Helping Teenagers Handle Pressure: How Brian Moylett Brings Oxygen Advantage Into Irish Schools
Brian Moylett's Other Game Plan
"I dreaded nerves. I'd get in my head and start overthinking — it was physically and emotionally draining. I was never taught how to manage any of it."
Brian Moylett · Performance Psychologist · Former Ireland Underage Rugby International · Connacht U20 Grand Slam Captain · Oxygen Advantage Instructor
From the Pitch to the Classroom
Brian Moylett has spent his career moving between two versions of the same question: what does it take to stay composed when the pressure is highest. A former Ireland underage rugby international who captained Connacht's Under 20 side to a Grand Slam, he now works as a performance psychologist across sport, schools and business — helping people do under pressure what they can already do in practice. It's work he came to from the inside: as a young athlete, nerves weren't something anyone showed him how to handle.
"I was never taught how to manage any of it, so I know firsthand what these young people go through." — Brian Moylett
A Tool Coaches Kept Asking For
Brian first brought Oxygen Advantage into schools through the sports psychology work he was already doing with school teams. Coaches kept raising the same issue — players losing composure to nerves and pressure before the real contest even started — and breathing gave him something concrete to offer: a way for young athletes to settle their mind and perform when it mattered.
One Year Group Becomes Every Year Group
What began with sports teams didn't stay there. A Transition Year Coordinator who saw the effect on athletes asked Brian to bring the same work to an entire TY year group, and it's grown from there — he now runs TY workshops across Ireland alongside his sports team sessions, mixing theory, practice and team-building games to give students tools for exams, performance and everyday pressure, not just competition.
"Nerves were a bad thing — it's great to be able to deal with them now." — a line Brian hears from students often enough that it's become the clearest sign the work is landing.
What Stayed With Him
The response that means the most to Brian isn't always the one in the room. Parents message him afterward about what their kids took home from a session; teachers tell him the work feels more necessary every year, not less. For a teenager learning to sit with performance anxiety for the first time, that's the shift Brian is chasing — not the absence of nerves, but a different relationship with them.
