Latest / The You Project / #1770 What's Harder Than Being An Olympian? - Giaan Rooney OAM

Transcript

#1770 What's Harder Than Being An Olympian? - Giaan Rooney OAM · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I get atam, It's tiff It's Jann, It's Craig Anthony
0:02
Speaker 1: Harper at the Bloody You Project. What else would it be?
0:05
Speaker 1: Where else would I be Tiffany and Cook over there
0:08
Speaker 1: at typ Central steering the good ship. Typ get a
0:14
Speaker 1: happy Monday, Hearts Happy Monday. Look at you in a
0:17
Speaker 1: bloody purple singlet. You look like a violet crumble with
0:20
Speaker 1: headphones on. Fucking hell, what what are you doing?
0:27
Speaker 2: We didn't get out in the heat yesterday, so I
0:29
Speaker 2: thought I'd just revel it up and pretend it was
0:31
Speaker 2: still hot today.
0:32
Speaker 1: Well, since I went to the dermatologist the other day
0:34
Speaker 1: and she scared the shit out of me, I don't
0:37
Speaker 1: go near the fuck the sun. I'm never going in
0:39
Speaker 1: the sun again. I'm getting a cave built in the
0:42
Speaker 1: front yard. I'm going to be a bit like Jesus.
0:45
Speaker 1: I'm going to live in there. Although he came out
0:48
Speaker 1: after three days, all right, I'm going to stay in
0:50
Speaker 1: for much longer. And enough theology. Jiann Rudey, you're a
0:55
Speaker 1: big deal. Welcome to the You Project.
0:59
Speaker 3: Wow, what an inn Hello.
1:02
Speaker 1: You've never heard that much bullshit at the start of
1:04
Speaker 1: any show you've done. Telly you've done radio, you've won
1:07
Speaker 1: gold medals, you're a big deal, your fucking World Olympic,
1:11
Speaker 1: this and world champion that. You've never had that, have you.
1:15
Speaker 3: I've never had that and actually really liked the message.
1:17
Speaker 3: I'm with you, stay out of the sun. I've spent
1:20
Speaker 3: plenty of my time in the sun. I've got that
1:22
Speaker 3: really pale skin that burns in ten minutes and just
1:25
Speaker 3: gets freckles and goes red and goes back to the
1:27
Speaker 3: color that it was, so after years and years of
1:31
Speaker 3: being in the sun, I am definitely hiding from it
1:33
Speaker 3: for the rest of my existence.
1:35
Speaker 1: I was talking to my old man on the weekend.
1:37
Speaker 1: Shout out to Ron Harper, who's two hundred and he's
1:41
Speaker 1: had shit cut off him and he had a melanoma
1:44
Speaker 1: cut off his nose not that long ago, and I've
1:46
Speaker 1: had about I'm going to go conservatively a dozen basil
1:51
Speaker 1: cell carcinomas. They're the kind of the one down cut
1:56
Speaker 1: off and I should probably, but I've never, like I
1:58
Speaker 1: done sunbake, that's the point. Like I've never probably I
2:01
Speaker 1: sun baked five times in my twenties, and I don't
2:05
Speaker 1: spend too much time in the sun. But nonetheless, nonetheless,
2:09
Speaker 1: do you so you avoid the sun.
2:12
Speaker 3: I can't avoid the sun. I'm a farmer.
2:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right.
2:16
Speaker 3: For the most part, it's pretty hard, but I am
2:20
Speaker 3: very wary of the sun. I think is probably the
2:21
Speaker 3: best way to put it. Even when I was a swimmer,
2:25
Speaker 3: when I was an athlete outdoor pool on the Gold
2:28
Speaker 3: Coast and you're, you know, four and a half to
2:30
Speaker 3: five hours a day out in it. My mum was incredible.
2:34
Speaker 3: She used to slather me in you know, sunscreen and
2:36
Speaker 3: then even zinc on the top of my face as well.
2:39
Speaker 3: But it's not like you're hopping out after an hour
2:42
Speaker 3: to reapply. You're also sweating water for the most part,
2:46
Speaker 3: so it's coming off and you get exposed to it
2:50
Speaker 3: whether you like it or not. So I've just got
2:51
Speaker 3: a really healthy respect for it. I'm like you. I've
2:53
Speaker 3: had a couple of cut out. I've had a couple
2:55
Speaker 3: of burnt off that have been nothing too sinister, but so,
3:00
Speaker 3: you know, just really notice that my skin doesn't like it,
3:03
Speaker 3: so I respect it.
3:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a good way. Tiffany and Cook, have
3:07
Speaker 1: you had anything cut off you other than your hair?
3:10
Speaker 2: I excuse me, I had a squam of silk ass
3:14
Speaker 2: and I would cut off my temple.
3:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, was that like a cleary whitey color, No,
3:20
Speaker 1: it was.
3:21
Speaker 2: It looked like it looked like a big wart and
3:23
Speaker 2: it come up real fast. And I had to go
3:25
Speaker 2: to three different doctors to get them to actually even
3:28
Speaker 2: test it. They were just like, I'll come back in
3:30
Speaker 2: a few months.
3:31
Speaker 3: It's nothing.
3:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, that happens a bit. I think. I think they
3:35
Speaker 1: give it a mile. Not most doctors, because most doctors
3:38
Speaker 1: are brilliant, but the old one goes, nah, you'll be right,
3:40
Speaker 1: slap on the back, so you and actually you won't
3:42
Speaker 1: be right. So it is worse some investigating. Where you at, Johan, I.
3:49
Speaker 3: Am in Corndale in New South Wales, which is about
3:53
Speaker 3: twenty five minutes out of liz Moore. So yes, my
3:57
Speaker 3: little community where Macedamia farmer's here and we love it.
4:01
Speaker 3: But it's been a really tough year for our little
4:05
Speaker 3: community and you know, we're not out of the woods yet.
4:08
Speaker 3: So just shout out to the northern rivers of New
4:11
Speaker 3: South Wales.
4:12
Speaker 1: Shout out to you guys and girls and everyone. It's
4:16
Speaker 1: a natural transition, you know, academia farming from swimming. I mean,
4:22
Speaker 1: that's what most people do, so yeah, yeah, but you know, nonetheless,
4:28
Speaker 1: do you want to explain to us the journey between
4:30
Speaker 1: those two very obviously linked careers.
4:35
Speaker 3: I think I can start by saying that the thing
4:39
Speaker 3: when I'm so grateful for my swimming career, so grateful
4:42
Speaker 3: for it, but I do not miss it at all,
4:44
Speaker 3: and for one of those plenty of reasons which we'll
4:47
Speaker 3: get into later of why that is such a healthy
4:50
Speaker 3: way to be, but one of them was probably what
4:53
Speaker 3: I grew to dislike most about swimming was the monotony,
4:58
Speaker 3: every day same. I don't think most people have thought
5:02
Speaker 3: about this, but as a as a swimmer, I just
5:05
Speaker 3: some time I got to the end of my career
5:07
Speaker 3: and I just at training didn't feel like getting wet.
