The Unseen Advantage You’ve Been Missing with Dr. Adam Szlezak, PhD

How a 10-second reset can defeat chaos and what it means for you 

There’s a reason Tier 1 teams look unremarkable in the field. No song and dance. Just quiet timing and clean decisions when the margin for error is final.

People assume it’s experience. Or better tactics. Or more bodies on the ground. 

Closer to the truth? A human-performance discipline based in practical psychophysiology that we’ve kept in-house and under wraps, coached by a clinician who has tuned up Olympians and switched on tier-one operators alike with the secrets to staying calm on the inside. 

What follows is the 3-Phase Focus Dr Adam teaches and we use in the field: 

1. Self-Awareness Development – to notice our own state, how to down-regulate, and stay in charge,
2. Strategies to Diffuse the Situation – to co-regulate and manage others, when their nervous systems are taking over 
3. Redirect/Re-engage to restore operational excellence and momentum. 

Simple to learn, fast to apply. This 10-second reset is the difference in a performance window when it matters most. 

The source? His name is Dr Adam Szelak, PhD, and for years, he’s been a behind-the-scenes specialist, working with our founder, managing director, and business development team, embedding a physiology-first method he calls the Physiology of Protection. 

This isn’t mindfulness glued onto tactics. It’s a replicable field protocol with tactics that are executable under pressure. Today, we’re opening the curtain so our partners in the industry can learn it too. 

Dr Adam’s 3-Phase Focus 

Dr Adam Szlezak is a performance clinician with a PhD in Applied Psychophysiology and a Doctorate in Physiotherapy. He translates the mind–body connection into practical protocols that keep cognition and behaviour online under pressure on the track, in the boardroom, and in the field. 

1) Self-Awareness Development 

What happens: As our internal survival mechanics are triggered, stress/emotion narrows and steals the fine motor control, like vision, trigger manipulation, judgment, and decision-making. It also impacts the way we operate and behave.

What this does: It trains operators to notice WHEN they’re becoming driven by fight, flight, or freeze processes, AND HOW to manage this. For example, how do they start to feel in their shoulders, stomach, blink rate, vision, breathing, and posture? How does their behaviour change – such as pacing, tensing, rushing, reacting, panicking, digging their heels in, even listening (defensively). 

Micro-protocol (10 seconds): 

• Body Awareness: how am I feeling (in my body)? How is my behaviour changing? 

• Posture: Un-hunch. Hips stacked, feet set.

• Breath: 3 slow nasal inhales, 6–8 count exhales.

• Vision: Soften focus to the horizon; widen peripheral field.

• Naming: “I’m triggered; not threatened.” (Labels → lower arousal.)
• Outcome: This is a huge game-changer! 

With training, people can replace instinctive reactions with conditioned and intentional responses, moving past initial shock in high-stress situations. This allows for pre-planned, practiced actions instead of freezing or acting impulsively. 

What’s really cool is that you can now think clearly. Even though things are intense, your higher-level brain functions stay active. They can still process information, understand situations, and make smart, deliberate choices, unlike the emotional “fight, flight, or freeze” response that can lead to irrational actions or shutdown. 

The biggest win here is that the person actually has a shot at surviving that first encounter. In those critical moments where everything hangs in the balance, being able to respond effectively instead of just reacting blindly is everything. 

2) Diffuse the Other Person

You have to co-regulate before you can problem-solve 

Most escalations aren’t about logic; they’re about nervous systems in a knife fight. 

What this does: It allows us to manage someone else’s nervous system and behaviour through our own behaviour 

• Immediate empathy: “This must feel urgent for you.” Putting words on someone’s feelings helps them feel heard, connected, safe (and thus regulated on the inside).

• Active listening: Mirror the concern. You don’t have to agree with them. You’re simply helping them to see themselves in the moment.

• Grounding moves: Simple strategies such as offering water, a seat change, or a 90-second walk can be a great way of getting out of the emotional vortex.

• Disrupt with Calm signals: Operators open their stance, slow their vocal cadence, and lower their volume to control the tone. Use your body and tone to bring down their nervous system. 

• Here-and-now focus: “Let’s deal with this bit, right here, right now.” Resurrect presence in the heat of the moment.

Outcome: As the initial heightened state of arousal gradually diminishes, a crucial shift occurs in an individual’s cognitive and emotional landscape. This de-escalation of intense emotional or physiological responses paves the way for new possibilities and a renewed sense of clarity. With the subsiding of immediate, often overwhelming, reactions, opportunities that were previously obscured by the intensity of the moment begin to emerge. 

Restored timing is crucial. When arousal subsides and timing is regained, problem-solving improves. This shift enables thoughtful, proactive engagement over reactive responses. 

3) Redirect & Re-engage 

After the dip, you need redirection and transition 

What we do: Tailor the next move to the person and the moment, one clear “NEXT step,” offered as a choice to restore agency. 

