“So present and calm. And then hunted when it mattered.”
— Ryland Hart, outrigger paddler
That is the destination. That is what this essay is about. Not the quote itself — the state it describes. Present. Calm. And when the moment required it, hunted.
By the end of this, you will understand what took Ryland Hart to that place. And you will have the tools to get there yourself.
You already have everything this asks of you. I am not handing you something new and dropping you in there. What I offer is a way to see it, train it, and bring it all together when it counts.
The last part is the work. Pressure doesn’t break you — it reveals you. It shows you which piece has gone quiet. The strength is already turned on. Knowing where it lives is not a problem. It’s a beginning.
I have spent my life coaching not perfection, but your game. Above the Line. Below the Line. What matters most. Know yourself. Play your game. Let’s play it.
The Canoe
Picture an outrigger canoe. Six paddlers. Every stroke, they are strong individually — but they are also synchronized. When the blade hits the water at the same moment, the canoe doesn’t just move. It surges. Now pull one person into their own rhythm. Suddenly the canoe is fighting itself. Works twice as hard. Goes half as far.
Some people offer tremendous force but their body has been out of sync for a long time. Athletes I work with, families I try to reach — we spend years asking why some of the talent stays in the canoe and never fully arrives.
After all those years, here is what I know: what keeps the best from their best is rarely skill. It’s coherence.
Coherence is not a feeling. It’s a state. It’s what happens when what you think, what you feel, and what you do are all pointing in the same direction at the same time.
When the whole canoe is moving as one — six paddlers, one canoe, everything pointed forward — that is coherence made visible. Every stroke together. Every breath synchronized. The canoe surging as one.
What Coherence Requires
The work itself is the shortcut. Most people are chasing results out in front of them. The excellent ones have learned to carry awareness with them into each moment — into the fielding position, into the at-bat, into the start of a big race, into a difficult conversation.
Awareness, honestly applied, doesn’t let nerves settle you — it sharpens your focus. It reminds you of the way. In a real, grounded, competitive way.
Coach Bobby Dodd used to say that people thought care and excellence were opposites — that softness was the enemy of edge. He built teams that proved the opposite. Care was the fuel. Fuel, when given a controlled burn, is what powers a house. No energy means flat. Both extremes leave you without controlled passion. Real edge is effort activated deliberately. But effort has to be coached — learned, managed, and sometimes called to slow down.
The GED Foundation is that controlled burn.
The GED Foundation
Gratitude is not a thank-you note. It is a practice of seeing clearly. When you are grateful, you are present. You are not ahead of yourself, not behind. You are here, in this moment, in this body, with these tools. Gratitude removes the fog that anxiety and entitlement both produce.
Excitement is not nervousness. It is energy that has been given direction. The athlete who has learned to channel excitement — not suppress it, not be consumed by it — is the athlete who arrives ready. Excitement is controlled passion. It is the engine running at the right temperature.
Devotion is the long game. It is discipline that has stopped arguing with itself. It is the athlete who does the work when no one is watching, who trusts the process when results are slow, who keeps showing up because they have decided that showing up is who they are. Devotion is trust made physical.
GED is not a sequence. It is a state. When all three are present at once — gratitude grounding you, excitement fueling you, devotion anchoring you — the canoe surges. That is coherence. That is HiLevel.
The Gate
There is something that blocks the way to coherence. Not skill. Not talent. Not even effort. Something older and quieter than all of those.
It is known to many as the Gate.
The Gate is what stands between an athlete and their full love for the game. It is built over time — from disappointment, from grief that was never expressed, from love that was offered but not returned, from years of being told that softness and performance were enemies. The Gate doesn’t announce itself. It just holds things back.
When the Gate is closed, the athlete performs — but not fully. The talent is there. The training is there. But something essential stays behind the door. The connection to why they play. The joy that was there before the scoreboard mattered. The love.
The Gate was built to protect you. This is important. It is not the enemy. It was constructed by a younger version of you who needed it. We honor that. We do not push through — we invite it open.
And here is what I have learned after decades with athletes and families: when the Gate opens, calm arrives.
Not the forced calm of someone trying hard to relax. Not the absence of emotion. The real thing — the stillness of an athlete who is not fighting themselves anymore. Who is all in the same direction. Whose canoe is moving as one.
Calm: The Evidence of the Open Gate
Calm is not passivity. It is not detachment. The calm athlete is fully present, fully feeling, fully engaged. Calm is what coherence looks like from the outside — and what wholeness feels like from the inside.
