Ep. 65: Safety, Stress, and Performance: Megan Bartlett on Rethinking How We Coach Under Pressure
There’s a moment that comes up often in my work with athletes, coaches, and high performers, a moment that’s so predictable, I can almost hear the script before the athlete opens their mouth. Someone hits a wall and can’t make sense of their own reaction. A player freezes in front of the open net. A coach snaps at their athlete and immediately feels the sting of regret. A young athlete shuts down after a mistake and avoids eye contact for the rest of practice. A seasoned performer looks at me and says, “I don’t know why I acted that way. I should’ve been able to handle it.”
Beneath all of these experiences sits the same belief: “I should be in control.”
And when people feel like they’re not in control, the next conclusion is usually self-blame.
I’m weak.
I’m not mentally tough enough.
I need to push harder.
Everyone else seems fine, why can’t I be?
But here’s the thing I wish more people understood: these reactions aren’t moral failings. They’re a function of our underlying physiological processes. They are the predictable outputs of a nervous system that is doing exactly what it’s wired to do.
That’s why my conversation with Megan Bartlett felt so refreshing, and, honestly, necessary. As the founder of The Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport, Megan has built her entire career helping coaches, youth workers, and leaders understand something so simple it feels revolutionary: until we understand the nervous system, we will misunderstand and misattribute behavior. And until we respect our biology, we will continue to design sport environments that unintentionally undermine the very outcomes we care about, performance, development, resilience, and joy.
Meeting Megan: The Keynote That Shifted Something in Me
I first saw Megan speak in 2021. I walked into a packed conference room, an ocean of performance psychology professionals sitting at the ready, and immediately felt something different in the air. Keynotes usually involve someone standing behind a podium, clicking through slides. Megan’s did not. There was movement. Connection. Playfulness. She was wearing great sneakers, which might as well be part of her brand at this point, but it wasn’t the shoes that made the biggest impression. It was the way the whole room ended up feeling regulated.
Her keynote had this rare combination of scientific clarity and biological warmth, the sense that she wasn’t just teaching about nervous system regulation; she was modeling it, and left us embodying it. And she showed that you can talk about neuroscience in a way that feels alive, grounded in the body, and fundamentally human.
That keynote has stayed with me ever since. And when we finally sat down to talk for this episode, that same grounded presence came through. Megan is someone who understands the nervous system from the inside out… not just from the textbooks, but the lived experience of trying to help humans grow, learn, and thrive in environments that often aren’t built for that.
What Coaches Often Get Wrong About Stress
One of the first things Megan said in our conversation was something like: “When I started working in sport, it became very clear how little adults understood about what young people actually need to thrive.”
That sentence hit me like a hammer. Because when you zoom out and look at most sport environments, youth, high school, college, elite, what you often see is a mismatch between the demands placed on athletes and their nervous system’s capacity to meet those demands.
Coaches assume behavior is a choice. They assume that if a kid is melting down, it’s because they’re not disciplined enough. If an athlete disconnects, it’s because they’re unmotivated. If someone keeps making the same mistake, it must be a focus issue.
But when stress increases, Megan reminded me, the nervous system shrinks our control panel and limits our choices. Cognitive resources shrink. Decision-making becomes less fluid. We’re pulled out of connection and into protection. And we start experiencing other people through the lens of safety rather than curiosity.
None of this is optional. It’s biology. And when we don’t understand that, we end up throwing more stress at athletes who are already over capacity. We ramp up the unpredictability. We push discomfort without considering dosage. We confuse overwhelm for growth, assuming that pressure alone is what builds mental toughness.
But pressure doesn’t make diamonds in this case unless the system has the resources to recover and grow. Stress without recovery doesn’t create stronger athletes; it creates fragile ones. Stress with recovery, support, and safety is what helps athletes expand their capacity to tolerate bigger challenges over time.
In this sense, one of the most radical things Megan teaches is that mental toughness is not about gritting through stress, it’s about regulating through and working with stress.
The Power of Psychological Safety and Quality Relationships
A theme that came up again and again in our conversation is the idea that relationships are not a bonus feature of high performance, they’re the backbone. When an athlete feels safe with their coach, teammates, and environment, they free up enormous cognitive and emotional bandwidth. Their system doesn’t have to burn energy scanning for threat.
Will I be yelled at?
Will I be benched?
Will my mistake change how the coach sees me?
Instead, that energy can be redirected toward problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and performance.
When athletes feel like they belong, like their contribution matters, like they won’t be punished for being human, everything changes. Effort increases. Joy increases. Adaptability increases. Recovery increases. Engagement increases. This is why teams that feel connected so often outperform teams that are technically superior but relationally fractured. Biology wins.
