👋 Hey. Welcome to issue #128 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4 min read):
🧘 One thing working well for me right now...
My natural wake-up is around 6am.
But now I’m up at 5am most days to run sessions at Hexa.
And by the time I’m home of an evening, eat, and wind down – well, you can only go to bed so early.
So I’ve started doing a guided 30-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol (also called yoga nidra) after lunch.
Shown to mimic the brain wave patterns experienced during sleep. So I’m paying back some of that sleep debt in the process.
The big secondary benefit is how much calmer I feel throughout the day.
Ally Boothroyd on Insight Timer has some rippers.
🐟 No more fish burps from fish oils
If you take fish oils (do, see brain fuel from newsletter #44), you may experience the fairly rank fish burp.
I've recently deleted them entirely by taking them before food, rather than after.
Excellent.
🏀 Creating a performance character like "Black Mamba"
I used to ride the emotional rollercoaster of my performance on the footy field pretty aggressively.
Because my identity as a person was so closely tied to my success as a footy player.
Exhausting stuff.
Now I know, this isn't just an athlete thing – it's a human thing.
We often tie our sense of self so tightly to our performance — at work, on the field, the stage, behind the camera — that we can't help but take every success and failure personally.
Two things helped me massively:
- 💡 Learning to reframe failure as lessons
- 🧠 Learning to put more value and focus on controllable inputs instead of uncontrollable outcomes e.g. preparation over performance
And recently, I heard a different perspective on managing this:
Create a performance character. A made-up persona you can step into and out of.
Kobe Bryant did it with "Black Mamba" – a character he could be on the court.
That he didn't have to take home with him.
It gives us permission to be fully committed to performance excellence while protecting our identity.
And a reminder that what we do isn't who we are.
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service nor a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The information shared in this email is general and written for a specific audience. If you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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