The athlete who is calm in pressure is not unaffected by it. They have simply stopped arguing with the moment. They are here. They trust what they have built. They are not ahead of themselves worrying about outcomes, and they are not behind themselves dragging the weight of the last mistake. They are now.
And that is where the game is played. Now.
The breath is the bridge to now. It is the only human function that is both automatic and conscious — which makes it the most powerful tool an athlete carries. The breath runs without you. And it responds to you. When pressure tightens, the breath shortens and climbs into the chest. The body follows. The mind narrows.
But here is what the trained athlete knows: you can go the other direction. Three slow counts in. Hold. Three slow counts out. The body follows. It always does. The mind arrives.
This is not relaxation. This is readiness. This is the body saying: I am here. I am open. I am ready to receive what this moment asks of me.
Ryland Hart knows this. After one of the biggest races of his life, on the water he had trained for, in the canoe he had poured himself into, he was asked what he felt out there. He didn’t talk about technique. He didn’t talk about strategy. He said:
“Was really nice to feel locked in. So present and calm. And then be able to hunt when it mattered.”
— Ryland Hart
That is the open Gate. That is the GED Foundation running. That is coherence — not as a theory, but as a lived experience on the water, in the race, in the moment that counted.
Present enough to receive everything the moment offered. Calm enough to be fully there. And then — when the moment called for it — hunted. Alive. On fire with controlled passion.
That is the whole athlete. That is what we are building toward.
The HiLevel Prayer: The Practice That Opens the Gate
Over many years of coaching and being coached, of sitting with athletes before the biggest moments of their lives, I developed a prayer. Not a religious document — a practice. Seven steps that move the whole person from wherever they are to where the game needs them to be.
Each step is a movement. Each one releases something and receives something. Together they are the Gate opening — and calm arriving. This is how you get there.
Open Heart.
I am grateful for this moment.
For the people in my life.
For the work I am called to do.
Elevate.
I choose to rise above the noise.
Above the worry. Above the wait.
My best self shows up today.
Trust.
I trust the process.
I trust what I have built.
I trust that doing right is enough.
Pull.
I draw strength from those who came before me.
Every coach who believed in me. Every teammate who carried me.
Every mentor who showed me the way.
I pull love into everything I do.
Receive.
I am open.
To answers. To grace. To help.
I do not have to carry this alone.
Return.
What I receive, I give back.
To my clients. To my family.
To the next person who needs it.
Amen.
Hey, Now. Accept Love.
What the Prayer Does
Look at what this prayer does, step by step — and feel how each movement brings you closer to where Ryland stood on that water:
Open Heart is the decision to begin. Anxiety closes — this is the conscious act of opening. You cannot be flooded with fear and open at the same time. The Gate begins to move.
Gratitude pulls you into now — into what is actually here, actually good, actually real. You cannot be anxious and genuinely grateful at the same time. Something in you exhales.
Elevate is the Above the Line move. Not denying the noise — choosing your altitude above it. Calm is not the absence of pressure. It is the choice of where you stand in relation to it.
Trust is where the grip releases. Worry is just trust that hasn’t found its footing yet. Every worry is a failure of trust in the process, in the work, in yourself. You have done the work. Trust it.
Pull reminds you that you are not alone. Every coach who believed in you. Every teammate who carried you. Every mentor who showed you the way. The game itself. Calm deepens when we remember we are held by something larger than this moment. The lineage carries you.
Receive. Stop straining. Open. Grace arrives when you stop blocking it. You don’t achieve calm — you receive it. The Gate is fully open now.
Return is completion — the Hammah fulfilled. Awareness. Acceptance. Completion. What flows in flows out. The athlete who gives freely is the athlete who plays free.
The Whole Athlete
Coherence is the destination. The Gate, the breath, the prayer — these are the path. The GED Foundation is the ground beneath the path.
When it all comes together — when gratitude is present, excitement is channeled, devotion is running underneath, the Gate is open and love is moving freely — the canoe surges. The whole athlete shows up.
Not perfect. Whole.
That is the difference. Perfection is a destination you never reach. Wholeness is a state you can train, return to, and carry into every moment that matters.
Ryland Hart found it on the water. Present. Calm. Hunted when it mattered.
That state — that exact state — is available to you. It is not reserved for elite paddlers or decorated athletes. It is the birthright of every whole athlete who is willing to do the work, open the Gate, and receive what is already there waiting.
“So present and calm. And then hunted when it mattered.”
— Ryland Hart
That’s where we’re going.
Know yourself. Play your game. Accept Love.
Brad Yates | HiLevel Coaching