Ever need to jet juiced up? In contrast to all of the relaxation tools out there (which are great), sometimes you need to be your own hype man or hype woman. These are tools I teach performers often to use when they need some energy induction.
there's a lot of great ways out there for reducing your energy kind of calming you down getting your body to a state of calm and composed but there's also times where you just need to get freaking jacked like get amped up and I want to talk about three ways you can amp yourself up none of which include just chugging an energy drink doing a bunch of caffeine there are natural ways behavioral ways that we can impact our physiology our body that are proven to help get our energy back up and this is helpful for maybe a performance that you have a just general task that you have where you might want a higher level of energy to be in the zone and this is something I talk about a lot with athletes soldiers overall performers these are great strategies that I have used myself and they're just great they're awesome so number one is going to be self-talk so how you talk to yourself your thoughts are powerful they have meaning so just using some energizing cues or phrases that help you get in the zone that you need I've seen videos of Aaron Donald he's a Hall of Fame or soon to be Hall of Fame football player for the Rams for a long time there's a video of him before the Super Bowl and they played the Patriots and he's just pacing up and down the field pregame saying like let's go all training you've worked for like this is your moment make a play be dominant control the aggression like those are great examples of short brief phrases to get you in the zone like maybe before a task you just say hey I'm like that whatever it might be self-talk can be very helpful to just get you in that zone with some energizing cues or phrases number two something that you've probably used before is energizing music pump up the jam whatever you need to get in that zone a good pump up song is always a tried and true classic I have plenty of go-tos on my workout playlist where if I'm really struggling on a set I go to those to get me amp the heck up so whatever that is for you some good music can always get you going research shows that fast upbeat music can be really helpful especially for amping up before physical performance for me I use it for again weightlifting running sometimes even like pickleball or sometimes I work early mornings and have to teach to soldiers so on the way maybe sometimes at four in the morning I'll listen to music that gets me going and then the third type of way the third strategy to amp yourself up is energizing breathing there's a lot of breathing techniques out there calm you down there's also ways to get your get your blood going and get your physiology ramped up that fight or flight activated and so what that looks like is deep forceful inhales followed by passive exhales with no pauses in between so I'm gonna look dumb but I'll practice here so I just did three if you did anywhere from 10 to 30 I guarantee if you're if you track your heart rate before and after it's going up a few BPMs it's very helpful I like to imagine it as like you're an angry bowl and you want everybody around you to know that you're breathing that's a good picture in my mind just an angry bowl getting after it and that has some physiological benefits to get you yourself amped up as well I've used these all three of these plenty of times whether I knew about the research and the theory behind or not but they 're just great ways sometimes you need to get amped up to help get yourself in the zone so you can use any one of these three experiment with them to see what works for you