• State first, then step: Check that they’re regulated; if not, loop back.

• Offer two paths: “Shall we address this now, or move on and return to it later?”

• Resourcing: Resource them with the tools, people, and structure they need to progress with what YOU are moving toward..

• Quick follow-up: A short check-in later cements the reset. It’s not about going back into the emotional vortex – it’s about reinforcing what’s been done well!

Outcome: As the moment unfolds, a positive trend has emerged within the organization. Incidents that previously posed a risk of near-misses, potentially leading to operational disruptions or safety concerns, have noticeably decreased. Concurrently, there has been a significant reduction in occurrences that could have resulted in reputational damage, thereby safeguarding the company’s public image and stakeholder trust. This sustained improvement suggests effective implementation of risk mitigation strategies and enhanced operational protocols. 

“Boring Wins”: A Field Glimpse (Anonymised) 

• Airport choke point: Your Principal faces an ambush of cameras at arrivals. The protection team runs the 10-second reset after resolving the threatening paparazzi assault. This widens their visual field, softens body language, and uses empathy lines with the media while guiding a neutral path. This reduces the risk of reputational harm with shoulder clashes and prevents optics blowing up, or the team slipping further into dysregulation.

• Hotel lobby balls up: The boss’s staffer misroutes a lift; operator tempers climb out of concern for missed timings, opened vulnerabilities, and unnecessary risks. The operators deploy the 3-Phase process and label their own trigger, resets, and answers with calm clarity to the Principal. Problem solved in under a minute; no chain reaction.

Different locations; same loop:

Observation > Outcome > Down-regulation > Co-regulate as a team > Redirect & Reset. 

Why We’re Revealing the Unseen Advantage 

We didn’t keep this quiet to be clever. We kept it quiet to make sure it worked. 

After years of seeing noise rewarded over nuance, we’ve decided to open the curtain for the sake of the industry, not ego. EP doesn’t need more chest-thumping or theatre. It needs protectors who look boringly competent when it counts, and clients who get home without a headline. 

If ever, the time is now for shared learnings that enhance and improve operator efficacy. 

Your edge isn’t slick kit and a new trick or toy. It’s a trainable, it’s a nervous-system skillset, and this one is built by a clinician who has proved it where the stakes are savage (Olympic events, Contracts with 0.1% margin for error, Non-Permissive Operations), and it has been translated for boardrooms, travel programs, and media encounters.  

We’ve run it in-house, pressure-tested it, and tracked the outcomes. Fewer escalations. Cleaner timing. Ongoing and continued contract work with clients who matter. 

We’re sharing it now because: 

• If we can help shift the culture from theatre to competence, everyone wins, especially the clients (and thus the industry).

• When trusted teams want the “why” behind our non-events, the professional answer is to teach, not tease.

• Biology is universal. If more operators can regulate under heat, our whole sector gets safer. 

Call it what it is: method. An unseen advantage you can measure. 

What’s Measured is Managed  

Error Rate Under Time Pressure: This metric evaluates staff accuracy under pressure. By comparing error rates before and after training, you can measure effectiveness in improving staff precision in high-pressure situations. 

Escalations per 100 Interactions: This KPI tracks how often interactions need escalation, revealing procedural gaps or staff skill issues. Shorter escalation times indicate efficient problem-solving and strong support systems. 

Principal Markers During High-Visibility Events (Optics and Events): This tracks critical behaviors, communication, or outcomes during events with public or internal scrutiny. It covers external perception (optics) and internal events (e.g., incident response, critical project launches), enabling proactive reputation management, effective crisis communication, and successful sensitive operations. 

AAR Language: Fewer “Got Flustered / Rushed / Blanked,” More “Paused / Reset / Redirected”: Analysing after-action reviews reveals a shift in staff language. Instead of expressing a loss of control likely seen as staff blaming staff, there is a shift to staff now using terms like “paused” and “reset,” indicating improved emotional regulation, strategic thinking, and self-correction under stress. 

Staff Self-Report: This self-reported metric gauges employee perceptions of work demand management, assessing their sense of control, cognitive clarity, and recovery speed. Teams that are overworked express it in their exasperation. 

Workshop Snapshot (For Partners) 

Physiology of Protection: For Operators & Leaders 

• Core Outcomes: Self-Awareness Development (signals, breath, posture, vision)

• What it looks like: Co-regulation scripts, body-language cues, spatial tactics that read as calm

• Workplace Integrations: Advance work, secure mobility, medical overlays, comms cadence

• Field Drills: 10-second resets, 90-second de-escalations, 5-minute recovery loops

• Tools of the Trade: Pocket cards, pre-brief checklists, AAR metrics 

Meet the Instructor We Didn’t Advertise 

Dr Adam, a black belt in his own right, has coached tier-one operators and athletes in environments where the plan rarely survived the first second of a contact or competition.  

