Speaker 1: Hi, my Boris and this is straight talk Cody Simpson. Well,
Speaker 1: and straight talk.
Speaker 2: Swimming was the first thing I remember being good at.
Speaker 3: The coaches and the people that I had there, really
Speaker 3: believed by it would be able to go all the
Speaker 3: way with it. But at the same time I was
Speaker 3: loving music and practicing guitar, and so I had these
Speaker 3: sort of dual interests. And then I cut swimming short
Speaker 3: because I was given a massive opportunity to young age
Speaker 3: to pursue music. I started traveling and touring by myself
Speaker 3: from sixteen.
Speaker 2: It did wonders for me as a musician.
Speaker 3: But you start going out to clubs because they're letting
Speaker 3: you in, you know, drinking and drugs, and that's a
Speaker 3: serious level of freedom for a kid that age.
Speaker 1: That's a time of mistake.
Speaker 3: Statement they did happen?
Speaker 4: Did you ever get like chronically close to stuffing things up?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, a few times it was sliding and what
Speaker 3: pulls you back swimming to save my life in a
Speaker 3: sense when I left entertainment to go stare at the
Speaker 3: black line again, having gone from doing nothing to that
Speaker 3: in nine months time, it was a lot of vomiting
Speaker 3: in that period. I said I'm going to go for it,
Speaker 3: because if I don't, it's going to be too late.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to live with those what ifs, you.
Speaker 4: Know, if you've got your now partner, Emma, Yeah, two
Speaker 4: great athletes. I'm just sort of imagining the genetics.
Speaker 3: Coach is waiting for.
Speaker 1: Like you said, Cody Simpson, straight talk, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Hey, going you have on all? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And how are you feeling now.
Speaker 4: That you were at the Olympics that you weren't competing.
Speaker 4: But you're at the Olympics and you come back from
Speaker 4: from France. You probably stopped training after the Colf Games,
Speaker 4: after the trial.
Speaker 3: Tries this year, about two months ago, three months ago.
Speaker 1: Now have you been have you done any training?
Speaker 3: Oh, Jim and just I built such good habits over
Speaker 3: the last three or four years that, you know, it
Speaker 3: was it felt strange to just stop entirely. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm still sort of regularly exercising in that but thing
Speaker 3: like I was, it's not as acting a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot more sleep ins.
Speaker 1: I guess it's probably fair to start off because a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know how it all works.
Speaker 4: So what's the routine look like for someone who's preparing
Speaker 4: for Olympic trials.
Speaker 1: Then let's let's go back. Let's go back Comic games. Yep,
Speaker 1: you did very well, thank you very very well.
Speaker 4: And and then then you just hear that, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm one of the contenders. I'm going to I want
Speaker 4: to go. I want to make sure I go to
Speaker 4: the limbus in Paris. I've got to get to these times,
Speaker 4: you know, you know what the times are. When do
Speaker 4: you start training, you have a break after come games,
Speaker 4: or you just get straight back in the pool.
Speaker 2: No, not really, like you you.
Speaker 3: Swimming is one of those really unforgiving sports where if
Speaker 3: you take more than we're probably allowed two maybe three
Speaker 3: weeks a year of not.
Speaker 2: Training, and that means seven days a week or six
Speaker 2: days a week. Sundays are always off.
Speaker 3: But if you're doing it right by Sunday, you're begging
Speaker 3: for You're begging for that Sunday to go, and you
Speaker 3: kind of need to then be doing very very little
Speaker 3: on that Sunday to kind of be ready to go
Speaker 3: again on that Monday morning, because that Monday morning through
Speaker 3: Saturday is pretty nasty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we just give me a bit of a
Speaker 4: taste of this. So we're talking about during the build
Speaker 4: up of just getting kilometers under belts?
Speaker 1: Is that a thing? Still? You still got to get
Speaker 1: a k's under belt in.
Speaker 3: A sense like you want to build. It's probably less
Speaker 3: vital for a sprinter, you know, one hundred meters and down,
Speaker 3: but still even for one hundred meters and aerobic a
Speaker 3: good solid aerobic base and a solid cardiovascular system is
Speaker 3: very important when it comes to being able to withstand
Speaker 3: the training required. Even when you're doing sort of the
Speaker 3: more lack take producing work or your sprint work and stuff.
Speaker 3: You want to be able to move oxygen through your
Speaker 3: body pretty pretty efficiently, and the aerobic stuff can help
Speaker 3: support that. So I still did a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of aerobic slash distance swimming.
Speaker 1: As Cody fifteen hundred nah.
Speaker 3: But maybe you know fifteen one hundreds on time or whatever.
Speaker 3: You're like things like that. A lot of kick a
Speaker 3: lot of.
Speaker 1: Pool just explain what there is kicking you mean to
Speaker 1: actually to kickboard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so just sort of legs on their own pools,
Speaker 3: you know, with the pool wary and maybe some paddles,
Speaker 3: arms on your own, so you're sort of building up
Speaker 3: your upper body as well. Yeah, a little band on
Speaker 3: the feet to stop your kicking. We sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: do a little you know cheat one here and there,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's it's it's just really nily regiment for
Speaker 3: your average sort of not average, you're for your typical
Speaker 3: elite swimmer or competitive swimmer. At this age, it's kind
Speaker 3: of you don't really have time for anything else. And
Speaker 3: I had to make that sacrifice in my life if
Speaker 3: I was going to be doing this again full time,
Speaker 3: where I had to sort of give up my the
Speaker 3: life that I was living at least back in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles when I left left entertainment to go stare at
Speaker 3: the Black Line again morning and night.
Speaker 1: Totally different life discipline, that's.
Speaker 3: For sure, polarizing, lifestylestly different going to sleep at five
Speaker 3: am versus getting up at five am.
Speaker 4: Because I just want to just get into the woods
Speaker 4: a little bit on in terms of the training thing,
Speaker 4: because most people don't have any idea. I'm lucky because
Speaker 4: I had a kid who did it, so yeah, I
Speaker 4: sort of I was one of the dads that had
Speaker 4: get up at four o'clock every and taking the swimming training,
Speaker 4: and then then again in the afternoon like it, and
Speaker 4: then and then Saturday, then there was, and usually there.
Speaker 1: Was after squad there was racing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got a carnival or something something.
Speaker 1: There's always a carnival, especially in the summer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the worst time because you have I don't know
Speaker 4: why they held them in January, February, March, April.
Speaker 1: That's usual.
Speaker 2: Through the day you're sitting under the tent and.
Speaker 4: I was on holidays, and your your you and your
Speaker 4: family and I'll come back to your family, your sex.
Speaker 4: But so just give me a typical morning if you
Speaker 4: can remember a typical week. So let's say Monday up
Speaker 4: at four thirty, what time you jump in the pool
Speaker 4: and we're talking about where were you training?
Speaker 3: Southport? Well, I was training the cost Yeah. Fortunately it
Speaker 3: wasn't four thirty. It was more like five point fifteen,
Speaker 3: which was good. We didn't have to be in the
Speaker 3: water till six. But Monday was always a really big
Speaker 3: day because we did two full swim sessions and await
Speaker 3: session in between.
Speaker 1: What's a full swim session?
Speaker 3: Look? For me, it was standard five pretty much five kilometers,
Speaker 3: sometimes it's tad less, sometimes a tad more.
Speaker 2: Average of five k and that'll be morning and afternoon.
Speaker 3: In the morning will be more sort of aerobic zones,
Speaker 3: some threshold kind of training to sort of dust the
Speaker 3: coboys out of the day off.
Speaker 1: A pace that when you say zone, you're looking at
Speaker 1: training at a.
Speaker 2: Pace pace or heart rate zones.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so what we're looking at, we're looking at
Speaker 1: eighty percent of max heart rate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're pretty much on a Monday morning, we didn't
Speaker 3: want to be above, say, thirty beats below maximum heart rate.
Speaker 3: So ifew max is you know, two hundred, you want
Speaker 3: to you don't want to be above that one seventy
Speaker 3: two much you often did you.
Speaker 2: Get above that for the whole session?
Speaker 3: My coach off and be like, I want you to
Speaker 3: hold these times but at this heart rate, and I'm
Speaker 3: going I'm going to be above. But that's that's what
Speaker 3: you're working towards, as being able to hold certain times
Speaker 3: with relative relaxation of heart rate. I suppose relative comfort,
Speaker 3: and when you're at your fittest you can do that.
Speaker 3: But that's what you're building towards, I suppose, is being
Speaker 3: able to withstand that kind of work and find some
Speaker 3: measure of comfort within the discomfort.
Speaker 4: That's sort of like a baseline training. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: yeah stuff. Yeah, so you do that five k's in
Speaker 4: the morning.
Speaker 2: Morning, and you're pretty much straight into about ninety minutes, and.
Speaker 1: So what would do straight off that? Like food wise, a.
Speaker 3: Little snack pretty much like I do. You're pretty much
Speaker 3: trying to just replenish glucose after that, because you know,
Speaker 3: fairly drained, so hydration and fueling, So I just have
Speaker 3: a snack. Sometimes we do a little more of a
Speaker 3: you'd sort of take half an hour to an hour
Speaker 3: to have a bit more of a breakfast, and then
Speaker 3: you go into the gym and do ninety minutes in
Speaker 3: the gym.
Speaker 4: When are you in your gym when you do leg?
Speaker 4: I mean, I can't imagine what a swimmer that way.
Speaker 4: I sort of camp, But what does a swimmer doing
Speaker 4: in the gym?
Speaker 3: Some fundamental I did three main lifts a week and
Speaker 3: they were all full body, so upper around lower, and
Speaker 3: you're doing a few key lifts for the upper and
Speaker 3: the lower. Mine was like a weighted chin up and
Speaker 3: either like a front squad or sometimes leg press if
Speaker 3: my back was bad, but often a front squat. And
Speaker 3: then you have a lot of other stuff, a lot
Speaker 3: of shoulder strengthening and strengthen all the little muscles around
Speaker 3: the shoulder, because shoulders are the first thing to go
Speaker 3: typically when it comes to injuries for swimmers for over years, yeah,
Speaker 3: over years, because you're doing you know, tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of rotations on those shoulders a month, you know. So
Speaker 3: it was always that, always core, always some sort of
Speaker 3: functional and connectivity, core connectivity stuff. So that was Monday morning,
Speaker 3: which pretty much and we'd often be at the pool
Speaker 3: from six till eleven because between the two hours in
Speaker 3: the pool nine minutes in the gym, I'd often have
Speaker 3: a little bit of physio therapy or something afterwards and
Speaker 3: wouldn't get home till eleven, sometimes eleven thirty, and then
Speaker 3: you're smashing lunch and trying to lay down for two
Speaker 3: hours because you're back at We were back at the
Speaker 3: pool at three for the AVO session, and that would
Speaker 3: often be a really big Monday IVO would often be
Speaker 3: my least favorite session of the week. It would be
Speaker 3: a few k butterfly, which butterflies my stroke. I absolutely
Speaker 3: loved it, but I hated doing more than you know,
Speaker 3: a few hundred meters of it or two butterfly.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're pulling a piano on your back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like so you would.
Speaker 1: So, so the morning SESSI would to be freestyle.
Speaker 3: Mostly freestyle, Yeah, sometimes a bit of a little bit
Speaker 3: of pacing of your stroke. Yeah, often sort of under
Speaker 3: you know, race speeds. You wouldn't be doing race speeds
Speaker 3: that morning, but yeah, you'd be doing a little bit
Speaker 3: of butterfly.