5:10
Speaker 3: I didn't, you know. I was like, I'm not lazy,
5:12
Speaker 3: I don't want to work hard. I'll go for a run,
5:15
Speaker 3: I'll go to the gym, I'll do I just don't
5:17
Speaker 3: want to get in the pool. And you know, there
5:20
Speaker 3: is no real cross training in the sport. There are
5:23
Speaker 3: little things you can do, but ultimately just got to
5:25
Speaker 3: do laps. That's where it's at. And no one thought
5:28
Speaker 3: about this. You know, if you're a cyclist, you can
5:30
Speaker 3: change your scenery. If you're a runner, you can change
5:32
Speaker 3: your scenery and change your motivation. Let me tell you,
5:36
Speaker 3: a pool is a pool. No matter where you are
5:38
Speaker 3: in the world, the same feel There is nothing about
5:43
Speaker 3: it that feels any different. No matter where you are
5:48
Speaker 3: in the world, A pool is a pool. And so
5:50
Speaker 3: it's the monotony that probably got me more than anything
5:55
Speaker 3: by the end of it. And what I wanted from
5:56
Speaker 3: my life after was to not have any of that
5:59
Speaker 3: monotony exist. And I've really got that. I've been really
6:05
Speaker 3: fortunate that no day has ever been the same two
6:07
Speaker 3: days had never been the same ever since I had
6:09
Speaker 3: walked away from the sport of swimming. And I absolutely
6:12
Speaker 3: love that component of it. But it wasn't until I'm
6:15
Speaker 3: a city girl, you know, grew up in Brisbane and
6:18
Speaker 3: the Gold Coast and then moved to Melbourne, lived in
6:22
Speaker 3: Melbourne and met my now husband, Sam, who is anything
6:26
Speaker 3: but city boy. He was a mustering chop, a pilot
6:30
Speaker 3: when we met. When we first got married, we had
6:33
Speaker 3: a cattle farm in Euroa outside of Melbourne, and so
6:38
Speaker 3: he grew up on the land. He's a fifth generation
6:41
Speaker 3: cattle farmer and we were on the Gold Coast. We
6:43
Speaker 3: were looking for a weekend a slash holiday house that
6:49
Speaker 3: was a farm that could pay for itself. We couldn't
6:51
Speaker 3: afford it without that. It needed to be able to
6:53
Speaker 3: pay for itself, couldn't afford cattle country where we were looking.
6:57
Speaker 3: Stumbled across a maca farm and thought, how hard can
6:59
Speaker 3: it be? And as it turns out, pretty bloody hard.
7:05
Speaker 1: I don't know for one moment why you would think
7:09
Speaker 1: that would be easy, but probably because everything else came
7:12
Speaker 1: easy because you're a freak. It is interesting with swimmers
7:17
Speaker 1: like I trained a few swimmers and a bunch of athletes,
7:20
Speaker 1: but I trained to somebody that maybe, well, she definitely
7:23
Speaker 1: preceded you. I don't know if you ever overlapped it
7:26
Speaker 1: and swam together, Nicole Livingston.
7:29
Speaker 3: But I'm very glad we didn't overlap Craig because she's
7:33
Speaker 3: extraordinary and she's hardcore as a swimmer. She has such
7:40
Speaker 3: an incredible reputation of just being the toughest on pool deck.
7:46
Speaker 3: So I was really lucky that our paths never crossed
7:49
Speaker 3: in the swimming pool. But I credit Nicole and Duncan
7:53
Speaker 3: Armstrong with mentoring me through the early transition into commentary
7:58
Speaker 3: and TV life.
8:00
Speaker 1: I got them.
8:01
Speaker 3: I got the best of that world in its entirey.
8:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you've done all right, She's done all right.
8:08
Speaker 1: But I remember I didn't meet her till she'd just
8:11
Speaker 1: finished well no, not just she'd finished swimming. But and anyway,
8:16
Speaker 1: I can't remember how we met, but we became friends.
8:18
Speaker 1: We're still friends. And so I owned a bunch of
8:20
Speaker 1: gyms down here, and she trained in one of my gyms,
8:23
Speaker 1: and I ended up training her and just general stay
8:26
Speaker 1: in shape, be fit, strong, healthy stuff. I remember. And
8:29
Speaker 1: I didn't ask her. I don't know why I didn't
8:31
Speaker 1: ask her, but I didn't ask her for a long time.
8:33
Speaker 1: I said, by the way, when was the last time
8:35
Speaker 1: you went? You were in a pool? And it was
8:37
Speaker 1: literally like her last meet or whatever, the last like
8:40
Speaker 1: she'd never been. She goes, I fucking hate pools, she goes.
8:44
Speaker 1: If I never swim again, it'll be too soon. I'm like, really,
8:49
Speaker 1: and I'm sure she doesn't actually mean that, but she
8:51
Speaker 1: was in no hurry to go for a swim. She goes,
8:54
Speaker 1: I would literally rather do any anything you want to
8:58
Speaker 1: give me anything, I would do over swimming.
9:01
Speaker 3: I'm like incur. I have not swum a lap since
9:05
Speaker 3: the day I walked away in March two thousand and six.
9:09
Speaker 3: In fact, I even own togs that would be appropriate
9:11
Speaker 3: to go for a swim in.
9:14
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
9:17
Speaker 3: As I said, a lot of people are shocked at that.
9:20
Speaker 3: I really shocked at the fact that there's you know,
9:24
Speaker 3: they're like swimmings in your blood. You loved this, you
9:27
Speaker 3: were so good at it. Why would you not do
9:29
Speaker 3: it anymore? And for me, there's a number of reasons,
9:32
Speaker 3: but I very quickly liken it to particularly by the
9:36
Speaker 3: end of my career, it was my job. It was
9:38
Speaker 3: my job. Yes, you know I was good at it
9:40
Speaker 3: and I loved it, but it was my job. And
9:43
Speaker 3: so I asked people to say, when you retire one day,
9:45
Speaker 3: will you go to the office and sit in front
9:48
Speaker 3: of your computer and swing on your chair just for
9:50
Speaker 3: the fun of it. And they're like no, And I'm like,
9:51
Speaker 3: that's how I felt about going and doing laps in
9:54
Speaker 3: the pool. The second thing for me is I loved racing.
9:57
Speaker 3: I loved racing. I needed racing. By the end of it,
10:00
Speaker 3: I hated training because all I wanted to do was
10:03
Speaker 3: the racing component. And I couldn't do one without the other.
10:06
Speaker 3: And in a sport like swimming, you know, it's twice
10:09
Speaker 3: a year that you get to do the component that
10:11
Speaker 3: I loved. The rest of it is doing the hard yards.
10:14
Speaker 3: So I've always said that if I could have been
10:15
Speaker 3: like a football player or a basketballer, or you know,
10:19
Speaker 3: got to do the part that I loved every weekend,
10:21
Speaker 3: I'd probably still be forty years of age like I
10:24
Speaker 3: am now trying to make the ustrain swim team. But
10:27
Speaker 3: when that isn't that isn't an option on the table,
10:31
Speaker 3: then it's like right, you know, okay, move on. But
10:34
Speaker 3: on top of it, I was really lucky. I actually
10:37
Speaker 3: got to leave my sport on my terms, when I
10:40
Speaker 3: was ready, with no regrets and ultimately feeling proud of
10:45
Speaker 3: my achievements and ready for the next challenge. So it's
10:48
Speaker 3: actually a really healthy place to be. As I said,
10:50
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful for it, but I don't miss it,
10:52
Speaker 3: and that's a really healthy place to be.
