Stress, Pressure & Execution in Elite Performance

[Part 1 /5] 

You've listened to all the guru podcasts.

You've done the ice baths. The breathwork. Maybe even cocktails of ashwagandha, lion's mane, phosphatidylserine and magnesium.

The first few weeks you had a novelty feeling.

Now, six months in, the placebo effect has worn off.

You're still waking up at 2am. Still carrying the same tension into every meeting. Still wondering why the methods that 'work' for everyone else aren't moving the needle for you.

Truth is they're not working for everyone else.

The emperor has no clothes. 

They're temporary relief.  Fancy coping trends.

But none of it addresses why you needed them in the first place. After twenty-five years working with NFL teams, Premier League clubs, Special Forces units, and Fortune 500 executives, I've watched the same patterns repeat in the civilian world. The stress response follows certain rules. System overwhelm takes forms that look identical but require opposite interventions.

Leaders who can't distinguish them make it worse half the time—and the worse half is very bad. 

This is a complete solution framework: How stress actually works, why people break, and what leaders can do about it.

Not tips. It's a model.

And you need a model. Not more methods.

Timing & Dose

 Whistle goes.

Preseason practice ends.

Exhausted.

Gasping.

Sweating.

Silence.

Water bottles.

Ninety-three NFL players walk off the field.

With smiling faces.

This is what most people miss about stress.
Those players weren't surviving practice.
They were thriving in it.

The cortisol flooding their systems wasn't destroying them.
It was reparing them.

The exhaustion wasn't damage.
It was stimulus.

Stress is necessary.
Essential.
The driver of adaptation.

Biologists call this hormesis.

Beneficial stress at the right dose.
Too little, no adaptation.
Too much, damage.

The dose makes it poison or medicine.

Cortisol isn't an enemy.
It's a signal that tells the body to prepare, mobilize, grow.

Without stress, there is no adaptation.
Without adaptation, there is no elite performance.
What elite teams do better than anyone else is time the stress/load they apply.

Selye called stress "the spice of life." He was right.
The problem is never stress itself.
The problem is what happens after.

Here's what most miss:
The body doesn't distinguish between physical and psychological stress.
Your hypothalamus doesn't know the difference between a predator and a performance review.

This is not new.
Wang Shuhe was reading stress through pulse diagnosis in 280 AD.
Selye explained it back in 1936.
Anokhin's Functional Systems research confirmed it in the 60’s.

Threat is threat.
This is why we can't separate body from mind when we talk about performance.
Your body doesn't.

But most gurus, wellness companies, etc oversimplify.
They treat symptoms. Ignore architecture, systems and sources.
They separate physical from psychological when the organism treats them as one.
They sell methods when what you really need is a 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 to understand and personalize it to you.

The question isn't whether stress exists or how to avoid it.
What matters is HOW you apply it.

Remember the only difference between poison and medicine is timing and dose.

What Happens Immediately After Work Determines the Lesson

Trust me.
The last thing a player wants to see after a ninety-minute Premier League match in front of sixty thousand people is an ice bath.

They've had a week of meetings.
Training.
Travel.
Then the game itself.

But the next forty minutes, right after the final whistle determines how the following week's game will go.

Why?
Because adaptation requires what happens AFTER the stress.

What elite leaders understand that others don't - there is a window to DEFINE the stress.

Your body, mind, your organism's singular goal is survival through adaptation.

After every stressor, two paths exist:
𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗢𝗻𝗲: Recover fully → Growth
𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝘄𝗼: Blunt the signal → Degradation

That ice bath isn't punishment.
It's the difference between building on the stimulus and being broken by it.
Here's what separates elite environments from average ones:
They structure what happens after.

Recovery isn't what you do AFTER the work.
It's part of the complete work 'experience'.

Think about it - the body doesn't suddenly switch to recovery once the final whistle goes - it's still in a state of activation.

In sport, post-stress activity is structured recovery. Nutrition. Sleep. Load management.
Every variable controlled.


In elite corporate teams, it's the hot wash and cold wash:

𝗛𝗼𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵: immediate debrief while stress is fresh.
• What happened? What did we see? What did we miss?

𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵: reflection with distance.
• What patterns emerged? What do we do differently?

(*𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦)

Both determine the TYPE of adaptation that occurs.

Skip them and you get degradation dressed as experience.
Ten years of experience becomes one year repeated ten times.

You can't accelerate it - but you can remove what's blocking it.
Sleep, nutrition, load management—these don't accelerate recovery. They remove obstacles. The body has its own recovery capacity. The goal is to stop interfering with it.

Selye mapped this. His "resistance stage" is where adaptation occurs—IF recovery is permitted. Miss the window and you don't get growth. You get load accumulation.
The Soviets weaponized this insight. Matveyev's periodization work recognized that timing of stimulus and recovery determines outcome.

Right dose, right timing, adequate recovery = above-baseline adaptation.
Wrong timing = degradation.

But here's the deeper truth:
Every response to stress is adaptation.
Even "maladaptive" responses were adaptive in their original context.
The organism has one goal: survive.
So bad 'recovery' after a board meeting doesn't have a neutral effect - it has a negative effect!


We're not pathologizing responses. We're understanding them as survival strategies.
Stress + Smart Recovery (Hot Wash & Cold Wash) = Growth
Stress + No/Poor Recovery = Degradation

The equation is simple.
The execution is where organizations fail.

Your Life Model Determines Your Stress

Working with elite athletes, operators, and executives for over twenty years, the first thing you notice is the difference in how people respond to stress.

Same situation.
Same pressure.
Different responses.

So the question becomes - why?
Why do some people respond in one way and others differently?

Over time, patterns emerge.

And you start to understand:
The difference isn't toughness.
It isn't genetics.
It isn't training.

It's 'The Model'.

We all have a Life Model
It's a deep subconscious model 𝗯𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝘃𝗲𝘀 personally and uniquely.

The Life Model is als the interpretation architecture that shapes how we perceive events and decide if they are threats.

It evolves from everything:
Childhood. Culture. Accumulated experience. Trauma. Faith. Genetics. Epigenetics

It operates largely beneath conscious awareness.
It's sole aim is to PROTECT us, to help us survive.

It essentially filters every experience, event or stimulus through a single question:
"𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭?"

This survival is reduced to three drivers:
𝗦𝗘𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗬
— Am I safe? Will I have enough?
Physical safety. Financial stability. Resources. Health. Status. Certainty.

𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘
— Can I act? Do I have agency?
Autonomy. Control. Choice. Self-determination. Voice.

𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗔𝗖𝗛𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧
— Do I belong? Am I connected?
Relationships. Tribe. Support. Acceptance. Love.

(𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴 - 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯)


Ultimately though this explains responses:
Same stimulus + different Life Model = different response.

One person's stress is another person's sweet.

Anokhin called the underlying mechanism the "Acceptor of Action." An internal model that predicts and interprets before conscious thought and Vygotsky showed how environment and culture structure the mind itself.

But here's the critical insight for you as a leader:
The stimulus doesn't create stress.
The Life Model's interpretation of that stimulus as a survival threat creates stress.

The Event Was Never The Variable 

Initial interpretation is subconscious.

But the Life Model CAN be shaped (we see it in cults and very elite teams and units).

And ... the Life Model CAN be reshaped also.
Through intentional work. CBT. Guided practice. Faith. Significant life experience.


How you interpret stress, threats or excitement isn't determined by someone else
It's determined by YOUR Life Model

Do you know what yours is?
Most people don't.
That's the problem.

When Your Battery Is Completely Flat

The CEO handled the 2020 crisis brilliantly.
Calm.
Decisive.
Kept the board confident and the team focused.

Two years later,
A routine HR issue - the kind she'd handled dozens of times ...
Sent her into a spiral.

Sleepless nights.
Snapping at direct reports.
Second-guessing herself.

The HR issue wasn't harder than the pandemic.
She just had nothing left.

Her functional reserve was empty.

I've seen the same pattern on sidelines and in locker rooms for twenty years.
Working with elite athletes as they execute under extreme pressure - in person, in the stadium - is one of the greatest experiences you can have.