Speaker 4: Sometimes and then your rip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you break up into you know, the medley guys
Speaker 3: will doing their set. The backstroke has been in their set,
Speaker 3: the butterflies have been at their set.
Speaker 2: And I was always I was.
Speaker 3: Never a two hundred flyer. I was a bit more
Speaker 3: of a sprinter. But on the Monday nights my coach
Speaker 3: had thrown me in with the two hundred guys and
Speaker 3: be doing a bit more endurance butterfly work, and I
Speaker 3: absolutely hated it.
Speaker 4: So you would rinch absolutely basically this is a repeat,
Speaker 4: repeat this every day of the week until maybe Saturday,
Speaker 4: when you might have done a few bit of racing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So like a Tuesday morning is quite similar,
Speaker 3: except you don't do gym. We do like a spin
Speaker 3: bike or like some kind of bodyweight circuit before.
Speaker 2: We get in the water in the morning.
Speaker 3: Well, and then you're kind of doing Tuesday morning doing
Speaker 3: a bit more all like power stuff in the pool,
Speaker 3: so you'd be dragging heavy sponges or pulling like buckets
Speaker 3: with weights in them, that kind of thing, as well
Speaker 3: as some of the aerobic stuff, so a bit of that,
Speaker 3: and then Tuesday night it would be like a more
Speaker 3: of a fast fast session, like more race paced session.
Speaker 3: So that Monday Tuesday, like you know, even for one
Speaker 3: hundred meters swim, like we're fitting twenty k into that
Speaker 3: Monday and Tuesday plus gym and spin bike. So it
Speaker 3: was pretty buggered by by Wednesday, and.
Speaker 1: Then it starts all over again.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Fortunately we get Wednesdays just the morning, just
Speaker 3: morning swim and another weights and then Wednesday are was
Speaker 3: sort of like your recovery window long enough. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so'd be just relaxing, sleeping, trying to do maybe a
Speaker 3: little as bath or often just literally sitting on the
Speaker 3: couch eating food.
Speaker 1: And you're doing this like for months, months, yeah, and there's.
Speaker 3: No so you kind of that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday block
Speaker 3: is kind of repeated very similarly on that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right,
Speaker 3: and then you have the Sunday off and that's that's
Speaker 3: months on end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and mentally. I mean, how do you It's a.
Speaker 3: Grind man like you, you find, And that's part of
Speaker 3: the reason I think I was attracted again to swimming
Speaker 3: at that level. And I built up to that amount
Speaker 3: of work from doing absolutely nothing in about a period
Speaker 3: of about nine months, which was a pretty steep on ramp.
Speaker 3: If you can imagine going from doing very very little
Speaker 3: to doing you know, being training with you know, Olympians,
Speaker 3: training with am I, training with other people, and having
Speaker 3: gone from doing nothing to that in nine months time.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of vomiting in that period, you know,
Speaker 3: and just trying to have my body adapt to what
Speaker 3: it had to try and withstand and my mind.
Speaker 2: I suppose as well. It was a mental and physical game.
Speaker 1: And what did you What things did you notice about
Speaker 1: your body?
Speaker 4: For example, like I I mean, I don't know, did
Speaker 4: you drop ten kilos or did you build muscle?
Speaker 2: Now I put on about ten kilos.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, I was quite I was quite quite skinny
Speaker 3: before I because I didn't do much weights. I didn't
Speaker 3: do a whole lot of I surfed a bit and
Speaker 3: I went to the gym, but not with a proper schediment.
Speaker 3: And you know, I went for runs and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it wasn't pushing myself in that sense or trying to
Speaker 3: build muscle. So I actually probably put on about ten
Speaker 3: killos and lost a bit of body fat or a
Speaker 3: fair bit of body fat.
Speaker 1: And what did you know about your mind?
Speaker 4: I mean like, I mean, do you start playing does
Speaker 4: your brain start playing tricks on you?
Speaker 3: The mental side of it was the most noticeable. The
Speaker 3: physical changes were just a byproduct of what I was doing.
Speaker 3: I wasn't going my goal is to you know, build
Speaker 3: get bigger arms and you know whatever. It was just
Speaker 3: it just sort of happened because you're doing that much work.
Speaker 3: But the mental was the decide that I had to
Speaker 3: battle with most, because you're moving from a life of
Speaker 3: relative comfort day in and day out to a life
Speaker 3: of consistent discomfort daily morning and night. Like it's you
Speaker 3: don't you don't sort of get to And this is
Speaker 3: something I've had to how to chat with a few
Speaker 3: other musician buddies of mine that was sort of so
Speaker 3: curious about what I was doing because I'd gone from
Speaker 3: this life into this, you know, another one. So if
Speaker 3: you're just absolutely absolutely exhausted and you got to train
Speaker 3: again the next morning, you just have to go. I
Speaker 3: was like, no, yeah, you can't just not show up.
Speaker 3: You know, there's that's not there's no negotiation, and you
Speaker 3: learn to not negotiate with yourself as much as your
Speaker 3: mind wants to negotiate with yourself, because excuses always sound
Speaker 3: the best to the person making them, you know, so
Speaker 3: you have to really battle with not listening to the
Speaker 3: mine as it wants to play tricks on you.
Speaker 4: How important is a coach in that regard then, like, so,
Speaker 4: I mean, do you not make excuses because you have
Speaker 4: a coach?
Speaker 1: You just won't cop them? And who was your coach?
Speaker 3: I think that's important. Yeah.
Speaker 2: My coach was a guy named Michael Bowle.
Speaker 3: He is renowned Australian swiming coach, has had success for
Speaker 3: decades now. Probably what put him when the map on
Speaker 3: the map was a god named Stephanie Rice. I know,
Speaker 3: well yeah, she won many gold medals, broke many world
Speaker 3: records and he has then had podium success with his
Speaker 3: athletes at every Olympics since then, most recently with Emma
Speaker 3: and Kaylie McEwen. And he had our group was amazing
Speaker 3: for a couple of years there. We had in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two he had ten, maybe eleven athletes on the team.
Speaker 3: It was like almost his whole squad was on the
Speaker 3: Australian team at one stage and that was a really
Speaker 3: special thing to be a part of that. I always
Speaker 3: look back on and go I was part of that,
Speaker 3: that group.
Speaker 1: At that time that would keep you going to I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you're looking around, you look into your
Speaker 3: left and looking to your right and just seeing people
Speaker 3: do this phenomenal things day in and day out, and
Speaker 3: it just makes you rise to that level goosebumps thinking
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 4: Now, buy motivation or use or is it more competitive thing?
Speaker 4: I actually want to be load them?
Speaker 3: It was both. Yeah, it's inspired as in, you know,
Speaker 3: they make me want to be my you know, do
Speaker 3: and reach my potential because I'm seeing them reach theirs.
Speaker 3: And also like I want to I want to piece
Speaker 3: of what they have.
Speaker 4: So so and so you had one coach, just one coach.
Speaker 2: One coach through I had.
Speaker 3: I had one coach in LA when I first started
Speaker 3: who I was got hooked up with over there, pretty
Speaker 3: much told him that I was interested in pursuing swimming again.
Speaker 3: He was a former coach, Australian coach that was coaching
Speaker 3: in college in the States, and who was a former
Speaker 3: OLYMPI in himself.
Speaker 2: Brett Hawk.
Speaker 3: Yeah boy, yeah, yeah yeah, I remember. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: He was around where my son was, right, I know
Speaker 1: the guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he he ended up becoming a coach and
Speaker 3: living in the States, and we got connected because he
Speaker 3: was funny enough doing a podcast, a swimming podcast, and
Speaker 3: he goes asked me to come on his podcast, and
Speaker 3: because he knew that I liked swimming and had a
Speaker 3: background in swimming growing up and was now a musician,
Speaker 3: he just wanted to talk about that. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: I'm actually looking at training again. And he thought I
Speaker 3: was kind of taking the piss, you know, but I
Speaker 3: convinced him I was serious, and we met up and
Speaker 3: he kind of tested me out a little bit, and
Speaker 3: we started during COVID. He started sending me little sessions
Speaker 3: to do in my little community pool. That was I
Speaker 3: was hopping the fence because it was shut you know,
Speaker 3: no lane ropes, no no flags or whatever, no blocks
Speaker 3: of just twenty five yard pool like in the States,
Speaker 3: and started doing that and then we got hooked up
Speaker 3: and he coached me for the first probably nine months,
Speaker 3: until I moved back to Australia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and why is it helped me out you But
Speaker 1: why is it?
Speaker 4: I mean Queensland, particularly that part of Queensland where you
Speaker 4: were training, the southeast part of queens Why is it
Speaker 4: we have so many good swimmers from there Australia White
Speaker 4: I'm talking relative for the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot a lot that aren't from their move there.
Speaker 3: I think it's just because makes sense because one of
Speaker 3: the programs that are available, like the couple of the
Speaker 3: best coaches.
Speaker 2: In the world are there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to the weather and being able to train
Speaker 3: outdoors year round in a fifty meters outdoor pool because
Speaker 3: we have such good facilities. So I think it's a
Speaker 3: mix of that. Because a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: the guys from Sydney, Melbourne, even like Tazzi and stuff,
Speaker 3: end up just coming to the squads in Gold Coast
Speaker 3: and Brizzy.
Speaker 1: I think it was a Queenslander thing there from them.
Speaker 3: Yet out of origin it is. But yeah, we just
Speaker 3: I think I think it's just the weather and the programs.
Speaker 4: That place attracts the swimmers and the coaches to probably
Speaker 4: probably because the facilities are pretty good.
Speaker 1: They are the ex Comic Games Yeah, facilities. That's why
Speaker 1: they're very good.
Speaker 3: Train was at the Gold Coast Games. Yeah, facility they built. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so your regime is hectic.
Speaker 4: You know, you're building up to get into the to
Speaker 4: get into Limby Trials. We'll get the trials to go
Speaker 4: to Limbit Games. You've already done very well in the
Speaker 4: comic games.
Speaker 1: You're at that age. We're twenty six or so, twenty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. I was twenty five Common Games twenty seven.
Speaker 4: Now, so relatively speaking, compared to some of the other
Speaker 4: younger people who got like the great respect, they're only
Speaker 4: late teenages, early twenties, so don't quite have a life yet,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean since they're nine and they haven't
Speaker 4: really had a taste of what the world's like out there.
Speaker 4: You've had a good taste of it, Okay, good taste,
Speaker 4: you've had well rounded well well, so that process of
Speaker 4: going and also like your body shape, I mean, how
Speaker 4: many years age you had off ten.
Speaker 3: Of them didn't touch water really from thirteen to twenty three.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's hectic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really is.
Speaker 4: Because anyone who knows any about the swimming world or
Speaker 4: just the world athleticism generally speaking, what you're going to
Speaker 4: compete against in terms of you know, the tidal wave.
Speaker 4: You're trying to take on probably other guys in your
Speaker 4: case who have not stopped swimming since they were eight
Speaker 4: or nine years of age, swimming at the absolutely level,
Speaker 4: and like they're all within one hundredth of the second
Speaker 4: of each other sort of thing, and a lot of
Speaker 4: training with each other, and they meet each other, you know,
Speaker 4: they're all at n SWISS or AOS or something like that,
Speaker 4: one of the one of those equivalents, and they all
Speaker 4: either train together or they're all meats the whole time.
Speaker 4: Everybody knows what everyone's like, and their body shape never
Speaker 4: changes because but.
Speaker 1: Here you are, you haven't for a long time.
