Training for High Performance: How Muse Helps Diver Kimberley Benson Stay Calm, Focused, and Ready to Fly

When you're standing on the edge of a 20-meter platform, preparing to launch yourself into the air with nothing but training, muscle memory, and pure focus to guide you, your mental state matters just as much as your physical skill.

High diver Kimberley Benson knows that pressure firsthand. And while she's spent years training her body and mind for high performance in high diving, leveraging Muse's neurofeedback technology has helped her hone mental resilience, enabling her to perform at her best in the most critical moments.

We connected with Kimberley to talk about how neurofeedback has become her not-so-secret weapon for staying calm, focused, and resilient in a sport that demands absolute precision.

Regulating the body, resetting the mind

Q: You’ve said diving still scares you sometimes. How has Muse helped you stay calm at the edge of the platform?

“The most helpful skill I’ve learned that helps with my high diving is the ability to reduce my heart rate, slow down my breathing, and focus my mind. Muse is perfect for this because it gives me real-time neurofeedback, directly measuring those metrics and more. It’s easier to calm myself when I have something that lets me know I’ve done just that. Using Muse helps me to train these relaxation and focusing skills over and over again, so I know what to do and what it feels like when I don’t have Muse up on the 20-meter platform with me.”

Strengthening cognitive control under pressure

Q: High diving demands total focus. How has Muse helped sharpen yours?

“Being 110% focused on the task at hand is extremely important for high diving. A distraction can be very costly and painful. But it’s also not beneficial to be too stimulated- shaking with excitement or nerves makes everything harder to execute with precision. I’ve found it especially helpful to track my APF (a measure of cognitive performance) with Muse over time and watch how the better I get at calm focus, the more my APF increases. Training my brain to achieve this state of calm focus, where I’m excited but not trembling with anticipation, is an invaluable skill that I can now tap into whenever I’m about to dive.”

Learn more about the brain science to stay focused here

Cognitive recovery as a competitive edge

Q: How do you use Muse to recover from high-intensity training?

“After training, it’s hard to stop thinking about how to improve. That pressure builds. Muse helps me relax, disconnect, and reset — otherwise the mental fatigue compounds.”

“As an athlete, it’s hard to stay present and not spiral into what-ifs. Ruminating hurts performance.”

Decompressing after the dive: mental recovery in practice

Q: Diving’s an extremely high-pressure sport. How has Muse helped you in your recovery after intense practice sessions or competitions?

“I think the biggest problem I have is the thought that no matter how I did, I’ll have to do it again and do it better, which can be crippling. Working on my relaxation and de-stressing after my practices and competitions helps to reduce this anxiety by focusing on what I feel in the moment. As an athlete, it’s hard to stay present and not think about the what-ifs. I’ve found ruminating on this only hurts your performance. The ability to mentally disengage when not at practice is so important.”

The calm-performance connection

Q: Have you noticed any patterns between your cognitive performance scores on Muse and how they translate to your dive performance?

“I definitely have! I’ve found I’m less stressed by diving and I can more easily slide into that ‘relaxed focus’ mode within my practices. I enjoy my training a lot more now that I feel more confident, more in control of what I feel, and at ease when I step to the end of the platform.”

Related: breathing exercises for stress relief

Courage isn’t the absence of fear — It’s confidence in the face of it

Q: You take a leap of faith every time you jump off a cliff or board. Any advice for someone looking to take that leap, whether in diving or just in life?

“Whatever it is, it will ALWAYS be scary. There is no magic trick to make the fear go away. However, the more confidence you have in yourself — and the more you can tune into your own body and what you feel — the more control you’ll have over your ability to do the things you once thought impossible!”

As Kimberley puts it, fear doesn’t disappear—but with the right tools, you can learn to meet it with calm and confidence. Whether she’s diving from 20 meters or winding down after a long training day, staying grounded has become part of her routine—not just her performance.

Learn more about how EEG and neurofeedback improve athletic performance 

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