10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny you say that I've never It makes
10:59
Speaker 1: complete sense, and I don't know why I haven't thought
11:01
Speaker 1: of it. I should have. I've never thought about that
11:05
Speaker 1: in that you would only compete, race, do the thing
11:08
Speaker 1: that you actually want to do a couple of times
11:10
Speaker 1: a year versus an AFL or AFL W player or whatever,
11:15
Speaker 1: who who does it twenty times a year. Yep, who
11:19
Speaker 1: is competing every weekend or you know even even other
11:24
Speaker 1: athletes in different fields who do it way more than that.
11:26
Speaker 1: Because yeah, it's the and and also because your training
11:31
Speaker 1: is not it's part like the actual training itself is brutal,
11:37
Speaker 1: is brutal, and it's not social and it's stupidly fucking
11:40
Speaker 1: early in the day, come on, right, But when you're
11:45
Speaker 1: running around a basketball court with your mates, talking shit,
11:48
Speaker 1: having fun, you know you're training, it's social, it's it's yeah,
11:52
Speaker 1: you're training, your sweating, you're developing skill. But it's like
11:56
Speaker 1: it's it's not mind numbing, you know, it's not mine numbing.
12:01
Speaker 1: Like there's socialization and I know the outside of the
12:05
Speaker 1: pool there's connection and all of that. But do you
12:08
Speaker 1: think that because swimming is such a brutal sport psychologically, emotionally, physiologically, sociologically,
12:20
Speaker 1: you can't have a fucking social life if you're elite swimmer. Yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: good luck with that. And also financially, like there ain't
12:29
Speaker 1: many swimmers in their twenties. There are some, of course,
12:33
Speaker 1: but there ain't many that are making heaps of dough.
12:36
Speaker 1: So you're putting off your career. You're putting all these
12:39
Speaker 1: things on hold to swim for glory. Unless you're a
12:42
Speaker 1: big deal like you are you fucking big deal, high watermark,
12:47
Speaker 1: big deal, shp your business card, said Jean Rooney, big deal.
12:50
Speaker 1: I went okay. So by the time you get to
12:55
Speaker 1: twenty four, like you, you're like, fuck it. I've been
12:58
Speaker 1: doing this for more way over half my life. I'm done.
13:02
Speaker 3: There's lots in it. One of the things as well,
13:05
Speaker 3: is that you've also got to remember in sportlight swimming,
13:08
Speaker 3: there's no off season. There's no chance. You know, we
13:12
Speaker 3: got two weeks off a year, and you were lucky
13:16
Speaker 3: to get those two weeks off a year because a
13:19
Speaker 3: lot of the old school coaches had a mentality that
13:22
Speaker 3: we as swimmers also believe that for every week that
13:24
Speaker 3: you take out of the water, it's three weeks to
13:27
Speaker 3: get back to where you were before that week. So
13:30
Speaker 3: when you're talking about a sports that's won and lost
13:32
Speaker 3: by one hundredths of a second, in a lot of cases,
13:36
Speaker 3: that mentality of taking time away from the sport is
13:40
Speaker 3: terrifying because you catch up process is so difficult. And
13:45
Speaker 3: I knew that to be true for me, particularly because
13:49
Speaker 3: our last session of a week used to be in
13:51
Speaker 3: the water, used to be on a Saturday morning, and
13:53
Speaker 3: our first session of the week was a Monday morning.
13:55
Speaker 3: So one day off a week, Sundays off, and every
13:58
Speaker 3: Monday morning of my life, my entire swimming career. I
14:02
Speaker 3: felt like I was starting again. I felt like I
14:05
Speaker 3: was a hot knife through butter. Is the analogy where
14:09
Speaker 3: I couldn't hold water, I didn't feel strong in the water.
14:12
Speaker 3: I felt like my body had almost forgotten how to
14:15
Speaker 3: swim after one day out. And that's why there's no
14:18
Speaker 3: cross training in sport of swimming. That's why we do
14:21
Speaker 3: so many kilometers. That's why we do so much work
14:25
Speaker 3: just inside the pool is because we's humans aren't really
14:28
Speaker 3: meant to swim. We're land based creatures, and so we're
14:31
Speaker 3: doing something that isn't fundamentally natural for our bodies, and
14:35
Speaker 3: we've just got to put in the mileage. And so
14:38
Speaker 3: that not only plays into your physical psyche, that plays
14:43
Speaker 3: into of course your mental and your emotional psyche as well.
14:46
Speaker 3: So there is no off season, there's no time away,
14:50
Speaker 3: there's no downtime, so to speak. And you know that
14:55
Speaker 3: every session that you're not giving your absolute one hundred
14:59
Speaker 3: percent best in at training is a training session that
15:01
Speaker 3: some one of your competitors somewhere around the world could
15:04
Speaker 3: be which could be the difference between you winning and
15:08
Speaker 3: losing by hundreds of second on race day.
15:11
Speaker 1: So many things out of what you just said, I
15:13
Speaker 1: want to unpack. Okay, oh fucking giddy up. Here we go,
15:18
Speaker 1: Like that makes no sense physiologically, Like, it makes no
15:23
Speaker 1: sense that you should have to train that much, especially
15:26
Speaker 1: when you're ten or twelve years old. Me, as an
15:29
Speaker 1: exercise scientist, I go overtrained, overtrained, undercovered, overtrained. It's going
15:35
Speaker 1: to have a negative impact on performance, on skill, on recovery,
15:39
Speaker 1: on health, on your immune system. It doesn't make sense.
15:45
Speaker 1: I know you're not a physiologist, but you're we're an
15:47
Speaker 1: elite athlete and you're a smarty pants you know all
15:50
Speaker 1: about macadamias and swimming. What's your theory? Like, like, what
15:56
Speaker 1: other athlete you know? If I mean, I'm just an
16:00
Speaker 1: dodgy bloke who's been lifting weights for one hundred years,
16:02
Speaker 1: but if I have a day off or two days off,
16:04
Speaker 1: the third day I come back, I'm fucking superman, Like,
16:07
Speaker 1: what is that about?
16:08
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so first and foremost it's changed a lot,
16:12
Speaker 3: and for the better because but so I retired in
16:15
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, and I probably came at a
16:19
Speaker 3: time where, you know, I started training. My first coach
16:22
Speaker 3: was Dennis Kottrell. Incredible, awesome love Dennis, but a full
16:27
Speaker 3: mentality of you do mileage, and you do lots of it.
16:30
Speaker 3: Essentially one of the greatest distance coaches the world's ever seen.
16:33
Speaker 3: I was only laying next to you know, Daniel Kowowski
16:36
Speaker 3: and Grant Hackett for most of my career. Success stories
16:39
Speaker 3: speak for themselves. But in that time before that, we've
16:43
Speaker 3: also heard about you know, Laurie Lawrence. Lorie Lawrence had
16:45
Speaker 3: a stable pool full of superstars. But there was kind
16:50
Speaker 3: of a joke that which wasn't funny at all. But
16:53
Speaker 3: to succeed in Laurrie Lawrence's squad, you either were Olympic
16:56
Speaker 3: gold medalist by the age of twenty or you had
16:59
Speaker 3: two shoulder reacs behind you do you know, like it
17:02
Speaker 3: was one or the other. And for a lot of
17:04
Speaker 3: those early swimming days. It really was survival of the toughest,
17:08
Speaker 3: not the fittest, the toughest. And I was lucky enough
17:12
Speaker 3: that I had a body that isn't very flexible at all.