Speaker 3: I wasn't quote unquote yeah pop stars, I suppose people
Speaker 3: that wanted to go to battle with them.
Speaker 4: It was pretty pretty weird though, like I'm on thingsel
Speaker 4: because that I mean, I don't mean weird in an
Speaker 4: intellectual sense, I mean like it's a massive call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was scary because there was no there there
Speaker 3: was no blueprint to what I was trying to do
Speaker 3: because no one had ever done it before. And so
Speaker 3: when I talked about it with people, some said it's funny,
Speaker 3: like everyone that I spoke to that had done something
Speaker 3: themselves in the sport, and I was fortunate to have
Speaker 3: mentors in Thorpey Phelps, like all these guys sort of
Speaker 3: lent their mentorship to me, which was really special, and
Speaker 3: they also go for it like what do you you know,
Speaker 3: what do you get to lose kind of thing. But
Speaker 3: everyone else pretty much thought I was nuts and said, well,
Speaker 3: why would you leave behind what you've built, you know,
Speaker 3: in your career to do something that's so so not guaranteed,
Speaker 3: probably not possible at all, you know. Even their thought
Speaker 3: of making an Australian team just sounded so far out
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 2: But oddly for me, I had this.
Speaker 3: And almost looking looking in retrospect, it was this naive,
Speaker 3: almost ignorant self confidence at that time.
Speaker 1: We novity helped sometimes and it.
Speaker 3: Helped me so much because probably because I I didn't
Speaker 3: realize what I was getting myself into. I didn't realize
Speaker 3: the odds that were stacked. I didn't acknowledge the odds
Speaker 3: that were stacked against me based on you know, how
Speaker 3: it should work in the sport of swimming, when what
Speaker 3: you should have had to have done from thirteen to
Speaker 3: twenty three, those ages that I didn't swim in order
Speaker 3: to get to that elite level, I said, you know,
Speaker 3: all that stuff, I'm going to go for it because
Speaker 3: if I don't, it's going to be too late. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to live with those what ifs. And all
Speaker 3: through those years of being a musician, there was this
Speaker 3: little spark in me that never died about the sport
Speaker 3: because I competed at quite a high level for my
Speaker 3: age at that stage, and the coaches and the people
Speaker 3: that I had there really believed in me then as
Speaker 3: though I would be able to go all the way
Speaker 3: with it, and then I cut it short because I
Speaker 3: was given a massive opportunity to a young age to pursue music,
Speaker 3: and I pursued that and sort of didn't look back
Speaker 3: until I got a little older and I thought, if
Speaker 3: I did want to swim again, like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: have to do it soon. And it was this spark
Speaker 3: and turned into this flame that just sort of grew
Speaker 3: into something that I couldn't ignore and I had to
Speaker 3: at least at least explore the curiosity I had for it.
Speaker 1: So it was just a curiosity. It sounds like it
Speaker 1: was all I was more than that. It must be
Speaker 1: much more that. Yeah, I mean, do you remember the
Speaker 1: time it was?
Speaker 3: It was a dream? It was it was a dream
Speaker 3: that I like, I love the sports so much. I'd
Speaker 3: watch I'd watch videos of the Aussie guys in the
Speaker 3: freestyle relays and just cry, like I'd cry watching them.
Speaker 3: This was back when I was before I started swimming again.
Speaker 3: I'd watch these things and that it made me feel
Speaker 3: ways that I'd never felt or don't get from anything else.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, I have to follow that and
Speaker 3: I have to try and pursue that for myself because
Speaker 3: this this obviously does something for me that nothing else does.
Speaker 3: I don't think.
Speaker 1: Parents just weren't they Yeah, yeah, it was there something
Speaker 1: in that that you felt like you needed to, you know,
Speaker 1: push a little harder on the like the genetic inherence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ah nah, because they, if anything, they almost tried
Speaker 3: to talk me down from it, because I think they
Speaker 3: both understood what it takes, because having done with themselves
Speaker 3: my mum's one for Australia in the eighties, and they
Speaker 3: they sort of said, well, it's freaking hard, like it's
Speaker 3: and you're you're living such a good life and you
Speaker 3: know all those things and do you want to, you know,
Speaker 3: really do that for no guarantee of success, you know,
Speaker 3: But when she heard how passionate I was and seemed
Speaker 3: about it, she then didn't ask questions again. She supported me.
Speaker 3: But no, it wasn't It wasn't that I felt I
Speaker 3: owed them anything. I felt like I owed myself something.
Speaker 4: Was there a moment where you can you think back,
Speaker 4: was a moment at twenty three.
Speaker 1: Around that time.
Speaker 4: You think you just watched the come with Games, you
Speaker 4: just watch the Olympic something. I'm trying to do a
Speaker 4: quick calculation what was on at the time, but maybe
Speaker 4: the nationals or you watch something in the US that
Speaker 4: you thought that's it, I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: Yep. It was twenty nineteen World Championships. I watched I
Speaker 3: watched Caleb Dressel break the men's hundred butterfly world record,
Speaker 3: which is always my event growing up.
Speaker 1: Butterfly was my favorite stroke, one of the toughest events.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I watched Christophe me Lark break the
Speaker 3: two hundred men's two hundred butterfly world records. Guys that
Speaker 3: were both my age and it was the first time
Speaker 3: I'd had a really visceral, really really intense reaction to
Speaker 3: watching that, going, why aren't I there? You know, why
Speaker 3: wasn't Why wasn't I training for the last few years
Speaker 3: to be there? And I just had this It was,
Speaker 3: you know, that epiphany type moment of Okay, well I know,
Speaker 3: I know what I need to do now, and I
Speaker 3: this is too much for me to ignore anymore, and
Speaker 3: pretty much started trying to find pools from that stage onwards.
Speaker 1: And and preak COVID.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: It was like the middle of twenty nineteen, and then
Speaker 3: it wasn't until I didn't swim a whole lot through
Speaker 3: the rest of that year. I started to kind of
Speaker 3: pop into USC which had a little program happening, and
Speaker 3: was jumping into sessions there, but hadn't really swum much.
Speaker 3: It was I was starting from scratch, and then COVID hit,
Speaker 3: and then I was hooked up with with Brett Hawk and.
Speaker 2: Express my interest and just pretty much got started.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if I.
Speaker 4: Could just go back a little bit, like when you're
Speaker 4: a young fellah maybe nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and you're
Speaker 4: work swimming, it's a pretty typical thing. I presume you
Speaker 4: were training in Queensland, but It's a pretty typical thing
Speaker 4: in Australia for a lot of families put the kids
Speaker 4: in the pools, particularly Queens, because yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Got to learn a swim, safety factors, Yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: to learn a swim.
Speaker 4: And then they go, well, the kids got to do
Speaker 4: a sport or some type, like he's not bad at swim,
Speaker 4: I'll just put him in a little training squad and
Speaker 4: or her put him in the training squad, and then
Speaker 4: the training the whole lot of kids become friends.
Speaker 1: You get a bit of a system, and the parents
Speaker 1: get used.
Speaker 4: To the rhythm of it. The next thing you know,
Speaker 4: there's a little swim meet and.
Speaker 1: Here and say, oh, come on, Cary, let's we're going
Speaker 1: to go down on Saturday morning there's a race and
Speaker 1: your first race is on do you ever do you
Speaker 1: have a recollection of that?
Speaker 3: I remember I remember pretty vividly some of my first competitions.
Speaker 3: It was probably it was probably eight or nine, because
Speaker 3: swimming was the first thing I remember remember being good at.
Speaker 2: I think it was I was probably eight on.
Speaker 3: It was this local competition and I broke like all
Speaker 3: the local records for that eight you know, nine years old. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean much. But I was going to you know,
Speaker 3: I have a natural feel for this. I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm good at this. This is something I can work with.
Speaker 3: You know, even at that age, you sort of you
Speaker 3: recognize that and you get that little hit of you know,
Speaker 3: feeling good about yourself kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And then your parents put you in the nippers because
Speaker 4: you go to events and you win that too, because
Speaker 4: some of the kids are good at the beach on
Speaker 4: the run.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so DoD nippers and I was, yeah, I started
Speaker 3: I winning the you know, the ocean swims.
Speaker 1: You think it was back back, around, back, out and
Speaker 1: around the boy and back.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so I said, okay, well, well this is good.
Speaker 3: And I was shocking it. I was wildly uncoordinated at landsports.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It wasn't interested either. Like I didn't played a bit
Speaker 3: of rugby at school, but never really liked it that much.
Speaker 3: Got asked to leave the local soccer team so they
Speaker 3: could make room for someone else because I just stand around,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at the sky, you know, singing, humming
Speaker 3: little songs.
Speaker 1: And humming the water to yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's funny. Back in the day, I used
Speaker 3: to I started writing songs about that. Age too, really
Speaker 3: ten years old. Yeah, and I used to come up
Speaker 3: with these little ideas and I'd asked my coach if
Speaker 3: I could get out and write that. Used keep a
Speaker 3: little notebook in my bag and I'd ask my coach
Speaker 3: if I could get out and write down.
Speaker 1: In an instrument as well. Yeah, learned guitar.
Speaker 3: It was already playing guitar at that age, taking lessons
Speaker 3: and that was sort of my primary hobby outside of swimming.
Speaker 3: I was swimming. Started training at that age nine and ten.
Speaker 3: You start to do a few more sessions a week
Speaker 3: and get really into it. And that was sort of
Speaker 3: my first year. I did the School Nationals that's the
Speaker 3: combined and I think that was the That was probably
Speaker 3: the first time I said I'm into this because I yeah,
Speaker 3: you go through like you do your you get top
Speaker 3: to at your school, you go into your district and
Speaker 3: then top to you go into your region and then
Speaker 3: State and then you get to the Australian School Nationals whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think I I won every event there at
Speaker 3: the age of ten. I think it was like eight.
Speaker 3: I would say, it's not a cocky thing, it's just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I won like eight gold medals when I was ten.
Speaker 1: That's enough Australian, that's enough to motivate you to get
Speaker 1: back in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I was going, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I think I still have eleven year old's Australian record
Speaker 3: for the fifty fly or something. It's hilarious, still still standing.
Speaker 3: So it was pretty I was good then when I
Speaker 3: was young, and but at the same time I was
Speaker 3: I was loving music and practicing guitar and doing all that,
Speaker 3: and so I had these sort of dual interests that
Speaker 3: I juggled, I suppose.
Speaker 4: And when did you find that, we don't want to
Speaker 4: find out about the music side of things. When did
Speaker 4: you find that music was going to take over from
Speaker 4: the swimming like and how did you become How did
Speaker 4: you realize you're good at music or that you had
Speaker 4: a tune or a sound that people want to listen to.
Speaker 3: I started I saw kids were posting themselves singing on
Speaker 3: online YouTube. YouTube and MySpace was spending at the time,
Speaker 3: and that was that had a real big music component.
Speaker 1: So how did you see it like your parents say,
Speaker 1: hey mate, have it check this out.
Speaker 3: No, it was just just me like being twelve years old,
Speaker 3: you know, going on the computer, I suppose, and I
Speaker 3: saw that. I saw that this was a thing that
Speaker 3: was happening. It was a new this was a new
Speaker 3: medium that was popular. People were able to just upload
Speaker 3: their own stuff and share themselves playing. It totally democratized,
Speaker 3: you know, the music industry in a sense. And I
Speaker 3: asked Mom to film me because I said, oh, these kids,
Speaker 3: you know, people are watching these kids videos, and it
Speaker 3: seems like a fun thing to do. It was totally
Speaker 3: a very low expectation thing. It was just sounded like
Speaker 3: a fun hobby. And I enjoyed kind of singing and
Speaker 3: playing guitar in front of the camera. Both.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was uploading some of my own stuff to MySpace,
Speaker 3: just for little audio recordings and just covers on YouTube
Speaker 3: and me singing like Jason Maraz and Justin Timberlake and
Speaker 3: you know, did a bit of Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2: I got like through the country back then.
