Welcome to Trained, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of holistic fitness.

I'm Ryan Flaherty, the senior director of Performance at Nike.

On every episode, I call up the world's leading experts and athletes to talk about mindset,

movement, nutrition, recovery, and sleep. All the ways to train your body and mind.

Today, I'm getting into it with a mental performance coach who's helped a lot of young MBA

players find their strength by helping them find their vulnerability.

Just like lifting weights, your instincts aren't to go get a bunch of resistance in places,

like you have to consciously go do that and put yourself under that situation.

I mean, run away from fear, fear, scary. Instinctually, we've been doing that for generations.

There's no one who doesn't feel fear you wouldn't be living a human experience.

So, our instincts, right, we run from something that feels uncomfortable.

So, our training is we have to teach ourselves to go back. We've just been living reactionary.

It seems like for quite some time.

That's mental performance coach Graham Bechart, explaining why we should all get a little

more comfortable with being uncomfortable. Or in other words, why we should go against our instincts

and get vulnerable. It's an approach that's been shockingly effective in Graham's work as he's

helped some of the best players in high school and college ball become some of the best players in

the MBA. But for Graham and the players he works with, being vulnerable demands more than

taking risks on the court. It demands setting aside your fear of losing and even your hope of

winning. It demands that you come back again and again to the present moment, even when it's the

last place you want to be. That kind of vulnerability Graham says doesn't always come easily for an

athlete or anyone really who's been taught to always stay in control. He also says that for many

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