17:17
Speaker 3: But I wasn't. I wasn't. I guess I have a
17:23
Speaker 3: lot of the overuse injuries or being hyper mobile that
17:26
Speaker 3: a lot of swimmers suffer from, and mentally I could
17:30
Speaker 3: deal with the work because that's that's also where I
17:32
Speaker 3: got my confidence from. I got my confidence from getting
17:35
Speaker 3: up on race day and looking at the other seven
17:38
Speaker 3: girls lined up across from me across the pool and going,
17:41
Speaker 3: get the hell out of my way, bitches, I've done
17:43
Speaker 3: more work than you. I deserve this and could honestly
17:46
Speaker 3: believe that in that time, like you know, would wave
17:49
Speaker 3: to the crowd with a smile on my face, looking
17:51
Speaker 3: like a cheerleader when they announced my name on pool deck.
17:54
Speaker 3: But mentally, I was telling myself and honestly one hundred
17:59
Speaker 3: percent believe it that I'd done more work than anyone else.
18:02
Speaker 3: Therefore I deserved it more, and that's where I got
18:05
Speaker 3: my confidence from. So I had to believe that whereas
18:07
Speaker 3: the great thing is now I was just speaking to
18:09
Speaker 3: Emma mckehon. You know our greatest Olympia the other day. Now,
18:12
Speaker 3: she had three months off, three months out of the pool.
18:15
Speaker 3: When they delayed the Tokyo Olympic announcement by a year,
18:20
Speaker 3: three months away, coach Michael Bole said, go, don't think
18:23
Speaker 3: about swimming. It's too hard to be in that intense
18:27
Speaker 3: mindset for this long. Go go and do something else
18:30
Speaker 3: and take your mind off it. We'll come back to
18:32
Speaker 3: it now. That for me in my time would have
18:35
Speaker 3: been suicide. Like I could not have taken three months
18:39
Speaker 3: away that close to an Olympics and had the confidence
18:43
Speaker 3: to get up on race day. So that's where it's evolved.
18:46
Speaker 3: And then Emma also took three months off after she
18:49
Speaker 3: was our most successful Olympian in Tokyo and came back,
18:53
Speaker 3: you know what I would consider completely unprepared, without much
18:59
Speaker 3: fitness or mileage behind her, to have an extraordinary Commonwealth
19:04
Speaker 3: Games and swim brilliantly. And so it's very foreign to me,
19:08
Speaker 3: but it's also really exciting for me to see that
19:11
Speaker 3: the sport is evolving and that we're not only understanding
19:14
Speaker 3: what you're talking about now, but on top of it,
19:17
Speaker 3: we're keeping our athletes in the sports so much longer
19:20
Speaker 3: than we ever did before because they are having these
19:23
Speaker 3: breaks both mentally and physically and allowing them to recover
19:27
Speaker 3: properly before the next campaign. It's really exciting.
19:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such I don't know if you read this
19:35
Speaker 1: when you did a sneak peek at what we do.
19:36
Speaker 1: But I'm doing a PhD in neuropsych and so I'm
19:42
Speaker 1: more fascinated with minds than bodies. And in fact, even
19:45
Speaker 1: when I was, you know, I owned gyms and did
19:47
Speaker 1: all that stuff and train lots of athletes and teams.
19:50
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm fascinated with physiology, anatomy and physical performance,
19:54
Speaker 1: but I'm more fascinated with the mind and the brain
19:57
Speaker 1: and being able to like, it's funny how you that are.
20:01
Speaker 1: I couldn't have had three months off, I couldn't have coped,
20:03
Speaker 1: and and that's really a psychological reaction to a thought,
20:06
Speaker 1: you know, And and maybe you would have been better
20:09
Speaker 1: or worse. You probably would have been worse based on
20:12
Speaker 1: how you explained it. But it's really interesting to see
20:17
Speaker 1: the way that training and recovery and performance and the
20:22
Speaker 1: integration of coaching and progressive overload and periodization and psychology
20:29
Speaker 1: and nutrition all of it's like now everyone's starting to
20:35
Speaker 1: work together. When I started working with for example, some
20:38
Speaker 1: killed a football club, which was when were you born
20:44
Speaker 1: eighty two? I started working with them in eighty in nine. Fuck,
20:48
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, no, no, about
20:52
Speaker 1: in the late eighties when you were like three, and
20:57
Speaker 1: it was so fundamental and rudimentary. H No, it was
21:00
Speaker 1: in the nineties. But even then, everything like nothing worked synergistically.
21:06
Speaker 1: There was like the dietitian over there and the strength
21:09
Speaker 1: guy over there, and the fitness guy over there, and
21:11
Speaker 1: the coaching staff and there was no connection communication. And
21:15
Speaker 1: now at least we're starting to see like a holistic
21:21
Speaker 1: I hate that word, but it'll do for now approach
21:24
Speaker 1: to managing, and not just in sport, but outside of sport.
21:28
Speaker 1: You know, I'm working with people where we talk about sleep,
21:30
Speaker 1: we talk about nutrition, we talk about movement, we talk
21:34
Speaker 1: about anxiety and stress, we talk about lifestyle, we talk
21:37
Speaker 1: about work life balance or impact like all of these
21:41
Speaker 1: things where we go this is this is you know
21:43
Speaker 1: project you or perhaps the you project we should call it,
21:48
Speaker 1: you know, and like things have really evolved though.
21:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for the better, because I think it's even
21:56
Speaker 3: like the way that we're approaching well hopefully that we
21:59
Speaker 3: are approaching, but we approaching medicine and individualistic health. We
22:04
Speaker 3: are all individuals, We're all completely different. You can't apply
22:07
Speaker 3: one overarching thought and apply it to every human on
22:11
Speaker 3: the planet. And that's the same when you're an athlete.
22:14
Speaker 3: And I think theming is is or has been one
22:19
Speaker 3: of the more old schools sports historically, where you know,
22:23
Speaker 3: you joined a squad because you thought that their training
22:26
Speaker 3: program would be the most or the best suited to
22:29
Speaker 3: your strokes and or distance that you swam. So once
22:35
Speaker 3: you're in that squad, it's not like, oh, Ujian are
22:39
Speaker 3: going to have this program today, and U Craig, you're
22:42
Speaker 3: going to have this program over here today, and you know,
22:46
Speaker 3: you Tiffany are going to have this program like you're
22:48
Speaker 3: all doing the same set. You're all doing the same
22:52
Speaker 3: program every single session. And so there was never in
22:57
Speaker 3: my day and individual training to and that for me
23:01
Speaker 3: at that time, really played into what I needed because
23:04
Speaker 3: I was quite often the only female in a squad
23:07
Speaker 3: full of boys, So there wasn't a female time cycle
23:11
Speaker 3: and a male time cycle. That's time cycle I had
23:14
Speaker 3: to keep up with the slowest guy. Otherwise I didn't
23:16
Speaker 3: keep up, So again that played into my psyche on
23:19
Speaker 3: race day of I can race you, I know how
23:23
Speaker 3: to race you. I'm okay with this because I've trained
23:26
Speaker 3: with boys or I've done this amount of work, and
23:29
Speaker 3: that gave me the confidence. But it's also the reason
23:31
Speaker 3: why I walked away from the sport at twenty three.