One of the biggest misconceptions in the sport world is the idea that unpredictability and overwhelm inherently build resilience. The old “throw’em in the deep end” approach to coaching. If something is uncomfortable, the thinking goes, it must be good for you. But as Megan pointed out, uncertainty and increased challenge are only beneficial when athletes have the internal capacity and external support to handle it.
If we toss athletes into high stress without having taught them how to regulate, without giving them time to recover, without building relational safety, we’re not building toughness, we’re amplifying dysregulation. And dysregulated athletes cannot learn, cannot connect, and cannot perform at their best.
This is where Megan’s work becomes so powerful: she helps coaches dose stress in ways that actually expand capacity, rather than overwhelm it. She teaches them to view the nervous system the same way they’d view a muscle, one that can grow stronger with intentional, supported stress, followed by recovery.
When we understand our reactions to stress as a function of a biological and physiological process that’s evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, we stop misinterpreting it as a moral and motivational test. And once we stop moralizing stress, we can actually start coaching more effectively.
The Neurosequential Model: A Better Way to Think About Coaching
Megan’s work is deeply influenced by the Neurosequential Model, which lays out a foundational sequence for how the brain operates and learns: Regulate, Relate, Reason.
Most sports environments flip that order completely. They demand reasoning, tactical decision-making, focus, discipline, from athletes who are dysregulated and disconnected.
When a nervous system is in protection mode, the reasoning part of the brain is simply not available. It’s not a motivation issue. It’s not a mental toughness issue. It’s not about athlete IQ. It’s biology.
When Megan trains organizations, she helps them design environments where athletes and coaches can regulate first, reconnect second, and reason third. And what happens when coaches follow that sequence? Performance becomes more consistent. Emotions become more navigable. Communication becomes smoother. Athletes take more risks because they trust the environment more deeply.
This model doesn't just apply to youth athletes. It applies to Olympians. NHL players. Elite performers. Adults in high-pressure jobs. Parents. Teachers. Coaches. We’ve all got a nervous system, and so it applies across the board!
Letting the Environment Do Some of the Work
One of the things I appreciate most about Megan is her ability to take this deeply scientific framework and ground it in practical, everyday strategies. She talked about a coach who used physical “zones” on the field, spaces where athletes could go to regulate themselves before re-engaging. The beauty of this system is that it didn’t require big speeches or complicated psychological interventions. It simply gave athletes permission to be human and tools to navigate the fluctuations of their nervous system.
Megan also talked about the power of humor, how a coach she worked with realized that when she let herself be playful, her own nervous system shifted into a more regulated state. And because regulation is contagious, the team shifted with her. That’s letting biology support leadership! Modeling nervous system regulation is often more powerful than any pep talk or tactical concept you can deliver.
She also emphasized the need for psychological cooldowns, moments after practice or competition where the nervous system can downshift, rather than carrying tension forward into the rest of the day. This might look like breathing. Or light relational connection. Or a change of environment. What matters is that the system has space to recalibrate.
What struck me in all of this is how much possibility exists when coaches understand their own biology. So many of the stressors in sport come not just from drills or competitions, but from the emotional tone set by the people in the room who are at the top of the org chart. When a coach or executive learns to recognize their own dysregulation, and takes steps to settle, it ripples through the team in ways that are both immediate and transformative.
Three Actionable Steps for Coaches, Leaders, and Athletes
Here are three practical steps you can start integrating today, whether you're a coach, athlete, or someone trying to perform under pressure in your everyday life.
1. Build Awareness of Your Stress States
Notice your body.
Name the signals.
Pay attention to tightness, irritability, or overthinking.
Awareness is the first and most crucial step toward regulation. When you understand your own patterns, you can intervene early instead of waiting for the full shutdown or blow-up.
2. Regulate Before You Reason
Before demanding focus or tactical decisions, regulate.
This can be breath work, a physical reset, a brief walk, a grounding touchpoint, or relational connection. When the nervous system is settled, performance improves. When it's not, no amount of “try harder” will change the outcome.
3. Create a Culture of Safety and Belonging
Psychological safety is not a luxury. It’s a performance enhancer.
Greet athletes warmly.
Apologize when needed.
Normalize mistakes.
Let people know they matter beyond their output.
When people feel safe, they take more risks, and that’s where real performance growth lives.
Finding A New Way Forward
My conversation with Megan left me feeling both grounded and energized. She offers a way of thinking about sport, and about humans, that feels not only more accurate, but more humane. When we stop fighting biology and start working with it, everything becomes more possible. Performance becomes more stable. Learning becomes faster. Relationships become deeper. And sport becomes the thing we all want it to be: a vehicle for connection, challenge, healing, and joy.
At the heart of it, Megan is reminding us that humans perform best when they feel safe, supported, and understood. If we can build environments that honor that reality, we’re not just improving sport. We’re improving the humans who move through it. When being a good human aligns with being a great leader and performer, that’s a win in my book.
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