Perform Under Pressure
Ferdia Performance helps individuals, teams and leaders think clearly, adapt quickly and perform when pressure is at its highest.
Drawing on 14 years of military service, including the Royal Marines and UK Special Forces, and an MSc in Performance Psychology, founder Shane Breen translates lessons from high-performance environments into practical tools that work in the real world.
What We Offer
1:1 Performance Coaching
Individual coaching focused on understanding what affects your performance and developing practical psychological tools to improve it.
Team and Leadership Seminars
Practical, engaging sessions designed to help teams and leaders understand how pressure affects the way they think, communicate and perform.
Keynote Speaker
Engaging talks combining real-world experience with performance psychology to explore how we think, respond and perform under pressure.
Webinars
Keep an eye out for upcoming webinars focused on specific topics such as resilience, stress management and goal-setting, with practical tools you can apply to your own performance.
Meet Shane
Shane Breen is the founder of Ferdia Performance.
During 14 years in the military, including the Royal Marines and UK Special Forces, Shane experienced performance at both ends of the spectrum, from exceptional to poor, sometimes from the same individual.
That raised a question: why can an individual or team perform brilliantly one day and struggle the next?
That question led Shane to study performance psychology, completing an MSc to better understand the mechanics behind performance, and importantly, how we can influence it.
Ferdia Performance brings those two worlds together: real-world experience and evidence-based psychology.
Testimonials
Being a professional fighter, the psychological aspect is even more important than the physical in order to be successful. Working with Shane I was able to practice being in the optimal mindset for me and we worked on cues and visualization to keep me in the correct arousal levels in order to perform. I was able to use the techniques. He taught me in my last couple fights and had my best performances to date. This has been a huge addition to my fighting and now I am confident I am able to remain calm and focus even during the most stressful situations.
Maximillian Flynn, Professional MMA Fighter, UNF Lightweight Champion
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Shane Breen and Ferdia Performance on a number of Who Dares Group events, where Shane has delivered performance workshops as part of our wider team-building programmes.
What sets Shane apart is his ability to take lessons and experiences from operating in genuinely high-pressure environments and translate them into something that is relevant and practical for the people in front of him. His sessions on resilience, managing stress and performing under pressure consistently resonate with participants because they aren’t based purely on theory — they’re grounded in real experience and backed by performance psychology.
Shane has a natural ability to engage a room. He’s authentic, credible and straightforward in his delivery, but importantly, he makes the content accessible and applicable to everyday working environments. Whether he’s working with individuals, leadership teams or larger groups, he gives people practical tools they can take away and use immediately.
From an event organiser’s perspective, Shane is also incredibly easy to work with. He understands the wider objective of the event, adapts his delivery to the audience and can be trusted to add genuine value to the overall experience.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Shane and Ferdia Performance to any organisation looking to develop resilience, improve performance under pressure and build stronger, more effective teams.
Leo Walker, CEO and Founder, Who Dares Group
I went to one of Shane Breen's training sessions a while ago. It was brilliant - very engaging and it was abundantly clear that a lot of time and effort had been put into tailoring the session to our group and what we needed.
Interestingly, it was a few months later that I really appreciated Shane's words of wisdom and the value of the practical exercises he had taken us through. I came up against a challenge at work and unsure of where to start, I looked back through the notes that had been sent from the session on effective decision making under pressure. It was invaluable to have those notes to work through and having a situation in my own world as an example made everything Shane had said come to life.
As a trainer, I found Shane to be incredibly personable, open, honest and clearly very knowledgeable about his subject. He comes across as having a real passion to help everyone he is working with get the best out of the training session. I would not hesitate to attend future workshops and training run by Ferdia Performance.
Cheryl Bowden, Director, Bowden Financial Management, Poole, UK
I’m a sprint athlete competing from 60m to 200m, and before working with Shane I struggled badly with pre-race anxiety. My nerves could become so overwhelming that I would sometimes vomit before or after races, largely because I felt I didn’t belong competing at that level. Shane immediately made me feel comfortable and helped me understand what I was experiencing, including imposter syndrome and how to recognise and manage my emotional and performance zones. Together we developed a clear race-day routine and strategies to control my mindset and approach competition with confidence, with Shane providing ongoing support throughout. The difference has been huge: I went from regularly finishing 4th or 5th, with the occasional bronze, to consistently making the podium within a few months — including several silvers and my first gold. My times have also continued to improve, but most importantly, I no longer experience the overwhelming anxiety I once had and now approach races with confidence and clarity. Shane’s knowledge, support and approach have made a genuine and lasting difference to me, both as an athlete and in how I handle pressure.
Ethan Wagstaff, Sprint Athlete for Newcastle University, and City of York. UK
We contacted Shane to help our 10-year-old son with severe anxiety around jiu-jitsu competitions. Although he genuinely wanted to compete, when competition day arrived his nerves and fear would take over and prevent him from performing.
From the very beginning, Shane was incredibly professional and knowledgeable. He took the time to speak with us and then with our son separately, making sure he understood the situation from both perspectives. Our son immediately felt comfortable talking openly with him about his worries and fears.
Shane developed a clear, structured plan specifically for our son, explaining what they would work on, why they were doing it and how each exercise could help. He also helped our son understand what was happening in his brain and body when he became anxious and gave him practical techniques to manage those feelings.
Throughout their sessions, Shane regularly checked how our son was feeling and whether the techniques were helping. He also kept us involved as parents, explaining each session and giving us practical advice on how we could support him.
The progress has been fantastic, and Shane exceeded our expectations. We would highly recommend him to anybody looking for professional support with their child’s performance anxiety.
Kamila Dyksa, Bournemouth, UK