23:34
Speaker 3: Using Emma again. Emma was twenty seven when she won
23:37
Speaker 3: seven Olympic medals in Tokyo, and he's going to Paris
23:41
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four where she'll be what thirty Kay
23:45
Speaker 3: Campbell is trying to make her fifth Olympics, where she'll
23:48
Speaker 3: be I think thirty two or thirty three. So we've
23:53
Speaker 3: always Summers have always physiologically been capable of being well
23:58
Speaker 3: into our late twenties early thirties, of reaching our physical
24:02
Speaker 3: peak performance, but historically, mentally, we've never made it, and
24:07
Speaker 3: that's because of the brutal, monotonous nature of the training
24:11
Speaker 3: for that sport.
24:12
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that I was going to literally
24:14
Speaker 1: ask you because physiologically there's no reason other than somebody's injured.
24:18
Speaker 1: But there's no you know, there's no reason why at
24:22
Speaker 1: thirty four done everything done well, and you know, nutrition
24:26
Speaker 1: and recovery and training, and that somebody couldn't be as
24:29
Speaker 1: good or better than when they were twenty four depending
24:32
Speaker 1: on the event and all of that. But speaking of
24:35
Speaker 1: speaking of over training and brutality and ridiculously tough athletes,
24:40
Speaker 1: I trained, I tried trained a five time Olympian whose
24:44
Speaker 1: name's Jackie Cooper, and she's completely crazy. She's a lunatic.
24:49
Speaker 1: She had thirty six operations. She just had a full
24:52
Speaker 1: hip replacement six and a half months ago. I'm actually
24:56
Speaker 1: training her now. She comes and trains when I train,
24:59
Speaker 1: and I just tell her what today. She's still absolutely
25:02
Speaker 1: But it's funny because some people like I don't even
25:07
Speaker 1: know what it is with her, but there's something in
25:09
Speaker 1: her and yet she would so I'm not being rude.
25:11
Speaker 1: She's been on the show a couple of times, so
25:13
Speaker 1: everyone knows her. But when I say, she's borderline crazy
25:17
Speaker 1: as in just out there, but she trains even now.
25:22
Speaker 1: She's fifty in a minute, I think she's fifty in
25:24
Speaker 1: a month or two. And even when she comes to
25:27
Speaker 1: the gym, she trains so hard it's ridiculous. I'm like
25:32
Speaker 1: steady on Champ there's no event coming up. It's all good.
25:36
Speaker 1: Let's just wind it back a little bit. But there's
25:42
Speaker 1: something innate in some people where and it's not just
25:45
Speaker 1: that they have a high pain threshold, but there's something
25:49
Speaker 1: that you know, in exo science we call it rate
25:52
Speaker 1: of perceived exertion RPE. You know, where people kind of
25:56
Speaker 1: over the years, I would say there's someone, how hard
25:57
Speaker 1: are you working? Out of ten? And they'd say nine,
26:00
Speaker 1: and I know they're working at four, right, yep. Whereas
26:04
Speaker 1: Jackie will be working in eleven and she'll tell you seven. Yep.
26:08
Speaker 1: You know, yep.
26:10
Speaker 3: Jackie. Love her, but she's also what you're describing, for
26:15
Speaker 3: me is the ultimate athlete. When you say, though there
26:18
Speaker 3: are some people that just have the ability to push
26:22
Speaker 3: themselves harder than is should be humanly possible, that for
26:27
Speaker 3: me is the ultimate athlete. And I'm the first person
26:30
Speaker 3: to put my hand up and say that's not me.
26:33
Speaker 3: I was incredibly competitive. I will back myself and say
26:37
Speaker 3: I was an incredibly hard worker. I had enough natural
26:41
Speaker 3: talent to get me through. But I also am very
26:46
Speaker 3: aware of the fact that I was an above average
26:48
Speaker 3: athlete in a superstar era that got tarnished with the
26:51
Speaker 3: same brush as my contemporaries. But that also sits really
26:56
Speaker 3: comfortably with me, because when I said to you, I
26:58
Speaker 3: left my sport with no regrets. I was the best
27:01
Speaker 3: athlete I could be. There is nothing more I could
27:04
Speaker 3: have done to be any better than what I was.
27:07
Speaker 3: Whereas there I think, again, that's a really healthy mindset
27:13
Speaker 3: to have. Whereas the ultimate athletes, those hardcore athletes that
27:18
Speaker 3: we talk about, the Jackie Coopers of the world, the
27:20
Speaker 3: Grant Hackets of the world, the Lydia Lasslas of the world,
27:25
Speaker 3: there are so many of them that they actually when
27:29
Speaker 3: they finish their sport, they actually don't have that switch
27:32
Speaker 3: off button. They have to find something else that allows
27:35
Speaker 3: them to push their bodies and their minds all the time.
27:38
Speaker 3: They never stop having that. Whereas for me, as I said,
27:44
Speaker 3: I was ultimate competitor, but I am, funnily enough, not
27:48
Speaker 3: competitive in any other aspect of my life. I do
27:54
Speaker 3: not feel the need to push myself physically. And maybe
27:59
Speaker 3: that ties into the fact that you know, everyone says, oh,
28:02
Speaker 3: don't you miss being fit, and I'm like no, because
28:06
Speaker 3: fit for me at that level meant physical, emotional, mental
28:11
Speaker 3: exhaustion every day of my life. I felt like I
28:14
Speaker 3: was eighty five getting out of bed every day of
28:16
Speaker 3: my life. So now I am happier, arguably healthier, more positive,
28:24
Speaker 3: and a happier person now than I ever was when
28:27
Speaker 3: I was supposedly at my fittest. So I've got no idea,
28:31
Speaker 3: I've got no desire to revisit that in any way,
28:34
Speaker 3: shape or form. Whereas for so many hardcore athletes, they
28:39
Speaker 3: need that in their everyday life continuously to feel like
28:43
Speaker 3: they are worthy, to feel like they are, you know, healthy,
28:50
Speaker 3: if you like, to feel like they are still in
28:52
Speaker 3: that successful state of mind that they were when they
28:55
Speaker 3: were a successful athlete. Whereas I'm really fortunate. I love
28:59
Speaker 3: my job, I love my life. I'm not competitive in
29:02
Speaker 3: any other shape or you know way, shape or form,
29:05
Speaker 3: and I'm pretty content where everything sits. How bloody lucky
29:09
Speaker 3: am I?
