HRV training for athletes: your edge when it counts.

Her clients have included PGA Tour golfers, NFL and NBA players, and Olympians. The protocol is the same 10-week architecture she has taught for 18 years: resonance frequency training, pressure inoculation and recovery acceleration, tuned to your sport, your position, and your competitive calendar.

The work transfers: pre-round routines, between-play resets, travel and time-zone recovery, and the ability to let go of a bad hole, a bad quarter, a bad trade, before it becomes two.

Who this work is for.

From on-site support on multiple PGA tours to consulting at the annual NFL Scouting Combine, Dr. Lagos has worked with amateur and professional golfers of all ages, NBA players and their families, Olympians, and collegiate programs in track, rowing, basketball, football and golf. Her work has been featured in Golf Digest and by the PGA Tour, and she has provided on-air commentary on pressure and performance in sport for CNN, MSNBC and ESPN.

Athletes come to the practice to:

• Return to baseline faster after each shot, point or play.
• Return to a steady, confident state after a mistake.
• Build pre-competition routines that hold under scoreboard and time pressure.
• Recover faster between efforts, between games, and across travel.
• Improve sleep quality and duration, in season and on the road.

The training is physiological: you learn to breathe at your resonance frequency and shift your heart rhythm on demand, then practice holding that state under scoreboard and time pressure. For the full method and the evidence, see HRV biofeedback in NYC.

Performance anxiety and pressure, trained on Park Avenue.

Pressure shows up in the body first: a racing heart in the tunnel, shallow breathing over a four-foot putt, tight hands on the free-throw line. The 10-week, one-to-one protocol trains that response directly. You learn to breathe at your resonance frequency, then practice holding that steady state under scoreboard and time pressure until composure is a trained skill.

Sessions run 45 to 50 minutes at 505 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan or remotely, built around your competitive calendar. For the evidence, read HRV biofeedback for performance anxiety: what the research shows.

What the engagement looks like.

Across ten weeks, training moves from identifying your resonance frequency and learning low, belly-driven breathing, to letting go of stress, shifting heart rhythms to optimize performance, heart-on-demand and under-pressure training, achieving resonance through visualization, and heart strategies for enhancing focus. Sessions are entirely non-invasive.

What the published research shows.

Dr. Lagos's own research is where this protocol was first documented in sport.

• Self-reported confidence rose from 4 to 26 on the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory; cognitive and somatic anxiety scores of 14 and 21 fell to zero by the final session.
• Negative mood states fell on four of five measures of the Profile of Mood States.
• Total and low-frequency HRV increased during training, and the effect grew stronger across sessions.
• A separate case study of a 42-year-old competitive athlete with post-concussion symptoms reported that HRV training significantly reduced headache, decreased mood disturbance and reduced post-concussion symptoms (Lagos, Thompson & Vaschillo, 2013).

Honest limits: these are single-athlete case studies. The 2008 paper itself notes that automatic transfer of laboratory skills to competition is not yet supported by evidence, which is why training is built around your real competitive conditions. Read the plain-language summary of the golf study, or the broader evidence on HRV biofeedback in NYC.

From the research desk: HRV biofeedback for post-concussion symptoms: what the research shows.

Questions.