The keys to facilitating elite performances is NOT about doing something
It's actually about removing things
Reducing as many ancillary stressors as possible.

Clear the noise.
Simplify the environment.
Remove what doesn't need to be there.

Why?
Because minor stresses accumulate and 'run the battery down'
They all tap into the functional reserve.
And we need ALL energy for execution.

Even then, you see the human body at its most exhausted and fatigued.
Even with everything optimized, the demands push systems to their edges.

So what separates those who perform from those who collapse?

Functional Reserve.
The organism always operates with reserve capacity.

Healthier systems mean more reserve.
More reserve means more capacity to handle additional stress.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 the important part:
When all bodily systems are healthy, they share load.
The cardiovascular system helps the muscular system.
The psychological supports the physical.
The collective handles what the individual couldn't.

But reserve must be replenished.
And it exists on a continuum.

This becomes critical later:
When reserve is predominantly depleted, you get one kind of shutdown.
When reserve is predominantly present but inaccessible, you get another.

Same external presentation.
Opposite internal states.

Wang Shuhe understood this in 280 AD, reading it through the pulse. Anokhin called it the Acceptor of Action. Bernstein described self-regulating systems. Ashby formalized it as the Law of Requisite Variety and I see it on NFL,Premier League locker rooms.

Different eras.
Different languages.

Same insight:
The system must have enough internal complexity to match environmental demand.

If environmental complexity exceeds system capacity, the system fails.
The question isn't just "how much stress?" It's "how much reserve?"

Leaders who deplete reserve systematically create systems primed for collapse. Leaders who monitor and maintain reserve create systems capable of sustained performance.

That CEO who fumbled the HR issue?
She didn't need coaching.
She needed things taken OFF her plate
To allow the functional reserve, her battery, to recharge.


The question leaders should ask is:

"𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗜 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲?"

not
"Why can't they handle this?"

The Stress That Happens When Nothing Happens

"Restructuring has 'on the table' for eighteen months.
No timeline.
No clarity.
Just the constant possibility.

By the time it finally didn't happen, the whole leadership team was already broken.

They’d aged five years in one.
Sleep wrecked.
Health declining.

They paid for a threat that never materialized.

That's the cost of anticipation.

I saw it constantly in sport - a threat that never arrives still takes its toll.

Not every team I worked with was top of the league.
In fact, the threat of losses - or a run of losses - is never far from anyone's mind in sport.
Only a big injury away.

This threat has a cost.
Physically and emotionally.

Even when the loss doesn't come, the anticipation of it takes its toll.

The body doesn't wait for crisis.
It prepares for it.
And preparation has a cost.

The traditional model is homeostasis.
Stability through constancy.
Fixed set points.
The body detects deviation and corrects back to baseline.

Think of it like your internal energy thermostat.

But Sterling and Eyer saw something different.
In 1988, they coined "allostasis."
Stability through change.
The system doesn't just react.
It anticipates.
Parameters vary.
And variation anticipates demand.
Feed-forward, not just feedback.

Your brain is a prediction machine, it predicts needs and adjusts in advance.
Set points shift based on anticipated challenges.
This is why your heart rate elevates 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 the presentation starts.
Why cortisol rises 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 the game, not just during it.

The Life Model is an allostatic mechanism.
Predicting.
Preparing.
Adjusting.

Chronic stress isn't just about repeated hits.
It's about staying in anticipatory mode.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹—𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝘀.

McEwen called this cumulative cost "allostatic load."
The wear from chronic adjustments.
Operating outside normal range for extended periods.
The body compensates by recentering on the outlier state.
What was emergency becomes baseline.

And this is where pathology begins.
Elevated inflammation.
Depressed immune function.
Disrupted sleep.
Accelerated aging.

The system that keeps you ready for threat ...
Is the same system that wears you down when threat never stops being anticipated.

That team living under constant threat of losses?
They're paying the allostatic price whether the losses come or not.

That leadership team waiting for the restructuring?
They were paying a bill every day for a year.

When you wonder why you're exhausted and "nothing even happened"?
No.
Something happened.
You were bracing.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁.

Either way.
You're paying.