29:09
Speaker 1: You're bloody lucky, but you're not lucky because you've built it,
29:12
Speaker 1: you created it. It almost seems to me like being
29:18
Speaker 1: an elite, I mean elite, top of the tree, world
29:20
Speaker 1: class performer and being mentally and healthily mentally and emotionally healthy,
29:28
Speaker 1: socially healthy, balanced, calm, lacking anxiety, sleeping well, It's like
29:35
Speaker 1: those things don't go together. It's like, yeah, if you
29:39
Speaker 1: want to be like mentally and emotionally healthy, don't be
29:43
Speaker 1: an elite swimmer like you you am I right ish?
29:48
Speaker 1: Or does it vary?
29:50
Speaker 3: I think it varies, but I think you're probably right.
29:53
Speaker 3: One of the things I will say that with my
29:58
Speaker 3: greatest asset it has been throughout my life, is the
30:01
Speaker 3: ability to sleep anywhere under any circumstances in duress, and
30:07
Speaker 3: so I never quite realized it when I was an athlete.
30:10
Speaker 3: I knew it was a positive, but I could fall
30:12
Speaker 3: asleep on a barb wife fence in the middle of
30:14
Speaker 3: the middayne with ants crawling on top of me like
30:16
Speaker 3: I had no problems going to sleep, even during major competitions.
30:21
Speaker 3: I never required sleeping tablets to switch off at night
30:24
Speaker 3: after a race, knowing that I had a heat the
30:25
Speaker 3: next morning. My brain was obviously incredibly adaptive in being
30:33
Speaker 3: able to say, Okay, you're tired, you've got something that
30:38
Speaker 3: you need to deal with. I need to switch you off,
30:40
Speaker 3: and then when you wake up in the morning, you'll
30:42
Speaker 3: be rational enough to deal with whatever you need to
30:45
Speaker 3: deal with. So almost the more stressed I was about
30:49
Speaker 3: something or had a decision to make or had something
30:54
Speaker 3: hanging over my head. The more stressed I was, the
30:56
Speaker 3: better I slept. And never realized what an huge asset
31:01
Speaker 3: that was across my whole entire life until it was
31:04
Speaker 3: taken away from me when I had a baby. For
31:06
Speaker 3: the first time I ever felt like I was failing
31:08
Speaker 3: in life. I had two I've got two kids who
31:10
Speaker 3: I loved dearly, but I've never felt like I was
31:13
Speaker 3: failing properly before I was doing something that is meant
31:17
Speaker 3: to be so fundamentally natural. So I went to sleep
31:21
Speaker 3: school with one child and two sleep consultants with another.
31:24
Speaker 3: And that's the thing out of everything I've done in
31:26
Speaker 3: my life that nearly broke me.
31:28
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. Well, I mean that will I was going
31:32
Speaker 1: to say, what a gift it is that the kids
31:34
Speaker 1: kind of threw a spinner in that work in that
31:37
Speaker 1: for you. But being able to people, I mean, we
31:40
Speaker 1: kind of get it. But you know, for me, even
31:44
Speaker 1: as an exercise in inverted commas loosely expert, right, I
31:49
Speaker 1: still say to people that bad sleep, consistent bad sleep,
31:56
Speaker 1: is way worse for your health than not exercising. You
32:00
Speaker 1: should exercise, but if you're working out and your diet's good,
32:04
Speaker 1: but you are consistently getting three hours of sleep a
32:07
Speaker 1: night for an extended even for a week, like your
32:10
Speaker 1: body just crashes. It's people don't understand, Like people go, yeah, yeah,
32:15
Speaker 1: of course, stay hydrated and sleep. Yeah, we get all that. No,
32:18
Speaker 1: it's way more important than because your body can't reset,
32:22
Speaker 1: you know, or your nervous system, you're endo crime system,
32:25
Speaker 1: cardiovascular system, respiratory, it can't reboot, reset and wake up fresh,
32:30
Speaker 1: ready to go if it hasn't had enough time, you know.
32:34
Speaker 3: And I think that's probably where you'd be so well
32:37
Speaker 3: placed to answer this, Craig. And the fact that you know,
32:40
Speaker 3: I feel like everyone around us after the last few
32:42
Speaker 3: years that we've had suffering from like a drenal exhaustion.
32:49
Speaker 3: You know, there has been so much going on that
32:51
Speaker 3: is out of our control. There is so much that
32:54
Speaker 3: has you know, caused us to look at our life priorities,
32:59
Speaker 3: look at our work priorities, look at our family priorities,
33:03
Speaker 3: look at every aspect of our life in ways that
33:05
Speaker 3: we never have before. And you know, I said to
33:08
Speaker 3: you before we started, I feel like, you know, everyone
33:11
Speaker 3: I know, myself included, we're just limping towards the end
33:14
Speaker 3: of the year, we're like, just you know, we're on crutches,
33:18
Speaker 3: you know, we're limping towards the end of the year.
33:21
Speaker 3: And I just think sleep, as you said, is such
33:25
Speaker 3: an integral part of our life, and I don't think
33:29
Speaker 3: we pay it enough attention. And it was why I
33:31
Speaker 3: went to sleep school with my son Xander, because giving
33:35
Speaker 3: your child for me, one of the most important things
33:37
Speaker 3: I could give my child was the gift of sleep,
33:39
Speaker 3: because I know insomniacts. My dad has always struggled to
33:43
Speaker 3: sleep since being a shift worker. I know plenty of
33:46
Speaker 3: people where it's their biggest downfall in their life is
33:50
Speaker 3: their lack of quality sleep. And that's the one thing
33:52
Speaker 3: I wanted to give my children, was this gift of
33:55
Speaker 3: being able to sleep and sleep well and reset, reset
34:00
Speaker 3: your mind, and have that as an asset in your life.
34:05
Speaker 1: It's interesting, there's such a and we know this now
34:08
Speaker 1: but we don't even necessarily understand the link. But you
34:10
Speaker 1: think about like in the middle of COVID, some people
34:15
Speaker 1: thrived and some people capitulated or you know, really really
34:18
Speaker 1: struggled understandably, and then people go, oh, yeah, but those
34:21
Speaker 1: people had it harder or whatever, and the the truth
34:26
Speaker 1: is sometimes like sometimes, so there's this, there's this the stimulus, right,
34:32
Speaker 1: there's the thing that's happening, and then there's the physiological consequence,
34:36
Speaker 1: which is I can't sleep, I'm producing adrenaline, cortisol, nouropin,
34:40
Speaker 1: efrom my sympathetic nervous systems elevated. There's all this shit
34:43
Speaker 1: going on in my body and now I'm in a
34:44
Speaker 1: stress state. But there's this space in the middle, which
34:48
Speaker 1: is the mind, and it's the mind's reaction to the thing.
34:53
Speaker 1: The mind creates the physiology, not the thing, because if
34:58
Speaker 1: COVID created a stress response, then everyone would have had
35:02
Speaker 1: a stress response and they didn't. Everybody would have endured
35:07
Speaker 1: significant mental health issues and they didn't. Which is not
35:11
Speaker 1: to say people are good or bad, strong, all weak.
35:13
Speaker 1: It's just understanding because when people go, oh, you made
35:17
Speaker 1: me feel like this, I'm like, no, that isn't true,
35:21
Speaker 1: or COVID did this to me, and I understand. I'm
35:24
Speaker 1: not saying, by the way, anyone don't lose your shit.
35:25
Speaker 1: I'm not saying COVID wasn't fucking horrible. I get it.