Speaker 3: It was funny looking back now as a twelve year
Speaker 3: old me, you know, doing those songs. But they garnered
Speaker 3: some attention quite fast, and I was getting a fair
Speaker 3: amount of viewership.
Speaker 4: What does that mean when you say you're back in
Speaker 4: that period, what did you look at you say, a
Speaker 4: thousand people look at me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like a thousand, and then it was
Speaker 3: ten thousand, and then it was sort of fifty, and
Speaker 3: then it was sort of one hundred thousand. Okay, well
Speaker 3: this is more than just you know, our friends, Like,
Speaker 3: this is more than just our friends, and you know
Speaker 3: the Golcos community. It's not this has gone.
Speaker 1: Well, how did you know that when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: So you got.
Speaker 3: To get comments from well, we'd had a little desktop
Speaker 3: in our living room kind of thing, and we'd go
Speaker 3: on and you'd see someone's commented from Canada or you know,
Speaker 3: from Argentina or going, I like this, And and then
Speaker 3: started getting messages from producers and record labels, yeah, going
Speaker 3: would you would you consider us flying you over to
Speaker 3: cut a demo? And blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And at first we kind of my mom thought it
Speaker 2: was pedophile.
Speaker 1: Media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's going, now, we're not going to respond to those,
Speaker 3: and you know, people were following up with us, and
Speaker 3: we started to I said, when I was really keen
Speaker 3: to entertain it if they were real, you know, and
Speaker 3: I saw that there were young people getting signed, and
Speaker 3: you know, there was it was not just sort of
Speaker 3: the Disney route anymore. There was, you know, kids were
Speaker 3: getting signed to labels off their music and videos and
Speaker 3: fan base and that alone that they'd grown. Justin Bieber
Speaker 3: had just gotten signed and blew up, and so that
Speaker 3: whole thing became you know, I think labels and that
Speaker 3: was sort.
Speaker 2: Of looking for more of those kids.
Speaker 1: Do you think they're looking for a blonde, heir rossie
Speaker 1: kid like you.
Speaker 3: Know, I don't know if they if they weren't.
Speaker 4: Did you come across as out there or it was
Speaker 4: you could have been, you could have been from anywhere?
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 3: No, I think I came. I came across as a
Speaker 3: bit of a young, blondhaired guitar playing. I was a
Speaker 3: kid kind of thing, you know, And that's that's sort
Speaker 3: of at least once I got signed and started, that's
Speaker 3: kind of what they in a way, you know. And
Speaker 3: I was flowing out of the States. I did my
Speaker 3: first trip to New York City when I was It
Speaker 3: was on my thirteenth birthday, because I remember I had
Speaker 3: a meeting at Warner Brothers in Manhattan on my thirteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: Thirteen year old boy meeting Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in one of music.
Speaker 3: I was in their office all day started with the
Speaker 3: low you know, the low level sort of executive and
Speaker 3: ended up at you know, at closing hour in the
Speaker 3: President's office, singing and playing guitar for him with the
Speaker 3: mum my dad, my dad took me over and again
Speaker 3: still I'm so thankful that they were even considered doing
Speaker 3: that for me, because I I was, I was ambitious
Speaker 3: young and I sort of said, off, you're not going
Speaker 3: to take me. I'm wn ago, you know, I want
Speaker 3: to go over there and see what this is all about.
Speaker 3: And I was always driven from a young age and
Speaker 3: whatever it was I was doing, and so when I
Speaker 3: saw that that was a possibility, I said, I want
Speaker 3: to do that, you know, and they fortunately listened and
Speaker 3: were great. Grace was sort of generous enough to help me,
Speaker 3: help me pursue it.
Speaker 4: But that's pretty pretty foreign though, like a three year
Speaker 4: old kid gets signed up music. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 4: money is it.
Speaker 3: Was kind of unheard of as well, you know, in
Speaker 3: the it's it's such a rare thing to occur, Like
Speaker 3: I don't know how many Australians that's happened to in
Speaker 3: the past, And so we didn't know what we were
Speaker 3: in uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: So what happens, You just we'll go home and have
Speaker 1: a family meeting.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, we went home and they've they've got my damn,
Speaker 3: they've recorded me a bit. Well, we went back after
Speaker 3: the first trip, and then about six months later they
Speaker 3: flew us back over to cut cut demos and stuff.
Speaker 3: There was a producer there that was cutting demos with
Speaker 3: me that was one of the ones who discovered me originally.
Speaker 3: And then they sort of said, well, if you want
Speaker 3: to do this for really, you're going to have to
Speaker 3: relocate because they'd offered me a substantial record deal at
Speaker 3: I was probably almost fourteen by this stage, and they said, well,
Speaker 3: if you want to do this properly, we need you
Speaker 3: to be based in LA And again it was one
Speaker 3: of those things that I said, my parents will if
Speaker 3: you're not going to come on going, I major of
Speaker 3: the Yeah, yeah, so that's what that's what we did.
Speaker 1: So there's a big deal for the whole family.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Dad gave up his work at the time, and
Speaker 3: I had a young two younger siblings, and I think
Speaker 3: they thought it would be a six twelve month adventure.
Speaker 3: I don't think they expected it. I don't think anyone
Speaker 3: expected it to sort of take off the way it did.
Speaker 1: At that statue you had your voice broken.
Speaker 3: No, I was going I went through. And it's funny
Speaker 3: now because I look back at recorded music from me
Speaker 3: from recently, the last couple of years, all the way
Speaker 3: back to thirty first at thirteen fourteen, and you know
Speaker 3: I sound tiny like a little boy. Yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 3: little wit.
Speaker 4: You had a sort of quite a cute melodic sound
Speaker 4: to you, like, you know, it was like a boy
Speaker 4: sound though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah it was. And I was I was,
Speaker 3: you know, pre pre prevestent.
Speaker 4: And how important was that to the the record labels,
Speaker 4: et cetera. I mean were they because there must have
Speaker 4: been a period where you started to be a voice
Speaker 4: would break. Yeah, and you get to study, get nervous
Speaker 4: or does anyone say saying, mate, you're not the same
Speaker 4: deal anymore?
Speaker 3: Well? Nah, they And they were good at sort of
Speaker 3: because they knew it was going to happen, and they
Speaker 3: were good at coaching me and working me through that.
Speaker 3: I had vocal coach, a vocal coach, and it was
Speaker 3: it was a big focus as I started to go
Speaker 3: through that fifteen sixteen years old, was to kind of
Speaker 3: make sure it was somewhat seamless, I suppose, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I had voice cracks on stage and all the you know,
Speaker 3: the whole ninees, Like I had to go through all
Speaker 3: that in front of thousands of people, you know, all
Speaker 3: the time. So that was kind of it was a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we were talking about the intensity of swimming,
Speaker 1: but if I if we go back and look at
Speaker 1: the coaching for music or singing and instrumentality, the two
Speaker 1: things you were doing, like playing and singing at the
Speaker 1: same time, whilst one is a totally different discipline. Was
Speaker 1: there what parallels could you.
Speaker 4: Draw though from what you learned as a thirteen year old,
Speaker 4: forty year old, fIF year olds, et cetera. Having to
Speaker 4: compete with a pretty crowded market, a global market actually
Speaker 4: in terms of being your records being sold or your
Speaker 4: usually being sold.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you reckon you the parallels.
Speaker 2: Are I was never scared to put the time.
Speaker 4: In, so there is a lot of time required. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: Like give me an example of that.
Speaker 2: Well, I had to.
Speaker 3: I was still developing my craft at that age and
Speaker 3: I still am. But I I at that stage was
Speaker 3: like figuring it out as I went, you know, and
Speaker 3: figuring it out in front of people. So still I
Speaker 3: was still learning to play my instrument well at that age,
Speaker 3: and I was still learning how to sing and project
Speaker 3: and do all these things. So I was in you know,
Speaker 3: almost what you'd call like performance coaching, how to hold
Speaker 3: and carry yourself on stage. I was just doing a
Speaker 3: bit of dancing choreography. It was when I was younger,
Speaker 3: So it was learning that stuff, learning how to do videos, like,
Speaker 3: learning how to yeah, participate, learning how to sit into
Speaker 3: an interview. Yeah, you know, I went through media media training,
Speaker 3: I guess at that age, learning how to.
Speaker 2: Learning how to be.
Speaker 3: On stage, learning how to be in front of people,
Speaker 3: an audience an audience, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Managing an audience is.
Speaker 3: Exactly yeah, And that's an art form in itself, is
Speaker 3: managing an audience. So I sort of had to figure
Speaker 3: all that out over those years that I was doing.
Speaker 4: It was a coach to you, though, do they did
Speaker 4: someone sit down and say okay?
Speaker 2: Partially and past and a lot of it was experienced.
Speaker 2: You just have to learn it out walking.
Speaker 3: Into the fire. And that's what it was for me
Speaker 3: in swimming too in a way, because I had a coach,
Speaker 3: but it was you got to figure things out for
Speaker 3: yourself as well. There's no there's no better coach than
Speaker 3: than than you at times.
Speaker 4: How you feel in the water, yeah, how the water
Speaker 4: feels with your body shape exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that that's purely instinctual. That can't be taught.
Speaker 3: It has to be felt and experienced. And especially in butterfly,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a flow thing.
Speaker 3: It's such a finicky combination of power and flow.
Speaker 1: Crazy little details though, like because if.
Speaker 3: The picture of your pinky and your hand, and you
Speaker 3: know the shape of your sort of elbow and whether
Speaker 3: you can kind of carry you know, find viscosity and
Speaker 3: find fine shape within something fluid it's like a very
Speaker 3: and you're breathing strange thing. Yeah, and you're.
Speaker 1: Breathing yeah, especially when you start to get a bit tight.
Speaker 3: Tired, keeping your head flat. Like I said that, it's
Speaker 3: a chain reaction of your hip staying high enough in
Speaker 3: the water. And there's a whole technical side to it.
Speaker 4: So the same would have applied to music though, absolutely,
Speaker 4: Walking on the stage, engaging in the audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, watching words, watching videos back going Okay, I can't
Speaker 3: do that anymore. That looks all would you know? All
Speaker 3: that stuff? And I always enjoyed and have always enjoyed
Speaker 3: the working at something and then feeling the progress of
Speaker 3: it and getting better at it, like and I swimming
Speaker 3: taught me that from a young age, and so it
Speaker 3: was a nice skill or it was a nice thing
Speaker 3: to have going forward that I understood the work to
Speaker 3: progress rule. You know that you have to put that
Speaker 3: time in and you have to get uncomfortable before you're
Speaker 3: going to be comfortable. Would you?
Speaker 1: Would you say that?
Speaker 4: You say, Cody is a person who is quite has
Speaker 4: quite a strong kinesthetic power, like within your gut, like
Speaker 4: you can feel things, you know, like you it's something
Speaker 4: that's important to you.
Speaker 3: A nice way to put it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've never really because I think swimming.
Speaker 4: Swimming is a lot about that, because you've got to
Speaker 4: know yourself. Yeah, and you've got to know how to
Speaker 4: just be able to pace yourself one hundred butterfly.
