The Foundation of Peak Performance. What My Mentor Taught Me 30 Years Ago…and Again Last Week!
- Julie Jones
- Nov 11
- 5 min read
Last Friday was a thrill! We had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Sue Ziegler, my mentor and one of the most influential people in my life. Kortney and I interviewed her for an upcoming episode of Game Changers: Athlete Edition. It WAS AWESOME, inspiring and packed with simple, solid truths about performance.
If you’ve ever heard me talk about mental training, you’ve heard me talk about Sue. She was the sports psychologist at Cleveland State when I coached there, and she changed the game for our athletes and for me as a coach and as a person.
Her ability to take complex mental skills and make them simple, practical and powerful is unmatched. She’s a big reason I do what I do today.
And while I thought I knew what she’d say was the most important mental skill, she surprised me.
I often say that we are all leaving so much on the table because so few of us use mental rehearsal/imagery. So, I said, “Sue, I always tell my athletes that mental rehearsal or imagery is the most important tool.”
She replied with her wise and steady demeanor, agreeing with the power of mental rehearsal, yet added, “But before you can use imagery effectively, you have to understand your habits and learn to manage your emotions. That’s the foundation of all mental skills training.”
I’ll take her word for it…always have…always will. And as I thought about how I teach mental skills training, we do start with our superpower – self-awareness. Still, as I look at it now, we may rush too quickly through the foundational skills of mental training (and every other type of science)…observing and asking questions…then figuring out what to do with the information we gather!!
Sue’s take on mental training is this: Before we can use any advanced mental skill, self-talk, visualization, imagery, etc., we have to understand ourselves first: our habits, our reactions, our stress patterns. That’s where real control begins.
As she talked, I thought about the Three Power Moves. I think they line up well…because all point back to thinking about what our habits are in times of stress and in times of flow. Once we recognize those habits, then we can change them or work to repeat those that help us!
But here’s the bottom line: we can’t change what we don’t recognize. And on the other side of the coin, it’s tough to repeat the good stuff if we aren’t aware of our thoughts, responses and physiology when we’re at our best.
As we worked through the basics, Kortney asked how young was too young to start learning to recognize our response to stressors. Sue’s answer à “You can start teaching two- and three-year-olds to manage their breath, to manage themselves, and that’s where it all begins.”
That’s where it begins, folks. For kids…and for us! I’ll let you listen to hear her advice for how to help toddlers understand the power they have in their own breath!! It’s perfect!
Simply put, our breath is the gateway to control!
Sue explained that in moments of stress, our first job is to regain control of the body, because the body leads the mind.
“If you can start with recognizing stress, then we’re good to go. That’s where it begins.”
She teaches even the youngest kids to breathe deeply, to relax their muscles, to feel what calm feels like. One of her favorite ways to explain this to children:
“Pretend you’re a strand of spaghetti that’s not cooked — you’re stiff. Now exhale and be loose spaghetti.”
Simple. Brilliant. And completely backed by science.
Here’s why our breath changes everything! When we slow our breathing, we literally change how our brain functions.
Dr. Andrew Huberman at Stanford explains that slow, controlled breathing, we know he loves the physiological sigh (full inhale plus one quick inhale, one long exhale) because it directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body and lowering heart rate and cortisol levels within seconds.
In Sue’s words, “When you take that deep breath, your world slows down.”
That breath is the reset button for attention, emotion and focus. It’s the first step toward composure under pressure.
And as Sue said, “If you can’t get your body and mind under control, it’s hard to focus. Mental skills help you gain control…and then help you focus.”
This is the habit on which we build all other habits!
Sue often said that the basic foundational principle for mental skills is, physically and emotionally and attentionally, getting the body under control so that you can perform.
It starts with thinking about what our habits are in times of stress. Once we recognize those habits, then we can change them!
We all have default settings when things get hard, like sighing, tensing, negative self-talk and shutting down. Sue’s message was simple: You can’t change what you don’t recognize.
That awareness of noticing our tension, our thought patterns, our breath is our entry point into emotional control.
THEN…once you understand your stress habits and learn to manage your breath, then tools like self-talk and imagery become exponentially more effective.
Until the mind can slow down, until you can take a deep breath, it’s hard to do anything else!
From there, the other tools layer beautifully:
Breathing creates composure.
Composure enables focus.
Focus opens the door for imagery and confidence.
That’s the performance chain Sue built her practice upon and it’s the one that works, from youth sports to the operating room, as she reminded us with stories of her former athletes who now use these same tools as surgeons and executives…and she uses them with hospice patients and families as a volunteer.
Unsurprisingly, since she was at the forefront of the discipline, Dr. Ziegler’s philosophy aligns with decades of research on arousal regulation and emotion management as the foundation of performance.
We’ve known since the early 1900s, when Yerkes & Dodson introduced the Inverted-U Theory, that performance improves with physiological arousal up to a point, after which it declines. Breath and awareness help keep athletes in their optimal zone.
Then, in 1997, Hanin’s IZOF Theory explained that each athlete has an “individual zone of optimal functioning,” and managing emotions through breath and focus is key to finding it. And we know from past discussions that emotional regulation research confirms that reappraisal and physiological control are the most effective ways to maintain performance under pressure.
Finally, studies by Lehrer et al. on slow-breathing biofeedback show measurable improvements in attention, decision-making and stress resilience.
Our breath is our anchor! It not only keeps us alive…if we use it to our advantage…it helps us perform at our best!
Sue ended our conversation with this. “Don’t underestimate the power of mental skills. Doing them doesn’t mean weakness. It means strength. And you’re not just building skills for sport, you’re building life skills.”
That’s the kind of wisdom that changes lives.
So this week, whether you’re coaching a team, managing a business or parenting a toddler, take Sue’s advice.
Start with the breath. Recognize your stress. Notice your habits. That’s the foundation of peak performance.
And as she’d say, “Be the loose spaghetti.” 🍝 Then go be better!
It’s this simple…the next time you feel stressed, do this:
Notice your body (Where’s your tension? Shoulders? Jaw? Breath?)
Breathe — one deep inhale, one small top-off inhale, long exhale.
Name your state — “I’m tight,” “I’m rushed.”
Choose how to respond — “I choose to be calm.”
Repeat until calm feels normal again. That’s training your mind like an athlete, the Sue Ziegler way.
Manage your breath and then the moments!
Julie
P.S. Add a 3-session mental lab into your fall season. Reach out and let’s build the perfect one for you! Shoot me an email or text – juliej@ssbperformance.com or 234-206-0946
Julie Jones
Mental Performance Coach
SSB Performance
juliej@ssbperformance.com • 234-206-0946
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