35:28
Speaker 1: But in the middle of that, there's still this space
35:30
Speaker 1: where I get to self regulate and say, Okay, what
35:34
Speaker 1: am I what story? Because if I'm telling myself a
35:37
Speaker 1: story of doom and gloom, even if there is no
35:40
Speaker 1: doom and gloom, but I tell myself that story and
35:42
Speaker 1: I believe that story, then that becomes an experience in
35:46
Speaker 1: my body. And we're just starting to understand now in
35:50
Speaker 1: a really correlated way where we understand the external stimulus,
35:55
Speaker 1: the cognitive processing, the story about the stimulus, and then
35:59
Speaker 1: the consequence of the story, which is all the shit
36:02
Speaker 1: in my body. And then when we start you love
36:04
Speaker 1: this word, it's called metacognition. When we start to think
36:07
Speaker 1: about where that thinking comes from, that metacognitive process, then
36:11
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we realize, oh, that thing is
36:14
Speaker 1: stimulating me, but I am creating the stress response which
36:18
Speaker 1: makes it. It doesn't fix it, but just opening that
36:21
Speaker 1: door on that awareness is a really good starting point.
36:25
Speaker 3: I really loved the analogy during COVID where you know,
36:27
Speaker 3: everyone started off by saying we're all in the same boat,
36:31
Speaker 3: and then some smart cookie came up with the analogy,
36:34
Speaker 3: which I really think is the right way of saying,
36:37
Speaker 3: is that we're not all in the same boat. We're
36:41
Speaker 3: all in the same storm. We're all in the same storm,
36:44
Speaker 3: but someone's in a super yacht, someone's in a fishing boat,
36:49
Speaker 3: someone's in a leaking tinny. You know, like we're all
36:52
Speaker 3: in the same storm, but we're not all in the
36:55
Speaker 3: same boat. And I think that, again, is the response's
37:00
Speaker 3: to it. And as you mentioned, you know, the mental
37:04
Speaker 3: capacity of different people and also what they were dealing
37:07
Speaker 3: with outside of the pandemic itself. And you know, again,
37:13
Speaker 3: we moved to the farm one week before the queensli
37:18
Speaker 3: Knew South Wales border shut and all of a sudden,
37:20
Speaker 3: you know, my mum and dad are up there, don't
37:22
Speaker 3: know when we're going to see them. I missed commentating
37:26
Speaker 3: on the Tokyo Olympics because I couldn't get to Melbourne
37:29
Speaker 3: because Victoria shut their borders with New South Wales. And
37:33
Speaker 3: you know, everyone was like, oh, you know, this is
37:36
Speaker 3: just terrible and this is awful, and I was like, look,
37:39
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of the day, I'm in
37:43
Speaker 3: a great position. I'm healthy, my family is healthy. Yes,
37:47
Speaker 3: I can't get to some of my family. Yes I
37:49
Speaker 3: can't do my job that I love, Yes I can't
37:51
Speaker 3: do this, that and the other. But there are people
37:54
Speaker 3: dealing with a lot worse and perspective is a great thing.
37:58
Speaker 3: You know, at the end of the day, a shit
38:01
Speaker 3: can hit the fan as much as you walk around you.
38:05
Speaker 3: As you said, your response to that shit hitting the
38:08
Speaker 3: fan is what will either see you thrive or just
38:11
Speaker 3: merely survive a situation.
38:14
Speaker 1: I think one of the great things about doing what
38:16
Speaker 1: you did and tips a tips a bit of an athlete.
38:21
Speaker 1: Tip gets in the boxing ring and gets punched in
38:24
Speaker 1: the face. You know, probably not the same Olympic level
38:26
Speaker 1: as you, but she'd kicked the shit out of me,
38:28
Speaker 1: which is not hard. But when you go through hard
38:32
Speaker 1: stuff like you do hard training, you have to be resilient.
38:35
Speaker 1: You have to just find a way. You're constantly working
38:38
Speaker 1: against resistance and you're putting yourself in uncomfortable, kind of
38:44
Speaker 1: crappy situations, which are a necessity of the skill development,
38:47
Speaker 1: fitness development, mindset development to perform at the highest level.
38:52
Speaker 1: But once you've kind of built that capacity and that
38:54
Speaker 1: ability to do hard shit and to be comfortable in
38:59
Speaker 1: the middle of disc I feel like that life beyond
39:03
Speaker 1: whatever that was becomes or is more manageable because you
39:09
Speaker 1: know how to do hard things and survive and thrive.
39:13
Speaker 3: I completely agree, and I would have one hundred percent
39:16
Speaker 3: agreed with that statement. But I always used to think
39:21
Speaker 3: when I retired from simming, you know, my first first
39:23
Speaker 3: thought process was, ah, thank God, the hardest thing I'll
39:26
Speaker 3: ever do in my life is behind me, Like, bring
39:29
Speaker 3: on whatever you want, because that nothing can ever be
39:32
Speaker 3: as hard as what I've just done. And then I
39:35
Speaker 3: had a child and that all changed, but for very
39:39
Speaker 3: different reasons. It was it was only physically hard from
39:42
Speaker 3: the sleep deprivation. It was just far more challenging on
39:46
Speaker 3: the emotional and mental side because it was out of
39:49
Speaker 3: my control and I didn't know how to fix it.
39:52
Speaker 3: But I completely agree with you in the fact, and
39:56
Speaker 3: we've also got to separate, you know, be very very
39:59
Speaker 3: honest here. Talk about Jackie Cooper and Lydia Lascilla and
40:05
Speaker 3: even you know, jockeys and to an extent surface like
40:09
Speaker 3: my sport, you were never going to hurt yourself, Like
40:12
Speaker 3: there was never a component of I could not a
40:16
Speaker 3: high risk event, not a high risk event. You know,
40:18
Speaker 3: the worst thing I could possibly do is probably run
40:20
Speaker 3: into the wall at full speed and you know, hurt
40:23
Speaker 3: myself in that sense, or have an asthma attack and
40:26
Speaker 3: drown in the pool, which would be ironic, but you know,
40:29
Speaker 3: you look at these hardcore athletes that when they are competing,
40:33
Speaker 3: they're actually putting their lives at risk. Like that's a
40:36
Speaker 3: whole new mindset, that's a whole new ball game. It's entirety.
40:40
Speaker 3: And I don't possess that component. And I just think,
40:45
Speaker 3: you know, they are the next level of hardcore beings.
40:51
Speaker 3: But it's amazing how you take the sport component away
40:54
Speaker 3: and like what I'm talking about with motherhood or anything
40:56
Speaker 3: else like that, And you know, we all have the
40:58
Speaker 3: same We're all human. We all have things that we
41:01
Speaker 3: think we're going to excel at we actually don't. Or
41:04
Speaker 3: we all think we can apply what we've learned in
41:07
Speaker 3: our life to every scenario going forward and it will
41:09
Speaker 3: always work. And I've always said there is I've very
41:14
Speaker 3: quickly come to learn that hard work doesn't always equal success,
41:20
Speaker 3: that equation doesn't always play out. But you have to
41:24
Speaker 3: find a way, also from your mental state of mind
41:30
Speaker 3: to know that or to be able to say that
41:32
Speaker 3: nine times out of ten it does work, that equation
41:35
Speaker 3: does work. And so I'm banking on the odds.
