Confidence, clarity, and calm are not gifts. They are skills. They are built one breath at a time, one repetition at a time, one debrief at a time — and the work begins long before the moment that asks for them.
This is the story of how those skills came to me. It begins on a football field in 1962 with a coach named Maxie Baughan, who taught me to use my breath to play with intensity. It moves to the North Shore in 1972, where Sunset taught me visualization, edge control, and how to ride a wave a hundred times in my head before I ever paddled out. It carries through the breath holds, the GED Foundation, and the work I do today.
If you’re looking for a way back to yourself — to your confidence, your clarity, your calm — this is how I found mine. The path is available to you too.
Maxie Baughan, Spring of 1962
The skills I took from football didn’t stay on the field. They followed me into the water. They followed me into learning how to surf. And they followed me into learning how to coach myself and others.
Maxie taught me how to use my breath to hit hard and play with intensity. That was the breakthrough. The rest was history.
That was the moment I learned to channel emotion into passion. Inhale. Pause. Settle down. Then, when the ball was snapped, hit the man in front of me — or get to my position and be ready to hit.
Our practices lived in fall two-a-days and five weeks of spring practice. During the season, we ran full speed without contact. You lined up in position, and when the ball was snapped you ran the play, performed your task at top speed, and stopped before contact. Those repetitions — full speed, clean finishes, no punishment — created the confidence, clarity, and calm we needed to perform in a game.
Coach Dodd knew what he was doing. He was preserving the body and training the nervous system.
A Play That Shows You What I Mean
We were playing LSU in Baton Rouge. I was lined up on the left side in my inside linebacker role. Their right guard stepped out to block me, and 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.
The next thing I remember, I was waking up in the arms of the trainer and another player. My helmet was split. My nose was broken. Part of the helmet was stuck in my forehead.
The 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 — but because I had done what I was supposed to do. My team and my coaches approved of what I had done. The body had answered. The training had held.
Full speed in practice with no punishment. Full speed in the game with full contact. By the time the play came, I had already run it a hundred times. There was no hesitation. No doubt. Just the step, the block, the stand-up — and then the lights.
You do not rise to the moment. You fall back on the training. And when the training is clean, the moment takes care of itself.
The Breath Was There All Along
Looking back, Maxie taught me something else — something I did not have a name for at the time. He taught me to inhale, pause, and then when the ball was 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. The inhale. The hold. The 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 did not know you were looking for. Your job is to recognize it when it comes, and to 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. It was my third year of teaching at Punahou.
First year — I was living on campus, teaching 5th grade. Elise and I got married, and I was surfing Ala Moana Bowls as much as I could.
Second year — I was living in Portlock, teaching 6th grade, and surfing the North Shore. Velzyland every Friday.
Third year — I built a house in Pūpūkea and was teaching a 3rd through 6th grade swim program.
Fourth year — I was starting to surf Sunset. The steep takeoffs taught me I had to exhale, feel my feet and core, and maintain edge control.
I had a souped-up VW bus with 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
I used the same technique Maxie had taught me to learn how to surf.
I substituted visualization and breathing for film and drills. I saw myself paddling for the wave. I saw and felt the edge control as I rode it from takeoff to the completion of the ride.
Living on the North Shore and teaching that swim program at Punahou, I got out early — paddling out at Sunset, 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 the size and conditions, the more accurate my 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. In my mind, I was taking off on the wave. Making the wave. Leaning into the takeoff. Feeling the edge control.
I didn’t know about breath holds then. But I knew the power of using my breath. Debriefing my success. Gradually learning to feel my way to getting waves on most days.
And living the best life.
Whatever you are heading toward — a meeting, a workout, a practice, a hard conversation — ride it in your mind before you get there. See it clean. Feel it finished. Arrive already familiar.
I didn’t know it at the time, but those were performance skills that would follow me for the rest of my life. I used those same techniques to master the skills needed to coach and to teach. As my breathing protocol expanded and life became more serious, I used them to stay present, to express passion in all the events of my life, and to learn how to manage the hard ones.
The Breath Hold
Then Wim Hof came along — and gave me the breath holds to manage 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 climbed in shorts. That is his calling, and it has opened doors for athletes who need to go to the edge. But the breath hold does not have to be extreme to be useful.
It can be fun. It can be a game you play with yourself at a red light. It can be the thirty seconds you take before you walk into a room. It can be the quiet moment you give yourself before you fall asleep.
Same tool. Small doses. Big payoff. The power is not in how far you push it — the power is in knowing you have it, and reaching for it when you need it.
The breath hold is available to you right now, 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 do not 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 into these techniques to help their athletes find flow and a more aggressive focus. Tow-in surfers and paddle-in ocean athletes now combine breath holds with underwater training to prepare for the worst conditions the ocean can hand them.
Recently, 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. Lately, I have been swimming on top of the water, holding my breath for one full lap. Same breath. Different application. The breath does not care what the moment is — it shows up the same way every time.
Feeling your own power isn’t only about the takeoff. It’s also about the steady, repeatable rhythm of the breath you carry into everything else.
Your Sunset
Your Sunset might be the Moloka‘i channel — just you, the canoe, and the water between here and there.
The young paddler I work with, Ryland Hart, has just won the Moloka‘i channel 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. The same skills Maxie gave me in 1962 are the skills that carried him across, and they are the skills that 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 do not need a VW bus or a Lightning Bolt. You do not 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 name for it yet. He was using the breath to settle. He was visualizing the wave before the takeoff. He was trusting the body. He was debriefing the ride and coming back clean for the next one.
Those are the same skills Maxie gave me in the spring of 1962. The same skills Coach Dodd modeled every day. The same skills Sunset tested and refined. The 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. It is 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 — and accepts it as it is before trying to change it.
Excitement is controlled passion. It is Maxie’s breath turned into a hit. It is the amp-up coming over the hill at Sunset. It is the heat you bring to your Sunset without letting it run you.
Devotion is discipline and trust the process. It is the repetitions. The early mornings. The practice when no one is watching. The willingness to come back clean for the next one.
Closing
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.
And that is what I want you to know — not because I said it, but because you have felt it.
Know yourself. Play your game. Accept Love.
— Brad Yates
Header photo of Ryland Hart, by Hayden Ramler.