Speaker 1: You have to be hyper aware of your body, hyper
Speaker 1: aware and funny, I feel the same every day.
Speaker 4: So today I'm going to be HyperWare how I am today,
Speaker 4: I'm going to compete. I'm going to be HyperWare today.
Speaker 4: I'm not feeling the same as it was yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I want to win. Yeah, and when you
Speaker 3: are HyperWare, you you feel those those minuscule shifts and
Speaker 3: changes in how you're feeling. So that's and.
Speaker 4: That's quite a kinesthetic power. That's a power that you
Speaker 4: develop over time. Yeah, I suppose so, knowing every little
Speaker 4: change at the margin.
Speaker 3: And I when I was growing up and I'm still
Speaker 3: somewhat this way I was growing I grew up a
Speaker 3: massive hypochondriac because I felt things in my body.
Speaker 2: That probably helps very very much.
Speaker 3: From a young age, I'd make my mum take me
Speaker 3: to get routine blood tests because I was like, I
Speaker 3: think I've got something wrong with me, you know, because
Speaker 3: I just felt things everywhere.
Speaker 1: All that might not have been a hypochondriac.
Speaker 4: That might not be a manic maniacal type thing in
Speaker 4: your brain as a as a mental health thing, but
Speaker 4: maybe it was just more you are very aware.
Speaker 1: Of how you feel. Yeah, yeah, probably more so than
Speaker 1: anybody else.
Speaker 2: Perhaps, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's like to be anyone else,
Speaker 3: so I don't know, but I I knew that I
Speaker 3: was always hyper aware of how I felt, and that
Speaker 3: did that was a curse in some sense, because when
Speaker 3: I was younger, I used to worry about that and go,
Speaker 3: I think there's things wrong with me because I feel
Speaker 3: changes and blah blah blah. So I wasn't sure that's
Speaker 3: calmed down as I've aged, but it was a blessing
Speaker 3: in the water.
Speaker 1: Definitely, and probably in new music too.
Speaker 2: And it's been a blessing, yeah, in my music as well.
Speaker 3: I think, what about school? What did you do?
Speaker 4: Is what happened to school during all this period when
Speaker 4: you're up there training for the stage.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I I went to school on the Gold Coast
Speaker 3: till I went through grade eight yep. And then we
Speaker 3: moved to the US, so I part of my contract
Speaker 3: was that the and I think it was probably a
Speaker 3: legal thing then to the record label had to pay
Speaker 3: for my.
Speaker 1: Tutoring homeschool, homeschool school.
Speaker 3: So I did nine to twelve homeschooled through a US
Speaker 3: curriculum over there, and graduated through a US high school
Speaker 3: that I never went to or visited.
Speaker 1: But you're still homeschooled, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I had a teacher on the road.
Speaker 3: Through tours and of course travel I had to they
Speaker 3: had to have someone with me.
Speaker 4: So when you he's a kid from Queensland, I mean
Speaker 4: as you said, probably people ever done this. I don't
Speaker 4: know any if anybody's ever done it. But you sit
Speaker 4: back today and you think of the mission that you
Speaker 4: and your family's on, and all your support group, everybody
Speaker 4: music teachers, guitar coach, blah blah blah, someone's engaging in
Speaker 4: the audience.
Speaker 1: You've got a book a venue. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Tudor there were more than I knew at that time.
Speaker 3: You know, my family would tried to sort of sheldy
Speaker 3: a bit, Yeah, and made an effort of keeping tried
Speaker 3: to keep a level of normalcy amidst the chaos, which
Speaker 3: was at times impossible, but they tried. But yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: There was a lot happening.
Speaker 1: Did you think about it? You think, my god, that
Speaker 1: was like that was mad.
Speaker 3: When I look back now, Yeah, I was. I was fifteen,
Speaker 3: doing three cities a day in a van, visiting radio
Speaker 3: stations and doing shopping, more concerts, and it was mad
Speaker 3: to think about, you know, three cities in Connecticut in
Speaker 3: one day.
Speaker 1: You know, you would regret I don't mean I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to pull it. No, it wouldn't be anything.
Speaker 1: You go, shit, I wish I hadn't done it or
Speaker 1: that was a pain the ass.
Speaker 3: No, And I say no because it taught me so much.
Speaker 3: So at times I wish I didn't have to grow
Speaker 3: up as quickly as I did.
Speaker 4: How do you mean you to grow it quickly because
Speaker 4: you got exposed at things you wouldn't been exposed on
Speaker 4: the Gold Coast for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to. I had to.
Speaker 3: I had to carry myself in an adult world from
Speaker 3: the age of fourteen. So you're sort of forced to
Speaker 3: learn how to carry yourself that in that world and
Speaker 3: sit in meetings and do all these things that you
Speaker 3: you don't have to do any most you know you
Speaker 3: don't have to do when you're fourteen.
Speaker 1: Is that like a loss of innocence?
Speaker 4: I don't mean in the I don't mean the normal
Speaker 4: sense of loss of innocence, but I mean just acting
Speaker 4: like an adult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I suppose so, But I I was, I believe,
Speaker 3: quite mature from a young age in that sense anyway.
Speaker 3: So I was. I was. I didn't feel strange to me.
Speaker 3: I was ready to do it. I wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: There's no force, nah, nothing, no, And.
Speaker 3: I was down to I was down for the grant
Speaker 3: of it. I was excited about jumping in that van
Speaker 3: and doing three gigs in a day, and you know,
Speaker 3: visiting radio stations and performing like I loved being busy,
Speaker 3: and I loved that because I've always loved the feeling
Speaker 3: of forward momentum, and that felt exciting. It felt like
Speaker 3: I was going someplace.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, like your ambition for a young kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, crazy, Yeah it was. And it was very self driven,
Speaker 3: like I even though I was on this rollercoaster, this
Speaker 3: train that just took off and didn't stop, I still
Speaker 3: felt somewhat in control from that age.
Speaker 2: And when I started not to feel in.
Speaker 3: Control, I sort of took back control, which is a
Speaker 3: whole other story about I left my record label at
Speaker 3: eighteen I think it was, and went independent and sort
Speaker 3: of built a new team that at that age and
Speaker 3: sort of shifted musical direction a little bit. But I've
Speaker 3: always liked to and have felt in control of my
Speaker 3: story in my life.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been out of control? Then? I mean
Speaker 1: that industry generally speaking.
Speaker 3: You know, it's pretty they can get pretty mad, yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's there was a dark side to it all
Speaker 3: as well, you know, as as sort of fun and
Speaker 3: fast paced and glamorous as I am making it sound,
Speaker 3: there was a dark side to it all.
Speaker 1: What is what is that?
Speaker 3: Which was?
Speaker 2: Having that level of.
Speaker 3: Freedom at that age is probably not the healthiest thing,
Speaker 3: being able to sort of go and do whatever whatever
Speaker 3: you want from an age where you don't know what
Speaker 3: you want or what's good for you. So, you know,
Speaker 3: starting to I lived on my you know, I bought
Speaker 3: my first place in la and lived on my own
Speaker 3: from seventeen, started traveling and touring actually on your own, Yeah,
Speaker 3: on my own? Yeah, I had I had a I
Speaker 3: had a sort of a tour manager who was this
Speaker 3: young guy that I became really good mates with that
Speaker 3: was that sort of had to spend most of the
Speaker 3: time with me because we were always working and traveling.
Speaker 3: But he ended up living with me for a while.
Speaker 3: But I was, I wasn't. I was a sense in
Speaker 3: a sense living on my own. I wasn't living with
Speaker 3: my family.
Speaker 1: Scared, but Jesus out of me if all as your parents.
Speaker 3: Yeah I did. It's scared. Scared the hell out of
Speaker 3: my mom. And I started traveling and touring by myself
Speaker 3: from yeah, sixteen, So I.
Speaker 1: Can imagine what he goes on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you start going out to clubs because they're letting
Speaker 3: you in, you know, that kind of thing. And that's
Speaker 3: a serious level of autonomy and freedom for a kid
Speaker 3: that age.
Speaker 1: That's a time of error to mistakes. Happened.
Speaker 3: They did happen, They did happen.
Speaker 4: Did you ever get like, did you ever get like
Speaker 4: chronically close to.
Speaker 1: Stuffing things up?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, a few times. Yeah, seventeen eighteen, from about
Speaker 3: seventeen to twenty, i'd call those my sort of.
Speaker 2: Party is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I suppose you'd say I was still working a lot,
Speaker 3: and I was still I made a ton of progress
Speaker 3: as a musician and as a guitarist, like as an
Speaker 3: instrumentalist in that period because I was so I was
Speaker 3: loving music and I was practicing and all that. But
Speaker 3: at the same time I was so, I was exploring
Speaker 3: a lot, I was finding new styles.
Speaker 2: It did wonders for me as a musician.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I was going out every night,
Speaker 3: and you know, I had discovered drinking and drugs and
Speaker 3: all these things that we're just in Hollywood are just
Speaker 3: successible to you at that age, and you have money
Speaker 3: and I had money, which doesn't help. And I also
Speaker 3: didn't I also didn't care to listen to guidance. I
Speaker 3: was a bit I was going through a rebellious thing
Speaker 3: because there was a part of me that felt like, well,
Speaker 3: I've been told what to do for these last few years,
Speaker 3: you know, in work, I want to make my own decisions.
Speaker 1: Now it's my time.
Speaker 3: But those decisions you make for yourself I always the best.
Speaker 3: You just think that they're cool or rebellious at that
Speaker 3: at that age you probably don't care. Really, I didn't
Speaker 3: give a shit, you know, I said, well, I built
Speaker 3: all this, I'm going to go do my own thing,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to leave my label and I'm going
Speaker 3: to just go and party and put the people around
Speaker 3: me that are going to enable that behavior. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's just you get a bit carried away.
Speaker 1: Did your parents put back to Australia.
Speaker 3: They did by the time I was I was nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty when they moved home. I think they started to
Speaker 3: feel like they didn't have a whole lot of control
Speaker 3: of me. At that stage because I was in that
Speaker 3: period of my life. It almost didn't allow them to.
Speaker 3: If they tried to, it made matters worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, conflict, I'm sure you can imagine.
Speaker 3: You know, you've had probably those experiences as a father
Speaker 3: and four sons, so you have to Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 3: you know, like it's it's tuning keys parenting.
Speaker 2: I think probably that age.
Speaker 3: I've never been through it, but that's what I imagine,
Speaker 3: you know, So they had to just sort of do
Speaker 3: their best to manage it. But there was a couple
Speaker 3: of years there was sliding. It was sliding and what
Speaker 3: pulls your back.
Speaker 2: Families won.
Speaker 3: Fortunately they were always there too, sort of far off
Speaker 3: the track as I a strayed. They were always there
Speaker 3: to talk to me and catch me and tell me
Speaker 3: how they felt. And I think that there were many
Speaker 3: times or if I didn't have them, I probably would
Speaker 3: have just kept going. They were quick to They were
Speaker 3: always quick growing up to sort of make sure I
Speaker 3: didn't get I'll get too big for my boots, because
Speaker 3: it's very easy to in that scenario, you get a
Speaker 3: big hit about you because all you're hearing is is
Speaker 3: good things. And then also in those years was expressing
Speaker 3: their concern and wanting me to come back down to earth.
Speaker 3: I guess is a good analogy. I was floating.
Speaker 1: I can imagine I was floating for good three or
Speaker 1: four years there. But then did swimming have any That's
Speaker 1: that's number two.