41:39
Speaker 1: Now, I know we've got to go soon because you've
41:41
Speaker 1: got stuff on cuz you're a big deal. I was thinking,
41:45
Speaker 1: I was thinking before we chatted, I wanted to ask you.
41:47
Speaker 1: I've asked a few athletes, and it feels like it
41:49
Speaker 1: sounds like you did this really easily. But a lot
41:53
Speaker 1: of athletes understandably their identity and their sense of self
41:57
Speaker 1: and who they are and their self esteem is top
42:00
Speaker 1: into their sport and their sporting ability. And so I've
42:03
Speaker 1: seen lots of especially athletes who had to retire or
42:07
Speaker 1: were sacked AFL players for example, and their career ended
42:12
Speaker 1: when they didn't think it was going to end and
42:16
Speaker 1: they had just lost, and many of them falling into
42:18
Speaker 1: a depression, like a real mental and emotional funk, and
42:23
Speaker 1: some of them, you know, are suicidal and like don't
42:29
Speaker 1: go well is that do you think that's because you
42:35
Speaker 1: are basically you are, Like what you do in your case,
42:40
Speaker 1: swimming is who you are. It's like like when people
42:44
Speaker 1: would talk to you for a very long time, it
42:46
Speaker 1: would primarily only about be about swimming, training, performance, recovery.
42:51
Speaker 1: Wouldn't be like, oh, what do you think of labor
42:54
Speaker 1: or liberal law? What do you think about paleo ge'm
42:56
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, it's like that, so that's
42:59
Speaker 1: who who you are, and then you wake up one
43:01
Speaker 1: day and you're twenty four and you're like, nah, fuck this.
43:05
Speaker 3: I think that's probably where I was a bit different,
43:09
Speaker 3: in the fact that I never just defined myself as
43:12
Speaker 3: an athlete the point where was always something that I did,
43:18
Speaker 3: I loved, and I was good at, but it was
43:20
Speaker 3: never me in my entireety. And you know, especially once
43:25
Speaker 3: you go to an Olympics, nearly every athlete gets the
43:28
Speaker 3: Olympic rings tattooed on themselves and I didn't. And I've
43:33
Speaker 3: never felt the need to. I've never had that desire
43:36
Speaker 3: to have that. And that's not because I'm not proud
43:38
Speaker 3: of it. I don't feel defined by it. I'm incredibly
43:42
Speaker 3: proud of that achievement, but I don't need it on
43:45
Speaker 3: myself to be reminded of it every day to feel
43:48
Speaker 3: proud of myself. It's a comfortable it's a comfortable feeling
43:54
Speaker 3: a pride that I exist with. I don't need to
43:57
Speaker 3: see it to be reminded of it, and I don't
43:59
Speaker 3: need anyone else else to ask me about it to
44:01
Speaker 3: feel proud of it. It just within me. Which again
44:05
Speaker 3: I think is really healthy place to be. I also
44:07
Speaker 3: think one of the biggest problems with transitions from elite
44:11
Speaker 3: athletes is the fact that they don't get to leave,
44:13
Speaker 3: as you said, on their terms. I was very fortunate
44:15
Speaker 3: that I did so the feeling of regret of I
44:18
Speaker 3: could have done more or I wanted to do more
44:21
Speaker 3: is ever prevalent there. I also think, and this might
44:25
Speaker 3: be a little bit controversial, that a lot of male
44:28
Speaker 3: athletes have more of a struggle with life after than
44:30
Speaker 3: female And my take on that is that male athletes,
44:35
Speaker 3: when they're in that elite world, are the most selfish
44:38
Speaker 3: people on the planet. And that sounds really negative when
44:41
Speaker 3: you say it like that, but it's actually what allows
44:44
Speaker 3: them to be so good because they are they are
44:47
Speaker 3: almost able to exist in a world where everyone around them,
44:52
Speaker 3: their support team, their partner, their family, everyone around them
44:58
Speaker 3: exists too support them to achieve their dream, and they
45:03
Speaker 3: are very comfortable with them being the center of that
45:07
Speaker 3: world and everyone existing around them to help them achieve
45:10
Speaker 3: that goal. I think why say male and not female.
45:14
Speaker 3: For the most part, female athletes or females have a
45:17
Speaker 3: natural maternal instinct where we have to also look after
45:22
Speaker 3: that team in the same way that they're looking after us.
45:25
Speaker 3: We have to return the favor if you like. But
45:28
Speaker 3: the problem is is that not only is that thought
45:33
Speaker 3: process encouraged as an elite athlete to be incredibly selfish
45:37
Speaker 3: and to focus only on your dream. It's taught from
45:41
Speaker 3: a very young age, so it becomes a habit, it
45:43
Speaker 3: becomes who you are, it's how you exist. It's encouraged
45:46
Speaker 3: from a young age. So all of a sudden, you
45:49
Speaker 3: retire from your sport, and that is actually not a
45:52
Speaker 3: quality that is revered in any other phase in your life.
45:57
Speaker 3: Relationships don't survive selfishness. The employer is not going to
46:02
Speaker 3: be happy with selfishness. Your family and your team and
46:06
Speaker 3: your partner goes all right, well, I was happy to
46:09
Speaker 3: be that person or that team support for you while
46:11
Speaker 3: you're an elite athlete, but you're not now. So now
46:15
Speaker 3: you're going to do the dishes after dinner, or now
46:17
Speaker 3: you're going to do your laundry, or now you're going
46:19
Speaker 3: to do X, Y and Z, and so all of
46:22
Speaker 3: a sudden, the very thing that made you successful is
46:26
Speaker 3: actually a negative in the next phase of your life.
46:28
Speaker 3: And I think a lot really struggle with that.
46:31
Speaker 1: That's so bloody insightful and I agree with you, and
46:35
Speaker 1: as an elite athlete myself, a tip, what do you
46:40
Speaker 1: laughing at? I wish you had a lot more time
46:43
Speaker 1: because your bloody interesting jam. Tell people how to find you,
46:48
Speaker 1: follow you, connect with you, and have you written the
46:51
Speaker 1: book or books.
46:53
Speaker 3: I've written a kid's book, so.
46:56
Speaker 1: Plug away. Tell people where to connect with you, and
47:00
Speaker 1: buy seventeen of your books.
47:02
Speaker 3: The best place for me is I probably solely exist
47:05
Speaker 3: on Instagram. So Giann Rooney on Instagram. Love to have
47:09
Speaker 3: a chat, always up for a chat, and cover a
47:11
Speaker 3: wide variety of topics, just like we have today.
47:14
Speaker 1: Craig, will you come back? Absolutely love to bloody oath
47:19
Speaker 1: you better because you're a superstar and you're come at
47:21
Speaker 1: a very good rate. I will say goodbye a fair
47:25
Speaker 1: but thank you so much for being on the you project,
47:28
Speaker 1: your fun and super interesting. And Tiffany and Cook put
47:31
Speaker 1: on some clothes. It's that purple bloody. I don't know
47:36
Speaker 1: if that's typ appropriate. Thanks everyone, Bye, Thanks Greg, Thanks
47:41
Speaker 1: Deev