Calling a timeout when everything’s going wrong isn’t weakness. It’s how coaches stop a bad run.

Momentum runs in both directions, and a bad stretch feeds itself, with each mistake making the next one likelier because nobody has had a moment to reset. Stopping the clock does not undo what happened. It interrupts the pattern, which is often the only intervention available while things are actively going badly.

When the day starts compounding, stop it deliberately rather than pushing through. Ten minutes outside, a different room, one thing eaten. Say to yourself what has actually gone wrong versus what only feels like it has. Pushing on through a bad run usually just makes the run longer.