This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic’s new desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Peak aims to connect readers to ideas they can implement in their own personal and professional lives. Follow Peak here.
A few weeks before the NFL playoffs, a group of Kansas City Chiefs players gathered inside a meeting room and listened to an instruction: Go to your happy place.The voice belonged to Dave Merritt, the team’s secondary coach. He closed the door and hit the lights, leaving the room pitch black. He then outlined an exercise: The players were to close their eyes, imagine their happy place, a place of safety and warmth, and then start counting their breaths in silence.
Inhale.
Exhale.
If anyone had stumbled into the room at that moment, it might have looked a little odd — a little new-age or crunchy, a little woo woo, a group of NFL defensive backs breathing slowly in the darkness. But the intention, Merritt said, was for his players to recognize the value of consciously controlling their breath, to understand the tools that would allow them to calm their autonomic nervous system and enter a parasympathetic state.
“It’s a habit that any human being should learn,” Chiefs safety Bryan Cook said. “Focusing on your breath.”
Cook, 25, is a two-time Super Bowl champion and firmly ensconced in Generation Z. He meditates at least once a day. Three days before the Super Bowl, he woke up in a hotel in New Orleans and began his day with 20 deep breaths.
“People get caught up in doing the daily tasks,” he said. “If you actually just sit, it lets your body do what it needs to do. You’ll find yourself in a place of peace and calmness.”
In a previous era, Cook might have been an eccentric outlier. But as the concepts of mindfulness and mental health have gained a societal foothold, he’s part of a cohort of athletes who have found performance benefits in the simple act of breathing.
From NBA stars Steph Curry and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers to MLB pitchers Logan Webb and Marcus Stroman, nearly ever sport has athletes using focused breathwork to calm their minds, improve their lives and boost their performance.
The Super Bowl featured several deep breathers. Lane Johnson, the Eagles’ All-Pro right tackle, utilizes box breathing, the Wim Hof method and Tummo meditation — an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice — to combat anxiety and depression, while his fellow tackle Jordan Mailata incorporates regular belly breathing, which he picked up from his therapist and yoga instructor.