Speaker 3: That that in a sense, the thought and the the
Speaker 3: idea grew in that period of time through my sort
Speaker 3: of twenty early twenties, and that almost saved my life
Speaker 3: in a sense, like it shifted my path for.
Speaker 4: The better, because you can't do you can't leave that
Speaker 4: Hollywood life, let's call it that.
Speaker 3: No, And there were times it was like the sobering
Speaker 3: thought was that, Okay, well, I can't keep doing this.
Speaker 3: I can't if that's what I want to do. I
Speaker 3: can't be wrecking my body until three am, you know,
Speaker 3: four times a week. It's not what this is dumb
Speaker 3: if I want to do that, you know. And that
Speaker 3: sounded like that sounded like where I needed to go.
Speaker 3: And it was the shift, certainly was a.
Speaker 1: Voice in your head like it is there some little
Speaker 1: person in your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, when you know, it just says it's the
Speaker 3: haze was going, hey what are you doing?
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And as I got older, like the first couple of years,
Speaker 3: it was guilt free. It was like, you know, having fun,
Speaker 3: not thinking twice about it. And then the voice grew
Speaker 3: you know, sort of na actually yeah, there was Yeah,
Speaker 3: which was great then to be able to do it
Speaker 3: with with that guilt free I feel. But then I
Speaker 3: got the voice in my head going it was it was.
Speaker 3: It was a mature voice, amits the immature I was
Speaker 3: up to, you know, going this is you can't do
Speaker 3: this much longer.
Speaker 2: Plus you don't remember that you want that.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: That helped me. Swimming helped me come out of that.
Speaker 3: That that that whole I guess.
Speaker 4: So when you say it saved your life, do you
Speaker 4: mean saved your life as you live it today or.
Speaker 1: Save you Actually?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I if I kept going down that path
Speaker 3: and didn't have swimming too, I suppose clean me up
Speaker 3: in a sense, get me healthy, I don't know where
Speaker 3: things would have gone. So in a way it did
Speaker 3: literally save my life, but it also save your life.
Speaker 3: Gave me life in it gave me new life, It
Speaker 3: gave me, built me these beautiful, healthy habits. It gave
Speaker 3: me a great partner, It gave me my life in Australia.
Speaker 3: Again that I didn't feel connected to Australia anymore when
Speaker 3: I was over there, like that was La was my home.
Speaker 3: I didn't care to come back here and I didn't
Speaker 3: come much and so it helped me reconnect with my
Speaker 3: homeland in a way as.
Speaker 2: Well, and the people here.
Speaker 3: And so having since swum here again and lived here
Speaker 3: again and been around family and built my base here,
Speaker 3: like I don't see I don't see myself living or
Speaker 3: being based anywhere else ever again, like I love it
Speaker 3: in Australia again, and I'm glad it helped me reclaim
Speaker 3: that love for where I'm from.
Speaker 4: You and you mentioned earlier, you know, if you've got
Speaker 4: your partner, Emma, who actually came in here, but I
Speaker 4: had my headly swung off my shoulders when I walk
Speaker 4: into the studio. But if you want to just quickly
Speaker 4: talk about that, because it's it's a talk of the
Speaker 4: town made two great athletes, you know, everybody's I'm just
Speaker 4: sort of imagining the genetics, like I said, I mean,
Speaker 4: there's marriage is sort of a thing that you guys
Speaker 4: are talking about.
Speaker 3: It's not spoken about, but it's you know, it's going
Speaker 3: to propose to it now. It's not something we've spoken about,
Speaker 3: but it's you know, we have something that is beautiful
Speaker 3: and honest and pure, and it's it's been a real
Speaker 3: breath of fresh air in my life, certainly you know,
Speaker 3: I've had I hadn't known more tumultuous relationships in the past,
Speaker 3: and and it's certainly been something that's given me a
Speaker 3: sense of calm and stability and that that I certainly
Speaker 3: needed and wanted. So that along with swimming. And we
Speaker 3: met through swimming.
Speaker 1: So the same place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's how we met. I could joined the
Speaker 3: group and so like, who's this And I didn't know
Speaker 3: who she was or what she had accomplished prior. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know now And I've had the chance to see
Speaker 3: it every day and be inspired by it every day too,
Speaker 3: because she's you know, she's just a beast, like in
Speaker 3: training and you know, she's she's sort of this she's
Speaker 3: so graceful outside of the water and she gets in
Speaker 3: the water and she can just you know, she just
Speaker 3: goes and pushes herself and it's amazing, you know. And
Speaker 3: so to see that and be inspired by that as
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's an attractive trait in a woman
Speaker 3: to you know, see see her do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So can I actually just maybe just on her parents athletes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was her mother father swimmers. Her parents
Speaker 3: both from for Australia. Was her father Ron mckinn, Ron McCann.
Speaker 1: He swing as my brother.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I remember him really from his sixties.
Speaker 2: Yep, sixties. He's from Maroubra.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember him. He was a tall guy.
Speaker 3: He's probably I don't know, he might be six four.
Speaker 1: He was a it was a freestyle I was.
Speaker 3: I recall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was in the Olympic final. He was Olympic
Speaker 2: finalist in.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get this wrong, but it was he
Speaker 3: went to Moscow and Los Angeles Olympics.
Speaker 4: I remember those. A guy called Max Metzka, and there
Speaker 4: was Ron mckinn. There's a guy called George of Venados.
Speaker 4: They were all around, George from Ghannada. I remember these
Speaker 4: guys because, like, I used to take a lot of
Speaker 4: interest in swimming in those days. Your brother and and
Speaker 4: but I remember that these guys are winning the nationals
Speaker 4: all the time. My brother's like fifty six, but these
Speaker 4: guys are getting first, second or third all the time.
Speaker 4: So so amma's father is the Ronald McKean m so like,
Speaker 4: and your parents are swimmers too, So there's some genetics
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 3: There, dude. Yeah, my dad will do it for Australia. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Her parents both met through swimming. My parents both met
Speaker 3: through swimming. That our parents knew each other back in
Speaker 3: the day because swimming was a small community then, and
Speaker 3: you know, they were swimming around a similar time. My
Speaker 3: dad and EM's dad were both at the AS at
Speaker 3: one stage at the same time. One of them was
Speaker 3: coaching and one of them was swimming. I don't know
Speaker 3: who was, but yeah, funny kind of history there with
Speaker 3: with with connection.
Speaker 4: And in terms of your musical career, do you you
Speaker 4: write songs now and do you get any inspiration for
Speaker 4: from your Yeah, I mean sometimes you write. Sometimes there's
Speaker 4: you sing songs that have the love theme involved in them.
Speaker 4: Do you get inspiration from your relationship with Emma in.
Speaker 3: Terms of what you write, Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Because there's one song I'm dying to ask you this one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got to if you don't mind.
Speaker 4: It's called on My Mind and I just want to
Speaker 4: ask you about I just want to ask about that
Speaker 4: song for a second.
Speaker 1: It might have predated and I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether this song was written well, I
Speaker 3: did a remake of it recently.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the more recent one, And I want
Speaker 1: to ask you when you write a song do you
Speaker 1: write the write it as a piece of poetry first?
Speaker 4: Sometimes sometimes because if I feel like that song was
Speaker 4: a piece of poetry, I felt like it was written
Speaker 4: as a piece of poetry. Then you know, which wrote
Speaker 4: the lyrics about as poetry. Then you added the music
Speaker 4: to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm just imagining things but.
Speaker 2: In different ways. Yeah, and that does.
Speaker 3: It does. I can't remember with that one, to be honest,
Speaker 3: because originally came out when I was fifteen maybe it was,
Speaker 3: it was, but I really redid it as a sort
Speaker 3: of piano piece, not because.
Speaker 4: You were playing that when I when I was watching it. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: so you obviously learned to play the piano as well
Speaker 4: as a guitar.
Speaker 3: That was me faking it, right. I can't play piano,
Speaker 3: My god, was trying.
Speaker 2: I was trying, Like, yeah, I was. No, I was playing, but.
Speaker 1: That's it, but you weren't. Sort of not a classic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't play, and that's in the proper sense.
Speaker 3: But I do write. I like to write poetry and
Speaker 3: bits of pros and things as well, so like sometimes
Speaker 3: lyrics come from that.
Speaker 1: And how does it work though?
Speaker 4: Are you sort of like you know, sitting on a
Speaker 4: train and going through the country and you know you
Speaker 4: had you know, you're sitting in the carriage where the
Speaker 4: food's being served, and you're just sitting there by yourself,
Speaker 4: and you're missing your girl, and you just start writing a.
Speaker 1: Bit of part of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, no, no, And you're romanticizing it. But in
Speaker 3: a way, that's that's the reality of it.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you're missing somebody or you want to are you
Speaker 4: thinking about somebody?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What they bring to the let's call it the table.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those those things inspire me all the time. She
Speaker 3: inspires me. My I've been writing a lot about what
Speaker 3: I've been through the last few years as well, so
Speaker 3: sort of non h I suppose non romantic or non
Speaker 3: love theme stuff, more say reflective or inspirational. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I draw from everywhere. And it starts in two ways.
Speaker 3: It starts either as just words or it starts as
Speaker 3: And this is more common for me when I'm writing
Speaker 3: on guitar, just a few chords and a tune.
Speaker 1: I like the sound of that.
Speaker 3: I'll start humming and then like words kind of evolve
Speaker 3: from from sound, just from humming. That's pretty contubuous in
Speaker 3: a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: You have a piece of are some words and that
Speaker 3: I'll kind of meld into what, you know, a tune
Speaker 3: I've got.
Speaker 1: And you have to be in a certain mood to create.
Speaker 3: To be creative, I find I have to have space
Speaker 3: and solitude.
Speaker 4: Which means space means you need to be being by
Speaker 4: my way, somewhere on your own, yeah sort of thing
Speaker 4: for multiple hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's why sometimes I have ideas
Speaker 3: and get little pieces when I when I'm swimming, because
Speaker 3: because you've got plenty of space, because you just in
Speaker 3: even though it's kind of intense, you are in your
Speaker 3: own world. Yeah, and you're not just you know, there's
Speaker 3: not a distraction and yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're singing a song in the pool in your
Speaker 1: head whilst you're going up and down the pool. Is
Speaker 1: common swimmers. A lot of swimmers do it because otherwise
Speaker 1: you go nuts.
Speaker 3: So I do it and it helps me get through
Speaker 3: those long sessions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you're sitting there for you're in the pool,
Speaker 4: in your head in the water, you can't hear anything, Yeah,
Speaker 4: except when you turn your head paps and you're you know,
Speaker 4: the hour and a half session of whatever the case
Speaker 4: may be, you've got to have something to keep your
Speaker 4: mind active.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's not just because and you're so well tuned physically,
Speaker 4: Like if I did that, I wouldn't have any time
Speaker 4: to think or seeing on it, because I'd be just trying.
Speaker 4: I'd be just trying to survive the lap or the distance.
Speaker 4: Whereas you're so physically well tuned that you actually can
Speaker 4: combine everything. You can sing and you can breathe, and
Speaker 4: you can you feel your heart rate. You know what
Speaker 4: your heart rate is pretty much, Yeah, within a couple
Speaker 4: of beats.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And at times, especially in the easier sessions, like in
Speaker 2: the recovery sessions or two to three of the of
Speaker 2: the nine swim sets ayet a week, we're sort of
Speaker 2: easier recovery based, and there you just sort of fall
Speaker 2: into that second nature.
