For Endurance Athletes

Confidence, clarity, and calm are not gifts. They are skills.

Built one breath at a time. One repetition at a time. One debrief at a time. The work begins long before the moment that asks for it.

This piece comes in two parts.

Part 1 is where the skills came from. A football field in 1962. A coach named Maxie Baughan. The North Shore in 1972.

Part 2 is what all that work is built for. The Power Surge. The trained, trusted moment in your race when you call your own power forward and let it loose.

If you are looking for a way back to yourself, this is how I found mine. The path is open to you, too.

Part 1

The Foundation

Maxie Baughan, Spring of 1962

The skills I took from football didn’t stay on the field. They followed me into the water. Into the canoe. Into every conversation I have with an athlete today.

Maxie taught me how to use my breath to hit hard and play with intensity. That was the breakthrough. The rest was history.

Inhale. Pause. Settle down. When the ball was snapped, hit the man in front of me. Or get to my position and be ready to hit. That was the moment I learned to channel emotion into passion.

Our practices were fall two-a-days and five weeks of spring. During the season, we ran full speed without contact. Lined up in position. Ball was snapped. Run the play. Top speed. Stop before contact.

Full speed. Clean finishes. No punishment.

That is what built the confidence, clarity, and calm we needed when the lights came on.

Coach Dodd knew what he was doing. He was preserving the body and training the nervous system.

I played with Lombardi. I played against the best in the league. And I’ll tell you — Maxie was special. Nobody could block him. Nobody. He had what Brad refers to as the Power Surge.

— Bill Curry

Bill saw it from across the line of scrimmage. I felt it standing next to him in the linebacker drill. Same man. Same breath. Same surge.

A Play That Shows You What I Mean

LSU. Baton Rouge. I was lined up on the left side at inside linebacker. Their right guard stepped out to block me. A back got the ball from the quarterback and came right at me behind the block.

I stepped up into the block and stopped the play.

Next thing I remember, I was waking up in the arms of the trainer and another player. Helmet split. Nose broken. Part of the helmet stuck in my forehead.

Game was over. Somehow I got on the bus to the airport. I remember sitting with a coach and a few of the players.

And that was fun.

Not because I was hurt. Because I had done what I was supposed to do. The team approved. The coaches approved. The body had answered. The training had held.

By the time the play came, I had run it a hundred times. No hesitation. No doubt. The step. The block. The stand-up. And then the lights.

You do not rise to the moment. You fall back on the training.

The Breath Was There All Along

Looking back, Maxie taught me something else. Something I didn’t have a name for at the time.

Inhale. Pause. When the ball is snapped, explode.

That was my introduction to breath holds. Decades before I ever heard the term. Before Wim Hof. Before any of the science came to me. Maxie had me doing it on every snap.

Inhale. Hold. Release into action.

He was building a breath protocol into us and calling it football.

You have had a Maxie too. Or you will. Someone who hands you a skill you didn’t know you were looking for. Your job is to recognize it. And use it.

Then I Came to Hawai‘i

There was a time in my life when everything just put me in the right place at the right time. Third year of teaching at Punahou.

First year — living on campus. Teaching 5th grade. Elise and I got married. Surfing Ala Moana Bowls as much as I could.

Second year — Portlock. Teaching 6th grade. Surfing the North Shore. Velzyland every Friday.

Third year — built a house in Pūpūkea. Teaching a 3rd through 6th grade swim program.

Fourth year — starting to surf Sunset. The steep takeoffs taught me to exhale, feel my feet and core, and hold my edge.

Souped-up VW bus. Two Lightning Bolts. An 8’0” and an 8’6”. Shaped by Tom Parrish. Glassed by Steve Cranston. Designed by Shaun Tomson.

How I Learned to Surf Sunset

Same technique Maxie had taught me. Different field.

Visualization and breathing instead of film and drills. I saw myself paddling for the wave. Saw and felt the edge control from takeoff to the end of the ride.

Living on the North Shore and teaching that swim program at Punahou, I got out early. In the lineup by 3:30. Driving from Punahou to Sunset Beach, I was practicing surfing in my mind. The more feedback I got on size and conditions, the more accurate the visualizations became.

By the time I came over the top of the hill and could see the whitewater, I had already ridden the wave a hundred times in my head.

I started to amp up. Taking off on the wave in my mind. Making the wave. Leaning into the takeoff. Feeling the edge.

