SPEEDWAY, Ind. — With the 105th Running of the Indianapolis 500 just days away, there's lots of excitement.
With all that's at stake, perhaps no one is more anxious than the drivers. So how do they manage?
"Believe it or not, the race car drivers have more stress continuously than fighter pilots," said Dr. Terry Lyles, an Indiana native who travels the U.S. as a stress coach.
"I train drivers and teams on how to handle that pressure at 200 miles an hour with other road-rage maniacs," he said
His technique for managing stress isn't complex. In fact, it's something we all do every day. We breathe.
"Like in karate, Lamaze, anything that we do with breath is power," said Lyles.
He tells drivers to treat their breathing as an integral part of race strategy.
"It's understanding how to control my physiology," he said. "So in the fighter pilot world, it's a G-breath, how to breathe correctly. So I teach my drivers the same way, how to breathe before, during or after a pit stop or a particular corner so that they can pickup a tenth of a second on a lap."
And while the majority of us don't fall into the category of fighter pilot or IndyCar driver, Lyles says anyone can benefit from taking control of their breathing.
"Every 90 to 120 minutes, we need a two to five minute pit stop. These guys do it in seven seconds. We need two to five minutes. So if you don't have two to five minutes, you're just too busy to recover to perform at your highest levels," Lyles said.