Speaker 3: Whether the physical bart's taken care of and your mind's
Speaker 3: just floating around. And that's when I'd often get a
Speaker 3: lot of ideas and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, and I mean you can get great ideas.
Speaker 4: And speaking of grand ideas, I'm actually keen to find
Speaker 4: out what does someone like you do now?
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to say.
Speaker 4: Post swimming career, because you know, all I know you're
Speaker 4: going to continue on Are you going to continue?
Speaker 3: I should ask the question, are you going to continue? Yeah,
Speaker 3: as far as I'm a were at the moment within myself,
Speaker 3: probably not. I'm really excited about other things.
Speaker 4: Again, I want to tell you what the other things are. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what do I see? You got doctor hydro written on there?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 3: That's the fun I started that while I was swimming
Speaker 3: with Queensland. Yeah, something I've co founded with a few
Speaker 3: guys up in Queensland. It's a hydration supplement little tub today.
Speaker 1: Got what Hydration is a big deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's been underplayed for a long time. Yeah, swimming,
Speaker 4: it was a vital part of my last few years.
Speaker 4: Let's just talk about that for second. In terms of swimmers, particularly,
Speaker 4: you're when you're in the open you know, you're an
Speaker 4: open pool, so you've got the sunshine and all that
Speaker 4: sort of thing, the elements, and you're in the elements,
Speaker 4: but you're breathing a lot and you're sort of transpiring.
Speaker 3: You're losing I was also losing a lot more fluid
Speaker 3: than I than you think because you're in the water.
Speaker 3: You don't see yourself when you're on for a run.
Speaker 3: Or in the gym.
Speaker 2: You can see yourself sweat.
Speaker 3: Sweating in the pool like that's happening as well, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like you are.
Speaker 4: And the breathing too, I mean you breathe a lot
Speaker 4: when you swim. I mean it's like if you're in
Speaker 4: the gym, you don't breathe. We knew what you would breathe.
Speaker 4: You're transpiring, you know, your mouth all.
Speaker 2: The time, the constant just all the time.
Speaker 1: So would you how did you get onto hydration?
Speaker 5: Was that?
Speaker 1: But that's something the medical people at the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I told you to go on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that we did a lot. We do a lot
Speaker 3: of research around how it affects you, how even the
Speaker 3: slightest level of dehydration can significantly affect your performance. And
Speaker 3: so that was stressed. That stressed to us a lot
Speaker 3: because we have a great in the training group. How
Speaker 3: we had you know, physiologists and dietitian and all those
Speaker 3: things there to support.
Speaker 1: Us sports scientists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so the hydration part was huge. And I
Speaker 3: also did a lot of research into you know, different
Speaker 3: amino acids and things that could help you know, recovery
Speaker 3: and vitamins, B vitamins like all the things that you know,
Speaker 3: support energy systems, and that's kind of what doctor Hydrate is.
Speaker 3: It's like all of that in one. So as I
Speaker 3: was like I'm going to have to take bloody five
Speaker 3: different tablets and do my you.
Speaker 2: Know, hydration, electrolyte powder.
Speaker 3: And you know glued like glutamine for sort of muscle recovery,
Speaker 3: amino acid type thing, probiotics, and that was sort of
Speaker 3: the idea around Doctor Hydrate was putting all of that
Speaker 3: in one.
Speaker 4: So it's not just a hydration, it's not just putting
Speaker 4: magers a potassum back in the system as a few
Speaker 4: other things as well.
Speaker 3: No, it's got yeah, it's got B vitamins, probiotics, it's
Speaker 3: got C minerals like seventy two C mineral, like those
Speaker 3: miniscule sort of things you don't really get in other ones,
Speaker 3: like we use like a seaweed extract from the North Atlantic.
Speaker 3: I think. Yeah, and where do you guys car team
Speaker 3: glued Tomine Queensland? Wow, straight, Yeah, that's good Queensland. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's it's like a really nice thing to
Speaker 3: have been able to be part of developing and it's
Speaker 3: going amazing in Australia. People everyone the tries, it loves it,
Speaker 3: and it's it's just started starting to go game busters.
Speaker 1: Because hydration has become a big deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for some reason, I've last I mean, the only
Speaker 4: time you ever heard about is when you had diarrhea
Speaker 4: or had gastric problem and your mom would go down
Speaker 4: to the chemistry, come back with a little packet of stuff.
Speaker 4: You have two or three of them, and yeah, that
Speaker 4: was usually how that how we roll with that, although
Speaker 4: and sometimes my dad used to come up with little
Speaker 4: salt tablets and give you a salt tablet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sodium is a key, like a key electrolyte, is
Speaker 3: it in what you're in? Lose a lot in sweat
Speaker 3: and if you don't have enough in it, you'll be
Speaker 3: cramping like that in some of the world cauts, you know,
Speaker 3: we're doing like you need it and it's yeah, it's in.
Speaker 3: It's one of the electrocics.
Speaker 1: What about something like me, like I'm not train, but
Speaker 1: I don't train to the level you train, but I
Speaker 1: train every day.
Speaker 4: But I'm talking a lot. I'm going I'm doing this
Speaker 4: sort of stuff a lot. I mean, I'm you know,
Speaker 4: you're perspiring even though you're not doing much. But I'm
Speaker 4: still perspiring all the time.
Speaker 1: How do you work out?
Speaker 4: How does one know if they're dehydrated or they need hydrationally?
Speaker 4: Do I get a headache or is there some symptoms
Speaker 4: apart from cramping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lethargy, feel tired, Yeah, like leather gy, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe headaches, yeah, general lower energy. Yeah, can be a
Speaker 3: variety of things. But the electrolytes, it just supports the
Speaker 3: key key like bodily functions. And it's also like a
Speaker 3: vitality thing as well, like you kind of feel feel peppier,
Speaker 3: you feel better because a lot of the water and
Speaker 3: I didn't really know this before, but a lot of
Speaker 3: water is sort of stripped of it's dead water, especially
Speaker 3: like bottled water. Yeah, it's stripped of like the natural
Speaker 3: minerals from the earth that you'd get when we used to,
Speaker 3: you know, just drink out of springs and rivers and stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, before we had all you know what we
Speaker 3: have in the world now in society. So the water
Speaker 3: we drink is usually void of all that stuff, and
Speaker 3: so you have to put it back in.
Speaker 1: At it back in.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So and why did you call it doctor hydrate? How
Speaker 4: to help you get that name registered?
Speaker 3: Like that's a question. Pretty cool, Yeah, it is cool.
Speaker 3: It felt felt like I felt semi medicinal but also
Speaker 3: kind of groovy.
Speaker 4: What is it is groovy, but it's it's also semi
Speaker 4: it is sort of it's actually probably fully medicinal because
Speaker 4: I think what we're all run off doing protein powders
Speaker 4: and all that sort of stuff. It's all great, Yeah,
Speaker 4: but this is a pretty basic thing.
Speaker 1: Hydration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do not drink enough good water. Yeah, no
Speaker 3: one does. And that's I learned it through assumming. But
Speaker 3: that's something that I now will take with me into
Speaker 3: my life even when I'm not, you know, all exercise
Speaker 3: going forward for general wellbeing. But I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be doing anywhere near what I was doing, but I'll
Speaker 3: still be taking hydration in the morning pre post exercise.
Speaker 1: And one other things on now. Apart from that.
Speaker 3: Music music, music, I started to write and record different
Speaker 3: style to work again, guitar based, so a bit of
Speaker 3: guitar based stuff. And also I'm really into I'm really
Speaker 3: into the jazz and blues kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Favorite.
Speaker 3: So I love, I love and drew a lot especially
Speaker 3: the last few years, a lot of inspiration from a
Speaker 3: lot of the sort of forties, fifties kind of kroners.
Speaker 2: All those kind of those kind of guys.
Speaker 3: I got up. I got up when I was in
Speaker 3: Paris actually last month. I was at this like underground
Speaker 3: jazz bar two in the morning, and I got up
Speaker 3: and saying the way you look tonight by Sinata with
Speaker 3: the band up there, and I just it just gave
Speaker 3: me the bug. In the past, I've done musical theater.
Speaker 3: I did a show on Broadway in twenty eighteen, wow,
Speaker 3: And so I'm interested in a bit of that again.
Speaker 3: I enjoy the stage, acting and performing as well as
Speaker 3: my own stuff. So I'll be trying to find fun
Speaker 3: projects to do on stage and with musicals and acting
Speaker 3: in that. But I'm also looking at writing and recording
Speaker 3: another record.
Speaker 4: So more is it more of the singing, the jazz territory,
Speaker 4: and more the instruments. In terms of the blues we're
Speaker 4: putting yourself, like ket.
Speaker 3: Ill play, I gotta I gotta develop, I suppose the
Speaker 3: sound for the next, the next thing. But a lot
Speaker 3: of the guitar style that I'm playing at the moment
Speaker 3: is blues inspired. And I really enjoy writing my own stuff,
Speaker 3: but I also really enjoy singing the kind of the
Speaker 3: jazz standards in that as well. So I'm trying to
Speaker 3: find a nice, like little blend of how I can
Speaker 3: do my original thing, but also sort of pay a
Speaker 3: bit of homage to stars that I love as well.
Speaker 1: I lived in Chicago for a while, worked in Chicago
Speaker 1: for a while, and there was like, no joke, it
Speaker 1: was a jazz bar and a jazz band, jazz singers
Speaker 1: and all musicians on there every night in some barman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was yeah, mental.
Speaker 3: With Chicago and New York just have those that feel
Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And I got stuck there.
Speaker 4: I remember once I was due to flat and the
Speaker 4: and the massive snowstorm happened and work up the mornings
Speaker 4: like five foot of snow outside hotel. Everything was stopped
Speaker 4: and I had to stay in Chicago for a full week,
Speaker 4: had nothing to do, so I couldn't even get to.
Speaker 1: Work to the office.
Speaker 4: So I just I was very close to the all
Speaker 4: the jazz bars, and every night they plo out like
Speaker 4: a track from my.
Speaker 1: Hotel, not for me, but for everybody else.
Speaker 4: And I tracked straight to all these bars and every
Speaker 4: night I went there was so cool.
Speaker 1: It was like the best, yeah, the best.
Speaker 3: I love it's kind of a dying you know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of a dying dying arcade. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: think it's just genre wise, it's not as not as
Speaker 3: popular among young people. There's there's new genres, but it's
Speaker 3: it's a it's a it's got a feeling that you know,
Speaker 3: you can't get from anything else that I want to
Speaker 3: actually got to feel to it in a way keep
Speaker 3: alive in some sense for for younger people. So that's
Speaker 3: that's part of my goal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you end up getting a record player and you
Speaker 4: get you put Muddy Waters on the record, and you'll
Speaker 4: be you'll be playing Muddy Waters.
Speaker 1: Yeah it sounds like yet old.
Speaker 3: I am getting help. Yeah, yeah, I feel it happening
Speaker 3: in real time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's crazy because you just you know, you
Speaker 4: just went to the Conmwealth Games and you know you're meddled,
Speaker 4: and you're going to the you know, you went to
Speaker 4: the train for the Olympic Trials and you know, like
Speaker 4: it doesn't you're only twenty seven. It doesn't sound that old,
Speaker 4: but but in terms of the life you've lived, you
Speaker 4: are sort of old.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a bad.
Speaker 3: Way, No, No, I know what you mean, I've lived
Speaker 3: two lifetimes or condensed lifetimes, but lifetimes nonetheless.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like seriously, because now you're saying, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to move on from that.