I didn’t know about breath holds then. But I knew the power of using my breath. Debriefing my success. Feeling my way to getting waves on most days.

And living the best life.

Ride it in your mind before you get there.

See it clean. Feel it finished. Arrive already familiar.

Those skills followed me for the rest of my life. Same techniques to master coaching and teaching. As the breath work expanded and life got more serious, I used them to stay present. To express passion in all the events of my life. To manage the hard ones.

The Breath Hold

Then Wim Hof came along. He gave me the breath holds for the most stressful situations. The nasal inhale. The power generated by the exhale. The confident clarity and calm that comes with feeling your own power.

Wim takes it to the extreme. Ice baths. Long holds. Mountains in shorts. That is his calling. It has opened doors for athletes who need to go to the edge.

The breath hold doesn’t have to be extreme to be useful.

It can be fun. A game you play with yourself at a red light. The thirty seconds before you walk into a room. The quiet moment before you fall asleep.

Same tool. Small doses. Big payoff.

The power isn’t in how far you push it. The power is in knowing you have it. And reaching for it when you need it.

It is right here. In the chair you are sitting in.

Inhale through the nose. Let the exhale go. Pause at the bottom. Feel the quiet.

That is the doorway. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it.

A Word About How Far to Take This

Some coaches working with athletes who take on bigger and bigger challenges have gone deeper. Tow-in surfers. Paddle-in ocean athletes. They combine breath holds with underwater training to prepare for the worst conditions the ocean can hand them.

Lately I have felt the need to expand my own breath work. It is one of the things I love. There is always a way to use your breath to build fitness, resilience, and fun.

Right now I am swimming on top of the water, holding my breath for one full lap. Same breath. Different application.

The breath doesn’t care what the moment is. It shows up the same way every time.

Your Sunset

Your Sunset might be the Moloka‘i channel. Just you, the canoe, and the water between here and there.

Ryland Hart, the young paddler I work with, just won the Moloka‘i in the relay. In two weeks he goes back alone for the solo. He has trained the breath. He has done the visualization. He has felt his own power on that water.

Same skills Maxie gave me in 1962. Same skills carried him across. Same skills will carry him across again.

Different generation. Different sport. Same breath.

Was really nice to feel locked in. So present and calm. And then be able to hunt when it mattered.

— Ryland Hart

Your Sunset might be becoming the best beach volleyball player on the sand. Or the coach every player wants to play for.

It might be the classroom on Monday morning. The race you signed up for and haven’t told anyone about. The hard conversation you’ve been rehearsing in the car.

It might be simpler than any of those. It might be building a family that has fun together.

Whatever your Sunset is, the path is the same one I found coming over the hill in 1972.

Settle the breath. See it before you are in it. Trust the body. Ride the wave. Debrief clean. Come back for the next one.

You don’t need a VW bus. You don’t need a Lightning Bolt. You don’t need the North Shore.

You need your breath. Your eyes. And the willingness to see yourself doing the thing before you do it.

What I Teach Today

The young teacher coming over the hill at Sunset was already doing what I now teach. He just didn’t have the names for it yet. He was using the breath to settle. Visualizing the wave before the takeoff. Trusting the body. Debriefing the ride and coming back clean for the next one.

Same skills Maxie gave me in the spring of 1962. Same skills Coach Dodd modeled every day. Same skills Sunset tested and refined. Same skills at the heart of every HiLevel profile I build today.

Read the field. See the play. Trust the body. Use the breath. Debrief. Come back clean.

And under all of it — the GED Foundation.

Gratitude is awareness and acceptance. The clear eye that sees what is actually in front of you. The wave. The field. The channel. The classroom. The family at the table. Accepts it as it is before trying to change it.

Excitement is controlled passion. Maxie’s breath turned into a hit. The amp-up coming over the hill at Sunset. The heat you bring to your Sunset without letting it run you.

Devotion is discipline and trust the process. The repetitions. The early mornings. The practice when no one is watching. Coming back clean for the next one.

Bridge to Part 2

Gratitude. Excitement. Devotion. That is the ground you stand on when you step into your Sunset. That is where confidence, clarity, and calm actually live.

That is feeling your own power.

Once it is there — trained and trusted, breath after breath — the next question is the one every endurance athlete eventually asks.

Where in the race do I call it forward? When do I let it loose?

That is Part 2. That is the Power Surge.

Header photo of Ryland Hart, by Hayden Ramler.