 2016 she was the sport psychologist for the USA men's and women's national wheelchair basketball teams, who both took home the gold at the Rio Paralympics.

I have worked alongside Roberta for many years and she is inspiring.

Roberta has joined us in Galleries 2 and 3 here in the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum and Hall of Fame to talk about the first of five important dimensions of resiliency for daily life: physical resilience.

So come with me and let's go join Roberta right now.

Dr. Roberta Kraus: I'd like to begin to ask you to think about a time recently where you were at your best in a performance-pressured situation.

Think of when you were on your game.

It's like you couldn't be stopped, you're on a roll, you're just kind of in the zone where nobody can damper your ability.

It could be a school play, a job interview, a presentation, trying out for a club team, but I want you to think about a moment where you were performing under pressure and you were performing at your best.

And here's what I want you to think about.

I want you to think about some different words or short phrases that comes to your mind that describes how did it feel when you're performing your best?

What words, short phrases would you use to describe, "here's how I felt when I was performing my best under pressure."

Now here's what's interesting.

Whether it be the Catch Award, the athletic field, the business world, the school play, what we know is everybody tends to have the same feelings when they're performing their best.

And if you look up at the list here, you might not have those exact words but I'll bet you can connect with what you are thinking to what's on this list.

And athletes call this being in the zone.

And they talk about lack of fear, confidence, totally in the present, very motivated, determined, lots of energy, but controlled energy.

And feeling one with mind and body.

And so here's what's interesting for us.

If we know that all people feel the same way when they're performing, why don't we teach people techniques to get these feelings?

When you are performing, you tend to be performing for one of three zones.

We call them the flat zone and that's where your skill ability, motivation is so much greater than the challenge.

Bottom line is you're bored.

Been there, done that.

You'd be in the flow zone which has all those characteristics and probably the words that you thought about on your mind in terms of what it feels like when you're at your best.

And that's where your skill ability, talents, and motivation equals the challenge ahead of you.

So game on, here we go.

Or you operate from the panic zone where you believe your skill ability, talents are well below the challenge ahead of you, and you play scared.

Ideally, we want to give you techniques to help you be in flow zone as much as possible.

And that leads us into our first series on physical resiliency.

To understand how important this is, I want you to meet someone.

I want you to meet BOB.

Anybody know what BOB stands for?

No, it is not Big Old Brain.

It is called the Biology of the Brain.

And here's what I'd like you to understand about this.

Inside your brain you have all of these neurons.

You actually have about 100 billion neurons in your brain.

Eighty percent of those 100 billions sits back here in the cerebellum.

This is the back of your head.

And when those are activated, you're in that flow zone.

You're on automatic pilot.

That's why some of you can not ride a bicycle for five years, get back on a bike and ride it just like that.

It's automatic pilot, not thinking about it, lots of energy with controlled, very motivated and positive.

In the middle of your brain, we have what's called the amygdala.

Two percent of those 100 billion sits there.

And that's where emotions sit.

And then we come to the front of your brain and this is called the pre-frontal cortex.

Eighteen percent of that 100 billion sits there, and this is where the challenge lies.

When we operate from the pre-frontal cortex, that's your executive section of the brain.

That's where judgment, evaluating, decision-making, analyzing, takes place.

And when we come home from a day of work, a day of school, a day of sports, and someone in the family says to you, "How are you doing?"

and you go, "Oh, God, my brain is so tired.

It's so heavy, I can't hold my head up."

The reason why is because likely throughout your whole day, you were asking 18% of your brainpower to do 100% quality work.

Nobody comes home from a day of school, a day of work, and somebody says, "How was your day?"

and you go, "Oh, my brain is so tired, it hurts.

It's so heavy."

They never put their hand back here.

They always put it on the front of their brain.

And this, then, after a long while, makes you very unsuccessful in your performance.

This is the same reason why some of you can't sleep at night, because when you go to bed, you turn on your pre-frontal cortex.

