​Hey Reader,​
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I’ve been putting together a series of conversations with some of the brightest minds in performance, coaching, and player development for World Pickleball Summit 2, and I wanted to share a small excerpt from one of the sessions

Zach Kramer is a certified breath coach and founder of Athlete Breath Coaching. His whole focus is helping athletes use breathing to improve performance, and when I asked him what he’d give pickleball players as a single, immediately actionable technique, he gave me something I’ve been thinking about a lot since.

Here it is:

After a bad shot, when frustration is rising and the spiral starts, take a double inhale through your nose followed by one long exhale through your mouth.

That’s it. Two quick sniffs in through the nose, then one slow, full breath out.

Zach calls this a “between point reset,” and here’s why it works. After a mistake, your nervous system is still in that point. Your heart rate is elevated, your CO2 is building, and your brain is half-focused on what just happened instead of what’s coming next. The longer you stay in that state, the more likely you are to make the same mistake again or a different one.

The double inhale through your nose dumps excess CO2, which is what’s making you feel like you can’t catch your breath. The long exhale through your mouth physically lowers your heart rate. As Zach put it:

Three seconds. Physiological effect. Not a mental trick.

There’s also a bigger principle underneath this that Zach shared: every inhale raises your heart rate, and every exhale lowers it. Once you understand that, you start to realize you have a "lever" for your own nervous system available to you between every single point, and almost nobody is using it.

🎯 Try it in your next match: After any point you’re frustrated about, before you reset to the ready position, take the double inhale and one long slow exhale. Notice what happens to how you enter the next point.

You can find Zach and his free breathing guide on his website. I’ll link to it below. If the between-point reset resonates with you, he goes much deeper on the endurance and focus side of breath training, including how nose breathing during practice sessions can actually build your cardio in ways that extra court time alone can’t.

​Visit Zach’s site and grab his free breathing guide​

And if you want to sharpen the strategy side of your game to match the mental focus you’re building:

​Get Dynamite Doubles​

(30-day money-back guarantee · 1-year access · Live Q&As with Helle & Trey)​
​
Go play well,
​
Trey

P.S. One more thing Zach shared that stuck with me: the players who benefit most from breath training aren’t the ones who learn the most techniques. They’re the ones who just start paying attention to their breath during play. The awareness alone changes how much you can control it. Start there

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