His approach has always been that an Olympian doesn’t just “train hard.” They assemble specialists: a technical coach for form, a strength coach for power, a Data Scientist for metrics, a physio for recovery, and a Performance Psychophysiologist to keep the nervous system steady when the stadium roars.  

That mix turns raw talent into medals. Margins matter. The podium is won in tenths of a second, and to quote the famous Ricky Bobby, “If you’re not first, you’re last”. When it comes to contracts and competition, no one remembers the losers. 

So Panoptic has done the same: 

• Technical coach = Tactics & SOPs. Our operators already knew the drills.

• Strength & conditioning = Medical, mobility, logistics. We built capacity to carry out the plan with our bespoke Medical program by blending Defence Force Doctors and Paramedics into our executive protection program. 

The Unseen Advantage, though. 

• Performance Psychophysiologist = Dr Adam – our Behaviour Risk Management Specialist

His Physiology of Protection is the difference between a strong athlete and a champion on finals day. Breath, posture, and vision are our equivalents of stride length, bar path, and race cadence.  

When stress spikes, we don’t “try harder”; we switch protocols, down-regulate, redirect, and win. That keeps fine motor skills, timing, and judgment online. The result looks boring from the stands. That’s the win. 

Most EP firms stop the training and hiring process at “operators.” That’s like stopping at a good club coach. We have built a high-performance program: integrated coaching, measurable routines, repeatable outputs. Less flinch, more finish. Fewer headlines, more safe arrivals. 

In short, we stopped treating protection as a single sport and started running it like an Olympic campaign. Dr Adam is our performance unit, turning capable operators’ actions into consistently elite outcomes.

If You’re Curious (And You Should Be) 

• Because you want your teams to look boring in the best way?

• You know that you want fewer near-misses and tighter decision loops? 

There is no doubt that an edge compounds daily, not just on range day. Dr Adam will be contributing more to “The Unseen Advantage” series here in this masthead. 

Dr. Adam: From Athlete to Emotion and Behavior Expert

Dr. Adam Szlezak, PhD., is a name synonymous with profound insights into human emotion and behavior, and his work is a testament to the power of personal struggle transformed into professional mastery.

Before he became a world-renowned specialist, Dr. Adam experienced the debilitating effects of performance anxiety firsthand. As a young athlete, the overwhelming pressure before competitions often manifested in severe physical symptoms, including vomiting, hindering his ability to perform when it mattered most.

Driven by a burning desire to become a world-leading high-performance specialist, Dr. Adam embarked on a path of relentless academic and athletic pursuit. His dedication to understanding the human machine led to significant achievements:

• Athletic Prowess: He became the Australian Under 18 and Under 20 Sprint Hurdle Champion, achieving a remarkable 5th World U18 ranking. These accolades are a testament to his practical application of mind-body principles even in his formative years.

• Dual Doctorates: His academic journey culminated in two distinct yet complementary Doctorates:

  • A Doctorate in Physiotherapy provides a foundational understanding of the physical body and its mechanics.

  • A PhD in Applied Psychophysiology delves into the intricate interplay between psychological and physiological processes, a critical element in understanding human behavior and emotion.

• Martial Arts Discipline: Further demonstrating his commitment to holistic development and self-mastery, Dr. Adam also achieved the prestigious rank of Black Belt in Japanese Ju Jitsu.

• Elite Performance Consultation: His early career saw him working with numerous high-performing athletes and their teams, directly applying his burgeoning expertise to optimize their mental and physical states for peak performance.

Despite his initial focus on high-performance in sports, Dr. Adam’s unique skill-set in the mind-body connection increasingly found its most critical application in the corporate space. Colleagues and clients recognized his exceptional ability to assist with complex emotional and behavioral presentations, leading to a natural shift in his professional trajectory.

As he embraced this new direction in practical “Mental Health”, his expertise gained recognition beyond the traditional clinical setting. He has been increasingly engaged as a consultant in the corporate world, where he became a vital resource for:

• CEOs and Executives: Guiding leaders in understanding and managing their own emotional intelligence to navigate the complexities of corporate leadership.

• HR Professionals: Providing tools and strategies for fostering a healthy and productive work environment by addressing emotional and behavioral challenges within teams.

• Health Professionals: Equipping other practitioners with advanced techniques for assisting their patients with emotional and behavioral regulation.

• And many others: Empowering individuals across various sectors to master their human emotions and behaviors, not only for personal well-being but also to effectively influence and manage the emotions and behaviors of others.

This powerful corporate application of his practical skills and profound understanding of human psychophysiology ultimately led to the establishment of his renowned coaching, becoming the “go-to” expert for emotion and behavior risk management. Dr. Adam is now releasing with Panoptic Solutions’ “The Unseen Advantage”.