So we have to give you techniques how do you use all the neuron synapses 'cause those are electric currents.

Those decide what the body does with the spinal cord here.

And the first technique we're gonna talk about is exercise and movement and why that's important because that will turn on the cerebellum.

When you get stressed about anything, feeling lonely and sad, don't know if I'm gonna have school in the fall, my parents are working at home again, we've got sports canceled for the summer.

My sister's getting ready to go away from college, we're all living under the same roof.

Whenever you have stress going on in your life, the neurons send a current and what gets released is adrenaline and cortisol.

Not necessarily a bad thing 'cause that distributes energy throughout the brain, then down to the body.

But too much of that will make you choke or be in the grip.

And when you exercise, when you move the body in any way possible, your chemicals in the brain release endorphins and neurotransmitters that actually reduce your heart rate, lower your blood pressure, and move you more back towards flow zone.

I'll bet any one of us has felt the power of a walk outside and felt the relief from our pressure.

When you move the body, you actually start steps moving away from depression.

Because movement in the brain acts as a fertilizer and it turns on other neuron synapses so you don't have the brain hold the body hostage with negative thinking in the pre-frontal cortex.

It also helps with overall mood elevation.

We usually feel better after we exercise.

It can present those ah-has where you've got a problem on your mind and you say, "I'm gonna go for a run," and while you're out running you got the answer to your dilemma.

So anytime that you are feeling stressed and you can add some movement to the body, you're likely to move away from flat zone or panic zone and back in towards the flow zone.

The next technique we're gonna talk about is called the tongue technique and I'm gonna tell you this right now.

Of all the techniques I teach our Olympic, Paralympic athletes, this is the one they love the most.

And I'm gonna have you do it first, then I'll explain what it is.

I'd like you to think about a moment in time most recently where you were pretty frustrated.

You're upset, you're mad, you're ticked off.

Want you to think about where you were at, what you were doing, who's around you, and I want to just give you about ten seconds to go back in first person and just relive that moment that really got you on edge.

Go.

Now, while you're thinking about this, I want you to check where is your tongue inside your mouth when you're frustrated?

It's probably up against the roof of your mouth, behind your front teeth.

This is a great technique.

What happens is, is the tongue is the first moving muscle closest to the brain.

Now, we know people that can do funny things with their ears, moving their ears or moving their eyes, but the reality is the tongue is the first moving muscle close to the brain.

And as soon as we move into a stress modality with the brain, we're thinking negative with the brain, that tongue's gonna go up there.

And people might say, "Okay, I get that, Roberta, but why do I need my tongue?"

Because by keeping that tongue up there, some of you have such tight jaw muscles that you have TMJ at night and you wear a night guard.

Some of you hold on to that tongue up there and the pain goes down the neck, into the arms, and even down to the lower back.

And the key is you have to release the tongue.

I can tell you that our swim athletes, you know, swimmers get on the deck and, if it's a relay team, they've got their four members there, and they usually have their headphones on that are playing music.

They've got the long coats and they're all shaking.

This is what they do.

And now it's time to get the first gal or guy in the water for the butterfly.

The United States team on purpose very loudly say to each other, "Check your tongue.

How's your tongue?

Where's your tongue?"

And they smile at each other.

Now, the countries on the right or left are thinking, "What is with the United States and their tongue?"

So now we've got inside of their head, thinking, and it just-- we release the tongue.

And as soon as you release the tongue, you let go of the brain signaling in overdrive to get worried and upset and nervous.

I did a webinar for about 60 high school athletes around the country on how to manage life in this crazy time we're living in.

And I taught them the tongue technique and I actually got an email from one of the athletes from Maryland and she said to me, "Oh, my gosh, I love the tongue technique.

I'm at home with my family.

We're living under the same roof 24/7.

I'm not with my friends, and I'm checking my tongue all the time."

So here's how you do this technique, the key is to first recognize when it goes up there.

The sooner you recognize it goes up there, the sooner you can help it get back down.

How do you get it back down?

