Whether you’re an athlete, coach, corporate exec, or average Joe, you’ve no doubt heard the saying: Sports are 80% mental and 20% physical. Well, guess what gets trained the most? Yep – the physical part.
Everyone claims to have laser focus… until you watch them train, work, or sit in a meeting and realize their attention span is not far off your 4-year-old at home.
Here’s a simple truth: Most people (athletes and executives included) don’t understand this: Focus is not a mindset. It’s a skill. A trainable one. And almost no one trains it.
People think focus means squeezing your eyes, clenching your jaw, and “trying harder.” Which, by the way, is not focus – that’s angst. Then they wonder why they never hit peak performance. Focus should happen during a relatively relaxed state, NOT under duress.
It’s not about trying. Anybody can “try.” The art of focus is a trained attribute. I’m talking about physical, deliberate, neurological focus training you layer into your workouts, your routines, and your day.
Why the emphasis on focus? Well, any of you reading this who aren’t gifted athletes, managers, parents, etc., like me – this one’s for you.
When I began my athletic career, if you looked up the word “dork” in the dictionary, my name was first on the list! I had to figure out ways to overcome my clumsy, pathetically underdeveloped body. Sure, over time, I became very fit and a solid technical ski racer. However, as you might have noticed from a previous article, “Brain or Brawn,” I had to rely on focus and sometimes the “Dark Arts” of competition to win. I worked on the 80% part a lot. Ski racing is a very challenging sport, so you’d better be on your game, or things go south quickly.
Let me explain how this works—and how you can train it every day.
Why Your Focus Sucks (And You Don’t Even Realize It)
We live in a world engineered to destroy our attention span:
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Blue screens everywhere
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Notifications buzzing
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Multitasking (ineffectively)
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Constant noise
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Mental clutter
In a culture that worships “being busy” vs. being effective, athletes are sidetracked, executives are distracted, and our kids are inattentive. Ever speak with a teacher lately? It ain’t pretty, folks.
But the rare people - the ones who truly perform at a high level, train focus the same way they train strength, cardio, speed, and skill. You want to unlock better performance? You train your brain while you train your body. That’s where the magic happens. Anyone can go into a gym, half-awake, and lift some weights.
Focus isn’t just mental — it’s physiological. Light is one of the most powerful drivers of alertness, circadian timing, and cognitive readiness. After years of coaching athletes and executives dealing with jet lag, cognitive fatigue, and attention fragmentation, the Humancharger is one of the few tools I consistently use and recommend.
The Focus Protocol
Most people treat focus as a mental exercise. It’s not! Focus is a physiological state.
Your nervous system, your breathing, your sensory load, and your visual targeting all play a role. If you train all of these together, your focus becomes a weapon. It’s what I do when I exercise, and it transformed how I teach athletes and executives to lock in under pressure.
Four simple techniques that sharpen your mind while you train your body:
1. Sensory Narrowing (The Earbuds Trick)
When I train, I put on my Ray-Ban Meta glasses (earbuds work too) and play music not because I need motivation, but because it creates a predictable soundscape. Music becomes a sensory anchor, reducing the ambient noise your brain wastes energy interpreting. Since I train mostly outdoors, this is key. Less noise = more focus.
2. Cognitive Pattern Shifting (Change Your Rep Counting)
Most people count reps like robots: 1, 2, 3, 4… brain turned completely off. That’s not training — that’s autopilot.
When I train, I constantly change the pattern:
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count singles
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count by twos
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alternate even/odd
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reverse the count
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sync reps with breathing
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count in a different language
Pattern changes disrupt your brain’s habit loops and force your mind to stay present. If you drift or daydream, you lose count quickly. Your brain must stay online throughout the exercise. Trust me, it’s a challenge to focus with music, lyrics, counting, and shifting focal points. And I do this all with higher reps (50-100), because the onset of lactic acid buildup (good pain) will force you to focus even deeper. When you get good at it, you won’t even notice the pain.
3. Breath Control (Nose In, Mouth Out)
This isn’t yoga stuff - it’s performance physiology. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth:
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regulates nervous system (“calm intensity”)
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maintains oxygen efficiency
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supports rhythm
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keeps you controlled under strain
When your breath is disciplined, your mind becomes disciplined. Breath is your internal metronome.
4. Visual Target Cycling (The 3-Object Method)
This is world-class focus training disguised as a simple drill. When I work out, I pick three objects in the distance. In nature (my favorite place to train), I can pick a flower, rock, stump, etc. – any object that is 10-15 feet in front of me. As I begin the exercise, with every rep, my eyes dart from one object to the next. In the gym, you can use 3 pieces of 2-inch x 2-inch duct tape at random places on the wall or floor. Depending on your sport, you can space them horizontally/vertically/abstractly anywhere from 3 feet to 10 feet apart.
This type of training develops:
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micro-focus
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depth changes
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spatial awareness
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target acquisition
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visual discipline
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mental agility
Ski racers do it. Pilots do it. Snipers do it. Tennis players do it. You’re training your visual cortex and motor cortex to fire together, which is the basis of elite focus and reaction time. This is a skill almost nobody trains… but everyone needs.
Why Athletes and Executives Need This More Than Anyone
I’ve coached athletes at the highest levels and executives with more pressure than they can admit publicly.
The common issue? They think they’re focused, but they’re not. Most are mentally fragmented, overstimulated, and reactive. They can grind for hours, but they can’t lock in for five minutes.
Focus is their missing gear. When they start training focus like a physical skill, everything changes:
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decision-making improves
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reaction time sharpens
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emotional reactivity drops
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discipline strengthens
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confidence rises
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results follow
Remember, focus isn’t motivation; it’s a trained neurological pattern.
How to Start Training Focus Today
Your workout is the perfect lab:
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Add music → sensory narrowing
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Change rep patterns → cognitive engagement
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Control breathing → regulate intensity
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Use multiple targets → visual discipline
You build the mind while you build the body. And trust me, the carryover is enormous. Most people don’t fail because they’re weak. They fail because their mind wanders at the exact moment it should lock in.
If you want to outperform the competition - on the slopes, on the court or field, in the boardroom, or anywhere in between - train your focus like you train your muscles:
Deliberately.
Consistently.
Relentlessly.
Everything gets easier when your mind is the ultimate co-pilot for your body.
- Gary Miller, Olympic Coach and Owner of Humancharger.us
