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