Speaker 6: From that swimming thing, an athletic career and the kid
Speaker 6: riding a bike on music videos, singing while this is
Speaker 6: going down there in l A and then later on
Speaker 6: singing to big audiences.
Speaker 4: Need to jazz and blues. You know, next thing, you know,
Speaker 4: you're going to tell me you're going to get yourself
Speaker 4: a hard and you're gonna start playing like, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, real bluesy stuff.
Speaker 3: How cool is that stuff? I love it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I did lessons on it, Like is
Speaker 4: the hardest thing to do? It's really hard to get
Speaker 4: that one sound?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, to get that one note.
Speaker 4: Because you keep sort of mixing up all the time.
Speaker 4: And in the end, I just I was working pretty
Speaker 4: had so and I giving it up.
Speaker 1: I gave it up, but I might go to it
Speaker 1: because I just I just love the sound of it.
Speaker 1: It's good, fine, and it has a feel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if it's nostalgia or if it's
Speaker 3: what it is, but it's it's a happy, sad.
Speaker 4: But ultimately it's comforting to me. Yeah, but do you
Speaker 4: feel as though you can't do it properly? Particularly the
Speaker 4: blues bit. And I often think this to myself. I
Speaker 4: can't appreciate probably because I've never lived that dirties period
Speaker 4: when it was sort of introduced to us, the blues,
Speaker 4: you know, with people very poor, particularly the black people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they used it as an outlet for themselves.
Speaker 3: In a sense. Yeah, Like you know, there's part of
Speaker 3: that that you're never going to experience firsthand. But I
Speaker 3: think you can find the spirit of it and try
Speaker 3: and capture it. If you love the style and you
Speaker 3: love the feeling of the music, you can try and
Speaker 3: find the spirit of it and capture it.
Speaker 4: Because I wonder whether you know, people like me, for example,
Speaker 4: can only ever be an observer as opposed to be
Speaker 4: a participant, because you're actually trying to become a participant
Speaker 4: in it. I can observe the feeling, yeah, but I
Speaker 4: can never claim I can be a participant because I'd
Speaker 4: feel as though, I mean, I'm not that musical for
Speaker 4: a start. But and I don't play the instrument like
Speaker 4: you know, the guitar like you do, And you can
Speaker 4: play blues guitar, but to really participate in it, you
Speaker 4: nearly feel like you've got to be like sitting in
Speaker 4: one of those places, you know, in South South of
Speaker 4: the United States, where you know the black community was
Speaker 4: actually singing the blues and playing the blues in order.
Speaker 1: To get that sense of feeling. I mean, you've gone
Speaker 1: through a lot of stuff in your life, and you've
Speaker 1: mastered by the way you've mastered so many things. It's mental.
Speaker 1: If anybody's going to be able to do it, it's you.
Speaker 1: Do you feel as though you can get that sense
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 4: From Australia or do you feel I think maybe I'm
Speaker 4: going to go back over there for a bit.
Speaker 3: That's a really good question. I've spent a bit of
Speaker 3: time in through the South. I've spent a time in Memphis,
Speaker 3: spent a time in Nashville recording and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, I think that.
Speaker 3: I think i'd like to I'd like to think I
Speaker 3: can stay here and capture some of it, you know,
Speaker 3: and have it here. But you know, I do plan
Speaker 3: on I do plan on being somewhat of a traveler,
Speaker 3: you know, my future and being able to spend time
Speaker 3: in different cultures and cities. And that's so I will
Speaker 3: and want to spend more time in some of those places,
Speaker 3: the music history type talents, Yeah, just for sake of feeling,
Speaker 3: feeling that and understanding where you know those A lot
Speaker 3: of that stuff comes from because even the jazz like
Speaker 3: even even you know, the big band jazz like that
Speaker 3: stuff will comes from from there too, comes from America.
Speaker 3: Is obviously all popular popularized by by you know, the
Speaker 3: sinatras of the Well, but there's roots to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember, especially jazz big bands like people like
Speaker 4: her Belt Albert and the Tierwana Brass's music. It's so good,
Speaker 4: it's so good and and I mean, I don't want
Speaker 4: to get any private life, but do you think, well,
Speaker 4: Emma from here on end, at some stage, like if
Speaker 4: you guys, you know, go the next to the next level,
Speaker 4: do you think she would be the same sort of
Speaker 4: person with you like you travel as a fan because
Speaker 4: your mum and dad did you supported you both, but
Speaker 4: they supported you, but they're also supporting each other in
Speaker 4: terms of what they wanted to do for you for
Speaker 4: their kid.
Speaker 1: And that's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And and that's that's an important that's an
Speaker 3: important factor for me going forward is you know, and
Speaker 3: I know you have those thoughts about well, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be you know, the father and sort of you know,
Speaker 3: the patriarch I guess of a unit eventually, you know,
Speaker 3: And that's that's an exciting idea, Like that's that's also
Speaker 3: you know, there's pride in that, there's I like that,
Speaker 3: you know, that idea and being able to do that
Speaker 3: with with a woman, like it's beautiful and and it's
Speaker 3: something that I don't want to neglect in you know,
Speaker 3: my travels and my exploration of you know, music or
Speaker 3: an art form, right, Like, it's something I want to
Speaker 3: And we've had that chat, you know about traveling together
Speaker 3: and you know, her coming along for the ride and
Speaker 3: some of that stuff.
Speaker 2: And because that's an exciting thing.
Speaker 1: Because it's hard not to be selfish, I mean, to
Speaker 1: be good at something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to be a bit selfish, you do.
Speaker 4: And to some extent what your you did in terms
Speaker 4: of your swimming career and your musical career, you were.
Speaker 3: Goal focused and those were selfish pursuits, like I was
Speaker 3: in a good way a lot for.
Speaker 1: Those yeah, and you had but you had to do
Speaker 1: to get to where you had to get to.
Speaker 4: There's no the way in terms of living a life,
Speaker 4: a full life either from now on, either with a
Speaker 4: part with that party. Again must be selfish, but at
Speaker 4: the same time we've got to start a compromise a lot.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of compromise involved in particularly you have kids.
Speaker 3: You have to be considerate, you have to consider other people.
Speaker 3: A lot of compromise feelings. And he reads you think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's cool, and I think that's part of growing up too.
Speaker 3: And I you know, you see, I've seen and been
Speaker 3: around a lot of people, especially in entertainment. It's quite
Speaker 3: common that you see older people that didn't want to
Speaker 3: make those compromises, and you get to that age of
Speaker 3: forty fifty years old and there's something missing there, you know,
Speaker 3: that's that that sense of family and that part's missing.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to be one of those those
Speaker 3: musicians that he's older without that and that sort of
Speaker 3: didn't didn't consider our priority as that and only was
Speaker 3: it was strictly selfish.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's for me.
Speaker 3: You know, I had my years of that, and you know,
Speaker 3: when something means enough to you, and you know, family
Speaker 3: does and will mean that much to me. It will
Speaker 3: always be part of part of the picture.
Speaker 4: And do you mind be asking you this as a parent,
Speaker 4: and I won't ask you to speak for Emma, but
Speaker 4: as a parent, given your genetics, and let's make an
Speaker 4: assumption seek assumption that you've got genetics said too, would
Speaker 4: you encourage your kids to become swimmers?
Speaker 3: I've thought a lot about that, especially lately because I'm going, Oh,
Speaker 3: I swim, and is that something i'd want, especially with
Speaker 3: experience I've just been there, is that something i'd want
Speaker 3: for my kids? And it's hard to say, Like, I
Speaker 3: think that the most you can do is what my
Speaker 3: parents have probably EM's parents did for her, which was
Speaker 3: just put you and learn to swim. Yeah, for safety reasons,
Speaker 3: you know, because I want my kids to be able
Speaker 3: to feel comfortable at the beach, you know, for living
Speaker 3: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Obviously we're going to be going to the beach.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I want them to be able to learn how to
Speaker 3: surf and do surf life saving all that I enjoy
Speaker 3: doing growing up. And you want them to feel competent
Speaker 3: enough in those scenarios to enjoy the ocean. And then
Speaker 3: if like pool swimming, and competitive swimming is of interest
Speaker 3: and of you know, if they if they enjoy it,
Speaker 3: then then I'll encourage it. But if they don't, I'm
Speaker 3: definitely not going to be one to make them.
Speaker 1: Because you would have seen it. You would have seen
Speaker 1: growing up as a swimmer, and I definitely would have
Speaker 1: seen it because she swam for a longer period as
Speaker 1: a swimmer, but that she didn't have the musical intervention
Speaker 1: like you did where you've got parents and I've seen
Speaker 1: it football said all sorts of places who pushed the kid.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 4: I mean it's good. Look, it's a great sport, it's
Speaker 4: a great discipline. They learned a lot of stuff about
Speaker 4: themselves that that push. Sometimes you need sometimes kids, you.
Speaker 2: Need a little tough love at time a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I mean that's gonna be a great question
Speaker 1: for you to a.
Speaker 4: Great dilemma for you guys to have to deal with
Speaker 4: at some stage, because you're definitely gonna have the genetics
Speaker 4: there and what makes.
Speaker 1: Sense and you're going to be thinking you yourself.
Speaker 4: I don't want this kid to waste what God has
Speaker 4: given them through you know, through the multitude of probabilities.
Speaker 1: Of someone coming out a good swimmer.
Speaker 4: If anybody or a good athlete generally, if anyone's going
Speaker 4: to have that, that genetics.
Speaker 1: Is going to be would be the combination of you too.
Speaker 1: Then you feel as though an obligation should I am
Speaker 1: I obliged to cultivate that? And how hard do you
Speaker 1: push that's that's gonna that? It would be a really
Speaker 1: tricky thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it'll be something to balance for sure, because
Speaker 3: that you know, you want to you want to be
Speaker 3: tough to the point of teaching them. You know that
Speaker 3: that it's important too, that you need some measure of
Speaker 3: discipline right to do anything in life. And so and
Speaker 3: you see a lot of kids these days and just
Speaker 3: they don't have that, you know, they're not taught that
Speaker 3: because because there is that element of, oh, we don't
Speaker 3: want to be tough on our yeah kids, you know.
Speaker 3: And I can't speak for parents. I don't know what
Speaker 3: it's like, but.
Speaker 2: You don't want to go too soft.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I don't want to force
Speaker 3: my kid to do anything that they don't want to do.
Speaker 3: And I was lucky that my parents never forced me
Speaker 3: to train or forced me to get up.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you forced them to take it.
Speaker 3: I force them to take me. Yeah. If anything, Hopefully,
Speaker 3: if my kids anything like me, they're going to have
Speaker 3: a little inherent drive. And so I'm hoping that's you know,
Speaker 3: enough to then be able to nurture in whatever path
Speaker 3: they choose to take. They could be a you know anything, biologist,
Speaker 3: or a tennis player or a you know it, could
Speaker 3: be a musician. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Cody Simpson.
Speaker 4: I hope I'm doing this in ten years time, and
Speaker 4: I hope that you come back in ten years time with.
Speaker 3: Your little my little little one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can tell me how your kids going
Speaker 4: in relation to that part of your life, because I
Speaker 4: actually think I have to be fascinated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm fascinated to experience it. So I'm excited to
Speaker 3: experience it.
Speaker 1: And I want to say thank you very much for
Speaker 1: coming in today.
Speaker 3: Lake.
Speaker 1: It's been awesome.
Speaker 4: Congratulations, by the way, on your life. Thank you everything
Speaker 4: you've done in your life and the way you've done it,
Speaker 4: probably more importantly, thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your time and the chat today.
Speaker 3: It's been great.