You could simply drop your mouth open slightly.

When you do that, where does the tongue go?

It goes back down.

But what if your frustration is so high that it goes back up there again?

Well, you might have to help it even more.

So you could smile.

When you smile, the tongue goes back down there.

If that doesn't work, you could yawn.

And if that doesn't work, you could simply just take your hand and kind of pull your mouth down like this.

Nobody has to know you're doing this.

It's not like you're under stress and you say, "Excuse me, ahh, aghhh."

Nobody has to know you're doing this.

But the minute you release the tongue, you move back into flow zone state.

The next technique is about performance breathing.

This is what I find fascinating about breathing.

People are pretty passive about breathing, meaning they think, "You breathe, you live.

You don't breathe, you die."

But the reality is, the way we inhale and exhale has a lot to do how well we handle pressure.

Would you do me a favor and stand up, audience, where you're at.

And I would just like you to do this.

Let's say you're feeling some stress and pressure, and you're telling yourself or you're telling somebody else, "Just take some nice deep breaths.

Just relax."

I wanna watch you take three nice deep breaths.

Show me those, if you would.

And you can go ahead and sit back down.

So most of you failed that test and I'm here to help you 'cause what you did, I don't know if you were thinking about, "I'm gonna impress this sport psychologist," but a lot of you got up-- I'll exaggerate a little bit, but we were like this here... [inhaling, exhaling, inhaling] And actually, this is the start of hyperventilation because you're doing very shallow inhales and pretty shallow exhales.

So what happens is air starts to come to your lungs but then you exhale right away.

As the air comes to your lungs because your lungs are a muscle, the lungs are thinking, "Oh, good, here comes air.

Here comes air.

I'm kind of scared.

I need some air."

But then, you exhale right away, and the lungs go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened?

I thought we had air coming?"

And you panic and that's the start of hyperventilation.

The way you performance breathe to make sure you stay in the flow zone state is you put your hand on your belly and when you take your deep breath in, your shoulders don't go up, but it's the belly that comes out.

So if I turn slightly sideways here, you can watch me.

I'm gonna do three of these and you just watch how-- I'll put my hand-- how my belly comes out, but my shoulders stay pretty steady.

[inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling] So the key is you breathe in through your nose and you feel the belly expand, and then you exhale with your mouth slightly open.

Go ahead and try a couple of those, if you will, please.

Breathing in through the nose, let the belly come out.

Then exhale with your mouth slightly open, making sure the chest and the shoulders stay level.

Very good, very good.

Now here's a way to practice this.

Way to practice this is you can think about the number one and two.

You can say in your mind on the inhale, the number "One," for the length of the inhale.

And you can say the number "Two" for the length of the exhale.

If that doesn't work, some people like to use the word, "In," as air's coming in, and "Out," as air's going out, okay?

What is the ideal amount of inhale, exhales you wanna have in a one-minute time for flow zone?

You would like to try to have six patterns of inhale-exhales in one minute.

So I'm gonna watch my watch here.

I'm gonna use my fingers to count and I'm going to demonstrate.

I ask you to do it at your chairs.

And I'm going to go for one minute and see if I can have performance breathing that goes for one full minute and don't do any more than six repetitions.

Are you ready?

Okay, here I go.

[inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling] That was 55 seconds.

Some people are competitive in nature and so what they can do is you can take your heart rate for ten seconds, okay?

So let's say I take my heart rate and I get 12 beats.

If I multiply that by 6, which is 72, that's my beats per minute right now.

And then I could either sit down, I can lay down, and I can do this performance belly breathing for a minute or two and then retake my pulse.

So let's say I do it a second time, and now it's ten beats a minute.

I multiply that by 6, that's 60.

I started at 72, now I'm 60, I just lowered my heart rate by 12 beats a minute.

I know when I go to the doctor's office and the doctor put that blood pressure cuff on me, I always do that deep belly breathing 'cause I want it to be really, really low so they'll say, "Wow, you're in really good shape."

And I teach this to a lot of athletes so there's enough dead time in sports, like in basketball, you go for free throw line, I don't really care what your routine is for getting ready to shoot the free throw, but right before you get ready to go, I just ask the athletes to take one or two belly breaths.

In volleyball, I suggest all the time, you go back to serve the volleyball, you've got a ten-second window before the referee signals, take a belly breath.

Ball goes over the net, both teams play it out, you win the point.

Now you're serving two serves in a row.

I say, as the ball's working its way back to you, make sure you take two belly breaths 'cause what happens is, adrenaline builds up and then all of a sudden, we get to the third or fourth serve by the same player, and they serve the ball over and it goes over the net.

It goes over the back row, and it goes out the street.

And that player usually looks at their hand, like, "Who are you?"

They just need to get themselves settled down.

So any time you're feeling some stress, even if you do one or two of these belly breaths, you will find that you settle yourself down and you change some of the negativity that's happening up here.

The next technique: falling asleep sooner and staying asleep longer.

You know, between the United States anti-doping and international anti-doping organizations, athletes can't take any sleep medication and still qualify for competition.

And yet, we all know the power of having a good night's sleep before a competition.

And so we teach athletes a technique of how to get to sleep sooner and stay asleep longer.

And hasn't it been true that our mothers always told us, "It'll look different in the morning if you get a good night's sleep"?

And here's why we know that works, is because when you go to sleep, the brain turns on a dishwasher like washing dirty dishes and gets rid of all of the debris in the brain from the day's events, all the negative, the junk, that is keeping you held hostage emotionally.

And when you don't get a good night's sleep, the brain cannot effectively desensitize your emotions.

So the good news is, is you're gonna wake up the next morning and you won't forget the events from yesterday, but if you got a good night's sleep, you won't have the same emotional feelings of sadness, frustration, as you had the day before.

It's almost like free overnight therapy.

But here's how you do this.

The breathing technique to help you fall asleep sooner and stay asleep longer, is called 4-7-8, and what it means is you take your inhale to a count of four.

And then you actually hold your breath for a count of seven.

And then you deliberately exhale very, very slowly to a count of eight.

I'm gonna demonstrate.

I'll use my hands to count to show you what this looks like.

[inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling] If you can do a cycle of 4-7-8 five times in a row, you're likely to fall asleep sooner and stay asleep longer.

It takes some practice.

When you first do this, you might find yourself counting... and maybe you've got to do 4, 5, and 6, but you wanna work up to 4, 7, and 8 to help you fall asleep sooner.

So, in closing, I'd like to say this to you.

I have two closing thoughts for you.

One is, it's about when you fly in a airplane.

You know, depending on the size of the plane, when the tarmac finally moves away, the flight attendants will take their position in the aisles and they'll have an oxygen mask and a seatbelt or the camera will come in front of your seat and you'll go through the safety briefing.

And what do they tell all of us to do with the oxygen mask if we have to help someone else first?

You put it on yourself first.

Self-care's not being selfish.

The second piece is you're all performers, just like Olympian and Paralympians.

You all perform under pressure.

But this is where you're very different than Olympian and Paralympians.

You will have a stressful Monday or Tuesday and catch yourself saying, "Oh, God, what a day.

I gotta get to the gym on Saturday.

I'm gonna get a massage on Saturday."

And you're gonna hold on to all the stress until Saturday, where Olympian and Paralympians understand rest-recovery is part of everyday training.

And so they build it in with regular--they don't hold on to it for three or four days.

So until the next series on mental resiliency, go out and make it a great day.

Hunter: I hope you enjoyed our session.

Today we have learned how important it is to be in an ideal performance state.

We have learned techniques to build physical resiliency.

We have learned something new for many of us: the connection between our brains and stress and our performance.

Dr. Kraus has given us some tools for getting out of our personal stress mode.

We now understand the importance of self-care.

I hope you have gained some practical advice from our physical resiliency session.

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